Steve Cropley: Citroen still makes great motorway mile-munchers

My pal let me behind the wheel for 20 minutes, where happy memories of a lovely mechanical gearchange, an unfettered exhaust rasp near the 5700rpm redline and a hard, progressive brake pedal were rekindled.

Many years ago, I drove a GTV up the east coast of Australia (it was a 4400-mile return trip). Besides the joy of spending so much time in a great car, I best remember this trip for the take-you-down-a-peg wit of a local bloke who I encountered at my destination city of Cairns, far north Queensland. We were both sitting on a seat looking out to sea – me a proud arrival taking a breath of sea air, him a local resident who probably sat there every day.

“Where’re you from, matey?” he asked, eyeing me and my flashy tourist’s Alfa with mild distaste. “Just driven from Sydney,” said I with what turned out to be an unwise level of city-slicker’s pride. “Sydney, eh?” he said. “Who’s got the pub there now?

Wednesday

I’m feeling the frustration of my colleagues who have battled to provide representative pictures of this week’s all-important new-generation Range Rover for our cover, even though you would think they would be plentiful, given that we’ve been in the US driving it. There seems to be an odd and unhealthy new spirit of media control within Jaguar Land Rover’s top echelons: only strictly vetted images are available from the maker and we haven’t been able to produce our own.

It’s hard to think of anything more directly at odds with Land Rover’s hard-won, 74-year-old spirit of freedom (for Range Rover it’s 52 years), and if you stand it beside the current lack of clarity from Gaydon about Jaguar’s progress, it adds up to a sorry misconnection with the media and (through us) the marques’ all-important devotees.

Thursday

I’ve just been relieved of £60 for parking my Dacia for too long in a place that I can neither identify nor remember early in January. The terse language of the penalty notice – and the threat of increasing the payment to £100 unless I’m prompt – has caused me to pay up without quibbling. But it’s a surprisingly grim feeling, not knowing whether I really did it, especially since there’s no evidence beyond some council functionary’s say-so three months ago. Here’s hoping my money goes to increase the speed of local bin collection…

And another thing…

Time in Paris reminds me happily of the exciting and imminent arrival of the Citroën Ami, tipped to be on sale here by mid-year, even though Citroën UK’s bosses managed to overthrow the “no UK sales” decision only late last year. I’m hearing prices will start near £7000 and annual volume will be around 2000.