1.3 TS2 3dr Hatchback

Good, but flawed by little niggles

Overall a good car, nice handling, reasonable nippy, good build quality and quite well spec'd. We test drove a 5 door model but opted for a 3 door as we seldom carry passengers, prefer the lines of the 3 door and it was slightly cheaper. However, we have become extremely irritated by the mechanism for tilting backrest of the front seat and sliding the seat forward to allow access to the rear. The backrest release is a nasty little plastic toggle on a pull cord and the seat back does not return to its previous position, it only returns to a 90 degree setting and must then be manually re-adjusted.

Second point is the useless little fuel gauge that consists of small lcd bar that diminishes in size, starts blinking and then disappears completely when the car is close to empty. It is not obvious enough and several times we have come close to running out of fuel because the gauge does not attract attention. A low fuel warning light in a prominent position on the instrument panel would be a big help.

Finally the silver finish of the air vent bezels on the dashboard reflect off the front side windows at night, which I find distracting.

Our only after sales experience of the dealership has been disappointing. We paid for a SupaGard paint treatment at the time of purchase, which was applied by the dealer before delivery. Unfortnately the car sustained some minor bodywork damage after about 6 months, which required a partial respray. When I contacted the dealer to enquire about a re-application of the SupaGard treatment we experienced 2 weeks of repeated phone calls which were frequently not returned, contradictory responses and overall lack of interest. Finally I bypassed the dealership and got the SupaGard treatment re-applied by the bodyshop that carried out the repair.

Another gripe - the arc of movement of the steering wheel required to get the indicator to cancel is so great that in many cases the indicators don't cancel automatically.

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