Features to look for in a city car
January 25th, 2010 gutenkFeatures to look for in a city car
A lot of people use their cars to commute to work, often driving in city centre environments. This can be very stressful with many cities operating one way systems, with limited parking spaces and obviously having to contend with rush hour traffic.
As a result, many new cars now come with helpful features to ease the pain of inner-city driving. Below is a list of a few of the smartest features available to ease city driving.
Rear parking sensors
Rear parking sensors are one of the more high tech ways to assist with inner city driving. A lot of street side parking is in parallel parking bays only; this can mean a lot of less confident drivers may pass on trying to get their car into the last parking bay on a street. Rear parking sensors use radar to ‘sense’ another car, a railing or a bollard behind you. This is normally communicated to you via a beeper that gets louder or more frequent as you draw closer.
City steering
Most cars have Power Assisted Steering (PAS) to help make turning easier for the driver, but with all the narrow spaces and turns in cities there are now cars coming with electrical PAS instead of the traditional hydraulically operated system. This is known as ‘city steering’ and serves to make manoeuvring the winding side streets and narrow car parks literally an effortless task. These systems normally revert back to the traditional PAS once the car is over 15-20 mph.
Ultra-mini cars
In the city, space is a luxury, everything is compact and mostly because land price in a city such as London or Manchester can be incredibly high. For this reason parking spaces can be few and far between and it’s always the case that you find one space and you are confident that your four seater saloon will never fit in without bumping the other cars nearby. Small cars such as the Smart Car, G-Wiz, Fiat 500 and even the classic Mini have no trouble getting in and out of even the smallest parking bays. If you’re driving in the city a lot, an ultra mini car may be worth considering investing in.
These features (even the ultra mini cars themselves) can prove advantageous when driving in the city. Whilst they aren’t going to make the traffic jams disappear, they’ll certainly help making parking easier.
Phil adams-Wright writes on a variety of motoring sucject like Car Loans, Yes Car Credit and Yes Car.
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