h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Not that I've got anything against them as hunks of metal, after all they are much the same as any other internal combustion engine driven machine with four wheels; it's the perceived behaviour of Volvos that get me due to the effect that driving a 'safe vehicle' has on the driver.

Volvos tend to have ABS, side impact protection, air bags, crumple zones, anti-submarine seats (????) and a miriad of other features that tend to make the occupants feel immortal. So they drive more dangerously, more unpredictably, and with less general consideration for other road users.

It should be a pre-condition of Volvo ownership that prospective purchasers should spend at least six months before hand in a Skoda, or even better a Reliant Robin! 
 

Bikers have their own word for Volvos that is ..OVLOV's as this is the mark that is indented in your body by the bonnet badge.

I had a Reliant. It wasn't the Robin but the Supervan. The same type as the one owned by Rodney and Del Trotter in "Only Fools and Horses," but mine didn't have the expensive sign writing on the side.
I hated that car. Really hated that car.
I was a student at the time and my wife was pregnant and had to push the damn thing to get it to go. I would have pushed but she couldn't/wouldn't drive.
One Christmas/New Year we were heading from the Midlands to her parents house in Surrey. The snow started to fall and the car started to cough and splutter on the M1. The engine would falter and our speed would drop to 30 mph and I would be jumping up and down in the driver's seat like a demented jockey pleading with it to keep going.
Eventually it conked out within about a mile of the end of the motorway and I had to phone for help.
The nice mechanic sprayed WD40 on the leads and the damn thing leaped into life. I think the spray of WD40 cost me about £25.
By the time we got to my in-laws I was at my wits end. The snow had fallen fast and trying to keep in a straight line with a front wheel which is sliding over the mound of snow left in the middle of the road by 4 wheel vehicles was very hard.
The wind was high and the snow was coming in horizontal. My wife leaped out of the car and ran to greet her family. She then said to me "Get the presents out of the back!"
I argued that a cup of tea or a whiksy and a nap in front of the fire would be more appropriate but my wife is very persuasive, so I slogged back out to the car pulling up my collar to stop the blizzard from getting down my neck.
I opened the back door of the car and a gust of extra strong wind caught it and blew the whole door off.
I really, really hate Reliant Supervans.

I have a Skoda. 'Interesting' handling... (It's one of those old types with the engine in the back).. Quite scary, due to the fact that there's a 'neutral' spot in the middle of the steering wheel, where absolutely nothing happens, for a few degrees