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So after all the hype and reputation destruction, it’s cured by nothing more than plugging a non-descript box with a touchscreen into the car and pressing some buttons.

I’ve just had our new long-term Prius recalled and reprogrammed to cure the thing with the brakes, which has gone from being described as “there’s nothing wrong” to a full blown, country-wide recall.

Late last year I took my long-term Volvo XC60 in for a service at Volvo Cars West London in Chiswick.

It was a frustrating experience, punctuated by a series of small problems that left me pretty unimpressed, especially as it was my first experience of a so-called premium dealer.

What’s you favourite road? I’ve always longed to have a strip of road that I could take my favourite cars to and really have a blast without getting caught behind some farm machinery or a ten-year-old Nissan Micra.

Last night, I was entrusted with the keys for our long term Renaultsport Twingo 133 Cup for the evening and I set about on a quest to find a stretch of road I would want to return to again and again.

Over the weekend, I clocked up more than 300 miles in our long term Honda Insight.

Honda’s latest hybrid offering is packed with lots of hybrid technology, but my favourite part of the car was hardly anything revolutionary – cruise control.

Spending some time in our long-term Vauxhall Insignia this weekend brought back a lot of happy memories for me of how saloon cars used to be.

I grew up on a diet of watching saloon cars go racing in the BTCC in the 1990s. These cars were my real boyhood motoring heroes and I used to love seeing the Mondeos, Vectras, Accords, A4s and co crashing into each other on a fortnightly basis.

Last weekend, I spent my first period of quality time with our long term Kia Soul. Being a twenty something (well, I’m 20) I’m just the sort of person Kia is aiming its new soft-roader/mini MPV crossover at.

But being a twenty something, I always have to watch the pennies and this is where the Soul’s biggest fault in my eyes comes in with its rather disappointing fuel economy figures.