Not many people know this, said someone in the office, but the Kia Picanto is the best-selling car in Jersey.
This is hardly the kind of factoid that stops traffic, even traffic of a verbal kind, but it stuck around in our conversation because it soon became clear that various members of the Autocar community had been to Jersey, driving cars, and thoroughly enjoyed the experience.
But how – the rest of us wondered – could you possibly enjoy driving in a place where the blanket speed limit is 40mph?
From that, one of those animated but pointless debates ensued. Jersey is only nine miles long and five miles wide, said the supporters. Its permanent population is 100,000, but 500,000 tourists go there every year because it’s endlessly scenic.
The roads are mostly twisty and narrow, and 40mph is often too much. The sceptics (including me) naturally demurred, and though our group discussion soon moved on, the controversy generated a plan: to get the hell over there, find a convenient Kia Picanto, and discover who was right…
We landed at Jersey airport in mid-March, following cheerful warnings from the BA copilot that the runway is shorter than most so the braking during the landing roll would be “a bit more energetic than usual”.
But even from the window of an Airbus A319, you could see that spring had begun, as it hadn’t in the mainland, with advanced greenery on the trees and tentative flowers beginning to sprout from the verges. This was encouraging.
It turned out that my companion for the trip, cameraman Max Edleston, knew Jersey very well, having had a series of fondly remembered childhood holidays there.
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