Apparently, the "ø" symbol is pronounced "ur"

This car may appear to be entirely innocent. See it sitting there, not doing any harm. Why, you might almost want to get in and drive off. But that would be a grave and terrible mistake. For this car...this car is Dethwägøn.

We're back in Jersey once again with this post (probably for the last time, unless I suddenly remember something vastly important that I feel I must relate), to talk about cars. In Jersey, you see, the automotive laws work differently to in the UK. Specifically, there is no MOT test, meaning that it is perfectly legal to run cars until they drop dead of exhaustion - and, given that this means that cars that could not possibly pass an MOT in the UK can be sold and registered freely on the island, there's quite a few cars like our Wägøn.

This particular car really does deserve its heavy metal accents, as it is surely one of the most effective ways ever devised of confronting yourself with the horrific substance of much of the metal genre - you know, death, terrible injuries, diseases, everything like that. The list of things that were going wrong with it would probably be impossible to definitively set down, as it seemed to be gaining more with every passing minute, but there were a few that were particularly worthy of note.

First, of the fuel inserted into the engine, probably about half actually got burnt in the pistons. The rest, happily vaporised and floating through the air, eventually made its way either into the lungs of the passengers or into the huge cloud of black smoke left hanging in the air every time the engine tried to work remotely hard. This did mean that when driving across the island, the car following us in the large family convoy didn't have any difficulty knowing which way we'd turned, but on the other hand they did have a bit of problem with the quality of the air we left them. We weren't quite sure by the end of the journey whether the hilarity in the car was due to the inherent humour of the situation, and how much was due to excessive carbon monoxide levels.

The second major problem with the Wägøn was that it had quite a bit of difficulty with starting. Well, that's not quite true. The engine started OK - the problem was that we had to do it rather a lot, as every junction, traffic light and slow-moving car ahead of the Wägøn caused it to die pathetically. Due to the above-mentioned clouds of black smoke, pushing the engine at all hard, which was what we had to do when restarting, was to be avoided - we therefore had to take pretty much every possible precaution against having to stop, even for the shortest moment.

This strategy might have worked, had we been located anywhere other than a tiny island with little twisty roads and hills. Our only actions in this regard ended up being frantic hand signals to the car driving in front of us in the convoy - for some reason, manically waving your hands backwards and forwards while bellowing "FASTER! NEED TO GO FASTER!" seems to be an internationally-recognised signal. There was one other practical effect of our inability to stop, but this one was only seen once, in a large car park from which our convoy was just about to depart. The Wägøn was running, and we were fairly dubious about the prospect of trying to start the engine if it failed us again. So in we piled, and then proceeded to drive round and round the car park, shouting through the windows to the other members of the convoy to try and determine where we were supposed to be going next. What the poor patrons of the restaurant whose car park it was must have thought, I can only imagine.

Convoy driving has its own little quirks at the best of time, which are compounded if the vehicles have rather different abilities. We were certain, for example, that if we took the Wägøn down certain hills, we'd never get it back to the top - this frequently necessitated very creative route-finding. The communication between the cars had similar shortcomings, such that there was one point at which we turned one way, found that the car in front of us had stopped for petrol, and turned round and came back. At this point we misunderstood their cheery waves for driving directions, so we turned round again. This time, as we came past the petrol station again, the hand signals definitely meant "wrong way", necessitating another three-point turn (during which the engine, predictably, died again), and another trip along the same strip of road. Whether the petrol station's proprietor had seen us merrily sailing past his establishment four times in as many minutes is something that we shall sadly never know. We certainly didn't see him when we went past yet again, roughly three minutes later.

So, what can we learn from this experience? Well, first (and pretty obviously), no matter how much we moan about it, the MOT test is a very good idea. Secondly, we now know not to drive in convoy if it can possibly be avoided. And lastly, we know that, even if it is dangerously hilarious, you do not try to tame the Dethwägøn.