Choosing the right car for PWDs

Maju is a person living with a disability. He owns a second-generation Mazda Demio, which has served him very well for the last four years. However, last year the alternator got damaged during engine cleaning. He replaced it as advised by a mechanic but since then, an engine icon keeps popping up on the dashboard whenever he drives on a rough road or when he hits bumps.

“It remains there for a day or two before it disappears. The engine is also vibrating and producing the sound of a burst exhaust pipe. What could be the problem?” he wonders.

Maju wants to replace it with a similar or one with superior attributes including fuel economy, reliability and comfort but is conflicted on which car to go for.

I will be honest and state that I haven’t reviewed any vehicle from the perspective of a person with a disability (PWD) and that is an interesting alternative view now that it has come up .

Vans are not the only option
The quick answer to Maju’s dilema would be “get a van”, but who said everybody wheelchair-bound must drive or ride around in a van?

Sure, they are the easiest to fit a ramp on, are roomy and the sliding doors are very practical, but it is not a PWD’s only forte. Some may want to enjoy the superior performance and handling dynamics of a sports car — and no, R63 AMGs don’t count, because they are very few and extremely expensive to buy and fix.

Others may simply want a car whose form they can gaze at fondly on a lazy Sunday afternoon. Vans are not this car.

I always take ergonomics into consideration to count towards the meritorious ranking of a car, especially in this era of the Car of the Year Award; but never from the perspective of a PWD.

Perhaps this needs to change. When the use of a wheelchair is involved, any dreams of a two-door snazz-mobile may need to be abandoned and vans looked at again; or at least long-roofs which carry more kerbside appeal if one does not want to look like an airport shuttle service or inner city deliveryman.

Engine light
About the engine light, some items were probably fiddled with during the alternator replacement, and those items are now loose, which cause the check engine light to glow.
When this happens , Take the car for a diagnosis to find out what exactly is causing the check engine light.

Replacement
About replacing the car, how about a newer Demio? Then again, if one travels a lot especially to remote areas with family and need something roomy, this may not do. This brings us back to a van-based discussion.

Touran
The Touran is the best option at first glance: It is a van that will not make you look like you distribute stationery to bookshops.
However, new-age Volkswagens and long engine life are two mutually exclusive concepts that have no convergence point in any existing Venn diagram.

Escudo
The Escudo is a pukka off-roading crossover, a Prado dressed as a RAV4 with a Suzuki badge, and the ground clearance may provide one with a daily workout swinging up from their wheelchair into the passenger cabin. If they don’t mind the upper body callisthenics, then it makes a good road-trip car and is reliable.

The Honda Insight Hybrid is small and sanctimonious; and if the battery pack expires, it may cost $7,000 to replace. I don’t need to convert that figure into any other currency to know that nobody needs that kind of unforeseen expense in their life. These are the kinds of sums that lead to a divorce; either with family or with your insurance company. (I’m not saying the battery pack will fail, but when it does then, yes, you are looking at the price of a whole other car just to replace it. One must ask themselves if they really need a used, warranty-less hybrid with no supporting infrastructure.)

Tiguan
The Tiguan is a pretty little car, a bit too pretty for my taste in first-gen form, but extremely handsome and staid in brand-new, unaffordable second-generation spec. The one I drove had hyper-touchy controls, especially the brakes; so it makes for a rather embarrassing first drive as you try to acclimatise yourself to the car. This is very “un-Germanic”.

The clearance is also a bit high, though not as high as an Escudo. However, short engine life notwithstanding, you will enjoy wringing its little neck up hills until either the manifolds melt or the gearbox disintegrates or the computer gets a virus or whatever it is that New-Age Volkswagens do when they reach their preprogrammed, planned, obsolescence breaking point and turn into money-sucking, garage-dwelling sculptures-in-the-round.

Honda Fit Shuttle
The Honda Fit Shuttle is not bad, when you think of it. It is a van (check) that doesn’t look like an airport taxi (uncheck — it actually does). It will offer good fuel economy (check) because of the available two vodka bottle’s worth of engine capacity in either petrol or diesel form.

There is also a hybrid that one is perhaps well advised to avoid for now, for reasons I have just mentioned but two paragraphs ago. It is reliable (check) — as can be confirmed by any survey one can find on the internet and by Honda’s history of building high-performance 9000rpm engines for 30 years straight with a failure rate close to zero (their recent Formula 1 history does not apply here).

Comfort is definitely better than an Escudo and the hateful Insight, but Volkswagen does know how to build a solid car, so the Fit has to play second fiddle to the two Germans. However attractive the VW pair may be, the Fit Shuttle is the car you are looking for.

This article was first published in Daily Nation