>>>>>Ah yes I forgot you told me before you had a Mini Cooper. Curious - did you test drive the Fiat 500 before you got the Mini Cooper? I've driven both and liked the Mini a lot better - but I haven't tried one of the turbo Fiats.
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>>>>>I have driven nothing but Mini Coopers for the last 14 years :)
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>>>>I drove one as a rental car and it was the worst experience of my life. Took 20 minutes to figure out where the key went.
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>>>Reminded me of my nightmare experience. Two years ago we spent a vacation in the South of Spain. We rented a car, Schkoda (I think it is a Czech car). It took us two days to figure out how to turn on the head lights.
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>>As Skoda is a subdivision of VW, the typical knobs and switches are standard, so unless you can also explain that you were plastered by local wine or cognac, telling that switching on the lights was a problem for more than a couple of minutes sounds unbelievable. While rented cars in Spain usually have more dents and are less maintained then rented cars over here, the manual probably was in the car and they usually have an english section ;-)
>
>As I just wrote to Lutz, that car had the switch on the driver side door. I have never seen these switches (in US) to be on the door. And of course I would not even thought of reading the manual (I am a man and don't need to ask for directions :))

I can fully relate to the manual aspect. But as your wife was with you...