Yayyyy!! and then not.

It was just sat there so I thought I'd take it on the school run.

20 minutes each way, all city roads but not in great shape.

My verdict? I don't think we are going to be friends.

I'm not ignoring your question, I'm thinking about it.

The truth is I am not entirely sure. Even the pick-ups these days are a great deal more plastic than I'd like. I'm happy with a pick-up though you can't leave anything unattended here or it will disappear pdq.

I rather like the look of the Ford pick-ups and may well look closer now. The SUVs these days are all intended for the school run and, were we in England, the occasionally muddy field at a country fair. They are all too plastic for the real stuff. The problem is that if you dent a metal car, ding it on the corner on a rock for example, you can just ignore the dent. But if you ding a plastic car large chunks of plastic panels fall off.

The HiLux is worryingly low at the front. I'm reasonably sure I'd have that whole panel off in fairly short-order.

So, a pick-up, perhaps a Ford. I'm thinking to go and have a look this afternoon so I'll comment further later.

The PPoS was very much a PPoS, but it was also comfortable and spacious. The Morano is similar to the PPoS in many ways but it is neither comfortable nor spacious.

Hate it. 40 minute school run and my back aches. Nothing is easy. Trying you get it to talk to my phone was fruitless,  but it kept hope dangling like a carrot to keep me going. . The USB and AUX connections are in the bottom of the centre storage space, which is a stupid idea because the box will get filled up with my wife's crap and the sockets themselves will get full of dirt and dust.

The central audio / entertainment / control bloody everything screen is a painful twiddly button affair copied from BMW by a blind man who doesn't drive and hates Nissan owners.

The reversing camera is pretty good. The gearbox seems ok except moving away, forwards or backwards, feels like you've left the brake on. On the subject of which it's one of those painful foot-operated one which even Mercedes owners struggle to pretend is a good idea.

The boot is small and cramped, the back seats are uncomfortable and the drivers seat adjusts electronically in many ways, but not in any way connected to comfort.

When you turn off the engine the steering wheel goes and the seat goes back. And the reverse when you get in. Kind of caught me by surprise at 7:00am this morning given that the last person to drive it was my 5ft nothing wife and so it decided to compress me into a small package.

The audio sound is ok, there's quite a lot of road noise and the horn sounds like I'm strangling a poodle.

I are not impress. I may sulk.

Not so much compulsory as inevitable. I've tried pretending I wasn't going to ding a car. It didn't work out well.

Thing is, ground clearance, door mirrors vs. rocks, and a need to keep away from the edge tend to result in minor incidences hardly worthy of mention.

I guess 20 years ago roughty-toughty cars and city cars were quite different items and consequently fewer compromises were needed. These days they more and more seem to want to make fashion items which purport to do both.

Chileans are fundamentally wimpy and prefer cities. That's why the wild outdoors still exists and hasn't been civilised.

Something like 89% live in cities, about half of which live in Santiago.

Chile: A population of 17m and an area of 750kmsq, 89% in urban areas
UK: Population of 66m and an area of 240kmsq, 75% in urban areas

Consequently Chile outside the cities is essentially unpopulated.

This might give you an idea....

Argentina has been deteriorating for years. These days pretty much nothing is better there.

Glaciers in the South, Deserts in the North, Forests in between and snowy mountains the whole way. Off road in the Andes is an experience, I assure you. I don't ding cars in normal conditions. Up there is not normal. People die quite a lot.

Oh, and stuff is voice controlled. In Spanish. And not my accent (which is Brazilian).

We *really* are not going to be friends.

Can't picture you with a Brazilian anything.