With my car being fixed (having a dent pulled and maybe some respraying; it's the damage that was caused before I went on holiday by the guy who liked to reverse blind) I have a courtesy car. A few people - unlikely to read this - will know what I mean when I say it's a Hire Car.

It's diesel. This makes it sound much like a two-tonne van. It's fairly powerful, but in a completely different range of engine speed to my normal car: as best as I can tell you cannot rush in pulling away, because the power simply isn't there until you get to 20mph.

Last time I had the wrong car like this, it took me two weeks to admit that maybe it wasn't gutless, just not as energetic as I was used to. Hopefully I won't be lumbered with this one for that long.

Update: It's not the revs: there's a substantial time delay between the pedal going down and the power arriving. I suppose it could be a mechanical issue (heavy flywheels or somesuch) but if feels more like it's not a mechanical link, which is new to me.