Day two dawned, and with it the threat/promise (depending on your vantage point) of Me Driving.
Regular readers may recall that my very first LHD drive, in fact my very first drive outside the UK, was back in Valladolid with my patient co-driver Pete.
Well since then I’ve driven abroad and/or LHD…
Zero times.
So here I am, in a bloody big truck, left hand drive, AUTOMATIC (I have never driven an automatic before either), in Morocco.
No biggie.
Here are some of my favourite details while I procrastinate.
I’ve been taking part in a really special @fordeu event this week, sharing all the excitement with you on Social Media. Be Social with me using the icons below #RangerRaptor More…
My buddy for this trip was the inimitable Filip, a Business Manager from Ford of Poland.
You get paired up at random on these trips I find, so you’re never quite sure how your personalities and priorities for the trip will combine.
I was so lucky in Spain to have a wonderful co-driver who took in all my excited demands to park the car in ‘just THIS field please’ to get the shots I wanted – would I still get to play with locations this time?
The die was cast pretty early on – the Ranger Raptors on our drive were available in two stunning colour ways, Ford Performance Blue and Conquer Grey (with optional Raptor decals), and we were both agreed we had the blue in mind for the first of our adventures.
The deep blue is simply stunning – of course it looks amazing in the Moroccan sun, but equally it would look at home back in the UK.
You also find blue in the stitching of the premium leather power seats, the interior leather details, and on the FOX Racing long-travel shocks.
So far so good – we set off in convoy, and that was that…
Or was it?
I couldn’t find my mobile phone.
What to do?
Would Filip let me go back to the airport for it, and drop out of the convoy? Would he forgive me for being an utter pain?
Of course he did…
By the time we picked my phone up from the airport car park floor (in my defence I had probably dropped it while pulling myself up into this hefty beast of a vehicle!) and returned, there was no convoy ahead, just donkeys.
Not a problem of course – with the route mapped into our Sat Nav (with ‘breadcrumb’ feature to leave a trail when exploring uncharted areas) it was time to play catch-up…
I’ve been taking part in a really special @fordeu event this week, sharing all the excitement with you on Social Media. Be Social with me using the icons below #RangerRaptor More…
I wasn’t really sure about the colour – I know it’s a real cliche that a woman cares about the colour of her car but when I drive my car is an extension of me, my identity, my presence.
To feel confident I need to feel confident in my car – in the safety and technical prowess (when I put my foot down I want to know there’s something to give me) but also in how I am represented on the road. So while I was a little unsure of the colour at first, like most of the gorgeous shades in the Fiesta palette the richness and depth grew on me by the end of our drive…
With Vignale the key is Detail. Every stitch in the right place. There were so many little details to discover…
I would say the extra details are added judiciously rather than everywhere – a cushion of leather *just* where your elbow rests, or a smooth glossiness where your hand will glide. It’s not overdone, it’s more of a flavour, a note of richness like a bass note of perfume.
The B&O Play system we’ve been banging (pun intended) on about is standard here.
The openable panoramic glass roof is in two parts, each with their own blind. The openable section is the front, and is smoothly operated. The opening is big enough that you could stand up and throw your arms in the air… if it was safe to do so of course!
My colleagues agreed that when you’ve driven Vignale, you can appreciate the perhaps otherwise intangible quality of the car.
Once again, because we could, and because we wanted to put off the moment when we had to hand the keys back, we stopped for photographs. In a castle. As you do…
I’ve been taking part in a really special @forduk event this week, sharing all the excitement with you on Social Media. Be Social with me using the icons below #newfiesta #FordFiesta
Drive 