My smart Volvo has managed to scrap itself

For much of the past few years, car production has been compromised by a global shortage of microchips. Why no manufacturer has seized the opportunity to market a microchip-free car (i.e. like all cars manufactured before the 1980s) I don’t know. I would certainly swap my too-clever-for-its-own-good Volvo V60 for such a model.

In fact, I would happily swap my Volvo for a pair of walking boots. They would be of far greater use. Over the past four months my boots have taken me 200 miles across Iceland and 120 miles (as well as ten miles vertically) across Corsica. As for the car, well, it has been to a garage in Cambridge and a garage in Bury St Edmunds as I try to get it repaired after a weird act of self-harm.

 It started one evening in May when, driving home in the twilight a small deer ran out of the undergrowth and into the road. It stopped just before it reached my side of the road but I braked nevertheless. Just as I was coming to a halt, there was a bang and the bonnet shot up by a few inches. Simultaneously a disembodied voice came from the dashboard asking: do you need an ambulance? My car had apparently rung the emergency services all by itself. Having dissuaded an ambulance from racing to the scene I pulled over and got out. There was not a mark, scratch or dent on the front bumper. Nor was there any sign of an injured deer.

It gradually dawned on me that the bonnet had not been damaged by a collision with an animal – it had been deliberately forced upwards by some inbuilt mechanism. It turns out it’s called the Pedestrian Protection System – which constantly scans the area around the front of the car for objects with a vague resemblance to a human leg and is claimed to reduce pedestrian injuries by a whopping 5 per cent.

How clever, I thought. But how do I now close the bonnet? That is where the system turned out to be not so clever. Or perhaps I should say it is all rather ingenious – at creating work for Volvo’s dealership network. The upshot of my non-collision with a deer is a bill for £2,000 – half of which is to replace the bonnet hinges and the other half to replace and reprogram the circuit board which controls the airbag system.

I haven’t met anyone outside a Volvo dealership who thinks this is anything other than absurd. Why not just make the bonnet softer? As it happens, almost exactly the same thing happened to me in my old car (there are a lot of deer around my way). On that occasion there definitely was some light contact with the animal, but nothing that prevented it from running off. Deer and I happily got on with our lives without any further consequence.

I won’t be buying another Volvo, obviously. Nor will I dare drive this one around any longer. I would live in fear of what it might do next: fire me off in an ejector seat in response to a fallen leaf? I’m really rather tempted to do what aggrieved motorists are doing in Ulez-ridden London and buy a classic car, which is exempt from charges and isn’t stuffed with over-engineered systems and gadgets. Otherwise, if there is anyone out there thinking of setting up a company making microchip-free cars which just have an engine under the bonnet and no other nonsense, count me in as an investor.