EVENING STANDARD
Subject: Motor Show – owners’ manuals

The Lexus GS 450h, the first petrol-electric luxury saloon, is an impressive feat of engineering. But you’d better enjoy reading as ardently as you strive to slash your environmental impact.

In every 450h glovebox is an owner’s manual explaining the car’s functions in minute detail. There’s more than light bedtime reading here; it’s a biblical 494 pages long.

Do you need to ingest it all? Obviously, Lexus recommends you do. But that would include 18 pages on ‘Opening, closing and locking the doors and trunk’. Three pages are devoted to an ominous, signed declaration from Fujitsu that the anti-theft system meets telecom directives – in 18 languages – while there’s a daunting 15 pages about checking and replacing fuses.

Fortunately, the section on the car’s hybrid system begins on page eight, giving a resumé on how it works. But having reassured yourself that you can, really, drive the car much as you would any other, you might start to skim other sections…and become mightily alarmed at the hundreds of panels headed ‘! CAUTION’ and ‘! NOTICE’.

Much of this info relates to unlikely yet conceivable outcomes of doing something mad, like: ‘Do not touch the high-voltage socket while the headlights are turned on. 20,000V is momentarily generated and may cause severe injury by electric shock’. Other stuff seems so obvious you wonder why Lexus bothers; ‘Do not spill fuel during refuelling’; and: ‘When taking a nap in the vehicle, always turn the hybrid system off’.

Fortunately, the Lexus manual is stuffed with clear, photographic illustrations to enlighten you as you wade through the instructions. This, according to the Plain English Campaign, is a huge improvement on unintelligible manuals of the past
“The problem used to be that they always assumed prior knowledge”, said a spokesman. “They never considered every kind of person and, often, meaning and grammar would suffer from the ‘lost in translation’ syndrome when the original was in Japanese or Korean. Instruction manuals for DIY products are often still like this. They use words like ‘parallel’ and ‘adjacent’, and three-dimensional diagrams that can be very confusing”.

Indeed, there are quite a number of three-dimensional diagrams in the manual for the Nissan Micra C+C (a sapling at 226 pages). You’ll want to read the four pages on how its retractable metal roof system operates, and the six more on what to do should it malfunction. The black-and-white line drawings showing how to change the engine oil filter are, however, unnerving; the unseasoned car maintainer may prefer to shut the bonnet (section 3.10: ‘When closing the bonnet, reset the support rod to its original position, the slowly close the bonnet and make sure it locks into place’) and ask someone else to try.

Jaguar’s 282-pager for the new XK strikes a good balance between handy size and clear visual instruction. Page 110 explains the car’s novel pop-up, pedestrian-friendly bonnet. If activated, the manual says, the car must go straight back to a Jag dealer, but first – ahem: ‘The hazard warning light will be activated and can only be switched off by pressing the engine Stop/Start button to turn the engine OFF and ON again (without pressing the brake pedal) to revert to the [bold]convenience mode[bold], see page 31’.

Er…

Still, better learn that one off by heart, because the offending pedestrian might need also attention. Nonetheless, the writing of these manuals has vastly improved. Fifty years ago, a star of the London Motor Show was Jaguar’s 2.4-litre saloon, with which proud owners received a 72-page ‘Operating, Maintenance and Service Handbook’. The book is rich in black arts that wouldn’t trouble an XK owner today. How about this, on caster angle adjustment: ‘Adjustment is affected by either transposing the shims from the rear of the upper wishbone balljoint to the front, or transposing the packing piece and shim(s)’. Or this on cleaning the carpets: ‘Grease or oil stains can be removed with petrol’.

In today’s manuals, pearls of wisdom are often discovered by a casual flick-through. Twenty-six pages into the Lexus GS 450h manual, for example, you’ll find advice on how to scrap the car. And have you thought about towing? On page 186, an inserted sticker cautions that the 450h weighs over 3500kg and you might need a tachograph for hauling some trailers. Yikes!

No worries with towing a trailer behind the Nissan C+C, as long as (section 5-11 in the manual) you ‘choose proper coupling devices’ and ‘avoid sharp turns or lane changes’.

But for the caravan-loving Jaguar XK owner – oh, no! Page 22 in the manual breaks the terrible news: ‘The XK has not been designed as a towing vehicle and Jaguar Cars Limited does not manufacture a tow bar for this vehicle’. Perhaps we need a few hours to read the owner’s manual before placing that order…

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