Testing, testing

Some cars would make your festive fir look half-dressed

- MATT SAUNDERS

Now seems like a good time to address a topic that affects almost all of us drivers, and disproportionately through the winter months: cars with dashboards lit up like Christmas trees.

I've driven plenty of ambient-lighting horror shows this year. Some would have made your average festive Nordmann fir look half-dressed and decidedly unjolly; others, to be fair, used lighting as decoration quite judiciously. There really are some brands that seem to be beginning to do it well; others are doing it really badly; and others still are just doing it for the sake of doing it. I'm not against the idea of it full stop, but a few dos and don'ts certainly seem to be emerging.

Let's depart in the obvious place. Light pollution inside a car ought to be minimised. And where it is emitted, it should be done with extreme care. Perhaps not eradicated, because we are where we are and there's no going back now on screens and displays doing jobs that buttons and dials used to. And also because when it's done well, it's quite nice.