I recently had a near death experience in a mercedes! Herzlich Willkommen bei Mercedes-Benz - Welcome to Mercedes-Benz says the website. Welcome to the afterlife thought I! Having had the car for 4 days as a company car from my posh new job (no I didnt choose to have a merc- I wanted the Jaguar X-type but someone else got in their first!) it nearnly killed me!

Picture the scene, M25 at 6-50am (I am missing the traffic that way- my little secret don't tell anyone but working late is passe, working early on the othe hand is cool!). The Motoway is really moving, busy but FAST. I am surrounded by lorries and other people sensible enough to get up early. In the fast lane at 69 miles per hour, the car just dies on me. No there are no lights, no it doesnt put and NO I didnt run out of diesal and NO I hadnt put unleaded in instead!

Someone was looking after me though, as usual, and amazingly no one hit me as a somehow managed to get it onto the hard shoulder as it coasted to a halt. The thing sarted again, but then a few minutes later as I was gingerly doing around 30-40mph in the slow lane IT DID IT AGAIN!!!!

Mercedes left me on the motorway for 1 and a half hours, and in the end the AA came for me (on my private membership!) Mercedes looked at it and initially refused to even have it taken in for fuller testing! Personally I was not too happy about the idea of relying on what is probably a faulty computer ('There can't be anything wrong because the computer has no memory of switching off and nearly killing you actually!). Whoever said computers were always a blessing was wrong!