It is, for practical reasons, impossible to be a regular reviewer of cars if you don’t feel comfortable driving them. Not even just comfortable. Confident. It’s probably unhealthy to think you’re Lewis Hamilton, but there’s a sensibility one must possess (or quickly cultivate) that allows you to look at a giant dump truck, or a Bugatti Veyron, or a Cessna-bodied Toyota Van, and think “Yeah, I can drive that.” I have piloted all of the aforementioned vehicles and was therefore completely sure that I’d be able to drive the manual, right-hand drive Ford Puma ST I secured for my first trip to England. I was also sure I’d have no trouble driving on the “wrong” side of the ride. My confidence was, unfortunately, slightly misplaced. The car was easy to drive and the directions were easy to follow. It’s my eyes that didn’t work.
This adventure to England was something of a dream trip. A 40th birthday celebration that would bring me and the family first to Shakespeare’s birthplace and then off to London. The plan was to land at Gatwick, pick up a car, and immediately drive to Stratford-Upon-Avon, some two hours or so to the north. I’ve done the fly-overnight-to-Europe-and-immediately-drive a car bit a number of times with no issue, but always to countries where the car’s wheel is on the left and everyone drives on the right (Frankfurt, Prague, Paris twice).
The sensible way to get to Stratford-Upon-Avon, perched in England’s pastoral West Midlands region, would have been to take a train or a bus. I am nothing if not not sensible. I’d be getting a car.
But what car? It would have to be something I couldn’t get in the United States (no VW Golfs or anything). Obviously, it needed to be interesting to me, but not so interesting that my family would revolt. I’d have one unit of wife, one unit of kid, and enough luggage to last two weeks abroad. I considered a lot of options and landed on what ended up being the best car for the job.
The Ford Puma ST Is A Damn Delight
The base Ford Puma is a weird little vehicle we don’t get. It’s essentially a Ford Fiesta subcompact that, like the universe, has expanded in every direction. Unlike the universe, the Puma prefers to be referred to as an SUV. This would be a small car in the United States, but on the narrow roads of the UK it passes for a family vehicle. The ST version of the car, which I requested, gets a six-speed manual transmission and a 197 horsepower turbo 1.5-liter EcoBoost “Dragon” three-cylinder motor similar to the one in the Ford Bronco Sport.
Ford UK did a tweet about this car back in 2021 and CEO Jim Farley made the comment that he wished the car came to North America:
Wish this came to NA and other markets! https://t.co/QpcXk2zokN
— Jim Farley (@jimfarley98) February 16, 2021
I shared the sentiment then and now, having driven it, I’m more convinced than ever this would be a great car to own in America. Would it sell? That’s a tough question. Given we no longer get the Fiesta on which it is/was based, there is no compelling case for bringing it over here other than “Jim likes it.” That’s probably not a good enough reason.
If you live in Europe, though, this thing is a hoot. The Puma ST weighs about 2,700 pounds, has a punchy little three-cylinder motor, a real Quaife mechanical slip differential if you opt for the performance package (definitely do), and can be had with Mean Green paint. Obviously, the only way to get it is with a six-speed manual transmission.
A Good Plan, A Bad Start
I’ve driven a manual in the RHD configuration before and it didn’t faze me. I’m not particularly coordinated, as any of my ultimate frisbee teammates will tell you, and yet piloting a JDM Nissan Skyline GT-R (R32) on a race track wasn’t difficult. If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball. And if you can drive a LHD manual, you can drive a RHD manual. It’s quite amazing how easy the brain adapts.
Knowing this wouldn’t be an issue, I asked Adrian Clarke, our resident Brit, if there was anything I should know, and he gave me two good pieces of advice:
- When you get to a roundabout, turn left.
- No one in Britain has a concealed handgun, so enjoy as much Road Rage as you wish.
Being from Texas, that last part seemed significant.
Just to be safe, I visualized the entire drive from Gatwick to Stratford-Upon-Avon using Google Street View. While I didn’t cover each mile, I reviewed all of the turns I’d be making, all of the roundabouts, and the key interchanges. Thankfully, once out of Gatwick it was just a quick left onto the M23 and one merge onto the M40. Once off the M40 it’s a short jaunt on the A46 and I’d be in town. I left for the airport feeling confident, though turning into oncoming traffic with my family was something I was understandably worried about. I insisted on taking a car, so, anything that happened would be doubly my fault.
I don’t sleep well on planes so, rather than take a later flight, I opted for a 7pm-ish departure out of JFK on JetBlue’s new London service. We got held up a little bit at JFK trying to depart (they told us our plane would be too fast and land too early and Gawtick has timed arrivals so they hold you up at your departing airport, which is strange). It was a great flight and the new Airbus A321LR in JetBlue’s configuration is a comfortable way to get across the Atlantic. Unfortunately, I still didn’t get more than a glancing wink of sleep.
Arriving at Gatwick approximately on time, I grabbed a rare caffeine hit in the form of some real British tea and met our delivery driver to get the car. After a little mental gymnastics, I figured out where to put the car seat relative to where I was sitting. I acclimated myself to the interior of the Puma and stuffed the back with gear, which it easily took.
The delivery driver wished us well and off we went from the 4th floor of a Gatwick airport parking garage. As expected, shifting was no problem. Your feet do the same thing and the motion is quite similar, so what’s the big fuss? I assume if you don’t drive stick often this might be an issue for a few seconds, but my daily has a manual so it was super easy.
I usually don’t have an issue in parking garages, as years of driving randomly sized cars require one to get used to constantly shifting car dimensions. The trick, really, is to use your mirrors. You’ll almost never run directly into an obstacle. If you make a mistake, it’ll be behind you more often than not. So I intently tracked my driver-side mirror to make sure I wasn’t running the bulging rear fender into an Opel. Unfortunately, I didn’t consider the left side of the car (which looked clear) and managed to drag the wheels of the car down a long kerb.
“Oh no,” I thought. “I’ve been driving in England for all of 50 yards and I’ve already mucked it up!”
The Two Things I Didn’t Think About It
I sucked it up and followed the path I’d already run on my laptop onto the M23. This was, like shifting, quite easy. I couldn’t unclench my stomach and felt a tang of anxiety about the wheels, but at least I was awake. My daughter, in the back, is impervious to bother and a great traveler so she quickly went to sleep. My wife had a slightly different experience.
Selfishly, I thought so much about driving the car, I didn’t think about what it would be like to be in the front passenger seat. It’s weird! If you’re used to driving on the right side, sitting in the passenger seat is strange. I later tried this in Adrian’s Ferrari and I felt a little uncomfortable, though you do adjust. This was the first thing I didn’t consider.
Fears of being too tired to drive were allayed by the mixture of adrenaline and novelty. I also felt very good about myself for, you know, taking so easily to driving in England. “I’m basically Jason Statham!” was my internal monologue.
The shifter in the Puma ST isn’t exactly a short-throw design, but it felt a lot quicker than the one in my 530i, which is basically a truck. I enjoyed chirping the tires a bit as I approached the M23 and my family only groaned a little.
Merging onto the motorway was straightforward and I eased into the left lane which, in England, is the slow lane. I felt great, but my wife pointed out I was way uncentered in the lane. “No, I’m perfectly in the lane with plenty of room on each side” I insisted. And then I actually looked. Oops.
My Brain Isn’t As Flexible As I Thought
Unless you’re in a McLaren F1, if you’re in a regular car then you are either on the left side or the right side. Centering the car isn’t difficult in your home country because your brain takes the input from your eyes and tells your hands to guide the car slightly to one side or the other to compensate. Years and years and years of driving LHD cars over hundreds of thousands of miles and my brain is fairly decent at staying in a lane (if I’m not too busy talking).
For whatever reason, driving through a roundabout in a backward way was not particularly hard for me. Keeping the car in the center of the lane was surprisingly difficult. My wife constantly would chide me “You’re getting out of the lane” and damned if she wasn’t right. If I didn’t focus intently on keeping the car where it was supposed to be my brain would naturally overcompensate in the wrong direction.
This led to a sudden bout of exhaustion as an hour of deep focus is a bit too much on 90 minutes of sleep over the course of 30 hours. I pulled over to a services (their version of a roadside service station), got another tea and a banana and tried to rouse myself for the last hour of the trip. The little bit of good news is that the wheels and tires were fine. The kerb must have been super low and no damage was done.
The first thing I did when I got in the car was to turn on the lane keep assist, which helped. The biggest change I made, though, was driving in the fast lane, which is all the way to the right. When I was all the way to the left my only reference point was the line in the road, which is hard to discern in traffic. In the fast lane, I had a divider to use as a mental signal that I was starting to drift to the left. I lost this when we got off the motorway and onto a two-lane A-road, but at least there the oncoming traffic was coming towards me and not my passenger.
Ultimately, we arrived and I was able to park the car easily in our little hotel. I was exhausted and the room wasn’t ready, so we wandered out into the village to grab some obscenely rich and delicious British pastries. I’d planned a trip through the Cotswolds in the Puma ST with the family but they were unenthusiastic about the prospect, so I went off on my own little drive so I could enjoy the Puma ST without bothering the other occupants.
After catching the Royal Shakespeare Company, getting some Shakespeare liquor, visiting the Shakespeare birthplace, seeing the other place where Shakespeare used to live, seeing the place where Shakespeare’s wife was born, and buying a bunch of Shakespeare-themed gifts, we left for London. The drive back was easier and my brain, thankfully, adjusted itself. I was also completely awake and it wasn’t raining, which helped. Everyone told me not to drive in London, so I ditched the car at Ford’s garage and kept to buses, tubes, and boats.
I’ll definitely head back and, when I do, I have a long list of cars I want to drive. Now that I know all the things I thought would be hard were easy, and the one thing I didn’t consider would be hard, I think I’ll be better prepared. I kind of fell in love with the double-decker buses and I bet I could drive one of those…
Did you get a new Shakespeare reel over there?
“I kind of fell in love with the double-decker buses”
Well you don’t have to go to London for that. My alma mater UC Davis bought and still has in regular service (when not in the shop) several of the original London RT Double Deck busses. They also operate several more modern ones. Unitarians is the only transit company in the United States to use authentic London double-deck buses in daily service:
https://localwiki.org/davis/Unitrans_Buses
Non UCD students can ride for just $1.25.
I’ve only had one opportunity to drive on the wrong side of the road, and in a LHD car, no less! Long story short, on a cruise, The Wife and I rented a car and drove around the island on our own for the day. We ended up in a terrible, old, LHD Sebring convertible on RHD roads. My only true “mistake” was when I turned into the Botanic Park, with a long, empty, unmarked entrance drive. I was more than half way down when I looked in the rearview and saw a car coming in behind us… on the opposite side of the drive. Oops!
Otherwise, we made it out unscathed, except for never wanting to drive another Sebring.
I was stationed in Japan in the early 90s where I picked up an old Honda Prelude XR.
Driving a manual in a RHD world was not at all difficult – in some ways it felt more natural shifting with the left and steering with the right hands.
Where it all went wrong for me was returning stateside.
First turn out of the rental car parking lot outside SFO – and I was on the wrong side of the road facing oncoming traffic.
The folks at the rental car place sure got an eyeful as I drove right over the median in that rental Maxima….
Glad to hear my homeland treated you well. I’ve owned and driven RHD and LHD cars in both right and left-hand drive countries. I settled on being most comfortable only driving manual LHD cars (shifting with my left hand) and only driving automatic RHD cars.
One minor disagreement though: the Puma is awful, when compared to the light, nimble and compact Fiesta it replaced. It’s fat, sloppy waste of space. It’s criminal that Ford have discontinued the Fiesta and Focus in Europe – both of which led the sales charts in their respective segments in countries like the UK year after year.
I could kind of understand Australia since it was an English Penal Colony initially, and of course England just seems to do thing their way right or wrong, but I never really understood why Japan went RHD. I get it that they used British Trains and so had some connection to Britain, but it still seems odd.
Hell, Gibraltar drives on the right side of the road but they have a mixture of LHD and RHD cars there. That’s one place that is fun to get confused with. Sure, there’s a bobby over there but he’s speaking in Spanglish.
I’m not sure how true this is but I’ve read that Left-Hand-Traffic was enforced in Japan even before cars because of Samurai customs. Samurai generally wore their swords on the left side of their body so they could draw them with their right hand. Enforcing Left-Hand-Traffic meant that two Samurai couldn’t accidentally whack each other with their scabbards while walking on narrower roads. Then, when the railways came to Japan they built them with the help of the British, who also used Left-Hand-Traffic/Right-Hand-Drive. This is apparently also why French trains continue to be RHD insead of LHD like their cars. Since Japan’s first cars were mostly British, and they already had an RHD tradition from weird old Samurai Laws and their trains, they stuck to RHD.
I found learning to drive on the left side to be a pretty easy transition. You could always tell a new arrival at our base in Japan by one action. New drivers approaching an intersection would invariably hit the windshield wiper stalk when trying to indicate a turn. It took a little time to train our brains that, not only is the steering wheel on the other side of the car but the turn signal stalk is on the outboard side of the wheel. Which in Japan, England, etc means the right side.
The next best sight was watching a driver walk to the wrong side of the car, unlock the door, and realize their mistake. Hilarious.
BTW, transitioning back to driving on the right side of the road upon returning to the states, much harder.
We went to Ireland this summer. Rented a tiny Hyundai i30 manual. Ireland has tiny roads so you have to hug the centerline and the shrubbery still nips at the left side of the car. Half the cars I saw there had scratches all down the left side of the car from the hedges. My wife had my teenage son sit up front since it was too intense for her as a passenger. Especially on those moments where a lorry would appear around a blind corner and you had 2 seconds to find a space to fit through. It was a blast and you are correct that the lane spacing is harder than the shifting with the opposite hand. 66hp is absurdly slow for an american car, yet it worked fine there. 0-60(mph) in 17.5 seconds.
Try driving in Thailand. the norm is that both lanes must pull to the side when someone decides to pass down the middle.
We rented a Vauxhall last October and drove from Edinburgh (the far north) to the Isle of Wight (the absolute south) a distance of nearly 800 miles. That was my first excursion to a place with backward driving and … nary a ding. No curbed wheels, no dents, no nothing. The rental agency examined the car in disbelief when I turned it in.
Somehow I flipped my brain’s muscle memory map for the trip and drove that car down skinny lake country single lane spaghetti roads with abandon. My wife now thinks that I can walk on water.
I live in the UK, and I’ve never driven a LHD vehicle, but I have driven in France quite a bit in RHD vehicles and generally I found it pretty easy. I wonder if part of that is years of playing driving games, which are mostly set in LHD locations, I think my brain has internalised being able to drive on the right.
The biggest problem I had was driving a van in France on the autoroute. If I wanted to move into the left lane to overtake, I needed a passenger to check my blindspot for me.
(One other thing I noticed about driving in France, was quite how many French cars there were. Sounds obvious, but I think about 70-80% of the cars I saw were Citroen/Peugeot/Renault, it’s about 5% in the UK. BMWs seemed mostly to be driven by Belgians, driving very fast)
I mean, that’s like Italy full of Italian cars like Fiats, Lancias, and Alfas just to name a few.
It’s never fine when the Ford symbol is in front of you while driving (or sitting- Found On Road Dead)
The weirdest part of being in a country with opposite-side driving country isn’t driving as that compensation is made clear by actually driving a bit. Being a pedestrian is far more disconcerting as you look the wrong way constantly. Be really aware out there when walking!
That’s really true, happens to me every time I go between the EU & UK…
Absolutely. My wife almost got killed in London on our last trip because she crossed a street after looking left instead of right.
We rented a car in NZ when we got to go there ( a manual no less! Try that in the states!). It was a fabulous way to enjoy the country. Similarly the very first day after landing and picking up the car was the most disorienting, staying focused led to no major scares, but after a good night of sleep it was basically a non-issue from there. Biggest takeaway, we need more roundabouts here, they rock. Oh, and NZ is the most stunning place I’ve been.
I hate driving in the UK, as much as it’s the same side of the road for me. Everything just feels so tight, small and slow, until you get on the motorways. The motorways are just nice, overtake, move back to the slower lane.
And I will say, UK car hire (at least in my experience with Enterprise) was, as long as the wheels are round enough the tyres still hold air, and the mirrors and bumpers are still attached, you’re good. They just know cars are going to get beaten up.
I have what is called spatial dyslexia which means doing things like driving on the wrong side of the road is a skill set my pea brain can’t process. If I ever get across the pond my time will be spent annoying those who have the good sense to drive on the correct side of the pavement.
When we went to New Zealand (the only RHD country I’ve visited) we were only pedestrians, not drivers, but I could *not* break the habit of looking left first when at a crosswalk. Thankfully not a problem, but it definitely messed with my head. When I’ve driven in Europe on the right side of the road, I’m still kind of on high alert because the last thing I want to have happen is an accident where my limited language skills would have to come in contact with law enforcement and first responders. Also I don’t want to have to do deal with insurance internationally…
Great Saab in the last photo!
When I drove in GB I had no problem when I was in cities — just follow the traffic. The problem was when I was out in the countryside on empty roads, especially after making a left turn. Oops, wrong side.
I did reasonably well but the entrances and exits at Industrial Estates and such always got me.
Did you sleep-drive your way round London on the M25?
Yeah, surely that would be the most stressful part of the whole trip! Although maybe not if it was 5mph the whole way as usual…
I have a relatively new-to-me RHD JDM fire truck here in Portland, and the lane centering issue is a thing for sure. Shifting is no problem, but it does feel weird to be cruising at speed (or semi-speed given how fast this thing actually goes) with parked cars whizzing by you on the right. The drift is real! Parking is the best though, since I can look down out the window and see exactly where my tire is next to the curb
The thing that continues to throw me off is that the turn signals and wiper controls are reversed compared to what I’m used to. That was fine during the summer when all I had to do was worry about turning, but now that the rain has started I’m signalling right when I actually need to see, and starting the wipers when I really want to turn. Of course I get used to it and then get in the LHD Volvo and repeat the process. To quote The Stepfather (1987), “Who am I here?”
I’m considering a HiAce van. How do you like your JDM truck? My concern is finding repair parts when I will need them at some point. Is it possible to take that thing on the highway? I ask since I’m up in Maine, so most JDM dealers are pretty far away.
I love it. It’s a 94 LH85 with the 2L diesel engine, originally imported from vanlifenorthwest.com. Its footprint is a little smaller than our Volvo station wagon, but it’s imposing because it’s so tall and blocky. That’s good for getting the attention of all the distracted drivers around here. Plus it feels like it can go anywhere, which is great for most of the city roads. It’s super utilitarian, but that makes it so easy to work on (I took the dash off in about a half hour when I was putting in a stereo)
Northwestvanlife mostly sell vans, which I’m guessing are probably much faster on the road! That said, I bought this from my neighbor, who had driven it down to Baja (and back). It almost gets to 60 mph on the highway, and so you just have to settle into the right hand lane and take your time. They’re starting to sell parts, and I’ve seen a couple of other sites based here in the US doing that as well. I haven’t bought anything from Amayama (www.amayama.com/en/genuine-catalogs/epc/toyota-japan/hiace/lh85/136141), but given that all my Alfa parts have to come from England this hopefully wouldn’t be a big deal…
I live in a RHD country, I’ve never actually driven on the right, but my first experience of being a passenger was bloody scary. It was heading into a roundabout in Vanuatu the wrong way (in my head) its really really hard to get your head around that one!
I pretty much had this same experience but in reverse – for my 40th birthday my wife and I travelled to the US for a few weeks (we’re Australian).
Exactly as you described, the ‘mechanics’ of it all inside the car were fine, it was lane placement that was the tough part for the first little while.
“You’re drifting out of your lane!”…. “No I’m n… oh”
The fast lane being on the left, turns etc were all pretty easy to just mentally ‘flip’ and weren’t really an issue. After a little while it all became second nature once my brain worked out that most of the car was on my RIGHT now.
Well, apart from pre-paying for fuel. I never got used to that and would have a moment’s confusion every time the pump wouldn’t just work…
Yup, lane centering is the main issue I have to figure on when driving on opposite side. Doesn’t help that I naturally err towards the hugging the lane on the side I normally drive, so switching to opposite side really throws it out.
But 5 adults in a manual diesel wagon on Autobarn in heavy rain with frequent construction zones was otherwise surprisingly manageable. Or similar in minibus on US roada (albeit slightly slower speeds)
We used to go to France every summer as a kid (from the UK), and I remember my mum complaining about my dad’s lane positioning every single year.
Yay, thank you for this! Whenever possible, I avoid driving the first day of jetlag, and luckily for our first trip to a RHD country we’re going straight from the airport to the train to our destination. After that, I might get to try RHD motorcycling.
Having lived in Japan for a few years in th e1990’s, I am very comfortable driving manual either RHD or LHD. In fact, I think I actually prefer stick RHD, because it feels more natural to me. (I was born left handed, and the teachers made me write with my right hand as a kid. I was destined to be weird.)
For me, these are actually two different skills, because you have to set up your danger reflex to anticipate collisions from different quadrants, and then you have to use your feet the same, but your hands different. It’s a lot like being a switch-hitter in baseball. Some things translate. But the reflexes are entirely separate and unique. So you have to approach each skill with respect, and allow your cerebellum to program the automatic responses for turning left, merging, turning right, roundabouts, etc.
To be honest, as a motorcyclist, who uses all four limbs all the time while operating a motorcycle, it wasn’t that hard for me. Different. But not hard. Fun even.
A lefty here also. And you are right for sure. When I was a competitive downhill ski racer it was always harder to begin and complete right hand turns or gates. It never got easier despite years of effort. After my 10th knee surgery, I finally gave it up. Actually am ambidextrous to a large degree, but some stuff just does not translate easily despite max effort.
I’ve driven in England and Scotland many times. Fortunately, most of the roads I had to travel were not wide enough to have “sides,” so lane-keeping was easy.
Would love to try that left hand drive bit. I drove a 20 ft e350 SD for a decade and IMHO the mirrors are for reverse only. You pick a point on the hood that lines up with the fog line that puts you at center. Don’t take tight corners or too wide and you are fine. I assume align the hood to the first yellow line it works the same. I bet turns are easier if you just don’t take them to tight. But yeah nothing doing in London town give me a dd bus or a glorious old taxi or even a boat.