Every time I bowl up to collect my hire/courtesy car these days, they give me one with a CD player, they've gone past the stage of outlining to me beforehand what a priviledge it is to have this feature. When I book and ask for a cassette, increasingly it cannot be accommodated.

Frustration follows when I try and feed my cassette adaptor into that narrow slit to connect up my Empeg.

Surely, if we're living in a world with ever new formats: Minidisc, MP3 and MP3 on CDR and CDRW and that chewing gum shaped format of Sony's that says it's an MP3 - or even going backwards and playing a talking book on a cassette with a walkman, our wishes should be accommodated.

Should not car and aftermarket ICE manufacturers be encouraged to provide a 3.5 jack on the fascia, very few models do.

Perhaps a hire car only needs a radio with a jack in the front so you could make your own choice, but obviously it would be more trouble than its worth to supply hire cars with different kit in.

Of course if Hertz and Avis were serious about wanting discerning customers, each car would have an Empeg sled fitted. Then Rio would leap back into manufacturing them to fill all those slots!