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Even though modern cars are more reliable than they’ve ever been, you can still find yourself stranded beside the road or in a car-park in a situation that’s preventing you from being where you need to be. That’s where roadside assistance comes in.  These days, the major reasons for calling in the roadside assistance cavalry are likely to be for a flat tyre, a dead battery or simply the keys accidentally locked in the car. That said, when a modern car does refuse to start or run, fixing it is not necessarily the simple task it once was. Either way, roadside assistance will be your best friend when it happens.

The various state motoring clubs (in this case the RACWA) have had something of a stranglehold on this market for many decades, but that’s changed slightly in recent times. But those decades of experience have meant that the motoring clubs’ network of servicepeople (the actual folks who drive out to rescue you) are the biggest around and will reach even the farthest-flung corners of the land.

Roadside assistance cover usually costs from about $100 per year and can go all the way to more than $300 annually, depending on the type and scope of cover you choose. The variables include how far from your home address you want the cover to apply, how often you drive outside your home region, how much free towing you want included, how many cars you wish to be covered, whether you want other drivers covered in your car and more. You can also opt for extras such as free accommodation if you’re stranded, and taxis and hire cars if your car is out of commission for a length of time. Other conditions can place a cap on the number of call-outs covered per year while some policies offer unlimited call-outs.

Increasingly, though, we’re seeing car companies offer a period of free roadside assistance thrown in when you buy a new car, and insurance companies are increasingly offering roadside assistance as part of their policy (sometimes as an extra-cost option).

Then there are the private companies offering roadside assistance, sometimes through a national network of service providers (usually mobile mechanic networks) and sometimes (particularly in regional areas) tapping into the motoring clubs’ network.  Don’t forget, too, that there are third-party websites that offer a comparison service to compare the various offers from one online location.

There are no hard and fast rules for what level of cover you need, and each provider has a range of terms and conditions that you need to understand before signing on the dotted line. You need to be absolutely sure that the policy you choose will cover you for all your driving and be aware that really basic policies are just that, and may not cover you beyond a certain distance from home. A good, if expensive, policy, however, will incorporate cover for you and others driving your car, regardless of where you happen to find yourself, as well as including a taxi or hire car to get home, a room in a motel if necessary and enough towing allowance to get the car back to a workshop for proper repairs.  The other thing to check is whether you’re covered once you’re off what’s called a gazetted highway (that is, an official road). Off-roaders should make doubly sure they’re covered when driving on tracks, as recovering a vehicle from the bush can be hugely expensive. Specialist insurers are a good place to shop for off-road mechanical assistance.

Modern engines like the Suzuki’s use literally dozens of sensors to keep the engine’s computer informed on the operating temperature, quality of the fuel, coolant temperature, ambient temperature, camshaft position and lots, lots more. If just one of those sensors starts to offer up false or misleading information to the computer, the whole operation of running the engine can be compromised. That’s when you’ll get rough running and/or stalling as well as the excessive fuel consumption you’ve noted.

Rather than starting to change sensors on an ad hoc basis (which could take weeks and hundreds of dollars, and even then not arrive at a solution) the best advice is to have the car electronically scanned. At that point, the car’s computer is a good chance to tell the interrogating computer what ails it, and then you can zero in on that component and replace only the parts that are the problem.

The news is generally good in this department. Modern packaging and materials have meant that cars have never been bigger inside relative to their external dimensions. A modern Corolla, for instance, has a lot more interior space than a full-sized family Holden or Ford of a few decades ago. Performance is also a given these days, thanks to high-tech powerplants and a raft of transmission technologies that mean an automatic small car can still have lots of flexibility and urge where you need it.

But while cars are uniformly more accommodating, the variations in the human form remain. Which is to say that you really need to go and try each contender for yourself in terms of whether you fit in it or not. Some tall people simply have long legs while others attribute their stature to a longer than usual torso. Those differences can have a major effect on how a car’s interior accommodates you, especially when, as you are, you’re starting to tap into the upper reaches of the human dimensions car designers design for. Don’t forget to check whether the steering column adjusts to a position suitable for the seat’s location and whether you can see all the gauges on the dashboard clearly from a normal (for you) seating position.

This one is a little beyond my pay-scale, to be honest. Medical advice from a car website is not something we’re prepared to indulge in. Damaging levels of radiation from a car are not something we've heard of, but to comment either way and potentially put somebody’s health in danger is not our place. The absolute best advice is to make certain the driver in question seeks proper medical treatment.

If you think the car is at fault, you could have it scientifically tested to detect the presence of radiation, but it’s certainly sounds unlikely given the well-documented history of the motor-car. From where did your theory that the car is at fault come?

That’s quite low mileage for a 2012 vehicle and, on the surface, suggests that it has led a pretty easy life. but you’d still only buy it if it is presented with a fully-stamped service book to prove that all the critical preventative maintenance has been carried out. These are complex, high performance cars and they won’t tolerate neglect in terms of skipped services.

The major mechanical problems with these cars were found in the engine’s variable valve timing (VANOS) system. Any 'Engine Malfunction' message or 'Check Engine' light in the dashboard could quite easily be caused by a fault in this system. The VANOS arrangement was also the first system to show the effects of poor servicing, so make sure it checks out before you hand over the cash. Fundamentally, though, these cars are not low-maintenance units, so make sure you budget for the necessary ongoing servicing.

Don’t forget, also, that this series of BMW was caught up in the Takata air-bag debacle. So make sure the car has been attended to as part of the global recall and don’t take a chance on any car with no proof of this air-bag replacement being carried out.

This is a real problem and many road service call-outs are, in fact, caused by this very problem. It’s vastly more common for petrol to be put into a diesel vehicle than the other way around, simply because a petrol bowser nozzle will fit into the diesel car’s filler neck, but not the other way around. But should you mistakenly put petrol into a modern, common-rail diesel engine, the entire fuel system needs to be cleaned as a result. And that’s the best-case scenario, because if you drive any distance with petrol in the system, repairs can top $10,000 in some cases.

The devices you have listed usually work in the same way; they replace the car’s standard filler neck and act as a physical barrier to an unleaded petrol nozzle being inserted into the car. Unless the nozzle being presented is a diesel-sized nozzle, you won’t be able to put anything into the tank. Installed correctly, they should present no problems, but as with any part of a car’s fuel system, the installer needs to know what they’re doing. But they’re popular with fleet vehicles (which are driven by a variety of people who may or may not know the vehicle is diesel-powered) and families with a fleet that uses more than one type of fuel.

Urban dwellers love the look of huge wheels and low-profile tyres, but their country cousins generally hate them. That’s because those some giant wheel and tyre packages make the car ride more harshly and the tyres themselves are more prone to damage because there’s less sidewall to soak up impacts.

Switching to an 18-inch wheel and a tyre with more sidewall would definitely make the car ride better, but it’s not always that simple. For a start, you might run into problems in a legal and insurance sense because you’ve suddenly modified the car. To get around that, you should stick to the smallest wheel and tyre package that the manufacturer specified for that vehicle. In the case of a current model BMW X5 that’s a 19-inch wheel and tyre. That’s going to give a better ride than the 20-inch items you currently have, but it won’t be as big an improvement as an 18-inch package. If, however, yours is not the current model X5, then previous models did, in fact, offer an 18-inch package.

Either way, check with your insurance company that you’re not transgressing at some pedantic level and check, too, that the smaller wheels won’t drastically alter the overall gearing and suddenly make your speedometer inaccurate.

As for handling and braking, the differences between an 18-inch and 20-inch wheel tyre package would only be felt on a race-track and not in everyday driving conditions. But the improvement to ride quality will be felt every time you drive the vehicle.

Definitely mileage. It doesn’t really matter how old a car is in years if it’s in fabulous condition. Similarly, a car that is only a youngster could still turn into a horror story if it’s in a damaged and/or neglected state. A car’s condition is also determined by the things you can’t see, so make sure that any vehicle you are thinking about buying has a full service history. That’s crucial because that tells you that the car has been maintained correctly and those expensive bits and pieces that you can’t see are likely to be in good condition.

The one time age is important is when you’re trading the car in for your next one. A lot of used-car valuations are based, at least partly, on the car’s year of build, and two cars in identical condition but with different build-dates will be valued differently for trade-in purposes. But other than that, always buy on condition.

Your Lancer uses a timing belt which is made from a rubber compound and drives the camshaft. This makes for a cheaper engine to build and potentially quieter running, but it also means that the belt has to be changed periodically to prevent it snapping in service.

Mitsubishi recommends a belt-change interval of 100,000km. The advice of most mechanics it to replace the water pump at the same time since this part of the engine will be apart to change the belt anyway. It’s a lot cheaper to do both things at once, rather than open the engine a second time to change a water pump at a later date.

Subaru has told CarsGuide that the 2021 Levorg will, indeed, make it to Australia. There’s also speculation that it will be an even higher performance car this time around with the new 2.4-litre turbocharged engined from the WRX tipped to power the new Levorg wagon. The only catch is that, due to the need to supply other markets as well as Australia, Subaru may not be able to get hold of the first batch of the new Levorg until well into this year, perhaps even the last quarter of 2021.