This occurs more often than you think and it’s often caused by overtightening of the sump plug when the old oil has been drained out and the new stuff is ready to go in. Generally speaking, the sump plug will be screwing into either a thin metal oil pan or a rather soft alloy sump. Either way, too much torque on the spanner that tightens it can easily strip the treads and leave you stranded. This is far from just a Haval problem – many makes and models have suffered the same fate.

The fix is usually to get the vehicle to a workshop where the mechanic can either drill out the messed up threads and cut a new thread to take an oversized sump plug. Done carefully, this can often be achieved without removing the sump.

It sounds as though the material the dashboard structure or skin is made from has started to collapse or degrade in some other way. If the structure beneath the vinyl skin of the dashboard fails, you could conceivably wind up with a mis-shapen dash.

While that might sound trivial, it’s important that this gets fixed as this part of the dashboard houses the airbag. And if the opening for the airbag is not the right shape or is compromised somehow, it could affect the correct deployment of the airbag in a crash. And the consequences of that aren’t hard to imagine.

The best advice here is to disconnect the battery and contact the dealership. Any time there’s odd electrical behaviour combined with a burning smell, there’s a decent chance you have an electrical short-circuit on your hands. And that can easily lead to a fire that could destroy the car and anything near it.

By disconnecting the battery, you’re removing the power source that is making something hot enough to produce the burning smell. The constant beeping, meanwhile could be a symptom of the same thing as the shorted or damaged wiring allows the warning beeper to continue blaring away even though the ignition is turned off.