Erin Baker: The worst options you should never pay for

But what’s not worth blowing the budget for? Forget depreciation: we’re just talking creature comforts and also, options that, nine times out of ten, don’t do what they’re meant to, and are best avoided.

For starters: lane-keeping assist. This is a horrible, horrible invention. Sensors detect the white lines separating lanes and, should you stray over them without indicating the car will assume you have nodded off and either make a noise, vibrate the steering wheel or gently tug it out of your grasp to pull the car back into the lane you’re in. Not good, for many reasons. One, it means you have to indicate every time you change lanes, which is normally an excellent idea, but what if it’s a clear, quiet road with nothing for miles?

The resulting tug of the steering wheel can often be stronger than you’re expecting and hard to override. More importantly, a Volvo XC90 I had a couple of years ago had overly sensitive sensors: barreling along in the outside lane of the dual-carriageway A3 one day, approaching a bend, the Volvo thought I was straying out of it, presumably due to the curve of the road, and tugged me over to the left. It was flipping dangerous. Unfortunately, lane-assist is mostly sold as a safety package along with a blind-spot warning system, which is useful, but I’d forgo the lot to be rid of it; often you can’t disable it.

Larger wheels are another no in my book. They can ruin the ride, and smaller wheels seem to be coming back into fashion anyway. Ditto any fancy alloys – public parking spaces on the road these days have not kept pace with the size of cars, both width and length, which means you inevitably butt up against kerbs and scratch your pride and joy.

Leather seats. Such are the capabilities of brands these days to produce really smart, but hard-wearing fabrics and futuristic textiles for their seats (see Renault’s lovely black ribbed seat fabric with white piping, or Land Rover’s innovative fabric patterns in the Velar), leather seems a bit old-hat – it’s all protein leathers coming out of California these days. Plus it tends to sag quickly and age your car horribly.

Roof liner in anything fancy, like alcantara. Really? How often do you look up?

Apple CarPlay. Difficult one, this. I have a love/hate relationship with it – yes, it’s great to have texts read out to you as they appear on your phone, but it just highlights how far the technology still has to go – I instantly want to dictate emails and send them, which you can’t do on CarPlay alone. Plus, you often have to disconnect the CarPlay in order to have the car’s own satnav activated. I’d say go without until the tech improves.