Bad for my Blood Pressure

Spent a huge chunk of yesterday evening and all of this morning sorting out the electric windows in the "big car". Wot fun. Turns out that the cable had rusted, jammed, and then destroyed itself winding round the pulley. I can imagine the design meeting in France around 10 years ago:

Engineer: "I 'ave used the stainless steel in the weendow regulatore to pull the weendows urp and down".
Accountant: "But eef you use the cheaper steel wire eet will save a couple of euros per auto and make us reecher."
Engineer: "Oui. But wire ordinare will rust after a while and jam up, causing the weendow to get sturk."
Accountant: "Eh bien. Then the customere (or suckere as nous can call him) will then be forced to spend boucoups de cash with us to purchase a replacement. I put it to you that thees is a good idea."
Engineer : (thinking about his femme, kids and le mortgage and what would happen to them if he loses his travail) "OK. Have it votre way."

There is no way I'm going to spend 220 smackers just because the people that made my car used cheap materials. Particularly as they are the ones that get my cash. So today number one son and I spent literally ages fighting with the stupid device to replace the broken wire inside with two nice shiny ones originally designed for bicycle brakes. Cost six pounds in all.

It took a lot of effort, lots of heartache, skimmed knuckles, swearing and numerous twangy failures. But now we are pretty sure we've fixed the window. We just daren't use it....