My wife was pulling away from some lights and ‘the car wouldn’t go so I just kept putting my foot down’.

It sounds like either the clutch pedal hadn’t returned properly, she hadn’t got her foot off it, the cable/hydraulics (not sure which it has) are ‘sticky’ or the clutch is on the way out.

Anyway, it she ended up driving it along at 5mph bouncing it off the rev limiter until she found somewhere she felt like pulling over. Given the power the car has (200bhp) I suspect it sounded ‘interesting’ at max revs.

I got a call because of the ‘burning smell’. I told her to wait ten minutes then drive gently home. After 2 minutes she drove home on a route that included a significant hill start ‘and the smell got worse’.

The smell of burning clutch was quite intense when she’d parked up.

She mentioned she’d had trouble selecting reverse when out a couple fo days ago.

So few questions;

1) is the clutch plate now likely to be toast regardless of what caused the initial problem?

2) Do we wait until it’s all cooled down and go and try a few hill starts to see if it goes wrong again and if it doesn’t put it down to experience and carry on?

3) Get it to a garage for them to have a look at the clutch and actuation etc to see if there’s an underlying problem?

I think there’s a bit of a trust/confidence issue with my wife and cars so we need to be fairly sure it’s not going to happen again at random intervals.

Suggestions?