Freelance Unbound

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Cathy Relf’s excellent Rantings of a Sub-Editor blog offers a tough challenge to journalists and sub-editors – to turn a piece of drivelling nonsense submitted by a car reviewer into elegant and accurate copy.
Here’s the original:

The car is fairly pedestrian-friendly as there aren’t any hard surfaces directly beneath the bonnet

Her straight-down-the-line edit is admirable, but a bit dry: “There are no hard surfaces directly below the bonnet, minimising danger to pedestrians in the event of a crash.”
She says: “If anyone can sum it up with both beauty and sense (possibly in haiku format, for extra kudos), I’d be interested to hear it.”
You have your mission. A guide to English language haiku form is here. Well, what else would you do on a Friday?

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