If Microsoft made a car… what would it be?

In the Venn diagram of car owners whose vehicles have a certain amount of “character” and individuals who use Microsoft’s applications, there is an intersection of people who accept a quirk or two but not an unexpected explosion.

These individuals were recently celebrated in “On That Side Of Things,” a spin-off of the Smith and Sniff podcast in which Jonny Smith, a former presenter of the Fifth Gear UK television show, and Richard Porter, a writer for Top Gear and The Grand Tour, discuss cars and many other things.

Smith and Porter were answering a listener’s question about Microsoft products, which led Porter to express his frustration with some of the applications produced by the Windows behemoth, notably the online version of Excel, as well as Word’s habit of occasionally doing unexpected things with tables and styles.

Porter complained about difficulties when trying to insert lines in Excel. (Which, to be…