my car caught fire!!

[midcuk]

driving home last night i put the heater on in econ mode to clear the windows there was a funny smell coming from it, stopped at the shop then when i drove off again i heard a "****" and seconds later the car started to fill up with black smoke from the passenger side footwell, i was on the motorway at the time and it was so bad within seconds i couldnt see the road, pulled on to hard shoulder (luckily) turned heater off asap and left it a few minutes, when the smoke eventually cleared i took a look under the bonnet and it looked fine. any ideas what it was and is it safe to use (turn the heater on)?.
now my car totally stinks inside of burnt rubber.

advice, opinions welcome

cheers
chris

[peterzs]

Reading through the posts the other day someone had the same thing but not as bad, turns out the heater motor works with resistors to give you different speeds. These look very dodgy just like a coiled spring, these overheat and burn up insulation. The talk was of replacing the springy things with diodes.

[arwilson80]

The heater motor is over that direction. If you lift out the glove box and have a look at it... hopefully it's nothing major and easily fixed.