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30 aprile Spot the difference with the Clio Cup!
Dan Trent writes: Just a quick one before the press conference to check in after a day on track in the new Clio Cup. Now though there were issues with my 197 Cup long termer last year when it came to track driving I really didn’t think it could have been improved. Wrong! And if you doubted its credibility just look at it alongside the racecar and play a game of spot the difference! Really, the only roadcar you can buy with such a direct link to a racing version is the Porsche GT3 RS, and that costs somewhat more than the Clio’s £15,750. Sounds like a daft comparison? Not really… Dan
--- Links: A new age of Clio geekery dawns! --- 29 aprile A new age of Clio geekery dawns Dan Trent writes: My Clio 197 Cup long termer last year has set me on a spiralling path of Renault geekery that ultimately lead to me buying one of my own. So when the invite for the launch of the facelift Clio 200 came through a while back none of my esteemed colleagues stood a chance. And we fly out tomorrow. Can't wait! Especially if this press pic is anything to go by... The only disappointment is that former duelling partner Chris Knapman from Performance Car magazine won't be making it as planned. I'd been looking forward to reinstating the on-track battles we'd enjoyed in our 197 Cups last year but it seems a 'dancefloor incident' has put him out of action, driving wise at least. Either way, expect an over-excited blog from yours truly some time tomorrow... Dan --- Facelifted Clio Renaultsport revealed This one didn't try and kill me ... so I bought it MSN Cars long term fleet Clio 197 on track --- Heaven in the Audi R8 V10Tom Evans writes: To Granada in southern Spain, where Audi is holding a twin launch of the Audi R8 V10, and the new A5 cabriolet. On arrival, the ever affable Jon ‘Zammo’ Zammett, Audi UK’s PR supremo, welcomes our group at the airport, promising us excellent driving on near deserted roads. He adds that the local plod are aware of our presence and there has as yet been no… “clash of priorities” (or words to that effect) – and he would like it to stay that way.
I pair up with Martin Gurdon, who is writing up the launch for the London Evening Standard. At the airport, everyone makes a beeline for the assembled R8s, leaving the A5s looking a bit forlorn and abandoned:
We snare a lovely blue manual:
Tom Evans with the R8 V10
Martin Gurdon with the R8 V10 and Martin drives first off onto the motorway en route to our hotel.
We swap at a BP filling station off the autovia, and I nail this gorgeous machine all the way up. Oh yes. A lovely billowing turbine growl erupts from behind my head, and the horizon approaches with amazing swiftness. Then off on some twisty country roads, and the joy continues. The car is utterly planted, precise, dynamic, exciting. The new engine is 5.2-litres against the 4.2 of the V8. It redlines at a most politically incorrect 8,600 rpm, and doesn’t deliver full torque until 6000 rpm either. With engines speeds like this the car will supply its lucky owner with a monthly glovebox load of Tiger tokens…
A5 cabriolet At the excellent country house hotel – La Bobadilla - nestled in some olive groves, we swap into a A5 2.0 turbo petrol, which is very agreeable if, in our car with loaded options, rather pricey at £39k. Road test to follow. The 3.0-litre Quattro diesel is something of a disappointment, much heavier and less lively. It also has a 7-speed DSG autobox which changes smoothly enough, but as with most 7-speeders never really seems to know which gear it’s supposed to be in. During our A5 excursion I was in the passenger seat with my head down writing some notes, when a machine screamed by going the other way, sounding like a fighter plane. “Was that a superbike?” I asked Martin. “No – one of ‘our’ R8s, at full tilt with all the cams open, doing 8000 revs in 3rd, at a guess.” – or something like that. The noise as you nail one of those machines is just astonishing, and knocks the flat 6 3.6-litre soundtrack of the Porsche 911 Turbo well into touch.
At lunch, I meet Brian Laban, late of our parish, who is in good form, impersonating Ali G with the help of an Audi cap, as Martin looks on:
Back into an R8, we discover some marvellous empty windy roads and really get a chance to put the car through its paces. Martin is less keen to ‘press on’ than I am, so we don’t really go for it – but I make a mental note to return alone if I get a chance. There is a good meal in the evening, where Audi tells us they are surviving the current troubles rather better than their key competitors, and taking market share. Which probably explains why Audi is still putting on events like this when other players have notably scaled back on their launch activity, replacing private jet charters with EasyJet and so on. We have a brief talk from Alan McNish, Audi’s star LeMans driver who has taken its remarkable diesel supercars to many famous victories. At the dinner, on one side of me was the writer David Long. David used to write a regular monthly column for us which sadly fell victim to the credit crunch; however we discussed some exciting things we might do in the future – watch this space: Not for the first time I thanked my lucky stars that I work for an organisation that can afford to think beyond the current mess, and think about how to win in the recovery when it arrives, as it surely will. On the other side of me was Jo Elliott, marketing product manager for R8 V10 among other things. Being just 29 and female, she is perhaps as far away as you can reasonably get from the 48-50 year old males that are this car’s target buyer. That said, she talked confidently about her product and how the car was a veritable bargain compared to the competition, and the fact that it has a much beefier engine and loads of stuff as standard - magnetic ride suspension, sat-nav, LED headlights, B&O stereo - that cost extra on the V8. The opponent in the cross-hairs for the R8 V10? The Porsche 997 Turbo. Which I suppose is keeping it in the family, though as Churchill might have said, anyone who can explain the byzantine goings on between Audi’s owner Volkswagen and Porsche in the past couple of years cannot be in full possession of all the facts. The talk at the bar afterwards is the usual tales of hirings, one or two notable recent firings, and the occasional rum goings on that characterises the motoring press. The business is an internecine one where everyone knows everyone else, and the sheer volume of hanging about – usually in airport departure lounges – encourages such activity. I am an incorrigible gossip so I love it, and am also aware that intermingled in the sands of the stream of innuendo and slander are occasional nuggets of pure gold: personal, commercial and sometimes just plain funny. Breath test Audi – probably wisely – breathalyses journalists the morning after. I enjoyed some excellent Spanish brandy the night before, so was genuinely curious as to my result. Zero as it turns out. There were 1 or 2 failures, but sadly the names of those parties was not published. Still, as Audi point out, much better to be nabbed by them than the policia; Audi’s cells are probably nicer. Alone in an R8 V10 with Guns ‘N Roses I was mighty glad to pass though, because this means I can get my hands on a bright red R8 with R Tronic sequential gearbox. All on my own. My Zune – Microsoft’s answer to the iPod, not officially sold in the UK – is full of an occasionally embarrassing collection of music from the sublime to the ridiculous. It is ill-ordered and chaotically structured so I usually just leave it on shuffle and love to be surprised by whatever comes up next. And nothing delights me more than a fast car and very loud music. Usually there is not much opportunity on car launches to do this, since one is usually sharing a car and it would be unfair to inflict my music on anyone else.
So I plug in my Zune, and fire up the Quattro. I amble back to ‘my road’ discovered yesterday, and nail it. The randomly selected soundtrack? The marvellous Guns ‘N Roses ballade November Rain, a 9-minute long rock-metal extravaganza that starts slowly and builds to a rollicking finale: “everyone… needs to be alone… you’re not the only one” etc. And on an empty road, in a £100,000 525hp supercar, both sentiments become clear. You do need to be alone, but you are indeed not the only one. I nail the car through some gorgeous twists and turns, where you can see for miles and for that reason is essentially quite safe. The paddle-shift is useful enough, but the shifts are far from seamless and I wondered what this car would be like with one of the newer DSG units. Nonetheless, the drive is absolute heaven. The car really engages you with its precise steering that feedback the grip level and reassures. But unlike the 911, which has all this but repays the favour with twitchiness in high speed straights, the 4WD R8 is rock solid on the motorway back to Granada’s airport. I didn’t mess with the traction control and accordingly never unstuck it at all, though I did have the TC light blinking at me incessantly over some of the more uncertain surfaces when cornering hard. Powering the R8 V10 out of a deserted roundabout in the middle of nowhere is something every keen driver should do at least once. Plod As for the fuzz, they seemed to keep a low profile. We had a brief encounter with the Guardia Civil when we were filming in the A5, but they were just establishing our bona fides and once they twigged we were part of the Audi invasion that had entered their locale, they lost interest. Like many European countries, Spain has a multitude of police forces that tread on each other’s toes, generally loathe each other more than they hate criminals, and often have different political masters. The Guardia Civil – like the Gendarmerie in France and the Carabineri in Italy – answer to the army, not the civil police or interior ministry at all. On that basis they are in theory scarier as they have bigger and better guns, and tanks if necessary. It was perhaps useful we were stationery at the time of our encounter with them. I really really want an R8 V10, but the impossibility of this combines with the thought that my licence would not stay clean for long. on the roadster version, whose existence Audi will not admit to but most observers expect around 2010 or so. To have all that performance, those looks, and capability but with the roof down and wind in your air. I cannot wait. iQ boost to intelligent transport solutions Dan Trent writes: OK, so we’ve proved you can get four people into the iQ. But even this most clever of cars can’t help me with an errand I’ve got later on today, namely going to a paintshop about four miles away to pick up my Clio where a scratch on the bumper (kindly donated by one my neighbours) is being repaired. Anyway, it’s too far to walk, it’s in the middle of nowhere so there aren’t any buses and obviously driving isn’t an option, at least on my own.  The answer is to ride a bike there, sling it in the boot of the Clio and drive back. But to get the bike to the office I’d need to carry it in the iQ. Hm, now that’s a challenge. Step up my girlfriend’s Brompton, the two-wheeled equivalent to the iQ in terms of intelligent design (no, not that kind of intelligent design) responding to real-world transportation conundrums. The iQ achieves this by looking at the way city dwellers actually use their cars and then engineering lots of clever ways to shrink and package components efficiently to reduce the size and weight of the car. And with its various seating options it’s a lot more versatile than the Smart too (Smart, iQ … what is it with the naming of these things?). And the Brompton does a similar thing for bikes. It’s a fabulous piece of design, functionally elegant, quirky and very effective. And made in Britain too. And it responds to a real need, namely the fact that trains and bikes are a perfect combination for commuters heading into busy cities. A combination the train companies do their best to foil by designing trains that can’t accommodate bikes. The Brompton is a brilliant riposte to this short-sighted policy and, like the iQ, proof that clever engineering can still come up with inventive solutions to the ever more challenging task of just getting around.   Talking of clever designs I couldn’t resist shooting a picture of the iQ next to my neighbour’s (no, not that neighbour) Mini. Half a century separates them but the Mini’s brilliance remains undiminished, the iQ’s 21st century solution to a similar brief no less interesting. Dan --- Links: Toyota iQ first drive iQ testing: the answer is four Dan’s ‘new’ Clio Clio 172 economy run Brompton bikes --- Share It
28 aprile Mercedes E-Class Coupé: the “predecessor”cj hubbard writes: A couple of things about the launch of the new Mercedes-Benz E-Class Coupé that I’m currently attending in Tuscany (where it’s been raining, by the way, so don’t feel too bad). First of all, lots of talk about design. Mercedes believes it’s created a really good looking coupé here. Hmmm. I know our Dan likes it. But what do you think?
Secondly, I can’t be the only one to find this amusing. All through the press pack – and the various presentations – the E-Class Coupé is referred to as having a “predecessor”, but Mercedes never actually clarifies what this is. It’s always “the predecessor” – like some kind of cheesy 80s detective drama. The reason is there was no previous generation E-Class coop. This new model, with it’s Ponton look rear wings and all (on which more tomorrow), replaces the old Mercedes CLK Coupé. Merc is keen to move its new two-door upmarket and away from the lower ranking connotations of the C-Class, but going so far as to avoid all official mention of the CLK badge in the press literature seems a tad excessive. It’s like it’s been erased…
Mercedes will perhaps say that it is simply trying to make clear that the new car has nothing to do with the old car. In which case, however, why make the comparison at all? Plenty of CLK sales related data has been provided as a best-guess guide to how the E-Class will perform when it hits the market in June. And as for giving the E more upmarket appeal, it’s clear what a difference Mercedes reckons a name can make. The E-Class is actually some five percent cheaper than the CLK – or “predecessor”, if you prefer – yet comes loaded with more standard kit, including some really state of the art toys. Funny old thing, semantics. Oh, and the car industry. That’s a funny old thing, too. --- Links: Croatian charter flights favour chiropractors First Drive: Mercedes-Benz E-Class (2009 onwards model) Spied: Merc E-Class convertible ---
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Surprise encounter in a Citroen Dan Trent writes: So there I was at the weekend, out and about in the all-new (and boldly styled) Citroen C3 Picasso and doing the things MPV owners do, such as nipping over to my girlfriend’s dad’s house to pick up a lawn mower. In the process of a bit of a garage clear out, he’d just sold some furniture and the buyers were just leaving as I arrived in the bright blue Citroen.  “That’s a C3 Picasso isn’t it,” said the chap, clearly scrutinising the Citroen with rather more than casual interest. Evidently he knew his cars as he chatted, asking how come I had one and what I thought of it. I explained I was roadtesting it and then he casually let slip that his son worked for Citroen. Somewhat patronisingly I assumed he meant at a dealership but no, it turns out his son is none other than Mark Lloyd, senior Citroen designer and spokesman for the DS Inside concept from Geneva. Yikes! Somewhat gobsmacked I managed to blurt out “pass on my compliments for the C3 Picasso” to Lloyd Senior as he made off in his own Picasso, a C4. Dan --- Links: Citroen DS Inside Citroen C3 Picasso first drive --- Share It
27 aprile Nissan and Porsche play nasty
Dan Trent writes: Head into the legendary Pistenklause restaurant in Nurburg after a public day at the Nordschleife and they’ll all be at it. “Man, I was sideways ALL the way round the Karusell!” “Yeah? Well I overtook a GT3 in my Saxo.” “Yeah? Well I was sideways AND airborne as I went past Sabine and she gave me her phone number and told me to call her later.” Ah, the heady combination of Bitburger and bravado.
One obsession with all the ’ringers is lap times. You’ll hear it from every table. “I was on for eight minutes, easy, if it wasn’t for the [accident/bus/slow-moving 911 that wouldn’t pull over/low sun/greasy patch at Bergwerk, etc]” You’d expect nothing less from a drunk Brit with a video games obsession and dreams of Nurburgring glory. But Porsche? It comes to something when the combination of Germany’s finest – namely a brand new 911 GT3 with Walter Rohrl at the wheel – posts a lap time with the disclaimer that it could have been faster but there was a bit of traffic… Maybe they’ve been hanging out in the Pistenklause too. Anyway, I refer to the 7min 40sec Rohrl recorded with the new GT3 as part of the ongoing spat with Nissan over King of the ’Ring status, Porsche maintaining its somewhat sniffy stance that the GT-R isn’t quite as fast as Nissan claims. Rohrl apparently also took a Ferrari 430 Scuderia out in the same session as his lap in the GT3 and was a tad slower, Porsche reported as saying that on that basis that the GT-R would be on a mid 7min 50s pace. Meanwhile at Nissan they’re gleefully chopping more time out of the GT-R’s frankly astonishing sub-7min 30sec pace, borderline bonkers test driver Suzuki-san recently recording 7min 27.6sec in a MY2010 GT-R Nissan insists is a standard production car, black RAYS wheels nothwithstanding. Astounding. And it hasn’t even released a time for the new V-Spec version yet either.
It’s all a bit juvenile really. But highly entertaining nonetheless. And meanwhile there’s another fight brewing, this time with Renault and Ford fighting for front-wheel drive daddy status with their Megane R26.R and RS Focus respectively. Ford is gunning for Renault’s 8min 17sec record, a Renault insider quipping that a trip to Germany will make a nice change of scenery for the Ford team but the Megane has unofficially gone five seconds quicker so has plenty more speed in hand. To the victors go the spoils. To the vanquished a table at the Pistenklause and muttered ‘if onlys’ over beers. Will their jackets have Porsche logos or Nissan? Ford or Renault? I’ll be there next week so I’ll be able to tell you live from the front line… Dan --- Links: ‘Ring gets world’s fastest rollercoaster We meet Nissan’s ‘ring record breaker --- Share It
23 aprile iQ testing. The answer really is four.cj hubbard writes:
All photos by Dan It was the delivery driver wot did it. At least, that’s the excuse I gave my colleagues. And no, nothing calamitous has happened already to the Toyota iQ that’s just arrived in our car park. It’s just that the friendly chap who dropped it off made the mistake of saying it was possible to get four people into the tiddly city car. He knew. he’d done it. You can probably guess what happened next. But anyway, I went straight back into the office and said we immediately needed to try it. And so, from right to left in the photo above, workie Alex, Peter, Richard and myself all piled outside – dragging Dan along to take the pictures. Notice I’m the only one that looks happy about it.
Officially, the iQ is a three and a half seater, or something. Three of the seats should accommodate full-sized adults, the fourth is good for a child or teenager. Naturally we slotted Richard into there. He looked a little dubious at first, but soon declared it cosy snug.
Alex got a slightly better deal. The front passenger seat in the iQ is deliberately set forward and faces a cutout in the dashboard, giving the adult passenger behind more legroom. Still doesn’t look keen though, does he?
Finally, Peter and myself made it into the front. I don’t know how I bagsied that, since it had been my silly idea in the first place. But believe it or not, we’re all comfortable enough.
However, we didn’t have time to take the fully loaded car for a spin. Which might have made for an entirely different story. But four-up in an iQ really is totally possible. And I do mean fully loaded. It’s people or shopping in the back of the iQ – the rear seats fold flat to create space for storage. With them upright for passengers there’s barely room in the ‘boot’ for Alex’s shoes…
To watch the MSN Cars First Drive video of the Toyota iQ, click the tiny image below: --- Links: One of these cars is fun to drive flat out In the car park: an overwhelming sense of superiority ---
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Tesla: part twoIan Dickson writes
As Tom pointed out in his earlier posting, the Tesla we had in for 24 hours has had a thorough thumbs-up from us at MSN. Everyone who had a go absolutely loved it. But unfortunately it had to go back, and I was given the tough job of returning it to Tesla’s showroom in Knightsbridge, London. While there I got chatting with Don, the sales and marketing director, and asked him how business is going. “We’ve sold two this week and it could well be three sales by the end of the day.” Blimey – that’s an amazing achievement considering the price – a stonking £94k.
Tom Evans and Peter Bale enjoy a drive in the Tesla I was something of an electric car pessimist until I tried the Tesla. Now it makes perfect sense; strong performance, zero emissions, no engine noise and a relaxing drive. If you live in a big city like London and have a garage this is the perfect commuter’s car.
American intern Jenna enjoys a spin in the Californian-built machine Because of the risk of flattening a pedestrian due to the silent running of these electric cars, the EU might be legislating on fake engine noise or even music which will warn other road users of your presence. On the other hand, they could just open their eyes before crossing the road.
Our MX-5’s UK tourIan Dickson writes Driving home to Northern Ireland at Easter, we were making excellent time on our way to Stranraer in Scotland to catch the super-fast Stena HSS service to Belfast. Our boat was the 14:30 fast service, and having left at 4:30am we beat the rush hour on the M40 and M42 at Birmingham, which has to be Britain’s worst motorway. Then I saw that sign that no one wants to see “M6 north closed at junction 26 – Wigan”. So we switched on the traffic announcements and kept driving, expecting to hit the inevitable traffic jam any time soon. I don’t know if anyone else has ever noticed this, but those radio traffic alerts are useless; like buses, there are none for ages then they come all come along at once. I presume the problem is that all these local radio stations make their traffic news at exactly the same time? Anyway, we inevitably hit the tailback when the traffic news did indeed warn us that the M6 north was closed – thanks for that. Wigan is a fairly large place and at the north end you can pick up junction 27 of the M6, so that’s where we headed. Bad move. About two miles from the motorway the local roads were gridlocked and after sitting in a queue for 30 minutes the traffic news informed us that 27 was now shut as the police removed the lorries involved in the accident. So we swung the MX-5 round and headed back to jct 26. “ We should have just parked up and had some breakfast” I said to my girlfriend, who was already miffed with me because I refused to turn round sooner, something to do with her having a ‘feeling’ that 26 was open again. Anyway, drama over, we wound my MX-5 long-termer up and pointed her at Scotland, making it to Stranraer for 12:30pm – just in time to catch an earlier ferry.
Cue lots of swearing again as we read the sign at the ferry terminal. “9:50 and 14:40 HSS services to Belfast cancelled due to strong winds. First come first served for the 16:30 to Belfast.” That meant spending at least four hours in Stranraer, and believe me it isn’t the most exciting town in the UK. We eventually left on the ‘slow’ ferry which was able to tackle the monstrous waves across the Irish channel. And with 1,000 miles on the MX-5 it feels nicely run in now, although it isn’t the most comfortable car on a long journey, feeling too cramped and noisy at speed. But once the sun is out it’s the perfect roadster… and amazingly it only drank one and a half tanks on the way home so it’s cheap to run, too. Snaps of Portstewart and Portrush Northern Ireland
Another green Audi R8! Dan Trent writes: Is there a craze for bright green Audi R8s developing? Could be. The one I spotted on the way to work the other week was certainly eye catching and the subsequent blog certainly got you all chatting. But German tuner MTM has gone one better with this souped up R8, resplendent in the searing green paint shade from the Porsche 911 GT3 RS. And it’s certainly eye catching.  As are the performance mods, a supercharger conversion upping power from the 4.2-litre V8 version from 420hp to 560hp. That’s considerably more than the 525hp of the recently released V10 R8, for what it’s worth. Black painted 20-inch forged wheels and an extensive aero package made from – natch – green tinted carbon fibre complete the look which is best described as loud. Dan --- Links: Audi R8 turns us green with envy --- A drive in the Tesla RoadsterTom Evans writes: Our lucky colleague Richard Aucock has had his turn, and now the in-house gang at MSN towers finally got our hands on a Tesla Roadster today.
This all-electric sports car, built in California but based on a Lotus Elise, promises to make electric cars sexy. Does it? Oh yes. It is quite simply phenomenal. You get in, and start it up. It bleeps a bit but then, silence. I eased it into the busy traffic, still no noise. And then hit the throttle. The instant torque is frankly... electrifying. Forget all your preconceptions about eco-cars. If all eco-cars were like this, pollution in London would vanish overnight. It is like being in a sci-fi film, zooming along, with just a whistle and a bit of tyre and wind noise. Spring arrives It was a glorious day in London today, with tons of tourists about – doubtless enticed by our devalued currency – and millions of policemen around Victoria. Whether they were there for Budget day, the Tamil demo, various miscellaneous protests – or something else – I do not know. But this tempered my deep, deep desire to nail the on button on the throttle and keep it there until I was doing 100. The car got admiring glances, with one or two folk clearly recognising that this was more than just an Elise. But pedestrians cannot hear you, and this means you have to be careful as people dawdle into the road yacking into their mobiles. You will quickly understand how cyclists feel about this sort of thing. The mall outside Buckingham Palace has proved itself a perfect race track in PGR4 and other games, but not today. Even so, helming this amazing little open top car in traffic in blazing sunshine was a total delight. The word went around the building that a rather special motor was doing the rounds, and we had colleagues queuing wanting to “have a go”. Most people have never driven an electric car, let alone a very special one like this. Silence is golden The best bit for me is the silence. I love sailing, and one of the best things about sailing is floating about on a calm day, at one with the world, with no blasted throbbing engine or belching air conditioning system. And it is the same in this. You are at idle, and there is no noise at all. Start moving, and still silence – it is just weirdly amazing... No congestion charge, no road tax, very low running costs compared to jungle juice. The downside There are issues of course. This is a £90,000 car, but the interior is still £30,000 Elise more or less. If this was £30,000, it would sell like hot cakes, even though it is small and impractical and lacks luggage space and all the other compromises that we must expect. How long will those batteries last? If laptops and mobiles are any guide, not long enough. How much will they cost to replace? If laptops are any guide, up to a third of the cost of the car in the first place. It is LHD only, despite its UK origins. The other issue is the range. I would be in a deep state of paranoia that I would run out of juice in the middle of nowhere, and nothing short of a low loader would get me home again. The Tesla has 2 rangeometers – 1 for ‘spirited’ driving, and 1 for ‘normal’ – which is around twice as many miles. Feel the power, and conserve it But – and it is a big but – the great intoxicating thing about the car is the digital throttle response which promises 0 to 60 in under 4 seconds, and I can easily believe this. The trouble is this will drain the battery much like watching a high-def DVD on a laptop on battery power on a plane – a lot of fun, while it lasts. It makes you think about your power use. A/c? certainly not (though it has it). Stereo? Steady. Electric windows? Put them down and keep them down. Our MD – who drives a V8 Vantage – has borrowed the Tesla for the evening for a trip to that quintessential sunny evening location, Cliveden House to the west of London. Will he make it? More to the point, will he make it back? I pressed my mobile number into his hands as he left just in case. What he makes of it so far I have only heard from Nigel, who was filming his journey home, and it sounds like a thumbs up, so far... Watch out for our video of Ashley’s commute – and what he thinks of it - shortly. But for now, I have seen the future, and it kind of works. But someone needs to hurry up and invent batteries that last for ever, and recharge in 2 minutes, not 8 hours, pronto. Tom
22 aprile Scrappage beneath the surfacePeter Burgess writes:
So as Richard has succinctly reported, we have the hoped for £2,000 scrappage scheme. But as is often the case from the current government, it’s not quite what it seems. For starters they ain’t putting two thousand pounds into the pot, just half that. Gordon’s jolly lot expect the car manufacturers to match that amount to bring the figure up to two grand. What an insult to our intelligence! The £1,000 from the car industry will inevitably come out of the same pot that until now has funded the showroom discount. And the industry doesn’t even have to buy into this idea. It’s voluntary!
I’ll l eat my hat if the actual savings you can make on buying a new car, between now and mid-May, when the scheme gets under way, get within £800 of the touted £2,000. Is Nissan, for example, going put £1000 into the scrappage scheme for buyers of the new £5,995 Pixo? Dream on. Let’s hope the headline writers work this out before they slap Messrs Darling, Brown and Mandelson on the back in tomorrow’s newspapers.
--- Links: Budget 2009: 'cash for bangers' scheme announced How Alistair Darling can make driving fun again Top 10 ways Alistair Darling can save the car industry ---
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One of these cars is fun to drive flat out... Dan Trent writes: And no, it's not the RS6. But fear not, this isn't another installment of Dan's Audi Rage because the RS6 is an amazing piece of kit. Utterly and completely pointless, even more so given this week's news about the likelihood of blanket 50mph limits on rural A-roads, it is so stupidly fast it'll double, treble even, any given speed limit in the blink of an eye if you're not careful. But it looks and sounds awesome. If not quite as awesome as the bright yellow Avant version on black 20-inch wheels I saw the other day. Brave choice. But to my main point. Tickling the Audi along on 10% throttle and instinctively having to go for the brake pedal every time you see the numbers on the speedo is kind of frustrating. I envy CJ and his tales of hitting the 155mph limiter on the German launch event but that ain't gonna happen here.  No such trouble in the Suzuki Splash. In fact, you could put a brick on the throttle pedal and leave it at that. It is slow. But because of that it's actually loads of fun. The steering is unexpectedly feelsome. It's top heavy but surprisingly well tied down and, most usefully of all, it's small enough to punt along the lanes without grazing expensively swollen wheelarches along the hedgerows on both sides. Yes, fatty with the RS6 badges, I'm looking at you!  I guess this presents two options. Buy an RS6* and move to Germany. Or keep the Suzuki** and enjoy driving it flat out without troubling even the strictest rural speed limit... Dan *Assuming there's £75K in small change behind the sofa **Also assuming the press office don't mind me keeping one of their cars --- Links: Raging against the machine Roadtest: Audi RS6 The march of the 50mph speed limit CJ enjoys maxing out the RS6 First drive: Suzuki Splash Hello, is that Kwikfit? I need 900 tyres please... --- Share It
21 aprile Focus on Ford's economyRichard Aucock writes: Had to snigger at this image from Ford. Of, the interior of the latest ST. I was ploughing through the Volkswagen Golf GTI’s rivals, you see, after being enthused by CJ’s first drive. And wanted to (randomly) remind myself what the Ford’s steering wheel looked like.
Very nice, it does look, too. But, peer more closely. See the display behind it? That’s a trip computer display for the 2.5-litre turbocharged ST. It tells you how economical the thing is. What does it say?
34.0mpg? What? Who’s been driving it – my gran? Worse still, me? Nobody but nobody gets anywhere near this economy with an ST. It likes a drink: period. What’s even more amusing in this image is that the car is started – and engines at idle kill fuel economy figures.
I’d be interested to know how such a figure has been generated. Because it certainly ‘aint through driving the ST at the speed its marvelous, marvelous chassis encourages… --- Volkswagen Golf GTI 2009 First Drive In the car park: an overwhelming sense of superioritycj hubbard writes:
Photo by Dan The cameraphone quality image somehow suits this monster. Ticking gently after its early morning run from Milton Keynes to our Hertfordshire car park, that would be an Audi RS6 Saloon, sparkling in Sepang Blue metallic. 5.0-litres, ten cylinders, two turbochargers, and the bluff, bulging bodywork = one mammoth fuel bill. But also such an overwhelming sense of superiority. BMW can keep its peaky, naturally aspirated M5 – delicate handling is one thing, a crap gearbox on a £60k car is quite another – I’d definitely take one of these. It is just so so achingly, effortlessly fast. However, the electronic steering lock (which requires another button press before you can get out of the car) has already sent Dan into a fit of apoplexy. Expect more posts on this RS6 soon. It should be an excellent week – the sun is shining, the birds are singing, and we’ve got a 579hp executive locomotive to keep the environmentalists active… --- Links: Car park snap shot: hot hatches ahoy Flappy paddles for your Porsche First Drive: Audi RS6 Saloon (2008 onwards model) ---
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20 aprile Things you don't see any more, #3 Dan Trent writes: Welcome to the latest in an occasional series of inappropriate/wacky/downright strange/amusing [delete according to taste] 70s publicity photos. We've had the Nick Heidfeld lookalike smoking fag in an Escort and man with weird hair driving round vertical banked test track in a Merc. Now step up Citroen, with a photo depicting an optional extra for the 2CV of which I was never previously aware, namely a bonnet-mounted blonde in a bikini. Doesn't do wonders for visibility or, it would seem, concentration, the driver apparently having inadvertantly taken a wrong turn and driven into the sea in his excitement at having a scantily clad woman clinging to his bonnet. Nice work if you can get it, etc... Dan --- Links: Things you don't see any more, #1 Things you don't see any more, #2 --- Share It
Car park snap shot: hot hatches ahoycj hubbard writes:
It was all old school in our car park late last week. Not a press car in sight as my SportKa slotted in next to Dan’s Clio 172 Cup and work experience draftee Alex Goy’s previous generation Mini Cooper S.
Not a bad little line up of cars, that – from the cheap and cheerful (my car), to the cult classic (Dan’s), to the fashion conscious but still seriously fun (you can figure that one out).
Seeing them all together, one thing was certainly clear. Which is to say Alex needs to get busy with a sponge (and some wax), as his Mini is absolutely filthy… --- Links: This one didn’t try to kill me … so I bought it!
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17 aprile Flappy paddles for your Porsche |
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Win a Wildcat for £20
Alex Goy writes:
Picture: Wikipedia Commons, Driver Sam
So here we go again, another small volume British roadster manufacturer here to shock us with something ‘new’ and ‘wild’.
That’s almost correct, but the Melling Wildcat came from the mind of Al Melling – former TVR engine guru. And he’s offering you one for £20.
The TVR Griffith inspired Wildcat is being offered to anyone with £20 and an uncanny ability to win ‘guess the number of sweeties in the jar’ type games. All you need to do is go to www.almellingsportscars.com, try to guess how many individual components are in a Wildcat and send them a cheque.
The car itself can be bought from £40,000 (if you don’t want to chance it) with any type of engine you choose from Melling’s own V8 to a Dodge SRT-10 (read: Viper) V10. The base Corvette LS3 V8 model will hit 62mph in under 5seconds and can knock on 180mph.
Some have described the roof that connects with car’s body via ‘poppers’ as a little flimsy, kit car-ish and cheap, but Melling is a small volume sports car manufacturer. And he needs to start saving up to begin production of the 1000bhp Hellcat promised in 2007 and scheduled to arrive in 2012.
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Ford pictures that, just for you.
1,000 prancing horses in Hong Kong
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