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November 27 Greek Spark-lers from ChevroletAlex Goy writes: Greetings from the Chevrolet Spark launch in Greece!
I’ll be honest, given the choice between being here, where it’s 20 degrees and sunny, and being at home in London (where I hear it’s not too nice), I know which I’d choose.
On the plus side, the clement weather means I’ve had the chance to look round the Spark’s darker corners. I’m pleased to report that it’s rather fetching.
A few friends in the ‘biz’ predicted it’d not be great, but I can happily say they’re very wrong. On all counts. It really is quite a charming wee car, something that I’d happily have on my drive. The design was apparently picked via a public vote from a choice of three and – having seen the others - I’m glad that this one made the cut.
There’s also the added bonus that it was featured in Transformers. I’m driving an Autobot! And I love it. Come back next week for the MSN Cars First Drive review of the Chevrolet Spark. --- Share It
November 24 BMW 5 Series seen... eventuallyRichard Aucock writes: Yesterday, MSN Cars went over to Munich, to see the brand-new BMW 5 Series. And frustratingly, all the time we were there, we couldn't report a single word back! BMW imposed a strict embargo, so information couldn't be released until 7pm. This wasn't the end of their teasing, either. It started off by us being picked up in new 5 Series. Err, new 5 Series GTs. So near! Then, entering BMW's truly massive design centre (7,000 people work there alone), we saw a sign, welcoming us to see the new car. Great - eyes peeled, then... Sure enough, there it was. Well, sort of. This bowling ball theme continued upstairs, as we waited for the press conference to begin. There, laid out, were all the colours to be offered on the new 5 Series. But not a single image depicting what the finished job would look like. People were, by this stage, up and pacing. A slight diversion was the revelation that, between where we were and where BMW's official HQ is (the second-tallest tower on the horizon below), '1 in 2 businesses are connected to BMW'. This means 40,000 people in this North Munich region alone are reliant on BMW's fortunes. Hence the wait: it had to be right. Finally, it was into the huge viewing hall. An hour's insight into the design process, then the drama really began. Fanfare, light show, and there she was. The new BMW 5 Series.
For the next 2 hours, all we did was speak 5 with the engineers. They're clearly very proud of it. Rightly so, we reckon. Yep, it was worth the wait... --- Share It
November 17 To Maranello and FioranoPeter Burgess writes: It doesn’t get much better than a Ferrari launch at Maranello. But this is trip is potentially the best yet, for I am here to drive the fabulous-looking Ferrari 458 Italia. This is a launch we have been working on for months - in fact, as soon as we first got whiff of this awesome Ferrari.
We don’t get to drive the car until tomorrow, but on trips like this it’s important to get the groundwork done as soon as possible. I teamed up with the Indy’s John Simister weeks ago because we’re both comfortable driving supercars together, and are well versed in the perils of spending a day alongside someone who scares the hell out of you or alternatively fails to really understand the fundamentals of driving a fast car quickly.
We quickly made a pitch for our session at Ferrari’s Fiorano racetrack. John and I have booked in at 3pm tomorrow, which gives us six glorious hours in the car beforehand followed by circuit work before the light disappears.
Undoubtedly there will be a typical Italian lunch scheduled along the way but we’ll skip if for more car time. What we didn’t skip this evening was an hour and three quarter technical briefing - which, even with my background in engineering, was rather exhaustive. Still, it’s a great chance to acquire the detail and to get under the skin of these passionate Ferrari guys.
I now know more than I’ll ever need to about scavenging pumps, crankcase windage and variable geometry oil pumps.
By 9pm we are in the pit garage at the Fiorano track for pasta, steak and tiramisu, washed down with Italian red wine. Nothing, though, can suppress this ever-building sense of anticipation about tomorrow. It should be sensational. --- Share It
November 12 The SLS lap: Schneider offers his feedback Dan Trent writes: So there I am, at breakfast, laptop open and in walks Bernd Schneider. "I've got that lap up online already," I boast. "Really?" he says. "Let me see..." Oh. Slightly surreal that, watching a vid of me driving with a corner by corner dissection of my technique from a five times DTM champion. "Hm, too late on the entry there," he says of my first turn. "Hm, sideways there, you lost speed, sideways is not so fast," after the next one. Racers really do't like sideways it seems, his colleague Thomas Jäger looking pained yesterday when I asked him for some sideways action for pics. "But this is slow," he complained. Anyway, somewhat crestfallen I watch Schneider's face as he studies the rest of the lap. I make excuses for my clumsy attempt at the Corkscrew, including my special two wheels over the concrete line. "This is OK, you still have two wheels on the track," says Bernd. And when I take lots of kerb he seems to approve. "This is good," he says of the last couple of corners. "You should come to the AMG Driver Academy." I'm not sure if this is a compliment or not but I give him my card and I'll be hoping for the best. If it means more Laguna laps in the SLS I'm there! Dan --- Links: Around Laguna Seca in the SLS --- Share It
October 27 The lifts of doomcj hubbard writes: The Hesperia Tower hotel in Barcelona is a very grand affair – but also rather odd. It’s one of those designer places where a) the architect apparently couldn’t quite make his mind up on the style so used several of them at once, and b) is so full of dark and glossy surfaces it surely can’t be uncommon for uninitiated punters to enter a room and either walk immediately into a mirror finished wall or not be able to find their way out again. It’s also slightly disquieting for being located adjacent to some of the Barcelona badlands – a position chosen for its convenience to the airport – and given this somewhat creates the impression of having been dropped at random from a great height. An appearance enhanced no doubt by the domed restaurant on the roof looking akin to a bulbous glass sided ufo. I loved the place; others were less keen. We were staying at there ahead of driving the new SEAT Leon Cupra R – 265hp of front wheel drive hot hatch, full first drive on the main MSN Cars site shortly. The main point of chagrin? The elevators.
Being a whacking big tower obviously it needs lifts – four of them, in fact. Making the point even more obviously, the only stairs we could find were on the outside of the building. Anyways, instead of the usual buttons, there’s a control panel, accessed by swiping your room keycard. This then tells you what lift you need to wait for. It’s no good getting in a different one, even if it should arrive earlier, because it won’t be stopping at your floor. Fine. Weird. But fine. Except in the morning, when everyone is trying to get to breakfast. And it turns out the staff have got over-ride keys. So you find yourself waiting 20 minutes for your assigned lift, only to then discover it’s been hijacked by someone else and you need to start the control-panel-card-request process all over again. Finally, just when you begin to think it can’t get any worse, this happens:
So, just to recap. You’re on the thirteenth floor of a towerblock hotel. There are no stairs. And the elevators apparently aren’t available. Exactly how are you supposed to get down? Genius. But if nothing else, certainly a talking point. --- Links: SEAT unveils 265hp Leon Cupra R Renaultsport Megane 250 first drive – the uncut version The smallest of dramas on the Citroen C3 launch Secrets of the Wolfsburg Ritz-Carlton --- Technorati Tags: SEAT, Leon, Cupra R, Hesperia Tower, hotel, Barcelona, lift, elevator, stuck, stairs --- Share It:
October 14 The smallest of dramas on the Citroen C3 launchcj hubbard writes: Here’s what the new Citroen C3 looks like after you’ve clipped the edge of a road at 60mph.
That’s right – you get a puncture.
I wasn’t driving, I hasten to add. The speed crazed road warrior in question? George from Which? magazine. Actually, it really wasn’t that big a deal – a very real, very everyday incident. A slight misjudgement on a corner (due, perhaps, to his navigator failing to shout: “Do not cut!”) saw him put a wheel onto the edge of a particularly vicious piece of Italian tarmac. This essentially gutted a section of tread, and the tyre deflated very quickly (without causing us any control difficulties).
Of course, the C3 being a modern car, there is no spare wheel. The air drop was so swift, and therefore the hole presumably so large, we didn’t bother attempting to rectify the situation with the large yellow looking compressor thingy that serves in the spare’s stead. This looks remarkably like a piece of equipment borrowed from a Vogon Constructor Fleet vessel. But I digress. So, a phonecall was placed to Citroen technical support, and a little while later we were rescued. I say rescued. Two kindly Citroen bods arrived and allowed us to co-opt their C3. We left them looking for somewhere to camp in the Italian countryside. Feeling bad, obviously. But at least it had finished raining. Since the donor car was a diesel and the original wounded greeny a petrol, the incident mildly cocked up Citroen’s carefully crafted plans that saw us supposedly us swapping fuels on the second day, as I hadn’t sampled the petrol before George not quite crashed it. This was smoothly rectified, and I picked up a set of petrol keys after breakfast – only to discover they were to the same car.
Here it is, all fixed in the hotel car park. The launch juggernaut is a remarkable thing – a little old puncture certainly isn’t going to stand in its way.
--- Links: On launch with the new Mazda CX-7 All aboard for the Fiat Punto Evo. Haha. Proving things don’t always go right on a car launch --- --- Share It:
October 13 On launch with the new Mazda CX-7Alex Goy writes: “Even the cows love our cars” – Franz Danner, Mazda Europe head press man. Well, that explains what was left on my bed. Not a cow egg, but two bars of finest Tirol-ean (is that a word?) chocolate.
Yes, the press conference for the latest Mazda CX-7 got off to a flying start. Franz, dressed in finest local gear, got up on stage and gave us a brief history of Kitzbuhel. Which was both interesting, and long… He was introduced with a video of the CX-7 storming through the Austrian Alps. It was mildly poetic. An SUV (probably with the soon to be discontinued turbo petrol engine, in the UK at least) barrelling along leafy alpine roads. Surely an image that would cause eco minded activists to explode.
It could have been a chase from an action movie, swooping camera angles and all, but it ended with the car stopped on an incline, while a cow merrily chomped at finest grass behind it. There could be a subliminal message there – The CX-7 isn’t bad for the environment: the cow’s still standing! Which is technically right – the new CX-7 diesel, the only one we’ll now get in the UK, is better for the environment than your average crossover SUV. Message received, Franz. And the chocolate was tasty, too! --- Share It
October 02 All aboard for the Fiat Punto Evo. Haha.cj hubbard writes:
Oh Fiat. Bless you for your desire to do events a little bit differently. The Punto Evo – not quite as exciting as it sounds; it’s an evolution of the current Grande Punto – is hoping to make a splash. So Fiat somehow managed to get the entire international launch based out of Italy’s newest and biggest naval aircraft carrier. I am not kidding.
That would be the ITS Cavour – named for the chap who established a unified Italian navy after Garibaldi established a unified Italy (Garibaldi already has ship named after him). Apparently it is the third largest carrier of its type in the world, has 120,000hp, and will eventually be home to Harrier type vertical take off and landing aircraft. Currently it’s chock full of enormous Augusta Westland EH-101 helos – well, two of them – and still waiting to be fully commissioned.
Think your dashboard is complicated? Button overload ahoy:
Anyways, staying on an aircraft carrier = majorly cool. Except for the minor inconvenience of extremely limited mobile phone reception and only 12 internet stations for approximately 150 international journalists. Some of my fellow UK autojourns came over all Queen Victoria and were seriously unamused – especially when the alcohol content in the fruit ‘cocktails’ being served by the bar prior to the press conference turned out to be zero. I don’t drink; how I laughed. :-) The conference itself had a slightly bizarre software update theme – the Punto Evo’s revisions were apparently ‘downloaded’, not something that the majority of computer users will be especially pleased to hear, I shouldn’t think, but there you go. It also contained the astonishing revelation that the Grande Punto will remain on sale alongside its updated replacement. Never heard of a manufacturer doing this with a mere facelift before. Truly weird. Still, all was forgiven when at the end we were told to remain seated and it turned out the entire conference was taking place on one of the aircraft elevators. The platform then whisked the whole lot of us from hanger deck to flight deck – chairs, podium and all – where the sides of a huge canvas awning were dropped and the Punto Evo driven into sight. Several examples tore round the deck for a bit – including up and down the “ski jump” take-off ramp – with another Augusta copter for a backdrop, resulting in one of the most spectacular new model introductions many of us have ever seen. Impressive indeed.
Full first drive report of the ‘new’ Punto will be up on the main MSN Cars site next week. Click the gallery below for more views of the ship. --- Links: Ever tried starting a car with a USB stick? Spot the difference with the Volkswagen Caravelle --- Technorati Tags: Fiat, Punto Evo, Grande Punto, aircraft carrier, ITS Cavour, On Launch, Inside Track --- Share It:
September 29 Bentley’s “Green” SupersportsPeter Burgess writes:
I have just arrived at Hacienda Benazuza about 30km outside Seville. The afternoon has involved driving Bentley’s new Continental Supersports across a combination of Spanish motorways and plenty of twisty bits before arriving at the MonteBlanco racetrack. Never heard of it? Neither had I. Seems it was built with idea of hosting F1 testing. Great idea, great location (year round sunshine), but testing is now banned during the F1 season. How those seemingly brilliant business plans can sink so quickly.
Anyhow, it’s onto the track with our road cars with nothing more than a tyre check. The deal with the Supersports is that it is a FlexFuel car, running on regular petrol, 85% methanol-petrol mix or any combination in between. Good for the environment, see, or as good as a two-tonne car with 630hp can be. Simon Newton, Bentley’s chassis engineer, takes me round the circuit for a couple of sighting laps. This Supersports is not just about being holier than other supercar manufacturers, it’s faster too. Richard explains that the bushing in the front suspension has been firmed up, rear seats thrown away and engine tweaked to make this the most focussed road Bentley ever.
And boy, is it quick. My turn behind the wheel shows just how well this four-wheel-driver turns into corners with minimal understeer. It’s all a bit alarming how such a substantial car can be made to hustle through the bends which such aplomb. Composite brake discs are standard (£10k on other Continentals). They work well on the track but there’s a hell of a lot of smoke when I get back into the pits. Simon says not to worry, it’s just the resin burning off…….
After a couple of hours at MonteBlanco it’s off to the hotel. Outside is a Continental Supersports in a new soft sheen metallic grey, a cool €20,000 option. It’s a different world, this luxury car business. Peter --- Links: Spot the difference with the Volkswagen Caravelle MTM Bentley in subtle German tuning shock ---
Technorati Tags: Bentley, Continental, Supersports, Flexfuel, green supercar, fast, On Launch, Inside Track --- Share It:
September 24 Spot the difference with the Volkswagen Caravellecj hubbard writes:
Nope, I’m not talking about the outside – which pretty obviously has a much angrier visage thanks to the latest corporate front end design. Rather what’s on the inside.
Can you see what the difference is? Ignore the DSG gearlever – although that is new to this facelift. The top image is the fancy new dashboard exclusive to the European Caravelle (actually Multivan – the Caravelle is something else on the Continent - but let’s not get into that) and California. The lower image is the dashboard from the ordinary Transport van, which both these passenger orientated vehicles are descended from; it’s updated with the revisions, but still the van dash, nonetheless. Guess which is the only one we’re getting in the UK… Apparently it’s all to do with economies of scale in the right-hand drive conversion. Still a shame, though – the Cali dash is much more car like, much nicer. --- Links: --- Technorati Tags: Volkswagen, VW, Caravelle, California, dashboard, spot the difference, On launch, Inside Track --- Share It:
September 23 Escaping from Colditz Dan Trent writes: Our route for the BMW X1 launch I'm on today took an unexpected twist when the name of a very familiar town appeared on a road sign: Colditz - 9km. What, that Colditz? Yes, it would appear so, the proof here in a rather poor quality phone pic of 'our' X1 in front of the famous castle-cum-POW camp. Escaping Colditz was indeed a challenge too, the obstacles in this case being roadworks and closed roads with the dreaded sat nav baffling 'Umleitung' (diversion) rather than armed guards, this unexpected landmark unsurprisingly not especially highlighted in the route books by our hosts. Dan --- Links: BMW reveals the X1 at Frankfurt --- Share It
September 07 Porsche PanameraPeter Burgess writes: The first right-hand-drive Panameras have arrived in the UK and last week Porsche UK ran a launch event based around their impressive Silverstone Experience Centre. We got to push all three variants around the tight test track and despite never getting beyond third gear, it was enough to show that this large saloon has all the expected Porsche agility you might hope for.
I found it hard to agree with my instructor, though, that it felt like a 911 from the driver’s seat. The driving position may be very similar, but there’s no disguising the massive width of the Panamera or length in front of you. While you can’t actually see any of the car beyond the windscreen, you know it carries on someway towards Buckingham.
Porsche is proud of the launch control and we tried that in the 500hp Panamera Turbo. The picture shows my co-driver John Simister from the Independent as he is about to lift his foot off the brake and propelling us into oblivion. I should have been sitting back in the rear seat for the take off acceleration is simply staggering. Launch control is a great party trick but I doubt you’d use it ten times over the lifetime of Panamera ownership.
Come 5pm and we left Silverstone to drive to our ‘hotel’, a private county house near Newport Pagnell. We stopped to change drivers at the Super Sausage cafeteria and only then noticed how the Porsche key was shaped just like the Panamera. Is this a first?
More importantly, is this The Super Sausage Cafeteria or A Super Sausage Cafeteria and thus the first of a nationwide chain of delicious fast food restaurants. Alas it was closed so we never did find out. --- Share It
August 26 Newspaper warsRichard Aucock writes: The man on the left is reading The Independent. He is the motoring correspondent for The Independent. The man on the right is reading the Financial Times. He is the motoring correspondent for The Financial Times.
This image was taken in a posh house Land Rover took us to for coffee on the Discovery 4 launch. Good to see company loyalty remains strong among the press corps. Naturally, MSN Cars had its laptop out at the time... --- Links Getting extreme with Land Rover Technorati Tags: land rover,discovery 4 Share It
August 12 Getting extreme with Land RoverRichard Aucock writes: This is what greeted us when rounding a corner on yesterday’s Range Rover Sport 2010 test drive.
I kid you not. An icy chill of fear. Had one of our fellow scribes had an off? Stacked it into the trees? Were they hurt? Just look at the angles… the tyre marks... Fear not. Nope, this wasn’t an 'incident'. Merely part of the test route. Turn left, drive down near-vertical ridge, drive upstream through a fast-flowing river for half a mile, cross a rickety wooden bridge, drive back up a sheer cliff face and stop for a nice cup of tea in the middle of nowhere. Well, if you boast that your range are The Best 4x4s By Far, you need to take every opportunity of showing it off… read more about it, and the 2010 Discovery 4, on MSN Cars soon. --- Technorati Tags: land rover,discovery Share It
July 24 Mad Merc side project Dan Trent writes: More fruits of my visit to Stuttgart on Monday, namely a wild after-hours side project by the boys who build the concept cars that go on Mercedes show stands. And, yes, it is a 20-year-old Merc 190. But one with a pretty mighty engine under the bonnet – the new twin sequential turbodiesel as seen in the E250 CDI. The official line from Mercedes is that it’s a synergy of old and new and a demonstration of how diesel technology has progressed in the 27 years since the 190 launched. And not some ‘skunk works’ bit of fun for the engineers to make an old car go way faster than originally intended and go out baiting 3 Series drivers on the local derestricted Autobahn.  The first 190 diesel had 72hp, 91lb ft of torque and hit 0-62mph in 18.1 seconds. This one has 204hp, a staggering 369lb ft of torque and at 6.1 seconds 0-62 is the fastest accelerating 190 Mercedes has ever built – mad looking Evo II version included.  We weren’t allowed to drive it – it can be a bit of a handful according to the engineer who built it – but we did get a ride and to say it’s rapid is an understatement, even four-up. With a six-speed manual gearbox it’s even 0.8 seconds quicker to 62mph than the C250 CDI BlueEfficiency Prime Edition this engine made its debut in.  Further 190-based geekery arrived this morning too in the form of an email from Merc PR-man Rob Halloway, proudly displaying the odometer of the £700 190E 2.0 he bought a couple of years back passing the 200,000-mile mark.  Originally acquired to pair up with the new C-Class and demonstrate how Mercedes safety innovation has come on since the 190 launched, Rob is so attached to the old bus he can’t bear to get rid of it and regularly eschews the temptations of the many modern Mercs at his disposal for a taste of the simple life.  A 1991 car with just three original options – a fire extinguisher, exterior temperature gauge and cruise control – this is one old car definitely not about to be traded in for the scrappage scheme. Dan --- Links: Mercedes C250 CDI Prime Edition The best Merc you can’t buy? Maestro scrappage car brings out the geeks Dan’s got a favourite new Merc Mercedes B-Class F-Cell first drive --- Share It
July 22 The best Merc you can’t buy?
Dan Trent writes: Couldn’t resist a quick go with the Mercedes GLK 220 CDI BlueEfficiency there yesterday at the eco tech day I attended in Stuttgart. After all, it’s not a model we can get here in the UK and nor are we likely to any time soon. Seems strange, especially when you consider BMW, Volvo Audi and VW all have direct rivals on sale here. All to do with the GLK being based on the running gear of the four-wheel drive C-Class 4Matic, which is too expensive to engineer into RHD it seems.
So I’d not really given it a second thought. And it didn’t look too hot in the pics either. But in the flesh it actually looks pretty cool, in a shrunken GL kind of way. And then I realised why I liked it – it reminded me of one of my favourite cars, the previous shape Subaru Forester.
My brother bought one of these recently and it’s brilliant. 03 plate, 60-something thousand on the clock, one (Surrey) lady owner, full history and only four and half grand. And the GLK has a similar no-nonsense, ruggedness about it. And a decent interior and a frugal diesel engine – two things absent in the Subaru.
No weedy crossover nonsense here. A square, hard edged interior hewn from finest quality Teutonic plastics and metals. A defiantly upright windscreen, unabashed about its SUV pretensions. Forget metrosexual crossover pretenders like the XC60, Q5, X3 and Tiguan too – if you’re going to drive a 4x4 it may as well look like one. Hm, I’m wondering if I perhaps spent a bit too long hanging round that Unimog… Dan --- Links: --- July 20 Dan’s got a favourite new Merc Dan Trent writes: A quick hello from the Mercedes eco tech day on an airfield outside Stuttgart. Why then, you may ask, am I posing with a Unimog that looks equipped for any eventuality, nuclear apocalypse included. Well, this one’s equipped with Mercedes BlueTec emissions reduction gear. Frankly, I don’t care. It just looks so damned cool. This is no nonsense taken to extremes. Examples? The dashboard isn’t made of namby pamby plastic for instance. No, it’s metal. Riveted metal. Grrr, etc.
Dan --- Share It
July 08 International front on Ibiza launchcj hubbard writes: Now, there is no doubt that UK motoring publications do conduct twin and group tests on launches – often when they are not supposed to. Manufacturers generally aren’t very keen on you crashing their specially organised on-message agenda with a rival product.
So UK publications are usually pretty subtle about it – hiding the other cars out of sight away from the PRs until they open the magazine the following week. Or whenever. Subtle, it seems, ain’t in these guys’ dictionary.
No idea which country the journalists were from, but just as the UK contingent was leaving the SEAT Ibiza launch last week, a pair of reprobates rocked up in a Clio 200 Renaultsport. Fine. Except they had absolutely no compunction about parking it right outside the event hotel – closer to the door than any of the SEATs.
That is some serious front. --- Links: First Drive: SEAT Ibiza FR, Cupra and Bocanegra Spot the difference with the Clio Cup! ---
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July 06 Behind the scenes at AMG
Dan Trent writes: Before last week’s E63 AMG launch I was last at AMG’s Affalterbach HQ five years ago for the launch of the E55 AMG – the supercharged predecessor to the outgoing E63 AMG. Now this car has also been replaced by an all-new E63, which starts to make me feel old! Anyway, in that time the AMG factory has expanded many times over, the existing engine plant now joined by the Performance Studio and other facilities. This is where AMG’s special customers get to indulge their taste (or lack of, going by the picture above) with custom paint and interior finishes and, well, whatever they damned well please by all accounts.
Far cooler for a geek like me was the engine test bed, able to take up to 1000hp and, when we were there, running the upgraded version of the E63’s 6.3-litre V8 destined for the SLS ‘Gullwing’ due later this year. While the E63 makes do with a mere 525hp this evolution of the engine delivers 571hp and makes a helluva noise doing it, even behind two inches of protective glass. Yes, those exhausts are glowing red hot. Not surprising really, considering part of this engine’s test regime is to run at maximum revs and maximum load for 30 days in a row. Yes, you read that right. Oil changes and other checks mean it runs for 20 or so out of every 24 hours – a formidable test for any engine. Good to know all that energy isn’t going to waste too – AMG’s nine test benches are wired into the local grid and actually deliver electricity to the town, our AMG man joking they were the best sounding power station in Germany! Dan --- Links: Previous shape E63 first drive --- Share It
July 03 Volvo DRIVe drives onRichard Aucock writes: Volvo doesn’t stand still. No sooner had it launched a 64mpg C30 – and no sooner had MSN Cars put it to the test for 6 months – it then went and previewed an even better one. Add Start/Stop, yield 72mpg and 104g/km, QED.
As I’m the C30 man here, I nipped across to have a shot. You can read my views on it soon… but, while I was there, I managed to collar some Volvo execs. Why had my car become out of date so fast? Seems it’s all down to pride.
‘Volvo has been heavily criticised in Sweden, for producing unenvironmental cars,’ director of CO2 Peter Ewerstrand told me. ‘We know this is unfair – but wanted to prove it, too. Our engineers thus got to work.’ The first result was the original C30 DRIVe – and they haven’t stopped since.
‘We’ve got a 139g/km V70. A 159g/km XC60. And a V50 load-lugger that emits little more CO2 than a Honda Insight.' And reason why Volvo won’t be rushing out a small hybrid Prius rival any time soon. ‘What’s the point? Current cars are just as economical, and somewhat cheaper…’ Ewerstrand even said a 94mpg C30 perhaps isn’t that far away.
Where does that leave today’s range? This is where we were confused – we assumed the DRIVe was getting Start/Stop as an addition. Well, it is… but the non-start-stop version will also be sold. This will be £250 cheaper and average 62.8mpg.
Why Volvo’s doing this, we don’t know. All that extra economy, for just £250 more? You'll save that in fuel costs alone, never mind retained values. In addition, the Start/Stop version also gets our car’s cool rear diffuser and hatch spoiler; the standard DRIVe has to do with just the shiny Libra wind-cheating alloys.
Odd. But, it could make our long-termer a real rarity. DRIVe-look C30, lacking Start/Stop? We’ve known full-on limited editions with a shorter lifespan; what price collectors seeking them out and bidding high in 30 years’ time? Makes me half tempted to leave a time capsule hidden in it somewhere…
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