MSN Cars's profileInside TrackPhotosBlogListsMore  |  Tools Help |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Inside TrackThe online diary by the people behind MSN Cars
|
27 November Super shock from supercarRichard Aucock writes: MSN Cars had a team gathering last night, where we get together with the great and the good elsewhere within the organisation for a catch-up and a drink. Fine night was had by all. CJ and I had a train to catch though, so we hot-footed it to the Tube. And, lo, what's that suddenly to our left?
Yes - only the first example of Lexus' mighty, mega-money LF-A supercar in the country! Our double take meant we risked missing our train, but it's not every day you just so happen to see stuff like this. We gawped, we took pictures, then remembered: Dan here is off for a close-up of it today! So, for a fuller view on how it got here, and where it's heading after (plus some far better images), come back soon. Us two? We had to dash: just made the train, though... --- Share It
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
26 November Oh lordy – I have been given the boss’s S600…Tom Evans writes: To the wilds of Hampshire to visit the organic farm of Jody Scheckter, Laverstoke. Jody is a former racing driver who won the Formula One world championship in 1979 with Ferrari. Previously he drove with Tyrrell and McLaren. Here he is at the wheel of the famous six-wheeled P34, which he drove to victory at the Swedish Grand Prix in 1976.
After his retirement in 1980, he enjoyed a successful business career in America, before selling his company and moving to the UK with his English wife and young family. Having been a big Mercedes owner for many years, he is now a ‘brand ambassador,’ and the purpose of the day is to promote the face-lifted top-of-the-range Mercedes S-Class. To get there, Merc have lent me, gulp, a S600L – the £110,000 V12 biggest daddy of the range this side of the totally mad £150,000 S65 AMG variant. But more importantly, judging by the key, this is not part of their press fleet, but in fact belongs to a real person: the MD of M-B UK:
Double-gulp. I gat paranoid enough with these big expensive cars at the best of times. But with the car actually being owned and used by a real person – and an ‘important’ one – makes me even more anxious. As I imagine it: Minion: “I’m very sir, but your car is late back from the workshop.” MD: “Why’s that?” Minion: “that total plonker Evans from MSN only managed to ding its alloys and scuff its bumpers in the 12 hours it was in his ownership, causing £800 worth of damage.” MD: “Right - he is totally banned from using any of our cars for the next 10 years.” Etc. But we did need to test it, so the night before my journey to Hampshire I bundled the family in and went to TGI Fridays in a retail park off the A1M in Mill Hill. It’s not really our type of place, but it is child-friendly and most importantly has a good sized car park where we can hopefully keep the car well away from any trouble. My 4-year-old thinks that the rear TV screens are the coolest things ever, as she settles down to watch the Jungle Book – again. Our 1.5 year-old just stares mesmerised. Rear TV screens are fun – but I would never have them in my own car; my kids would never look out of the windows, and I remember when I was growing up I learned a lot about the world from staring at it as we went by:
This uber-luxobarge really looks the business:
And the night-vision thingy is really quite cool – though I suspect most useful in heavy darkness and thick fog, rather than in the wilds of street-lit Finchley…
The TGI Fridays mission passes without incident, and en-route to Hampshire just time for a quick school run:
It is a big old car, the S600, and a very complicated one. I enjoyed all the toys, especially the massaging seats, the very high quality sat-nav, the ability to watch Sky News on the grid-locked M25, and radar cruise control. Full road test to follow. And so to the farm itself, where we are greeted by Andrew Roberts and Rob Halloway from Mercedes, and Wilfried Steffen, the MD who owns ‘my’ S600. There are around ten or so journos there, some of whom I vaguely know and some I don’t. I’m very pleased to meet Gavin Green, the Australian who edited Car magazine in a period when I read it in the early ‘90s and it had amazing writers like LJK Setright and Russell Bulgin, both sadly no longer with us. We are welcomed by Jody himself and his wife Clare. An affable South-African, he tells us about setting up the farm back in 1996 and the progress that he has made since. It is clear that it is not an easy job by any means and the organic nature of everything means that everything is a lot more expensive and labour-intensive than more factory-orientated efforts:
One of the reasons he worked is “so that he could afford the best car I could get” and has been a Mercedes owner for many years. Since the deal with Mercedes earlier this year, he has acquired some more and his house “sometimes resembles a dealership.” The Farm And thence for a tour of the farm. Spread around a vast 1500-acre site, the farm produces a vast array of meat and agricultural produce. First stop is the Buffalo mozzarella dairy, where they make the cheese that is famously Italian but has to be eaten quickly before it goes off. Jody sells it to the likes of Waitrose and various posh restaurants. I eat some fresh off the line – delicious. Not so delicious is our next stop: the abattoir. Where meat-eating is involved, these places are unavoidable. I have never been to one before as far as I can remember, and while I’m sure Laverstoke’s is a whole lot better than most, an abattoir is still an abattoir. One or two of our party stay outside. Laverstoke has been lent an electric Smart, and here Merc’s Wilfried is asking its driver how he’s getting on with it:
Up to the soil lab; Laverstoke is apparently one of the few farms to take the biology of its soil so seriously that it employs boffins to keep everything in line. On a ‘normal’ farm this is a job done by fertilisers and pesticides:
Clare shows us their free-range chickens. And they really are free-range, with a vast field to wander about in:
“What about the foxes?” “We shoot them.” We then go and choose some eggs by delving our hands directly into the hen-house; Andrew Frankel manages to find one the size of a hand grenade. Back into the Sprinter minibus, and off to see the Buffalo:
Feeding the buffalo calves, with Mercedes’ Rob Halloway:
And thence to lunch in Jody and Clare’s lovely 18th-century house. Many of the journos present are much more knowledgeable about F1 in general and Jody in particular than I am so I leave it to them to fire questions at him about his career. I ask him who is favourite F1 driver of today is. “Oh Lewis, most definitely… so fast and fluid, especially in traffic.” And was James Hunt as wild as everyone… “Yes,” Jody interrupts me with a laugh. “I remember getting one flight with him down to Spain or somewhere – we got so drunk we were virtually unable to get off the plane…” Left to right: Clare Scheckter, Jody Scheckter, Gavin Green, Ben Barry (Car magazine):
The lunch is sumptuous and involves us tasting all the amazing meat that Laverstoke produces: lamb, chicken, various types of sausage – as well as some lovely wine. We are then tasked with tasting Jody’s latest Buffalo-milk ice cream, and asked to give our verdict on various new flavours – all of which are marvellous, especially a unique flavour beginning with R which tastes like no other ice cream I’ve ever had… After lunch, Jody takes us through his car collection, which includes most of the F1 cars he drove during his career, including the 12-cylinder Ferrari that he won the championship with in 1979: And thence off home to London – this time in the back of the S600. My driver is a charming off-duty policeman and as myself and my channel are obsessed with police vehicles, I enjoy grilling him as to his favourites – before I inevitably doze off in those long-wheelbase leather chairs… Spot the handbrake competition... Dan Trent writes: As CJ has already alluded, I’ve been having something of a difference of opinion with the electronic parking brake fitted to the new Astra we’ve just had in. Now, to be fair to Vauxhall it’s an issue I have with electronic handbrakes in general. It’s just the Astra’s bad luck it was the last car I drove with one. And boy have I got a bee in my bonnet! I know there are packaging advantages compared with conventional handbrakes and all that. But, really, we coped this far. And when I yank a handbrake I know it’s on. I can feel the mechanical connection, the resistance of the brake shoes stopping the car’s motion and it’s the kind of confidence inspiring thing you want when you’re stopping a car for a hill start or whatever. I can also find a handbrake without having to look – eyes stay on the road, hand goes between seat, there it is. I’m not flailing around the dashboard for a little switch and then lowering the back window when I meant to be stopping the car rolling backwards. I also know the brake is on because I can feel it. And, like many electronic systems, the Astra’s had an annoying delay between flicking the switch (once I’d found it) and actually engaging. Is it on or isn’t it? Well, for reasons best known to the black boxes about one time in three it wasn’t, the car rolling back and resulting in another mad flailing session to press it again and hope it engaged this time around. And when it comes to something as fundamental as making sure a car doesn’t roll away I just have a fundamental mistrust of a little switch. I want a big lever to pull. I want to feel like I’m yanking the back wheels up under me. I want to be in no doubt whatsoever that when I take my foot off the brake the car isn’t going anywhere. Worse than that, how on earth am I meant to practise my new, stunt school honed ability to handbrake turn into parking spaces? Dan --- Links: How to drive like a stuntman Don’t give up the day job Hell in the aisles Raging against the machine --- Bentley bus brings great charity cheercj hubbard writes:
Ok, I may have been a little hasty in declaring the Hyundai Morris Minor story cutest press release of the week on Tuesday. If this doesn’t stir some warmth within you, well, best change your name to Scrooge and think about cancelling Christmas.
The above Routemaster double decker bus belongs to St Luke’s Cheshire Hospice. The charity acquired it earlier in the year to act as a mobile fundraiser. Apparently it needed a bit of work, so for the past several months it’s been in the hands of Bentley Motors at Crewe. Yes, that Bentley Motors. It handed back the keys at 11am this morning. Fair to say, a few jaws at St Luke’s must have dropped.
59 Bentley workers have put in a total of 2,000 hours completely renovating the Routemaster, keeping as many original features as possible while adapting it to St Luke’s needs in quite remarkable Bentley style. The leather you see throughout is the same leather used in Bentley road cars, lovingly hand stitched with the logos of St Luke’s and Bentley. The ticket bin has been repurposed for donation collection. Completely custom-designed work surfaces are amongst changes to the remodelled interior, all specifically tailored to St Luke’s requirements.
Bentley Production Manager for the project, Gary Lazenby: “This has been a real labour of love for all those involved. Bentley staff are incredibly proud of the cars we produce but applying those skills to a bus was a totally new experience for all. We are very grateful to the many suppliers who provided materials free of charge to help make this iconic vehicle fit for a new lease of life.”
The Bentley Bus is called Luke, and will be touring the local area serving as a mobile charity shop, and education and awareness base for the charity.
Bentley has been associated with St Luke’s Cheshire Hospice for the last three years. During the recession-imposed factory shutdown in March and April this year, many Bentley employees chose to volunteer at the charity rather than simply rest idle. A make-over for one of St Luke’s fundraising shops, a rejuvenated hospice garden and now this bus are amongst the fruits of their labour.
Karen Burns, St Luke’s corporate fundraiser: “Bentley’s support has been invaluable to us over the past three years and we are astounded by our new community bus. As a charity we could only dream about Luke undergoing such a transformation. What we have is not only unique but is also a practical tool for us to share the St Luke’s story.” You can read more about St Luke’s – and even make your own donation – via the links. --- Links: --- Technorati Tags: Bus, St Luke's Cheshire Hospice, Bentley, Routemaster, charity, Offbeat News, MSN Cars, Inside Track --- Share It:
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
