Left hand drive opens you to a world of motoring gems

IT was on the rain-lashed lanes of the Ribble Valley that I had a bit of a motoring epiphany the other day.

Normally, the schlep along the A59 from Harrogate, through the Pennines and over the border into the Red Rose County isn’t exactly the most insurmountable of motoring challenges, even on a drizzly Tuesday afternoon when the grey skies make you feel like you’re driving through an old Joy Division record. This particular trip, however, was different.

For the first time ever I’ve been out on British roads in a left-hand-drive car. Not only have the good people of Clitheroe and Skipton survived, but it’s opened me up to a whole new world of automotive opportunity!

Up until now, I’ve always been just a little bit apprehensive about left-hookers. For starters, if a car company simply can’t be bothered to move the steering wheel to the right hand side, it indicates they’re not all that confidently we Brits would have wanted it anyway.

Take, for instance, all those Cadillacs and Corvettes which are relaunched here every couple of years, and always rack up sales figures you can count using your fingers. Surely, if the Americans were that confident in the cars, they’d offer it to us with right hand drive? The other thing is that while I’m happy at the wheel of everything from a Smart ForTwo to a Jeep Grand Cherokee, the idea of being sat on the wrong side of the road, in real world conditions, scared me a bit.

After trying out a left-hand-drive Suzuki on a test track a couple of years back and finding the experience strangely alienating, I really wasn’t sure I’d want to try it out on real British roads. It turns out, however, that the perfect treatment for my mild phobia of left-hand-drive proved to be a dash across the Pennines in a Chevrolet Corvette.

Not only is it more of a four-wheeled-event than a car, thanks largely to its easygoing V8 and cartoonish styling, but being on the wrong side of the cockpit wasn’t as nerve-racking as some armchair critics might have you suggest.

Embracing cars with left-hand-drive opens you up to potential ownership of everything from the original Renault Twingo to the Ferrari F40. It means the BMW E30 M3 and the Lancia Delta Integrale are not fiendishly inaccessible. Perhaps, most pertinently, it means the car the Mazda MX-5 should have been – the beautiful Fiat Barchetta – could be on your driveway for less than two grand.

If you can drive a car, you can definitely drive a leftie. It really isn’t as hard as it might look.

Read more »

American cars? Be careful what you wish for

IT’S the baking heat, one too many cheeseburgers, and The Beach Boys blasting out over the loudspeakers which I blame for my latest motoring misadventure.

Cast your mind back a couple of weeks, to that first swelteringly hot Saturday of July. While you were queuing up for ice cream served by a bald bloke in the back of an ancient Bedford van I was rolling up in the grounds of a stately home in Cheshire that, for the day at least, had become a little overseas corner of California. Acres of nothing but old American cars – that’s the Stars ‘n’ Stripes show at Tatton Park for you.

Old Yank tanks aren’t normally my bag but what started out as a work assignment quickly became an indulgence in fins, chrome and people wearing precious little but denim shorts and cowboy hats. As Sweet Home Alabama belted out of the stereo and I wandered, slightly heat hazed, through a sea of Confederate flags, pick-up trucks and Cadillacs, I might have got a bit carried away with the whole yee-ha-aren’t-American-cars-brilliant thing. I left Tatton Park not just with plenty of pictures, but my very own American dream too.

Wouldn’t It Be Nice, I pondered, to don my best pair of shades, stick on a cowboy hat and get behind the wheel of an American car myself? My head, for about a fortnight afterwards, was full of ideas. Perhaps I could lower the power-operated hood on a ’62 Cadillac – so much cooler than the Thelma and Louisa ’59 model – and cruise down the nearest sun-kissed boulevard, or play the rebel without a clue in a Chevrolet El Camino SS (Google it, trust me). I even entertained the idea, despite the ongoing Queer As Folk connotations in this country, of blagging a go in a Jeep Wrangler.

I really, really, wanted to go for a drive in an American car. Unfortunately, fate dealt me with a cruel hand and gave me one.

True, it was a Chevy, but it wasn’t an old Corvette or Bel Air. It wasn’t even the intriguingly entertaining Camaro Convertible I tried last year. It was a Captiva, which is the Vauxhall Antara’s cheapskate American cousin. Only it isn’t really all that American because – like the Antara – it was developed and made in South Korea. Not that I’d mind if it was any good, but it isn’t. It’s roomy and generously equipped, for sure, but it’s not especially nice to drive, uninspiring to look at, and the materials on the inside feel at least a generation behind most of the competition. It’s not as bad as Ssangyong’s Korando, but that other Korean contender, Kia’s Sportage, runs rings around the Captiva.

Worst of all, it’s a Chevrolet, so you know full well that while your Stateside cousins are lapping up the sunshine in proper American cars, you’re getting lumbered with what’s basically a old Daewoo cast-off. Still, I was looking for a drive in an American car, and I sort of got one.

As the saying goes, be careful what you wish for.

Read more »

The return of the Corvette Stingray

HISTORY has a habit of repeating itself. Here's proof of that in automotive form; fifty years after the fabulous Corvette Sting Ray emerged, there's now a new one on the way.

Chevrolet reckons its new Corvette Stingray - don't worry grammar pedants, it became a single word back in the late Sixties - is the rightful heir to one of the best known names in the sports car business, although whether or not it'll be a hit with sports car fans on this side of the Pond is another matter. There's no doubt, however, that it shares one crucial trait with the split-window orginal, however; the latest Corvette looks, for want of a better word, stunning.

General Motors North America President Mark Reuss said: "Like the ’63 Sting Ray, the best Corvettes embodied performance leadership, delivering cutting-edge technologies, breathtaking design and awe-inspiring driving experiences.

"The all-new Corvette goes farther than ever, thanks to today’s advancements in design, technology and engineering."

The new 'Vette might still be made out of plastic in a factory in Kentucky and it might still be powered by a General Motors V8 engine but the car's makers say it'll be little bit better than its predecessor in just about every way, promising more performance, sharper handling and - wait for it - better fuel economy. GM have also said they weren't prepared to revive the Corvette Stingray unless they make a car good enough to wear the name with pride, so hopes are high it'll have the substance to match its Baywatch style.

The new Corvette goes on sale later this year in America, and odds are over here not too long after that. If it's as fun-packed and keenly priced as the Camaro Convertible Life On Cars drove last year, the Stingray should be a bit of a hit.

I'll have mine in right-hand-drive, please.

Read more »

Fire up the... Chevrolet Camaro Convertible

CHEESEBURGERS. Bottles of Budweiser. Episodes of Friends. Some American ideas, whether you love them or loathe them, just cross the Atlantic well.

Yet American cars, with the notable exception of Jeep, are the exception to the rule; for some reason we Brits just haven't taken to them to our bosom. Now it's the latest Chevrolet Camaro that's oversexed, overpaid and over here, but don't be too quick to dismiss the latest iteration of a Stateside icon.

Sure, the Camaro looks like something that should be in the Transformers movies - which, funnily enough, it is - but you can't deny it's a handsome son of a gun, blending the sculpted good looks of a Hollywood hunk with the bright colours, stripes and shiny bits of metal you'd expect in a Marvel comic. It's a just a shame the interior, which has leather everything and lots of toys to play with, looks a bit cheap by comparision.

Yet the biggest drawback about the Camaro is that in this country it's flummoxed by that other most American of institutions, the drive-thru, because you can only buy the convertible I tested and its coupe sibling in left hand drive. If you're frightened of driving ‘left hookers' on Her Majesty's highways and byways then don't be put off, because it's easy enough to master, but I still reckon it'll severely limit the big, bold Camaro's appeal with buyers over here.

Which is a pity, because Chevrolet have cracked setting up the previously all American Camaro for European tastes - while it's not BMW sharp it's fun to drive in a lazy, laid-back sort of way, the £40,000 pricetag makes it bit of a bargain for a convertible of its size, and because the 400bhp V8 can shut down its cylinders to save fuel it's even vaguely economical to run.

The Camaro is good looking, practical, oodles of fun to potter around in, and - thanks to it being a V8 muscle car - cast iron cool to boot.

Get that steering wheel switched over, Chevrolet, and I reckon you've got a hit on your hands.

Read more »