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 »

Audi - the tailgater's wheels of choice these days

Did you hear about the new species scientists discovered the other day? Apparently, there’s a new type of shark, which has emerged in a remote spot of sea just off Indonesia, which ‘walks’ along the ocean floor.

In the interests of science, I’d like to put it to the boffins at the Natural History Museum that I’ve found its motoring equivalent, right here in the UK. The Greater Spotted Tailgater, or Secuutus Major to give it its scientific Latin name, has existed for decades in the warm, inviting habitat of motorway outside lanes for generations, but it’s only in the past few years that a new variation of this most annoying of motoring breeds has evolved.

Specifically, the Greated Spotted Tailgaters who drive Audis, meaning the above image is now plastered across rear view mirrors right across Britain.

Not that long ago, history will recall, Audis were driven by nice people who wanted something a tiny bit tidier than the equivalent Volkswagen. My late granddad had a 100 Avant and it really was the epitome of respectable middle classness, a useful, family-friendly estate without the antique dealer connotations of its Volvo and Mercedes contemporaries. At that time, the Greater Spotted Tailgater’s wheels of choice were 3 Series and 5 Series BMWs, and you knew when you saw the Munich motors’ quad headlights flashing at you from behind that you were incurring their wrath.

Things, however, have changed, and I blame the Audi TT. Ever since the gorgeously swoopy coupe started gracing the showrooms 15 years ago, the rest of the range has basked in the glow from its chrome detailing and become a bit cooler as a result, bit by bit attracting the sort of people who used to buy BMWs. The figures speak for themselves; in the past year alone, Audi sales are up by almost 10%.

The sales rises, combined with ever sharper and more aggressive styling updates, means something that’s struck me every time I’ve every time I’ve ventured out onto a motorway’s outside lane in the past two years – almost immediately you are swamped by tailgaters in cars with four rings on their radiator grilles. Don’t get me wrong; there are still lots of nice people happily trundling to the shops and back in their Audis, in the same way it was wrong to label every BMW owner as a lane-hogging loon ten years ago.

Yet the tailgating brigade have, by and large, taken up Audis as their wheels of choice, and the range is a bit less on my motoring radar as a result. The only truly cool Audi you can buy now, I’d contend, is the A7 because it’s not a big seller. Which means Mr and Mrs Tailgater don’t tend to wind people up with them.

If I had a pound for every time an Audi-driving middle management type has sat two feet off my back bumper, I’d have roughly £13,790 by now. Which, incidentally, is the entry level price for an A1.

Read more »

The childhood game motorists play at their peril

I SPY, with my little eye, one of the biggest threats to your summer holiday car journey. Something beginning with ‘I’.

Regular readers might recall that a few months ago I declared wasps as the single deadliest distraction to drivers, on the basis that having one sting you mid-drive is the only thing other than breaking down in a motorway contraflow which could provoke my genuine panic behind the wheel. That is, however, until a couple of colleagues and I decided to break up the boredom of a long journey by resorting to an old childhood favourite.

I Spy – the children’s game, not the adorable series of Michelin-branded spotters’ guides – started easily enough. S, of course, was for sky, followed shortly afterwards by T for trees, so we upped the stakes a bit, introducing trickier in-car teasers like C for choke – yes, we were in something old enough to have one – and multiple word mind-bogglers like C E for Cat’s Eyes. Even though it was getting dark and we were a cold, noisy old classic car, the drive to our destination – Harwich ferry port, but that’s another story for another Life On Cars column – the miles just flew by.

By this point, we were feeling really cocky, throwing in I Spy absurdities which required some genius thinking of the truly lateral variety. It took a good ten minutes to work what began with S and “was all around us”, thanks to the answer being the entire county of Suffolk, while only the truly anal would have worked out A for Asphalt. Normally, by this point we would have stopped playing and gone to the nearest pub, but we had a ferry to catch and no choice but to plough into the night.

In fact, the game was so engaging we were still playing it when we pulled into the port – the Port of Felixstowe, which anyone with even the vaguest sense of geography will tell you is emphatically not Harwich and at least half an hour in the wrong direction. How did three grown men all manage to miss a major turning to one of the biggest docks in Britain? By getting completely lost in a game mst of us stop playing at the age of nine and only recommence well into parenthood.

While I’ve managed to get utterly lost on trips before – I knew, for instance, I’d missed the turning for the M25 the other week when I started seeing red double deckers and Cockneys loitering outside tube stations – it’s only thanks to the mind-distorting distracting powers of I Spy that we managed to end up in Felixstowe rather than Harwich, desperately late for a ferry.

I Spy a simple childhood game adults in a rush play at their peril.

Read more »

How did I ever survive without air conditioning?

HERE’S one to ponder over your post-work pint tonight. Have you an invention so useful you hardly notice when you’re using it, yet to have it malfunction would prompt a crisis of unimaginable proportions?

My vote, obviously, would go for the internet. My first question at any hotel reception I end up on work assignments is what the WiFi code is; my second, when they tell me it’s a tenner a night, is how they think they can away with charging for a service that’s as an essential a part of your stay as having towels in your bathroom and a key for your room. Having access to Facebook and Twitter in one of those 21st century essentials you just can’t do without.

But there’s an in-car invention which – at the moment at least – I’ve been noting by its absence; air con. Even though my job primarily involves working with older cars, a lot of the journeys to shows up and down the country have been at the wheel of cars far newer than my own. Cars which, without exception, were a prod of a plastic button away from a refreshing blast of artificially chilled air.

Even the Chevrolet Captiva, one of the worst cars I’ve driven all year, was saved from complete condemnation because it came with a powerful air con system on a sizzling summer afternoon. When you’re spoilt with the option of an air con button after an afternoon of traipsing around a hot, sticky car show, you simply stick it on, whack it up to full blast and forget about it. Car makers know this and as a result offer it on just about everything; on a truly scorching day, getting air con right can rescue something that's unspeakably rubbish just about everywhere else.

So when I had to do a four hour journey in a car which didn’t have air con – my 17-year-old Rover 214 SEI – it was painful how absent the cool air I’d become accustomed to was. No amount of opening windows or using the power of thought to try and make the dashboard somehow grow its own air con button could help me escape the reality of being sat inside what was effectively a 70mph greenhouse for hours on end. Still, it could be worse – after 25 minutes of stop-starting through one particularly bad traffic jam on the M62, the gentle rise of the temperature gauge indicated the engine was enjoying it even less than I was!

My point is that air con, once you’ve become accustomed to a car equipped with it, is one of those brilliant inventions you can’t really live without.

Read more »

Bank Holiday weekends are no fun for motorists

So another Bank Holiday weekend’s been and gone. How was yours?

If you were sensible you probably spent it trying to shelter your pint from the searing heat of the sun in a beer garden of your choice, enjoying a round of a rather different sort at the Royal Birkdale or – if you were feeling adventurous – trying to avoid a DIY-induced trip to your nearest Accident & Emergency.

It’s just a shame, then, that I loathe Bank Holidays with a venom usually only reserved for Bob Geldof, the music of Will.i.am and the Kia Pride. Part of the problem is that – unlike days you’ve chosen to take our your holiday allowance, when the world truly is your oyster and you’re free to make whatever carefully considered plans you like for it – Bank Holidays are essentially days when the Government tells you that you must have fun. Whitehall telling you to enjoy yourself is like telling a six-year-old child to go to sleep – because of the imperatives involved, it ain’t gonna happen.

But worse still is the unintended but inevitable byproduct of Britain’s population being told, en masse, to have a good time; the slightly silly amounts of traffic on the major roads and motorways from clocking off work on Friday right through to the following Tuesday morning. As much I love cars and driving, even I was wishing someone would get on with inventing a successful teleportation system as I sat in the same two mile stretch of M6 for the 45th minute last Friday night. If you can liken Britain’s road network to a living, breathing thing, then the Bank Holiday weekend represents the clogged arteries that come after the nation collectively gorging itself on the double cheeseburger that is the working week.

I can see the retort coming already; perhaps, rather than being one of these people inconveniently helping cause a bit of congestion, I should have just avoided travelling? I would have loved to have travelled at a different time but I could only leave work to get where I needed to be when – you guessed it – work finished. I’d only dared venture onto the M6, at rush hour on a Friday night on a Bank Holiday weekend, because it connects where I’d come from with where I wanted to go. Thanks to the brilliance of Bank Holiday weekends, that’s the predicament everyone else was in too.

There was that idiotic suggestion by some Government think tank that Bank Holidays should be abolished altogether, but really what Whitehall ought to do, for the nation’s collective commuting sanity, is find a way of managing the congestion nightmares they cause for thousands of people, none of whom especially want to be stuck there.

That or get busy giving a grant to whoever can invent a teleporter.

Read more »

Don't get stung by one of driving's biggest distractions

IT WAS on a fine summer’s afternoon I discovered perhaps the most dangerous driving distraction known to man.

The Government’s answered calls – although not on a mobile phone while at the wheel, obviously – to up the penalty for those caught texting while driving to ninety quid. Rightly so, I reckon, because trying to spk 2 ur m8 abt 2nite while at the helm of an Audi A4 in the outside lane is, in anyone’s book, a recipe for disaster.

Unfortunately, the Ministry of Transport hasn’t yet found ways to legislate against some equally attention-grabbing, but rather less avoidable, motoring distractions. Nanny State could, for example, do something about those lorries you always find conveniently parked up in fields alongside motorways and dual carriageways, but of far more pressing concern are the appalling spelling, grammatical and punctual errors on an alarming number of them. One, at the side of the A1, reads “Believe ON the Lord Jesus Christ”*, which constantly provokes in-car debate about whether it’s best to believe while standing, quite literally, on the son of God. Another, plugging a car care specialist, proclaims “Diesel’s repaired”. Is it? Trust me, there are few things more dangerous while driving on a dual carriageway than being forced to consult my imaginary copy of Eats, Shoots and Leaves.

There’s also the unavoidable motoring horror of the sneeze, which not only blinds you entirely for half a second or so but, if it catches you off-guard, leaves the inside of your windscreen covered in snot (interior windscreen wipers, by the way, could be a great suggestion for anyone thinking of entering Dragons’ Den). Driving while preoccupied by a recent bereavement is a no-no too, and if you’re a man, there’s the added distraction of billboards with pictures of Keira Knightley on them.

All of these however, pale into comparision with the distraction I encountered on that gloriously sunny afternoon in the North Yorkshire countryside. I was driving a bright yellow Triumph Spitfire – read badly built Mazda MX-5 if you haven’t done your GCSEs yet – down the country lanes, lapping up the rays, when a bee landed on the inside of the windscreen. Seconds later, it flew off and landed straight on my chest. All the advanced driving lessons in the world can’t help prepare you for a spot of motoring melissophobia. How I didn’t crash someone else’s prized classic sports car, I will never know!

What’s more, while bees are fairly benign creatures which only sting when they’re threatened, I dread the day when a wasp – a useless species which stings small children just for fun – decides to join me for the drive.

The Government don’t just need to clamp down on texting drivers. They need to ban wasps as well.

*I am aware that 'on' and 'in' are both, for historical reasons, considered acceptable, but it still draws up interesting debates about the evolution of the English language. Just one I'd prefer not to have while driving along the A1.

Read more »

Satnav Lady didn't do my laundry, but she did get me lost again

CHEAP washing machines have all but killed off the great British laundrette. That’s one of the conclusions I’ve drawn after an evening rediscovering the joys of satnav.

The impending drama of having to deal with an ever-increasing pile of dirty laundry prompted a drive pretty much the polar opposite of the ones I enjoy – instead of being given the chance to tackle the Buttertubs Pass in a hot hatch on a heady summer afternoon, I needed to navigate the mean streets of Peterborough, at rush hour. My motoring mission? Find, because I’ve yet to invest in a washing machine for Cambridgeshire home from home, a laundrette.

Normally, I navigate using my finely honed pub-based system but anyone familiar with Cambridgeshire’s contribution to the New Town initiative will know you can’t use quaint buildings called The Dog and Gun or The Golden Lion as pointers. Peterborough, not unlike Skelmersdale, is a confusing maze of roundabouts, slip roads and dual carriageways.

Out then, came the satnav app on my smartphone as my sole means of navigation to obscure postcodes which – according to a quick search on Google five minutes before I’d set off – contained the answers to my clothing cleaning conumdrum. It’s just a shame I’d forgotten why I don’t use satnav.

It’s useless.

At least twice Satnav Lady, whose slightly robotic voice leads to the presumption she’s the daughter of that equally synthesised woman who haunted Austin Maestro owners all those years ago, guided me off a dual carriageway, through a village for five minutes, before spitting me back out onto the same stretch of road. More worryingly, she would tell me exactly which turning I needed to take off the roundabout.... at pretty much exactly the point I’d start to power past it. Even an Audi Quattro, I’m almost certain, can’t corner that abruptly!

Half an hour into my ten minute journey, Satnav Lady proudly announces we’ve arrived at our destination – a grim looking suburban street where once, a long time ago, there proudly stood a laundrette. Mary Portas might curse the out-of-town shopping centre for killing off the high street, but I’m cursing Zanussi and Hotpoint for killing off the laundrette I’d spent so long looking for.

That’s why a drive around Peterborough, not at all distracted by Satnav Lady, turned into a drive around Peterborough where I wasn’t at all distracted by inspecting every shopfront for miles around to see if any of them were laundrettes. I discovered that Peterborough is home to the factory that makes Perkins diesel engines, IKEA’s distribution centre, and the strangest looking branch of Pizza Hut I’ve ever seen.

But, thanks to the combined efforts of a booming white goods industry and Satnav Lady’s hopelessness, I still haven’t found a laundrette.

David Simister is now saving up for a washing machine

Read more »

Life begins at Classic Car Weekly

JUST a quick note to say how much I've enjoyed my first day as a full time motoring journalist.

It's not every day you start as a writer for Classic Car Weekly, which is based down in Peterborough and published by Bauer Media, but that's exactly how the dream of getting up, driving gorgeous old cars and then getting paid to write about them, started this morning.

I've already been entrusted with a series of motoring-related missions, including some stories which should, fingers crossed, be in next Wednesday's edition. All this on a day when I've managed to get totally lost in the office's endless corridors and have only just discovered where the canteen is!

Ever since I learned to string "Range Rover" into a sentence I've been pretty much obsessed with cars, especially older ones which make grunty noises when you put your foot down. For the past three years, my friends at The Champion have allowed me to indulge my automotive passions on the flimsiest of journalistic excuses - and don't worry, the weekly column WILL continue - but now I'm a fully grown boy and I get to do what I love doing most of all for a living.

To say I'm looking forward to giving these automotive adventures my all's a bit of an understatement.

Tomorrow's assignment: drive an E-Type. No, really. One of my first assignments for Classic Car Weekly is to let you know what it's like to get behind the wheel of a car I've been itching to drive since I was ten years old.

I'll keep you posted...

Have you got a story for Classic Car Weekly you'd like to share with David? Get in touch with him by sending an email to david.simister@classiccarweekly.co.uk or give him a call on 01733 468847.

Read more »

Don't punish younger drivers. Just give them a Luton van

LOTS of people in cardigans have been using this last week to call for even tougher restrictions on those pesky young drivers who keep passing their test and then crashing.

Among the suggestions being bandied about by the bores-that-be are restricting them to cars as woefully underpowered as the one-litre Kia Picanto I tried the other day, banning them from venturing onto Britain’s highways and byways once the sun goes down, and bringing in yoof-specific drink-driving laws that’ll land them in prison for twenty years if they’re caught in the possession of wine gums.

In fact, the only sensible idea that hasn’t come from someone who’d otherwise suggest reintroducing National Service is tougher, more plentiful driving lessons, and a harder driving test to match. It’s mad, for instance, that my newly-qualified mate can freely venture onto the M6 at rush hour, despite not having had a single lesson on motorway driving!

I, however, have found an even better way to encourage careful driving after moving house last week. Insist everyone does their driving test – and all the lessons leading up to it – in a Ford Transit Luton van packed to the brim with their most prized possessions.

Driving something the size of a student flat is a little nerve-racking at the best of times, but knowing it’s weighed down with your furniture, your DVDs, your carefully accumulated copies of Evo magazine and the IKEA bookcases you gingerly screwed together on an idle Sunday afternoon does tend to focus your mind on driving more carefully.

The windy West Lancashire lanes I use to get to the motorway network – lanes I’d normally enjoy driving – were mildly terrifying, not only because a Luton van is so long and so wide, but because the cargo in the back is yours. It also encourages you, thanks to its appetite for diesel, to go easy on the throttle, and if you can park one, you can park pretty much anything.

Make cocky, over-confident new drivers – like me not that long ago – do their lessons and tests in vans fully loaded with their prized personal belongings and they’ll learn more about defensive driving and not taking risks than any 1950s-style motoring curfews.

You never know. There might even be a few less hot hatches wrapped around trees as a result…

Read more »

The flying car is still a bit of blue sky thinking

I WAS planning on doing a piece on Alpine's latest decision to go adventuring at Le Mans but then a mate sent me something which is much more up my street - an ad for a roadgoing aircraft!

The PD-2 is built by Plane Driven, an American company which, rather than going to the expense of creating a Jetsons-esque flying car has taken an existing aircraft, changed the wheels, fitted a second engine and made a few tweaks to turn it into something you can drive on a US highway. I briefly thought it was brilliant until I saw the $60,000 pricetag - and that doesn't include the cost of the aircraft before it's converted.

It also loses two of its four seats, you have to fill it up with two completely types of fuel, and - depending on which US state you live in - you have to have a driving licence, a pilots' licence and a bike/trike licence to actually use it in the way its creators intended. What the chaps at the Department for Transport would make of it I've no idea.

Far better, I reckon, is to use another marvel of flight as the basis for an automobile of the airborne variety - the picture you see above is of Yours Truly at the helm of a microlight, for a feature I wrote for GR8 Life Magazine nearly two years ago. I've always said that if I win the Euromillions there'll be one in my dream garage alongside the TVRs, Land Rovers and Jags, because microlights are like motorbikes you can take into the sky.

More importantly though, a roadgoing microlight would make much more sense than trying the same trick with a plane. A microlight is smaller, cheaper, has wings that are designed from the outset to fold away, can take off pretty much anywhere and - for someone used to classic car fuel bills - doesn't get through extraordinary amounts of unleaded either. All we need now is someone of Ed China's ilk to work out a cheap 'n' cheerful way to make that wonderfully revvy Rotax engine drive the wheels, and a way of convincing the powers-that-be that microlights belong on the A1 as much as they do an airstrip.

Microlights, then, are the best bet for a flying car you can actually afford. You heard it here first...

Read more »

Burscough motorist to sharpen driving skills on Channel 5 show

A WEST Lancashire motorist who “doesn't suffer fools gladly” is one of the drivers being featured on a motoring programme being broadcast on Channel 5 next week (Thursday, February 14).

Dudley Valentine, a self-confessed ‘inconsiderate driver', will be one of the motorists featured on Dangerous Drivers’ School, which sees AA driving instructors help people from across the country to sharpen their skills behind their wheel, in the latest episode of the show, which will be shown at 8pm.

The retired RAF pilot, 70, said he had been driven to the show after years of complaints from long-suffering partner Lynne, and was given a crash course from AA instructor Ashley Briggs for the show.

Mr Valentine said: "I wanted to address my driving because my partner had been saying to me for years that I was inconsiderate on the roads. After about 20 minutes with Ashley, I realised that I did need to make some changes.

"I have been driving for 53 years and over that time you get into bad habits and you do get complacent. I do feel that it made a big difference and my driving has changed for the better since taking part."

He is the latest in a series of drivers to be featured on the show improving their skills, following famous faces who have their own motoring mishaps, including former-Apprentice star Kate Walsh, actor Melvyn Hayes, comedian Rowland Rivron and ex-MP and author Edwina Currie.

Mr Briggs, who is seen instructing the West Lancashire driver in tomorrow night's episode, said: "The range of problems the drivers face in this series are very varied and it was a really enjoyable process to try and help them become safer.

"Dudley’s problems were more down to his attitude than any lack of driving skill. With something like driving that most people do very regularly, it is all too easy to bury your head in the sand about problems you are having and just try to battle on regardless. But, there is help out there and people should not feel they have to struggle on alone."

To coincide with the programme, the AA is offering 2,000 free courses to motorists who'd like to improve their skills behind the wheel. To find out more go to www.theaa.com.

Read more »

BMW M5 drifter: master or madman?

IRONICALLY, it was just after I'd renewed my membership of the Institute of Advanced Motorists that I came across this controversial clip.

Straight from the mean streets of Tblisi, this video of a BMW E34 M5 - the automotive star of Ronin and a supersaloon renowned for being one of the finest four-door entries in the company's back catalogue - has already attracted more than 14,000 hits since it was uploaded to YouTube a week or so ago. There is, if you're a petrolhead, something quite inspiring about seeing this autobahn annihilator drifting delicately from corner to corner.

It is, you've got to admit, a very skilled bit of driving, but here's the rub. All of it was filmed on public roads in and around the Georgian capital, and the roads weren't closed. Our anonymous BMW pilot was hanging the M5's tail out while other motorists were wondering what to do about it.

For that reason, it's already kicking up a bit of a stink in the motoring world, with a lot of petrolheads already pointing out that one wrong move and Mr M5 could have killed or injured another innocent road user.

So is the M5 driver talented, lucky, reckless or just plain mad? Or a bit of all those qualities? I'd love to know what you think. Without wanting to inadvertantly promote dangerous driving, have a look for yourself and see what you reckon...

Read more »

Is it worth fitting winter tyres to your car?

MY EXTENDED thanks goes to the likes of MailOnline, The Daily Express and ITV News for all the “SNOW CHAOS” stories and messages not to travel unless absolutely essential over the past week. It meant all the motorways - which were covered with a light dusting of snow - were marvellously empty last weekend. Cheers!

Unless a freakishly early spring arrives between me writing these words and The Champion going to print, chances are it'll be a bit snowy where you live. Thing is, if you watched that cracking documentary Chris Packham did the other night about the winter of ‘63 you'll know this is girls' stuff compared to a real white-out, and that - in this part of Britain at least - the world didn't exactly grind to a halt enough to stop us all driving.

All of which brings me to a question I've spent the past three years trying to avoid answering. Is it worth fitting your pride and joy with winter tyres?

This debate's dusted down every time a snowflake so much as thinks of landing on the British road network, and like all great questions my own answer's a bit of a cop-out.... erm, it depends. It almost goes without saying that in these conditions winter tyres ARE safer, as evidenced by a brilliant clip on YouTube which involves a snowy bit of Swedish wilderness, two SEAT Leons, and some gung-ho Auto Express roadtesters. You can see where this one's going. By the time the one with winter tyres had stopped safely from 30mph, the one on ordinary rubber was still skidding at 25mph!

I've also had lots of press releases pointing out how brilliant winter tyres are - albeit ones signed off by Monsieur Michelin, Signor Pirelli and Herr Continental - and reckon that, if you drive a brand new motor, it's probably worth the outlay.

But when you lose your automotive cherry to a 30-year-old Mini with drum brakes you get used to driving something with the stopping capabilities of an ocean liner anyway, and when secondhand hatchbacks are your car currency the price you pay for having winter tyres is.... the price. To kit out my Rover 200 with some winter footwear would cost £250, and that's before fitting and balancing. A pricey prospect when the car itself cost £300.

Are winter tyres better than summer tyres in sort of weather? Without a shadow of doubt, but that wasn't the question. Are they worth fitting to your pride and joy? Well, it depends on what your pride and joy is.

If in doubt, buy a secondhand Land Rover.

Read more »

2012 has been a year of great motoring moments

STRANGER things, I guess, have happened, but I’ll share it with you anyway. As the clocks chime midnight and drunks everywhere usher in a New Year, the most popular Life On Cars piece of 2012 was about the Raleigh Chopper. Which isn’t a car at all.

Still, there were plenty of proper motoring moments – you know, ones involving cars – which I’ve enjoyed over the past 12 months. Here’s ten of my favourites:

1) Doing an advanced driving lesson... in a Lotus Evora S 

2012 marked the year when I took the plunge with the Institute of Advanced Motorists and did their advanced driving course (thoroughly recommended, by the way). I did all of the lessons in my Mazda MX-5 – which was fun in itself – except for the one week when I had a supercharged Lotus Evora S at my disposal. There are probably more sensible choices for what’s basically a driving lesson than a mid-engined supercar, but I used it anyway. Big fun...

2) Setting a blisteringly fast lap time in a Wigan cotton mill 

Literally, as the sharp pain in my hands – shot to bits from fighting furiously with a tiny steering wheel – proved for hours afterwards, but a karting race organised a birthday treat for Yours Truly was well worth it. If you’ve ever fancied flinging a go-kart around a two-storey track crafted from an old cotton mill, give Elite Karting in Wigan a bell. Then again, the three seconds my mate shaved off every lap over mine meant he lapped me twice in our 40 minute race. He still hasn’t let me live that down...

3) Driving a Rover which refuses to give up 

The MGB GT and the MX-5 are undoubtedly the glamour models of the Life On Cars fleet, but when the going gets tough it was always the ancient Rover 214 that’d be called upon – and it delivered, time after time, without a whisper of complaint. In February, it drifted its way across a Cumbrian snowdrift which had defeated a much newer BMW 1-Series, a MINI and a SEAT Leon. Then it sailed right the way across the country to deliver two people and a week’s worth of camping gear safely in Norfolk, and got back again, without a hiccup, and only last month it freed a far heavier Mondeo Estate from a muddy campsite. Not bad for a car costing £300. Rover and Honda engineers of the late Eighties... I salute you!

4) Pitting sports cars against hot hatches in Mid Wales 

We took four performance hits to the utterly wonderful A44 and found four very different ways to get your motoring kicks. Given the choice between a Volkswagen Polo G40 (ultra rare hot hatch from the people who brought you the Golf GTI, with added supercharger whine), a Rover Metro GTi (affordable, rev-happy and goes like stink), a Mazda MX-5 (slowest of the bunch but the only one with rear-drive and the option of driving al fresco) or a Ford Racing Puma (pretty, rare, quick and controversial – see number nine) which would you pick?

5) Going back in time 

Obviously not literally but on the few occasions when I brought the MGB GT to the right road, on the right day, it really was like driving in a simpler bygone age. This heady blend of high-octane petrol, 20w50 oil and Rostyle wheels - which proved a big hit at this year’s Ormskirk MotorFest – provided a nostalgic treat, which is best expressed in moody, monochrome pictorial form. Like the shot you see above.

6) Discovering that you don’t need four wheels to make a great car 

 A couple of people have already asked me how a three-wheeled car with a 1920s body, skinny tyres, a motorbike engine bolted to the front and an absence of any doors, windscreen, windows or roof can possibly be good enough to be named as the best thing I’ve driven in a year that’s produced such hits as the Toyota GT-86. But it just is. Take a Morgan Threewheeler out for a blast down on a country lane on a sunny day – in fact any day, come to think of it – and you’ll know exactly what I mean.

7) Capturing the moment at the Ormskirk MotorFest

The special online magazines made by Life On Cars are, by and large, quite well received (which, given it was only ever meant to be a one-off originally, is a good thing). The edition I wrote with the cooperation of the Ormskirk MotorFest organisers, however, went a bit further than that, being read not by a few dozen or even hundred people, but by thousands of people. I just hope you all enjoyed reading it as much as I did researching, writing and producing the thing!

8) Driving Britain’s best roads... in an MX-5 

 The Buttertubs Pass is great in any car but when you’re in something as delicately balanced as an MX-5 it feels a little bit extra special (although the bright evening sunlight didn’t help). But even that wonderful moment couldn’t top the occasion when what seemed like a farm track in the middle of nowhere eventually brought us out onto the road between Pentrefoelas and Ffestiniog, which is one of the most spectacular bits of tarmac I’ve ever encountered. To have discovered it any car would’ve been fun but it was even better being behind the wheel of a great little sports car.

9) Discussing whether the Ford Racing Puma deserves its classic-in-waiting status 

Just one of the many pub arguments I’ve had with the small-but-dedicated group of petrolheads who hold Life On Cars’ automotive assertions to account. Other topics to get The Farmers’ Arms treatment include whether or not off-roaders are stupid and pointless, whether a Toyota GT-86 is better than a top-of-the-range MX-5 and if in cash-strapped 2012 MPG was more important than MPH. For these endless hours of entertaining discussion, I thank this small group of people who know who they are.

10) Raising £126 for charidee

Finally, there was the night when Life On Cars and the region’s petrolheads came together to help support a very good cause by taking part in a pub quiz with a difference – all the questions were motoring-related. Even though there was a broken sound system, a very drunk Nigel Mansell fan and a slight mistake in a motorbike question to deal with, the night still managed to raise £126 for the National Autistic Society. You never know, there might even be another one in 2013...

Make no mistake, 2012’s been a great year for motoring moments and Life On Cars will continue giving you a petrolhead perspective throughout 2013. Happy New Year!

Read more »

Is it any wonder Britain is falling out of love with the car?

THE doctor's been in and given his diagnosis. Britain is Castrol R deficient. As a nation, we are falling out of love with the car.

That's the finding of a new report, which concludes that we - and particularly my own group of petrolheads, the male twentysomethings - are driving in fewer numbers over smaller distances. Perhaps these days we can't be bothered getting in the car and driving to a mate's place, because it's easier to Facebook them instead.

I'd agree with the numbers - since the days when the Spice Girls were still topping the charts and the most sophisticated bit of handheld tech most kids had was a dead Tamagotchi, the number of young blokes in the North West with a driving licence has dropped by 18% - but not the logic. It's not that we don't still love our cars. We just can't afford them any more.

Motoring as a movement, no puns intended, is still being passed down to the next generation, if the number of lads younger than I am at classic car shows is anything to go by. Gigs like the Footman James show at the NEC, these days at least, are just as likely to draw fans of the original Fiesta XR2 as they are the Morris Minor or the Hillman Imp. I still shuddered when I saw an entire stand dedicated to the Vauxhall Nova!

Nope, the problem is the numbers; upwards of £1.30 a litre for petrol, anything in the region of £1,500 for insurance and the sort of obsession with miles per gallon which would have made a Rover Vitesse owner wince. Not that these aren't things we all have to deal with - remember, these days we're all in this together - and they're costs which most car nuts will still put up with, especially if they're clever and buy a pre ‘73 car with no road tax and classic car insurance. But I can see why most of my mates, even the ones vaguely interested in cars, give the idea an apathetic shrug before whipping out their iPhone.

I like the idea of motoring being a scene, a culture that gets passed down from my dad's generation to mine, which is why I love getting in these beautifully crafted machines, meeting up with likeminded folk and going on a drive to enjoy them. I just worry that in thirty years' time, the generation that follows me won't be able to afford it.

So the car, at least as an entity in modern day Britain, is a bit sick. Then again, I'd still take a Vauxhall Nova over public transport.

Read more »

A motoring idea you'll warm to in this winter weather

HERE'S an idea you'll warm to. Why don't we fit cars with proper boilers and thermostats?

T'was a cold and frosty morning when the thought struck me. Faced with needing to take a car rather than the bus into work, I unlocked the garage and started up a stone cold Mazda MX-5 which immediately fogged up the moment I dared to exhale breath while sat inside. I was one of the lucky ones; elsewhere, the good people of Southport were scraping the ice of their windscreens.

Here's the rub. Almost every car I've driven on a cold morning, even shiny brand new ones, still require the efforts of some cheap de-icer before you can set off, and then a good few minutes before the icy chill of winter leaves the interior. Nor can you do the old trick of warming the car up while you sit indoors with a cuppa - not only is it illegal, but you might as well stick a sign on your pride ‘n' joy with “STEAL ME” writ large all over it.

With the exception of a wonderful January weekend in Wales, when I donned gloves and a woolly hat so I could enjoy the crisp mountain air in the MX-5 with the roof down, driving first thing in the morning at this time of year is no fun. Unless of course, you run a recently-made Range Rover. A car which comes with a little gas heater and a time-adjustable thermostat, just like your house does.

In the same way I've always wondered why houses aren't fitted with electric windows, it perplexes me why proper thermostats which you can preset to come on when you want - which have been around for ages - don't come as standard on more cars. If you know you're going to setting off at eight every morning, wouldn't it be great to preset a proper heating system to come on fifteen minutes earlier, so your pride and joy is all toasty once you step inside and the engine isn't having to cough into life at minus four?

Don't get me wrong - there's all sorts of aftermarket preheating systems you can fit to your motor - but I'm just amazed the car industry at large didn't cotton onto the whole winter-is-cold thing years ago.

It's one motoring gadget you wouldn't give a frosty reception.

Read more »

Protecting youngsters is just the start for Ford's MyKey system

A SAFETY feature fitted to Fords in the States will be arriving from across the Atlantic next month in a bid to prevent younger drivers being involved in accidents.

The MyKey system, which will be fitted as standard on most models in the Fiesta range from next month, allows parents to alter the car's settings to make it safer when their children borrow it, and includes the option to restrict the top speed, to limit how loud the stereo system is, or to disable the audio altogether if seatbelts aren't being used.

I reckon, however, that MyKey could be used for all sorts of things beyond merely protecting youngsters from themselves. Here’s some of my own suggestions for extending the system:

Parent Mode: As per the normal MyKey system, but with an additional, disabled set of pedals in the passenger footwell for those moments when you never know whether your loved one is going to brake or not.

Audi Mode: Uses a form of radar-guided cruise control to automatically reduce all motorway following gaps to three feet. Minimum speed set to 90mph.

Tiff Mode: Switches all traction control systems off.

Gangster Lean Mode: Automatically maximises driver’s seat recline and darkens the windows. Maximum speed reduced to 8mph. Stereo preset to loudest volume.

Alfa Mode: Redirects all electronics so as to be operable by the passenger window switch alone.

Hire Car Mode: Doubles maximum speed, rev limit and optimum cornering speed. Only available on fleet cars sold to Avis, Hertz, etc.

Bond Mode: Activates the machine guns and nail dispensers

Roger Moore Mode: As per the Bond Mode, but with added eyebrows.

IKEA mode: Quadruples boot space.

TVR Mode: Automatically blanks off every interior button and reorganises them in an order completely incomprehensible to all human beings. Except, perhaps, TVR owners.

Feel free to add your own suggestions…

Read more »

Rover to the rescue in the Lake District

THE glamorous motoring missions don't usually get thrown the Rover's way.

While the MX-5 gets tasked with tackling the tricky mountain roads and the MG gets to strut its stuff at shows, my 1995 214SEi is usually doing the dowdier jobs, trundling to the shops and taking bits of unwanted furniture to the tip.

Yet on a weekend away in the wilds of Cumbria, it's more than proved its worth.

Having decided to spend a night away with a few friends in a camping pod near Ullswater (well worth a try, by the way) I pointed the Rover's square-rigged nose north up the M6 for the dash up to Cumbria. When I tried exactly the same journey in the MGB earlier this year it was genuinely hard work - not only was it slurping a gallon of premium unleaded every 25 miles, but it was noisy, heavy and, thanks to a firing problem, not all that fast either. The MX-5's motorway manners are far better but its tiny boot meant it was a no-no for the camping trip, and, still haunted my memories of a hairy moment with it on the wet Cumbrian roads this time last year, I decided its tail-happy sense of fun and country lanes covered in mud and wet leaves made no good mix.

Not that taking the £300 Rover was a bad bet, because what it lacked in excitement it made up for in comfort, its parsimonious take on drinking petrol and its sheer determination to plod on, no matter what I threw at it. I threw it at mountain roads. I forced it up steep hills. I caked it in mud. I loaded it up with clothes, clobber and camping gear. Not once did it complain.

I knew it wouldn't - this being the same Rover that refused to be beaten by snow in Grasmere, the Evo Triangle in North Wales or the enduring feat of getting to Norfolk in back in baking sunshine - but by far its finest hour was last night, when a mate's much newer, much heavier Mondeo Estate got stuck in the mud on a boggy campsite. Even though there was a Land Rover Defender parked nearby, nobody was around to drive it, so it was down to an ancient, front-drive Rover to tow the stricken Mondeo out.

Even though the Rover's clutch gave off a distinctly evil smell and the tow rope eventually snapped under the strain, the £300 hatch eventually managed to free an estate car weighing nearly twice as much and save the day. We toasted our success of a few pints of the local brew in the campsite pub later that night, but we couldn't have done it without the plucky little Rover which refuses to give up.

Great car.

Read more »

Calling all Scottish petrolheads

NOT SO long ago I got my first invite to a fully-fledged car launch. Champion commitments meant I couldn’t have taken two days, but it was a tempting offer – flights, accommodation, grub and the chance to drive a new car.

Most tantalisingly of all, it would have offered me the chance to put a car through its paces in a place I’ve always wanted to drive. The Highlands of Scotland.

Having lived just over the border in Carlisle for three years, I’ve ventured into Scotland on a string of occasions, most notably in 2007 when I used the Caledonian Sleeper as part of a feature to travel the length of Britain using public transport alone. I’ve also sampled some of Scotland from behind the wheel, but thrashing a Renault 5 to Dumfries and back is only scratching the surface.

Anyone who read my piece on Skyfall will already know the remoter bits of Scotland are a wonderfully scenic place to take a car, but with places like Glencoe and Aviemore being a long, long way from the Champion’s circulation area and petrol currently at a crippling 138.9p a litre you can understand why I’m a little reluctant to follow in Bond’s footsteps and take my own Sixties GT car on the same journey.

That’s why I’d like to go all Guardian on you and crowdsource a solution; what is the best, and most affordable, way to get your motoring kicks in the Highlands?

Taking your own car is the easiest and most convenient way to do it, obviously, but aside from the wear ‘n’ tear there’s the hours on the motorway and the petrol involved. As much as I’d love to see the shot of my MGB GT overlooking a misty loch, it’d take eleven hours and £150’s worth of premium unleaded just to get there and back.

Nor is hiring a car for the long trip up especially appealing either – sure, you’d save big time on fuel and it’d be a much comfier, quieter and less stressful drive, but when you’re presented with somewhere like the A82 as it winds its way towards Fort William you want to be something a little more memorable than a Chevrolet Aveo. A stage as grand as the Highlands ought to be experienced in something a little more agile!

The romantic writer in me loves the idea of boarding the Deerstalker as it screeches into Crewe at midnight, sleeping as it chugs its way through the Scottish countryside, and hiring a car at Fort William, but it’s a lot of money when you risk being lumbered with a diesel Vauxhall Corsa. Another option, until not so long ago, would have been to fly up to Inverness Airport, but the Liverpool flight I used to get back five years ago is long gone and Easyjet have dropped their Manchester flights.

So I’m stumped, haunted by an appealing idea which sounds like great full-throttle fun but which, thanks largely to the price of petrol, I’d struggle to do on a budget. That’s why I’d love to hear from anyone who’s ever ventured up there to find out what’s the best way to experience a stunning stretch of the British Isles.

The Dales, the Lakes, Snowdonia, the windy lanes of Cornwall and the Cat and Fiddle Run – I’ve driven them all and loved every mile. I’d love to add the Highlands to that list.

Life On Cars readers are also reminded that the PetrolheadPub Quiz takes place in Southport on Sunday, November 18. If you’d like to take part, it costs just £2 per person and starts at 7.30pm...

Read more »