I want to put the brakes on one of my motoring pet hates

PETER KAY would have been proud of the perfect comic timing with which I rediscovered one of my motoring pet hates the other night.

Four of us had spent a very long day working at the Goodwood Revival – an enormous celebration of the cars, clothes and culture your mum and dad used to enjoy in the early 1960s – and we’d broken out of the long traffic jams on the nearby roads to venture into nearby Chichester for dinner. While we’d all embraced the 1960s theme and were dressed from head to foot in marvellously silly period costumes, I’m ashamed to admit the car I’d brought along was a not even remotely period, 11-reg Volkswagen Passat.

A truly accomplished cruiser of a car, but one with a nasty surprise.

It was just outside the city’s branch of Pizza Hut that I nosed past my chosen parking spot, flicked the gear lever into reverse and gently backed the German repmobile favourite into the bay perfectly, the VW badges on the alloy wheels lined up perfectly with the painted white lines on either side.

As I switched off and we clambered out of the car I turned to my colleagues to share my smug moment of Passat parking prowess.

“Never let it be said that Mr Simister can’t park a car”. As I finished my sentence I was met with a mixture of shrieks as the Passat started rolling forward, as though it were on a mission to turn the adjacent Italian restaurant into a drive-thru of its own accord. The people of Chichester were treated to the sight of four men – three of them dressed in tweed suits and the other as a 1960s F1 pit mechanic – fleeing a runaway Volkswagen. 

I realised my moment of motoring brilliance had been cruelly taken from me - by the electronic parking brake!

I’ve driven a couple of cars equipped with such devices, and I hate all of them because they replace something perfectly good with a system that’s as best clunky and at worst downright dangerous. The Pizza Hut parking calamity might have generated an entire night of mickey-taking at my expense, but a couple of us did find it genuinely trickier to set off on hills without the finesse a proper handbrake affords you. The split second you have to wait for the computerised system to strut its stuff, we found all too often, was that split second you needed when pulling out at a busy junction.

What was wrong with the old-fashioned handbrake? It is, like the manually-operated gear lever, a perfectly good device that’s being slowly phased out by car makers. I’d love to be proven wrong by one that works properly, but until then I’ll maintain they just aren’t as good as the proper handbrakes they’re increasingly replacing.

Next year, I’ll have to embrace the Goodwood period thing properly and go in my MGB. Largely because it doesn’t roll into Italian restaurants when you park it.

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Mazda - please don't ruin the MX-5

AT 2am tomorrow morning (4 September) petrolheads will be treated to an event that’s only happened three times in the past quarter of a century. Mazda will unveil a new MX-5!

Regular followers of Life On Cars will already know I’m a big fan of the rev-happy Japanese roadster and its appetite for British B-roads. In fact, I’m now on my second MX-5 (and before points it out, I know it’s badged as a Eunos), and I’m yet to tire of its never-ending appetite for a blast down the nearest country lane.

It is the one car which - no matter how many times I hear the hairdresser gags – earns the respect of even the most hardened cynics by blending traditional sports car thrills with pretty much unshakeable levels of reliability. I’m the fifth motoring journo I know at Classic Car Weekly’s offices to have owned one, and even a mate who’s been firmly of the MGF-is-better mentality for years surprised me by rocking up in a Mk2 1.8 Sport version the other day. The MX-5 is, I’ve long maintained, the best small sports car ever made.

That’s why the unveiling of the fourth generation car in the early hours of tomorrow morning is such a big deal.

Mazda itself said itself earlier this year the winning formula for what’s gone on to be the world’s best selling sports car is a lightweight design and perfect front-rear weight balance, so every keen driver from Norfolk to North Virginia will be hoping Hiroshima’s best engineers haven’t forgotten how to make a cracking car.

Jeff Guyton, Mazda’s European president, said: “The MX-5 is the product that best epitomises Mazda’s convention-defying spirit and our love of driving. “It has been grabbing people’s attention for 25 years, and with the new generation model we’re aiming to share this passion with yet another generation of drivers.”

Fingers crossed, then. Mazda, please don’t muck it up!

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How to ruin one of Ford's finest efforts

IMAGINE sitting down, glass of champers in hand, to watch the perfect theatrical performance.

It’s a hit new play which has received rave reviews in all the papers – including, naturally, The Champion. The venue offers a view of the stage unobscured by even the tallest of fellow showgoers, and acoustics Bang and Olufsen would be proud of. From the off, you’re gripped by a script blending all the best elements of Shakespeare, Noël Coward and Willy Russell, delivered by an ensemble cast comprising Dame Helen Mirren, Martin Freeman and Timothy Dalton.

You’re hooked, and as the first act draws to a climatic close Richard E.Grant launches into his finest soliloquy since he quoted Hamlet to a pack of wolves at the end of Withnail and I. Yet mid-sentence, amid this bout of theatrical perfection, a work experience student wanders onto clumsily onto the stage, knocks over one of the props, and looks at the leading man with an expression so exasperated it kills the whole performance stone dead.

“Am I on yet?” he asks pointlessly, but it’s too late. Consider your night ruined!

That’s how I felt after spending the best part of 500 miles with a Ford S-Max last weekend, gorging myself on everything from narrow country lanes to motorway outside lanes. 

While it’s starting to show its age it’s hard to deny that it looks great for a people carrier – a box on wheels with added seats, essentially. Its Mondeo-based underpinnings make it far more fun than any slab-sided diesel family wagon has any right to be, and the car’s star leading light, in the form of the 2.0 litre, TDCi turbodiesel engine, delivers a gutsy and reassuring performance.

It’s still my favourite people mover, but there’s a place in hell reserved for the automatic transmission.

The PowerShift system is like the work experience student ruining Richard E.Grant’s greatest moment – just when the turbodiesel comes on song, the gearbox wanders in, spending an eternity asking whether you’d like it to change up and then delivering a huge jerk of torque long after the overtaking opportunity’s gone. It’s particularly bad when pulling out of junctions, delivering a pause Jeremy Clarkson would be proud of at precisely the point.... ....when you don’t want it.

It’s not that I’m anti-auto, as I’m now on my second car equipped with a ‘slush box’, but this particular system was definitely the weakest link on a great package, hindering the whole of the car with its dim-witted demeanour. Happily, there is a manual mode on the PowerShift system which works very effectively, but that defeats the point of having an expensive, self-shifting transmission at your disposal. 

If you’re the sort of frustrated mum or dad who needs a family wagon capable of conveying seven but secretly wants a car that’s fun to drive, then by all means go out and look at an S-Max. Just make sure it’s a manual.

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Life On Cars takes on the Nürburgring

YET ANOTHER Porsche 911 screamed past as I dived into a tight right-hand corner on the world’s scariest race track.

My passenger was grinning like an overexcited schoolboy, but I couldn’t help but thinking what I was doing was slightly mad. There I was, beginning a lap of the longest, most challenging – you could even argue most dangerous – race track in the entire world, with half of Europe’s BMW M3 owners closing in from behind. What’s more, I wasn’t at the helm of the latest supercar. I was in my own car, a 25-year-old Mazda MX-5 I bought for a grand six months ago, and I was mixing it with 911s, hot Audis, superbikes and even the odd Ferrari or two.

Yet this is exactly why, if you’re a committed petrolhead so into cars you might as well have GTX Magnatec coursing through your veins, you simply HAVE to drive the Nürburgring at least once in your life.

It is, with 13 miles and 73 corners to contend, easily the longest race circuit in the world. The F1 circus abandoned it after Niki Lauda’s horrendous accident – heading to the much shorter, newer and safer Nürburgring Grand Prix circuit next door. It still amazes me that a place deemed too dangerous for F1 is open to just about everyone else, at £20 per no-holds-barred lap.

A friend and I had just fired up the MX-5, stuck it on an overnight ferry, and driven it down from Rotterdam the previous morning, which goes to show that it’s no harder to get to Europe’s motoring playground than it is to get to Cornwall or the Scottish Highlands. In fact, the overwhelming majority of the cars queuing to get onto the track – despite being in deepest Germany – had British registration plates.

As soon as I got onto the track it wasn’t hard to see why so many Brits make this automotive pilgrimage. It is, as long as you keep your wits about you and make sure your car’s up to the job, one of the few places in Europe where you can really put a car through its paces.

I’d love to brag in the pub about doing a blistering lap, but in truth I was overtaken by just about everything, as I had no idea which way the 73 twists and turns went. However, the MX-5 absolutely reveled in it, and revealed depths in its steering and handling I genuinely didn’t know it had.

There’s no logic whatsoever to a 13-mile race track where just about anyone can turn up and have a go, but I loved it anyway. 

It’s a challenging place you underestimate at your peril, but go prepared – and make a foreign holiday of it by taking your own car over – and it’s one of the most spectacular things you can do with a car.

Read more in the 20 August, 2014 edition of Classic Car Weekly

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James May's Cars of the People was great motoring TV

IT WAS somewhere in the North Sea where I discovered one of motoring telly’s genuine surprises last night.

Chances are that if I hadn’t have been stuck on a ferry tossing and turning through the waves on my way back from a trip to Holland and Germany, I wouldn’t have flicked on the TV and started watching James May’s newly-launched BBC series about people’s cars. If you haven’t already seen it and fancy tracking it down on iPlayer, it’s called – in a magnificent display of Beeb imagination – James May’s Cars of the People.

Yet despite the unremarkable name, Captain Slow had me hooked; here, after what seems like months of false starts, was a spot of automotive telly I found myself genuinely enjoying. I’m sure not the only car nut who finds his other pet project – an occasional motoring show called Top Gear – has brilliant and tiresomely slapstick moments in roughly equal measure, but almost all of the other shows aimed at us petrolhead types have proven tricky viewing. 

I get the impression that in a glass-sided building somewhere in Canary Wharf a boardroom’s worth of overpaid telly executives have cottoned onto the fact that classic cars are hot property, and between them opened the floodgates for a whole of slew of motoring TV shows over the past few months. We had Philip Glenister do a great job with For The Love Of Cars, but I couldn’t help wincing when an old Series One Land Rover was restored to such an eat-your-dinner-off-it level of cleanliness that it’ll never see a farm track again, and then auctioned for an eye watering £41,000. We’ve also had AC/DC rocker Brian Johnson pontificating about his favourite supercars in Cars That Rock, but the worst television call by far was whichever idiot gave Classic Car Rescue a second series. 

That’s why, after a bellyful of obviously scripted motoring mishaps and shows which give off the impression all old cars are handcrafted from unobtainium, it was so refreshing to see James May talking sensibly about the cars your mum and dad used to drive. I switched off at the end of the show having learned some genuine nuggets of pub fact gold about the Fiat 124, and been reminded why the Trabant was so bad that thousands of East Germans happily headed straight towards a crooning David Hasselhoff in a simultaneous lunge for motoring freedom. In fact, the only letdown was resorting to some cheap Top Gear laughs by dropping a Lada from a helicopter for laughs, but James May’s Cars of the People had me hooked

.

Even though I’m firmly back on terra firma now, I’ll definitely be tuning in this Sunday for the next episode.

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Road resurfacing is an annoying but effective way to slow drivers down

IT WAS the ping-ping of my Mazda’s paintwork being repeatedly bombarded which made me realise it. Sefton’s powers-that-be have inadvertently won the war on speed!

I can’t have been the only motorist left last week in the peculiar position of struggling to keep within a 20mph speed limit but unwilling to venture above the pace of any half-decent cyclist on the Formby Bypass. A strategy of having every major road resurfaced almost simultaneously turned seeing friends and family into a game of rat-running roadworks and crawling along temporary surfaces, listening to the crackle of my MX-5’s surfaces being chinked and chipped away by the stones being chucked up.

It is, of course, better than the alternative – a North West criss-crossed with roads so badly potholed they’re suitable only for the Lunar Rovers last deployed on NASA’s Moon missions. However, I still pondered which clot had signed off resurfacing the Coastal Road in Ainsdale, stretches of the Formby Bypass, Altcar Road in Formby, and several of Southport’s more important thoroughfares almost simultaneously. Surely redoing ALL of them wasn’t a particularly bright idea?

Then it hit me. The combined threat of destroying the paintwork on your pride and joy and skidding to a fiery death if you drove one of these resurfaced roads at speed had succeeded in reducing the average pace – even on a dual carriageway – to the sort of speeds I normally do on my mountain bike. The roadworks have succeeded where that favourite strategy of the Speed Kills lobby – 20mph speed limits – failed.

Not convinced? Well, nationwide research by the Institute of Advanced Motorists into the effects of dropping 30mph limits by a third showed that the number of accidents actually went up by over a quarter, with less severe accidents increasing by 17%. Logically, you’d reason that the nation’s go-faster drivers are utterly unmoved by a lower speed limit, but I bet they’d think twice about ruining the optional metallic paint on their Audi A4s.

I’m sure I can’t be the only person a bit peeved with the policy of redoing roads with noisy, slow, paint-removing substances en-masse, but you can’t deny it got even the most ardent of speed freaks to back off for a change.

The conclusion’s a simple one. A rubbish road is a safe one.

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Life On Cars is five years old!

 

IT'S great to reflect that Life On Cars is now five years old* and - by some stroke of luck - is still going from strength to strength.

Since its humble beginings with a broken-down Mini back in 2009 there have been hundreds of show reviews, test drives, comment pieces and features - and, of course, it's still a regular fixture each week in the pages of The Champion newspaper.

In an idea not-at-all-inspired by Chris Evans' seven-themed displays at the CarFest events, I've decided the best way to mark the anniversary is by looking back at five of the best 'fives' from five years of Life On Cars.

Click on each to find out more about each of these memorable motoring moments...

Five.... unforgettable drives

1) Blackpool Illuminations in a Mini
2) The Buttertubs Pass in Suzuki Swift Sport
3) The New Forest in a Jaguar XK150 (pictured)
4) Derbyshire Dales in a Lotus Evora S
5) North Wales in a Mazda MX-5

Five.... shows you won’t want to miss

1) Lydiate Classic Car Show
2) Cholmondely Pageant of Power
3) Lakes Charity Classic Car Show
4) Goodwood Revival
5) Ormskirk MotorFest

Five.... fantastic Life On Cars moments

1) Raising much-needed cash for charity (pictured)
2) Seeing Life On Cars printed in a national motoring publication
3) Winning a national award
4) Landing a job at Classic Car Weekly
5) Getting printed in The Champion

Five.... moments we’d rather forget

1) Taking an MGB at Curborough - and not doing it much good (pictured)
2) The Volkswagen XL1 being accidentally referred to as a Vauxhall in print
3) Selling the Mini and the Renault 5 within a week of each other
4) The Mondeo’s premature demise
5) Spinning my first MX-5

Five.... greatest cars we’ve tested

1) Ford Fiesta (2009)
2) Honda CR-Z (2010)
3) Citroen DS3 Racing (2011)
4) Morgan Threewheeler (2012, pictured)
5) Suzuki SC100 (2013)

For all these reviews, plus dozens of other road tests, visit the Fire Up The... section.


*Or rather it was five years old last week, but I might have been away on holiday on the big day. Oops!

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Fiat beefs up the Panda 4x4

A MORE hardcore version of the UK’s smallest off-roader has just been launched by Fiat.

The Panda Cross is based on the existing four-wheel-drive Panda but adds a stack of gadgets you’d normally only find on much larger off-roaders – including oversized tyres, hill descent control, a sump guard, and a terrain control stability system – to the package.

It's also got a six speed gearbox with a shortened first gear designed with 'crawling' through challenging conditions in mind - admittedly, it's not the low ratio 'box you'll get on a Land Rover Defender, but this will squeeze through many a gap and gulley which the bigger, 'proper' off-roader can't.

Fiat said its sheer versatility has come from more than 30 years of making some of Europe's smallest 4x4s. A spokesman for the company said: "In 2006 SUVs accounted for around seven percent of the total car market in Europe whereas today they account for approximately 20 percent.

"Yet despite the proliferation of models in the past decade the new Fiat Panda Cross remains a truly unique offering, by combining the genuine capabilities of a proper off-road vehicle with the efficiency and practicality of a versatile city car."

Prices start at £15,945 for the TwinAir-engined version, while the 1.3 litre version will set you back £16,945. Both go on sale here towards the end of the year.

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The Life On Cars Mini resurfaces - here's why I didn't buy it

SUPPOSE you’re invited out for a drink with an ex you haven’t seen in years. You’re curious – perhaps even slightly sentimental – but you know it ended for a reason. What do you do?

That’s the way I felt the other day when the first car I ever owned turned up, completely unexpectedly, in an online auction. Naturally, it piqued my curiosity, and I’ve almost certainly spent far longer than anyone really ought to keeping track of all the bids a rather ropey, 30-year-old Mini.

It proved, given I’m exactly the sort of car lover who develops an attachment to what everyone considers to be automotive tat, to be a weirdly bittersweet experience. Even though there was no shortage of people egging me on, I couldn’t bring myself to do the motoring equivalent of getting back with your first girlfriend. I resisted the temptation to stick in a bid on the 1984 Mini Mayfair which for several years accompanied the logo of this very blog.

Not that I didn’t look back longingly, of course. If you really, truly love cars then your first outings in your own car are something you’ll reminisce about as fondly as your first kiss or your first pint, and for me those tentative initial trips in that Mini will be forever stacked away as wonderful memories. Being behind the wheel of A860 JKC meant the first time I ever took my own set of wheels to a car show, my inaugural motoring holiday and finally being free of bus stops. It was so much more than just a car.

That’s why seeing it up for sale in almost exactly the same state in which I sold it left me feeling sad. Contrary to previous belief, any plans to restore it to its former glory seemed to have fallen by the wayside – in fact, the 2009 Woodvale Rally plaque I’d fitted was still cable-tied to its chrome grille. The only difference was that four years ago my old Mayfair got driven away; it got sold online as a non-runner.

In the end I resisted the temptation, largely because despite the supersized helping of nostalgia my abiding memory is of it being a car which you could rely on to let you down. I watched as it went under the virtual hammer for £120 more than I sold it for; I can only hope it went to someone who’ll love it as much as I did, and can rescue it using the funds I didn’t have back in 2010.

Despite the bittersweet ending, I realised I’d learned two things from watching my first car being snapped up. For one thing, old Minis really have shot up in price over the last few years – that’s why even ones which really weren’t very good, like mine, get snapped up.

But perhaps more importantly, I remembered it’s better to have loved and lost an old car than never to have loved it at all.

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New classic car show planned for Southport

CLASSIC car owners in and around Southport are being urged to get involved with a new charity event being held in the resort next month.

The event, which is being held at the newly-refurbished Kings Gardens near the Promenade, will take place on Saturday, 23 August and raise funds to help treat Merseyside residents with neurological disorders.

It’s free for owners of classic car and motorbikes to show off their prized vehicles, but anyone keen to get involved must request an application form by sending an email to info@lot21.co.uk.

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The Life On Cars MGB does MG90

Click on the image for a full size version of the article. All rights reserved by Classic Car Weekly.

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Fire up the... Vauxhall Cascada

FORGET any ideas of this being a sports car. Even though it’s a swoopy two-door offering with a droptop roof and the word ‘Turbo’ in its name, to blast down the backroads is to miss the point of this al-fresco offering from Vauxhall.

Nope, the Cascada’s charms are altogether more grown up – four plump seats, a traditional, soft-top roof which stows away electrically in 12 seconds and endless opportunities to improve your tan. Enjoying this Astra-based open top tourer is all about relaxing, taking in the scenery, and letting the car’s supple suspension take the strain.

That’s why the Cascada is smooth and cosseting to drive rather than livewire, firm and immediate – in fact, the composed, chilled out way its front-wheel-drive underpinnings take corners is immediately familiar to anyone who’s piloted an Astra or Insignia for any meaningful mileage. The ride, in particular, is superb, with the uncomfortable shakes and vibrations of big cabriolets from a generation ago (Saab 900 Convertible, anyone?) all but a distant memory.

In fact, the only real weak link in the Cascada’s easy-going chain is that turbocharged engine – it’s a 170bhp 1.6 litre petrol lump and it’s far from lacking in pace, but the way it revs and scrabbles to put down its power is utterly at odds with the rest of the car’s character. The silky smooth, unstressed urge of a big V6 is what this car really deserves, but in this cost-conscious day and age the best engine the Cascada range offers is Vauxhall’s superb 2.0 litre turbodiesel.

One thing that is consistent through the range, however, are the looks; it’s not going to grace any bedroom wall posters any time soon, but you can’t deny the Cascada’s handsome in a restrained, intelligent sort of way. There’s an argument it’s not only better looking than Renault’s Megane CC, but BMW’s open-top 3-Series too.

Vauxhall’s biggest challenge is going to be persuading image-conscious convertible connoisseurs that the saving over a BMW 3-Series or an Audi A5 is worth forgoing the street cred of the German rivals. However, there’s still a gap left where the Saab 9-3 convertible left off.

In the Cascada, the company’s got a convertible capable enough of exploiting it.

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How to organise the perfect car show

IN PRETTY much the same way plenty of my pals like to shout instructions at Liverpool players even though they’re no good at the game themselves, I’m guilty of being that guy who reviews car shows even though I’ve never actually organised one.

It’s that time of year when every stately home, village green, municipal park and playing field seems to host its own car show. Thanks partly to my day job and partly due to being a glutton for punishment, I’ve spent pretty much every weekend, for as long as I can remember, wandering around them. Yet the only constant – apart from them featuring displays of cars, obviously - is the incredible amount of effort the organisers put into getting them off the ground. Passing comment on where they could do better is a bit like you telling Roy Hodgson how he could have got England’s boys to have done better in Brazil, surely?

But when you spend every single weekend wandering around classic car shows (and last year, a bit embarrassingly, I ended up at more than 40 of them) you soon get an idea of what works and what doesn’t. You end up wondering how the rather obvious opportunity for a striking car display right in front of the stately home somehow got missed, why all the ropey cheeseburgers from the mobile catering vans always seem to cost £5.50, and whether the people in charge forgot to invite anyone other than Austin Cambridge and Morris Minor owners. 

That’s why I found it so refreshing to wander around what I reckon was the perfect car event. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Lakes Charity Classic Car Show, held last weekend on a playing field in Grasmere.

I’ll skip past the postcard-perfect Lake District venue – if Wordsworth did car shows, this is what they’d look like – because just about everything else about the show was spot on. Every single car, bike and tractor, with the notable exception of a few last-minute entries, was carefully catalogued in a programme that didn’t cost a million pounds to buy, and what you did have to pay went straight to charity. The organisers couldn’t have been more helpful, the grub was sensibly priced, hastily-arranged ‘entertainment’ from long-forgotten rock bands was pleasingly absent and there was a great, friendly atmosphere.

Most importantly, however, they’d got the most important bit – the cars – right too. It was utterly refreshing to be able to check out some intriguingly and fantastically rare old cars, like one chap’s 1952 Marauder Sports, before wandering all of ten yards and debating whether the Ford Probe is old enough to considered a classic yet.

Getting a car show just right is a tricky old thing to do and I reckon the closest thing we’ve got on our doorstep is the (equally charity-orientated) Lydiate Classic Car Show. Roll on Sunday!

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Life On Cars writer picks up award

THE writer behind Life On Cars has won a prestigious award at a glittering ceremony in London.

David Simister (pictured, centre) was presented with a ‘One to Watch’ award at this year’s Bauer Media Awards, held last Friday (June 27) at The O2.

David, who was praised for his achievements as news editor at Classic Car Weekly, said: "I'm over the moon to have won such a prestigious award a little over a year after I started at Classic Car Weekly.

"Even though I write more about Austins and Astons than Ormskirk and Aughton, I'm delighted to carry on The Champion spirit of finding great stories through hard work and good journalism."

The award was in recognition for a series of exclusive motoring scoops for Classic Car Weekly and sister website Classic Cars For Sale, including breaking the news that the world’s first Triumph Spitfire was up for sale and that the world’s largest collection of cars from the James Bond films was being sold for £20m.

John Westlake, acting editor of Classic Car Weekly, said: "David richly deserved this prestigious award. His tea-making is woeful, but he's a very promising journalist."

Earlier this year, Life On Cars picked up a prize at the inaugural UK Blog Awards, and when working at The Champion newspaper in 2011 David won the O2 North West Scoop of The Year award.

Read more of David’s news stories every Wednesday in Classic Car Weekly

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A great selection of rare classic cars at Gaydon

IT'S a bit of a shocking admission to make when your day job is being the news editor of a national publication dedicated to classic cars. Until last weekend, I'd never looked around the Heritage Motor Centre.

I'd only been to the extensive museum, based in the Warwickshire village of Gaydon, on one fleeting visit during a classic car rally last year. Sadly, an extremely hectic schedule meant I couldn't do what any self-respecting petrolhead really ought to; have a long, lingering look at the scores of British classics inside.

Luckily, last weekend's roster of classic car events was just about un-hectic enough to afford me a proper peek into one of the nation's bona-fide automotive treasure troves. Here's just a few of the stunning machines you'll be greeted by if you head through Gaydon's doors...

To plan your own visit, go to the Heritage Motor Centre's website or give them a call on 01926 641188.

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The Volkswagen XL1 is more important than you might think

I CAN only conclude David Cameron’s vow to get tough on all those City bankers is finally having an effect.

Why else would Volkswagen launch a car which – as far as I can tell – is designed specifically with them in mind? The rising stars of RBS, HBOS and Lloyds have long had a fascination with flashy German metal, as evidenced by all those Porsche 944 Turbos the Gordon Gekko generation drove in the 1980s and all the Audi R8s which have been lining London’s shinier streets these last few years.

However, all those efforts to get tough on bankers’ bonuses must be having an effect because the latest bit of German exotica to hit Britain’s roads uses a combination of an 800cc diesel engine and an electric motor rather than a whopping great V10. It’s also considerably smaller than a Ford Fiesta, won’t do 100mph and will be comprehensively outdragged at the lights by a diesel Skoda Fabia.

Yet the Volkswagen XL1 costs £98,515, making it more expensive than the BMW M5, the Porsche 911, the Maserati Granturismo and the Jaguar F-type. In essence, it’s a small city car you’d need to be on a Fred Goodwin-esque salary to even contemplate affording – and I still love it.

The XL1, aside from having a wonderfully sci-fi moniker which renders it cool in an instant, is significant because it opens up a whole new front in the long-running war of the supercars. Put simply, it does for MPG what the McLaren F1 and the Bugatti Veyron did for MPH. I’m aware of the irony of blowing the best part of a hundred grand on a car which takes saving money at the pumps to the extreme, but it somehow ekes 282 miles out a gallon. Try doing that in your Ecoboost Focus.


Doing 282mpg would – at the current going rate for diesel - get you from The Champion’s front door to Land’s End for a little over £8, and in a mad miniature two-seater which looks a bit like a Mercedes 300SL Gullwing crossed with something out of The Jetsons. Somehow, I think pursuing the edges of what’s possible with fuel economy has got to be more relevant than the battle to be the first out with a production car that does more than 300mph. In the same way the Jaguar XK120 eventually gave us everyday hatchbacks that could crack 120mph, maybe one day we’ll all be driving cars that do upwards of 200 to a gallon.

The first time I see some City stockbroker type driving an XL1 won’t be a moment of utter contempt. It’ll be quiet respect for someone test-piloting the future.

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Fire up the.... Suzuki Swift Sport (again)

THE Suzuki Swift Sport isn't perfect and it's a car of few superlatives, but it is brilliant.

That’s exactly the verdict I reached two years ago when I last drove the Japanese firm’s addictively entertaining junior hot hatch, and just about the only thing I could find to mark it down on was that it lost a little of the Mk1 version’s edge by becoming a little better in just about every other area. It was – and still is – a superb little streetfighter of a car which punches well above its weight.

Why then, the need to test it again?

Put simply, Suzuki has opened doors to anyone previously put off by the sprightliest of the Swifts. In true pocket rocket tradition, the Swift Sport has until very recently only been available as a three-door hatchback, a configuration which benefits its aggressive stance and suits the model’s youthful target market perfectly, but it means plenty of keener drivers with families to look after have had to look elsewhere. That’s why it’s great to see Suzuki finally offering the Sport with the full five-strong compliment of doors, as you can get throughout the rest of the Swift range.

Happily, the £500 translation from three-door to five-door hasn’t affected the aesthetics – true, a five-door is never going to look as single-mindedly sporty, but you still get the deep double grille at the front, a cheeky spoiler, a twin helping of exhausts at the back, and some added practicality in the middle.

Anyone looking for a polished all-round supermini isn’t going to find the Swift perfect –with the best will in the world, it’s starting to show its age – but keen drivers will forgive it because of the consistently smile-inducing way it craves corners and the revvy demeanour of its 1.6 litre, 136bhp engine.

There’s a wonderfully old-school charm to its handling and the whole car begs you to take it by the scruff of its neck and make the most of its petite dimensions. It is, to all extents and purposes, a sort of Greatest Hits compilation of all the best characteristics of the classic hot hatches of the 1980s, and all the more loveable for it.

It’s just that, with a £14,499 price tag, five doors and a very 2014 helping of safety clobber, it’s vaguely sensible too.

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Sorry Renault, I can't quite capture the point of the Captur

A MATE of mine has taken leave of his senses. He’s about to blow five thousand of his carefully-earned pounds on a Triumph Stag.

Followers of automotive folklore will happily bore you rigid with stories about why this Seventies convertible has a home-brewed V8 with a habit of overheating, a body with a penchant for rot in places you wouldn’t imagine possible and a reputation for raiding your bank balance if you buy a bad ‘un. However, I understand said mate’s obsession with the Stag completely because it ticks all three boxes of what I look for in a car. It looks fantastic, makes a great noise and it's a pleasure to drive.

In an idealist, bedroom-wall-poster sort of way all cars would satisfy this holy trinity of petrolhead perfection. However, I’m a grown up so I’ve developed an alternative checklist for cars that aren’t Triumph Stags – normal cars on normal roads need to look passably nice, but more importantly drive in a sensibly pleasing way and have an interior that’s bearable on long journeys.

That’s why a weekend with one of Renault’s latest offerings left me with more questions than it answered, because it didn't really tick any of the boxes.

I was actually quietly excited when a Captur arrived on the driveway, particularly because my dad – for reasons I’m still not sure – insisted on calling it the much more menacing-sounding “Raptor”. It’s an important car for the French firm because it’s a crossover – a sort-of hatchback-meets-off-roader, once you translate the word from Marketing back into English. Given Renault’s links with Nissan, who conquered the crossover kingdom with the Qashqai and Juke, I was keen to see if some of the Japanese cars’ sparkle had rubbed off on their Gallic cousin.

Yet after 300 miles on just about every type of road imaginable, I couldn’t quite capture the essence of the Captur.

What Renault appears to have done is taken the Clio, a car which is great because it’s small, pretty and quite nice to drive, and made it bigger, uglier and not very nice to drive. There’s plenty of room for you and four passengers in the cabin, but the boot space, at 455 litres, just isn’t enough to carry all their clobber. The 90bhp 1.5 DCi engine in the version I tested was smooth and quick enough on paper, with the dash to 60mph being dealt with in 12.6 seconds, but in the real world it just didn’t feel lively enough.

All of that, however, pales into insignificance with the biggest question the Captur asks. Why would you spend the best part of £12,000 on a car which has – and I choose my words carefully – a truly nasty interior? It’s well equipped and festooned with airbags, which is great, but the last time I saw plastics that cheap was in a branch of Woolworth’s. The steering wheel, in particular, has a scratchy texture which makes sliding it through your palms an unpleasant experience.

Don’t get me wrong; Renault makes some great cars, including a hatchback that’s usefully bigger than the Clio. It’s called the Megane.  

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Fire up the... Dacia Sandero 1.2 Access

THE Nokia 3310 is one of the world’s best selling mobile phones.

There was a time when everybody seemed to have one, and in a way I miss its simple, unpretentious charms. Why spend a fortune on a slick, 4G-guided piece of smartphone technology which can shoot movie footage and let you play Angry Birds simultaneously which you need to charge up every few hours? What was wrong with a cheap, no-frills phone which does nothing other than call your mum and text your mates, but lasted four days on a single charge and was practically indestructible? 

The same argument goes for cars too – there are far too many motors these days with radar-guided cruise control and iPod connectivity, but not nearly enough which offer the four-wheels-and-a-roof simplicity plenty of today’s recession ravaged drivers are looking for.

Which is where Dacia’s £5,995 entry-level Sandero – drumroll please, Britain’s cheapest new car – steps in.

For your fiver short of six grand it’ll have to be the base Access version, which manages to contradict Henry Ford by coming in any colour you like as long as it’s white, with some black bumpers and 15-inch steel wheels to let passers by know you’ve opted for this Nokia 3310 of cars.

Not surprisingly, it’s deliberately deprived of many of the luxuries you’d expect from a new hatchback in 2014, with the windows firmly of the wind-up variety and the cheap, plastic dashboard lacking the plethora of buttons you’d get in most other supermini offerings. However, you really can’t deny that in terms of offering a brand new and reasonably well built family car for as little as possible it hits a bullseye; the days of Britain’s cheapest new car being badly thrown together Eastern Bloc obscurities are long gone. 

The  Sandero masters offering four seats, four doors a roof and reliability but little else besides. The 75bhp 1.2 litre petrol engine, for instance, isn’t especially refined and feels gutless compared to other offerings of its size. There is an innate ability hidden within the Renault-engineered hatchback’s handling, but the harshness of the noise and vibrations mean it’s not something you’d particularly enjoy using on a longer journey.

More worryingly, I’m not even convinced that it particularly excels at being value for money. Throw in even basic equipment you’d get as standard elsewhere and the price quickly stacks up – for the sake of an extended warranty, a spare wheel and a CD player the Sandero I tested became a £6,245 car – and heavy depreciation means most of the money you save initially is unlikely to be recouped when you sell up. That’s before you get to the intelligent question of warranty, because while Kia’s entry-level Picanto might cost two grand more than the Sandero, you get a far more modern design with a seven year warranty as standard.

The prospect of having a brand new car on your drive for less than six grand might sound pretty tempting, but I’m struggling to make the sums add up.

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Don't miss out on the Lydiate Classic Car Show

CLASSIC car fans are being urged to help raise cash for charity by heading to a show in Lydiate next month.

The team behind the Lydiate Classic Car Show said this year’s event will take place at the parish hall between 10am and 4pm on Sunday, July 6. The bustling one-day event, which helps to raise much-needed funds for Cancer Research UK, attracts scores of classic cars from across the North West.

Ben Spears, one of the event's organisers, told Life On Cars: "It's the largest charity car show in the Merseyside and West Lancashire area, it has the cheapest entrance fee, and it's got a great atmosphere because there's no competition or snobbery, just lots of likeminded enthusiasts looking at each others' cars.

"It's an old school show for true petrol heads, and every car and owner and visitor is a winner for supporting a great cause."

The show which costs £2 to attend and has room for 200 cars, is open to all makes and model of classic car and motorbike.

All funds raised by the event will go towards helping Cancer Research UK - so far, the show has aready raised more than £10,000 for the charity. If you're interested in getting involved, send an email to classiccar@cheerful.com

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