SMMT Test Day 2014 - Plenty of car reviews on the way!

IT’S not every day you get to drive not only Britain’s cheapest new car, but also one of Britain’s most expensive.

They’re just two of the new motors I’ve managed to get behind the wheel of at the Millbrook Proving Ground in Bedfordshire, where I’ve joined fellow automotive hacks at the SMMT’s annual test day. In all, I managed to find out whether 16 new cars are worth your hard-earned cash, and over the next few months I’m looking forward to letting you know my findings in full both on here and in The Champion.

Until then, however, I can share the follow nuggets of automotive enlightenment which I picked up from a packed day of road testing:

• The Rolls-Royce Phantom Series II is not, as you might imagine given the prices, fifty times better than the entry-level Dacia Sandero. The rest of my life, however, will feel slightly poorer as a result of having briefly sampled the height of four-wheeled opulence.  

• The Suzuki Swift Sport, even though it’s getting on a bit, is still one of the best hot hatches out there. Find out which flimsy excuse I’ve used to roadtest it again in a few weeks’ time… 

• As I’ve suggested after previous visits to Millbrook, the electric offerings are getting better every year, especially if the evidence presented by Volkswagen’s e-up and BMW’s i3 are anything to go by. 

• I can completely understand why the learned scholars who make up the European Car Of The Year panel opted for the latest Peugeot 308 as their choice this year.

• Lexus should put the original LS400 back into production, if the popularity of their early example at Millbrook was anything to go by. 

• The Jaguar F-type’s price might raise your eyebrows, but the noise it makes will definitely lower your jaw. 

• MG’s latest offerings aren’t as bad as their critics make out, but nor as they good as some of the marque’s defenders would have you believe. 

• Without wanting to sound like Jeremy Clarkson, what the Ford Fiesta could definitely do with is a bit more power. 

While the recurring theme with too many of this year’s offerings was a sense of being accomplished at the expensive of character, there were plenty of gems among the 160 cars brought along by the world’s car manufacturers to this year’s Millbrook event.

I’m looking forward to letting you know over the next weeks which ones I really rate.

BMW's i3 is among the electric car entries showing the eco-friendly contenders are getting better every year

The day marked the first chance for many UK journalists to try out the new Alfa Romeo 4C

 

Lexus showed off the LS400 alongside its modern day equivalent, the LS600h

The F-type was among the most sought-after entrants - it's a good thing Jaguar brought five along!

McLaren's P1 supercar was only a static display, but the 650S had plenty of takers

MG Motor UK brought along a quartet of MG3 hatchbacks for journalists to assess

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Test driving new cars at SMMT North 2012

 

THE residents of the pretty village of Cattal, about halfway between Harrogate and York, must have got fed up of seeing me driving past today.

I've just got back from SMMT North - a Yorkshire-based spin-off on the motoring media's annual speed dating event at the Millbrook Proving Ground - where I've put a dirty dozen of the latest automotive arrivals through their paces. Well, 13 cars actually, if you count the fact I drove two very different versions of Ford's Focus.

In a way, it's actually more educational than the Millbrook day because while you can't push the roadtesting envelope as far as you can at a private testing ground, you do get to find out how everything from Smart cars to Bentley convertibles actually cope with real roads in the real world. In fact, I always put the cars I'm lucky enough to get a go in through the same thirty minute route, because it combines a bit of everything; a blast up the A1(M) motorway, a sprint along some sweeping A-roads, a chance to show off in the handling stakes on some twisty B-roads, and a pootle through Cattal, presumably to the residents' chargrin.

I'll let you know over the next couple of weeks whether I reckoned the new cars I tried were up to scratch, but here's a round-up of some of the motoring snippets I've picked up:

• Good things come to those who wait. Regular readers might remember that I couldn't be bothered with the Alton Towers style queues for the Subaru BRZ but a twenty minute wait got me behind the wheel of its sister car, the Toyota GT-86. I'm now in a position to reveal whether it deserves all the hype it's had...

•  The Ssangyong Korando was a completely different animal. Although I drove one at Millbrook, it felt seriously out of sorts in the ride and handling stakes, so rather than write up a road test I decided to wait, take a different car out, and hope the problems I encountered on the test track were confined to just one rogue car. Luckily, they were.

•  Suzuki's Kizashi is the perfect antidote for any fed up with optional extras bumping up the cost of their new car. 

• Ford's Fiesta - the Life On Cars car of the year in 2009, don't forget - is no longer the best supermini you can buy.

• The Land Rover Defender, which I've been familiar with since childhood but never actually driven until today, is terrible at almost all the things I look for in a car. Yet I still stepped out of it with a smile on my face.

• I'm now able to resolve a motoring dispute which has raged for months in The Champion offices.

• Being spoilt by brand new cars always makes your own motor feel a bit old, slow and clunky - how did one of the best small sports cars of all time suddenly feel a bit lethargic and skittish when I got back into it? I had to go back home via the Buttertubs Pass just to make sure it still handled as brilliantly as I remembered it...

Road tests of all the cars I've driven today will be online here in the coming weeks.

A special thanks to the people of Cattal for their patience in the making of this feature

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