Anything goes

White van man's never had it so good

2008-05-09T15:06:43Z

If so, weren’t you totally knocked sideways by how comfortable, refined, well-equipped, well-mannered, easy-to-drive and actually-remarkably-fast it was?

A couple of house moves recently gave me cause to become acquainted with the rarefied delights of the modern commercial vehicle market. In the space of two months, I had weekends in the latest Renault Master and Mercedes Sprinter panel vans. I did more than 400 miles in both, to-ing and fro-ing from old gaff to new. And not once did I consider myself unlucky to be doing so: it was great fun.

For starters, everyone loves a high driving position, but in today’s cargo-carrier, that comes with decent grip, performance and steering, good economy, surprisingly good refinement, a decently-appointed and designed cabin, and often the kind of equipment you associate with luxo-saloons. Suddenly, careers in construction and logistics look a lot more appealing to me.

The Mercedes Sprinter I drove was particularly impressive, not least because it was Mercedes’ ‘Safety Van’ – a demonstrator designed to showcase many safety systems you can spec on your Merc workhorse that’ll keep it, and you, from a nasty accident.

It had a reversing camera, airbags, antilock brakes with brakeforce distribution, automatic wipers and headlights, a speed limiter and ESP. And it was bright yellow, which must have made it that bit more visible, loaded as it was with beds, fridges, sofas, wardrobes and such, on the southbound M40.

The Renault I drove wasn’t exactly sparsely kitted out either, with sat nav, a CD player, electric windows, and more. Of the two, it was the marginally smaller, more workmanlike device, but the manual gearchange was slick, the clutch light, and the ride quality quiet and pliant.

All things being considered, I reckon the modern commercial vehicle is wasted on builders, plumbers, gardeners, couriers et al. They’re limousines really - they just happen to have a bit more boot space – and it’s a shame they’re not driven a bit more gently, and treated with a bit more respect here in Britain.

Locking is not Impreza-ive

2008-05-09T10:21:19Z

I drove our long-term Subaru Impreza STi home yesterday evening and was impressed by how much smoother and less twitchy it was than its predecessor.

What didn't impress me, however, was the central locking. I left my house this morning with two bags, a coat and a laptop. I blipped the fob and the driver's door opened. The passenger doors and the boot remained locked. I blipped the button again. The driver's door locked. Hmm! I pushed the button twice in quick succession. The driver's door unlocked and relocked very quickly. The boot stayed locked the whole time.

In the end, I reached across the gear stick and put all the junk on the passenger seat.

There is a way to get the boot unlocked, apparently, but Matt Prior, our road test editor, who runs the car on a daily basis, said that it took him three weeks to learn it.

Come on, Subaru. Central locking has been around for ages. We've ironed out all the glitches. Why can't you set it up in the same way as everyone else?

Fortunately, the driver's door is easily opened. Which is good. Because driving this car is the best bit.

Technorati Tags: subaru,key,sti,wrx,central locking

The hardest working 911 yet

2008-05-02T12:30:31Z

I've just been hearing about the hardest working Porsche 911 Turbo in the world: the one that Nissan has been using to benchmark the new GT-R against.

Apparently the Turbo (a current generation model) has covered over 30,000 miles shadowing various GT-R prototypes at testing sessions around the globe, including hundreds of laps at the Nordschlieffe. It's even got its own dedicated mechanics to keep it in tip-top condition - Nissan doesn't want Porsche to be able to send a 'fresher' Turbo out at the Nurburgring to retake the GT-R's hard won lap record.

Of course, that also means that Nissan has spent tens of thousands of pounds on genuine Porsche parts including dozens of sets of brake discs and pads.

More amusing, from the point of view of Nissan's development team at least, is the fact the 911's full telemetry kit and roof antenna made it irresistable to spy photographers, with shots of an alleged Porsche prototype turning up all over the place.

The big question now is that of whether Porsche is too proud to reverse-engineer a GT-R with the same brutal efficiency. Don't be surprised if Walter Rohrl is dispatched to the Eiffel Mountains in short order, and in a new GT2, to try and reclaim the record for Weissach, a well-used, grey-imported GT-R trailing in his wake.

There's hope yet for today's youth

2008-04-24T13:22:55Z

While at the ‘Ring the other day blasting around in the new GT-R, I saw a heartwarming sight in the paddock.

In among the Porsches, M3s and other assorted hot motors were a British registered Ford Orion and what I first thought was a Clio Williams but was actually a 1.2RN.

The Renault was driven by a young lad and the Orion by a couple of teenage girls (or perhaps early twenties). I tell you, my faith in British youth has been restored.

Rather than sit at home virtually going around the Nurburgring on a Playstation they made the effort to get in their motors and have a crack at the real thing. In those motors? Yeah, alright a brace of GT3 RSs would be better suited than an old Orion with a bodykit, but not everyone has got the beans to buy an RS.

And what would you rather prang at Bergwerk? Eighty grand’s worth of sports car or a few hundred quid of elderly Ford? They might even have been having more fun than I was in the GT-R.

Find out how Goodwin got on riding shotgun in a GT-R with Nissan's test driver at the wheel, in Autocar 23 April issue.

Pass the XF on the left-hand side

2008-04-22T10:29:00Z

Here’s a good one for anoraks. Japan is an island that drives on left, just like the UK. So why is it that some cars, even some British ones, get to be shipped to Japan and sold as left-hookers?

The new Jaguar XF can be ordered in Japan in both left-hand drive and right-hand drive. An interesting option, you might think – but what’s the point?

The answer, initially, is economics. “Our German competitors offer and get significant left-hand-drive volume,” explains Jaguar Japan President, David Blume. So Jag has to do the same to compete. Simple.

As for the slightly broader question of “Why?”, that requires a trip into the Japanese car-buying psyche. It turns out that Jaguar has been offering left-hand drive XJs and XKs in right-hand-drive Japan for decades.

Japan’s love affair with left-hand drive began in the '70s and '80s when it was considered a very cool thing to have a Porsche, BMW or Mercedes with the wheel on the ‘wrong’ side. Left-hand drive gave status. It was different, exclusive and exotic – even if a bit impractical.

These days, left-hand drive is not nearly as popular as it was, but some well-heeled Japanese still go for it, believing the cachet is still there, and that cars designed for left-hand drive work better that way instead of being converted. (Although whether that still applies to Jaguar is an interesting question.)

Some Japanese with more than one car want them all to have the steering wheel on the same side, hence the continued demand for left-hookers. Which is why both left- and right-hand drive XFs will be roaming the streets of Tokyo.

Technorati Tags: Jaguar,XF,Japan,left-hand drive,lhd

I want outriders

2008-04-18T16:30:54Z

I've just spent a very memorable morning travelling from central London to Silverstone.

It’s the sort of journey that would normally cause serious stress on the south east's traffic clogged road network, but today it was rather wonderful.

In part this was due to my wheels for the occasion, an Aston Martin DBS, but in la rger measure it was thanks to Sergeant Paul Mostyn of the Metropolitan Police's Tactical Motorbike Unit and six of his colleagues, who worked together to give the Aston - and the 35 other supercars in our procession - the sort of experience more normally enjoyed by senior government ministers and visiting heads of state.

The ev ent was the Ro yal Automobile Club's annual supercar run to deliver the tourist trophy for this season's British FIA GT championship. A good excuse for a thrash and, thanks to close links between the Royal Automobile Club and the Met, an event considered important enough to earn the full set of police outriders.

And, if there's a finer feeling than driving an Aston through a red light while a policeman waves you to go faster and an appreciative crowd applauds and takes pics from the pavement, I've yet to experience it. The fact that all this happened in Kenistan, and that barely a single vehicle in the procession falls within emissions band G, made it all the sweeter.

And, despite the presence of a Ferrari F50, a fire-spitting De Tomaso Pantera and a brand new Gallardo Superleggera, the DBS was the star of the show. “That's James Bond's car,” I heard a father tell his young son as our procession ground to a momentary halt. Junior was suitably impressed, although his next question was all too clear: “Why did he le t that fat bloke drive it, then?”

Other than that, magical.

Saving the present for the future

2008-04-18T10:25:03Z

It might sound mad, but I’ve been mulling over the idea of buying a Renault Clio 197 Cup, running it in, and then laying it down, like a good bottle of wine, for a decade or so.

The thinking here is that I don’t quite need one now, but might be able to make use of it in 10 years time when there’ll be few left in decent condition, and when driver’s cars of this format may have become something less entertaining than this brilliant little Renault.

And it’ll be curiously satisfying to drive around in a 10 year old car that not only looks new, but effectively is new too.

In fact, there’s nothing novel about laying fresh-made cars down for the future, though the motivation has often been to turn a profit rather than the curiosity of enjoying something that’s old, but new. Profits probably unrealised, if inflation, storage costs and the lost interest on the original outlay are factored in.

Back in 1981, for instance, a surprising number of optimists figured that a Limited Edition version of the MGB and MGB GT might make a good investment bet, and several of the pewter B GTs and bronze Bs were tucked away in garages, awaiting an escalation in value. Which is why you very occasionally see adverts for one of these cars, of which under 100 were made, with nominal mileages. In fact, they fetch quite good money, but whether £8-10,000 has made it worth storing a car over two decades is debatable.

On the other hand, it must be pretty amazing to drive a factory-fresh car from 1981. I suspect that a few of the last Minis made at Longbridge in 2000 may have been stashed too, though those might make a profit one day.

Anyway, the Clio, and its bigger brother the Megane R26, are tempters - there’s a yellow Renaultsport 230 in my local showroom right now - another factor in their appeal being that they have been made in relatively small numbers, and like most hot hatches, the majority are likely to be driven until they drop.

If I had the cash - and I can’t afford those hot hatches in truth, never mind the costs of secure storage somewhere - the Vauxhall VXR8 appeals, because it’s bound to be rare, and so does Mitsubishi’s latest Evo. High-end stuff, even if I could afford it, appeals less because you can bet that plenty of collectors will stuff Ferrari Scuderias in heated motor houses for a decade or two. Although that would be a pretty extraordinary thing to have a mint copy of in 2028.

But if you could do it, what would you lay down?

It's not carbon, okay?

2008-04-15T12:02:57Z

Nestled among the UK media’s ‘comprehensive’ coverage of the possible impacts of the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation was an interview on Channel 4 News with John Snow, Clare Wenner of the Renewable Energy Association and Friends of the Earth director Tony Juniper.

What irritated me most about the discussion was not the exceptionally limited content, the omission of weather conditions and a decade of global economic growth from the argument over rising food prices, or even the terminology of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ biofuels, but the following sentence from Clare Wenner: “The problem is so great that we need everything to make sure we reduce carbon in the transport sector.”

The size of the problem is already a matter of national debate, but what the hell does ‘carbon’ mean? There are two ways that most people will encounter ‘carbon’: 1) on the tip of a pencil or 2) in its slightly harder-wearing form, brilliant cut with an octohedral table and claw set in a white gold ring.

In terms of a car, it can only refer to the very low levels of non-crystalline or amorphous carbon known as soot that make it through the particulate filters of modern diesel engines.

Sadly the slap-dash word use from many quarters illustrates the inadequacy of the contributions to what is a very real debate about CO2 production and its effects. If I went on a Masterchef and couldn’t successfully name any of the ingredients in pastry, I wouldn’t be invited back. Why don’t we apply this degree of rigour to the climate change debate?

The X-type must die

2008-04-14T14:40:54Z

I just spotted a new Jaguar X-type sitting in our car park as I headed out to lunch.

I think Jaguar is a great company: I drove the XKR and DB9 on consecutive days and thought the Jag was a much better car; I lust after every XJ in the range; I love the S-type and its acclaimed successor, the XF. But I cannot understand why the company thought that the X-type was anything other than a malnourished, rather bony cash cow that would do enormous damage to the brand in the long term.

I don't have a big objection to it being a Mondeo underneath - there are worse ways to start building a car. I just hate the way it looks. What's particularly galling is that rather than dropping off the end of the range with as little fuss as possible, the X-type has received a facelift that will keep it in on the showroom for another 30 months.

There must be quite few owners who never upgraded to the excellent S-type and have been put off Jags for good. The best way to welcome them back into the fold would be to can the X-type completely and concentrate on what the company does best - producing great sporting saloons and coupes.

Thank women for the Fiesta

2008-04-11T15:54:19Z

I regularly wish I was in Top Shop - but I really do wish I had been there to observe a group of male Ford execs being subjected to the random, and often frenzied routine carried out by twenty-something women in the high-street shops.

That’s right – Ford’s desire to make the Fiesta fashionable means the company has been keenly studying the habits of young women. Which, as a member of the target audience, I reckon sounds like a very high risk strategy – Volvo has been enrolling women into its customer clinics for years, without much success in my opinion.

I must admit that I’m totally confused as to why ‘Antonella’, as Ford is calling the Fiesta’s target customer, leads an ‘Italian lifestyle’. And I’ll eat my designer mobile phone if the Peugeot 207 is selling well because of the 205’s reputation – twenty-something woman would still have been at primary school when the flimsy ‘80s Pug went off sale.

All that notwithstanding, I reckon that women might have done the car industry a favour. The focus group sisterhood seems to have persuaded Ford to keep the Verve concept’s stand-out styling and many of the details of its futuristic interior. So thanks, girls – you seem to have forced a motoring icon bang into the focus of the iPod generation. I’ll chalk one up to women and retail therapy, then.

It’s just a good thing they didn’t go in the sale season or some of the industry’s finest minds could have become research roadkill.

Goodbye Bongo

2008-04-11T09:14:30Z

Question: what do Bighorn, Cynos. Windom, Freda, Bongo and Cedric all have in common? Answer: they're all names from the comedy end of the Japanese new car playbook. Or at least that's how it'll likely seem to many in Blighty.

Some day, somebody should write a book about how Honda happened to come up with a new small car in Japan called That's. Or how Mitsubishi settled on Dingo (and no, it has nothing to do with Australian wild dogs....trust me, it's way, way more convoluted and arcane than that).

Fact is, Japan has a long and chequered career in twisting and torturing English to arrive at some truly incomprehensible model names and phrases. Which is good in a way since Japanese names can be a lot wackier and entertaining than say, A4, CLK or Vectra. Where's the fun in that versus, say, Wagon R Stingray, Alphard or Scrum?

Meantime, the news on the street is that sadly some of the classics are due for the chop. Mazda is rumoured to be dropping Bongo, for instance (although happily, the commercial version, the even more fabulous Bongo Brawny is set to continue). Likewise, Honda is axing one of the belters from its domestic catalogue, the Mobilio Spike.

Why? An effort to make names more international and - shock - more sensible, or because the locals were getting bored? Probably the latter, but still all is not lost. Plenty of the cryptic ones - Regiusace, Move Latte and Lapin spring to mind - are still alive and well in the land of the Rising Sun.

The cross greens code

2008-04-10T11:52:20Z

Surveys are complete rubbish aren’t they? Some berk with a clipboard stops a few gormless shoppers and asks them some inane questions, carefully weighted to support some feeble pre-determined hypothesis, and then the results are loaded into a computer and get extrapolated into the opinion of some huge swage of the Great British public.

Which is why we end up with press releases making ridiculous claims that, and I’m quoting here, that “millions of motorists are ready to welcome 20mph city speed limits.”

Except, they’re not. What the survey actually found out was that 60 per cent of those who couldn’t think of an excuse to avoid the pollster think that 20mph speed limits are a silly idea. Which, last time I checked, was a clear majority – and, if you think about it for a minute, a blindingly obvious one.

The “millions welcome” line was doubtless grafted on later in the process when the car supermarket that thought up this survey, and which will be getting no publicity from me for doing so, realised that “Brits think 20 mph speed limit is an utterly stupid idea” was less likely to set newsdesks alight.

Rover: the lost empire

2008-04-03T15:07:26Z

Had the privilege of a trip around the Mini factory at Oxford yesterday, where a cornucopia of these desirable runabouts was being created - in a surprisingly quiet atmosphere for a car factory.

Some 70 per cent of them are exported, this former Rover/Austin Rover/British Leyland/BMC/Morris factory not seeing success on this scale since the heyday of the original Mini and the Morris 1100 in the mid-1960s. Our tour of the paint shop revealed the intriguing fact that in 1998 it was re-equipped and modernised to accommodate models as large as the Range Rover.

The first new model to go through it was the Rover 75 - which was moved to Longbridge post-BMW - but BMW’s plan was to integrate the Oxford plant (or Cowley, as it used to be known), Longbridge (originally to have built the new Mini) and Solihull so that the outputs of each could be managed against the rise and fall of each model’s lifecycle in the least profit-damaging way.

BMW is a master of industrial manipulation of this kind, the production management of its network of German factories one of the keys to its success. Having bought Rover’s still extensive string of factories in 1994, it must have seen scope to achieve the same results.

In fact, a fair chunk of that network survives today, and includes the Swindon panel pressing plant - formerly Pressed Steel Fisher - which remains with BMW to stamp panels for the Mini - and the Hams Hall engine plant near Birmingham, fresh-built by BMW in 2001, which was supposed to have supplied four cylinder engines for Minis, BMWs and Rovers. Instead, Peugeot takes the engines that Rover would have used. All of which is a reminder of how far BMW got with its reconstruction of the Rover Group before boardroom bust-ups, a falling share price, wrangles over government subsidies, slow sales and a poor press caused it to pull the pin.

But I occasionally allow myself to speculate on what would have happened had BMW managed to face down than huge pressure - it certainly tried - and launched the Mini as a Rover Group product.

I suspect it might not have done quite as well as it has, but certainly well enough to have saved BMW’s English Patient. Which means that by now, we would not only be able to buy the now infamous new medium car, but also the Rover 75’s replacement, an Austin Healey 3000 successor out of Spartanburg in the US, new MGs, possibly a Riley and even a modern Frog-eyed Sprite, not to mention assortments of Land Rovers. It could have been a great empire.

Motorway madness gets scary

2008-04-03T11:51:23Z

Speed limits cause endless debate – but it’s rare you see spectacular evidence as to why, sometimes, they can be a really bad idea.

That’s what happened to me late on Tuesday, travelling west on the M42 in one of the numerous roadworks zone that the imminent end of the financial year has brought about. Like an increasing number of zones in motorway work areas, it was guarded by average speed cameras. And, as always, traffic slowed to a constant 52 mph crawl.

Ahead of me a lorry rumbled along in the slow lane – or Lane 1 as we’re meant to refer to it. Adjacent to it, in the middle lane, sat a Fiat Punto that – for reasons best known to itself – was exactly matching the lorry’s speed and sitting in its blind spot.

As we approached a junction the inevitable happened. Another car appeared at the end of the truncated slip road, intent on merging with the flow. The result was no less alarming for its predictability. The HGV driver failed to realise he had a Fiat in his blindspot, the Fiat driver failed to notice the lorry’s indicators, the wagon pulled out and – after losing his door mirror, which almost took a chunk out of my Mondeo – the Punto pilot swerved right into the (mercifully vacant) fast lane.

Lessons? Better observation all-round. But no question in my mind – this was a potentially nasty smash caused in large part by the ridiculous notion that it is somehow safer to have three lanes of traffic travelling at exactly the same speed.

Rolls-Royce: older is better

2008-04-02T16:47:16Z

Don’t you find modern day Rollers rather disagreeable? All that bling. All that overstated chrome, slab sides and footballers’ wives high chintz interior. Now they’ve sliced the roof off the Phantom it gets even worse – you can see the tasteless buyers in their perma-tanned glory.

And no, my prejudice against the modern Rolls isn’t based entirely on envy. Good luck to ‘em, and all that. At least the sort of lottery winner who rolls down to the nearest dealership and splashes a deposit has got the genuine excuse that, with a ‘G’ reg Ford Escort as trade in, they don’t know what an automotive faux pas they’re making.

But the genuinely super-rich who do likewise aren’t even buying ironically – they genuinely like these leviathans and everything they represent.

Which is what, exactly? Proper old-school Rolls exemplified the best and worst of British craftsmanship – from stunning interiors to freak electrical fires. The Phantom doesn’t even have character-enhancing faults on its side, and it proves that the upper reaches of the UK motor industry have become a glorified assembly operation for Germans, who design and make all the important, oily bits properly. Our craftsmen and women just add the walnut and leather frippery.

But here’s the thing – new Rollers have been bought by social pariahs for as long as I can remember. You know the sort - scrap metal dealers, nightclub comedians and successful armed robbers.

Back in the sleazy ‘seventies, no Soho strip-bar was complete without the owner’s Silver-something moored against the kerb outside. You have to go all the way back to the swinging ‘sixties to find the last time Rollers were driven by the real cultural elite, when people like Peter Sellers, David Bailey and various Beatles tooled around in ‘em.

Yet the strange thing about Rollers is the way they acquire a sheen of cool over time. I’m not talking about some ‘Y’-reg Silver Spur in Hammerite, white smoking its way between cut-price wedding receptions, but rather proper oldies that have had a chance to acquire a bit of what the trade calls “patina” as they drop through the social strata.

I found a ’71 Rolls Corniche the other day, in a restrained shade of black and wearing a £30K screen sticker. Its understated elegance made the modern equivalent look like a gaudy fairground ride – and for a fraction under a tenth of the cost of a brand-new Phantom Drophead it gives the less financially-advantaged plenty of scope to demonstrate their superior taste.