The Life On Cars MGB GT: it's finally ready!

A CHAP in a very clean MK3 Cortina - better known as the star of time-travelling cop show Life On Mars - pulled up alongside me and was the first to ask the question.

Was this, the car I was filling up at my local branch of Esso, the MGB he'd read so much about in The Champion? Could the 1972 GT finally be ready, taxed, insured and MOT'd?

I could barely contain the smile. Yes, it's finally ready, it's on the road, and I can finally say what I think of it. Maybe it's just the sunny weather that's graced Southport for the last few days, but it's brilliant.

As a car it's got a completely different character to the Minis and hot hatches I'm used to; whereas they're permenantly fast-paced and frantic in everything they do, the low-slung B's a lazy, lusty old thing which is does few things better than burbling down the country lanes, taking it easy. It can go fast, but it'd really rather you didn't.

Nor is it, as the pictures above show, exactly a concours example of MG's biggest hit but the punters at the country pub I pulled into didn't seem to care. For all the not-quite-there cosmetics (which I've got plans for, don't worry), what was being paraded in front of them was a delicately proportioned, traditionalist sports car in a sunny colour scheme. The open-top Astra parked next to it didn't stand a chance.

The credit for all this has to go to my dad, who has worked tirelessly behind the scenes to get the B back on the road, doing all sorts of James May-esque mechanical things which I don't really understand. Naturally, he'd like the favour paying back in pints.

I wonder if Adnams will let me open a credit line with them?

Lotus takes on Lotus in world's most confusing car deal

THE Lotus vs Lotus rivalry that's hit racetracks around the world in perhaps the most confusing F1 name dispute ever has hit the road.

Anyone who's been following this year's F1 season will already know that thanks to some incredibly boring business tubthumping that Team Lotus, owner of one of the sport's most iconic names, is in direct competition with Lotus Renault, which is actually backed by the Brit sports car maker. All of which means that spectators at Silverstone in July can see, probably for the only time, two completely different cars from two completely different Lotus teams, which are both powered by Renault engines. Confused? Then you're going love the story's latest twist.

The first Lotus team, the one that isn't backed by Lotus, the car maker, has just announced that it's bought Caterham Cars, makers of the iconic Caterham 7 sports car, which is of course directly descended from the - wait for it - Lotus 7 of the Sixties.

Anyone who's ever seen not-at-all-kitsch Sixties TV hit The Prisoner will already know the original Lotus 7 as that dinky little two-seater Patrick McGoohan drove around in before being kidnapped and sent to a strange village which looks suspiciously like Portmeirion in North Wales. Lotus made it right up until 1973 before getting bored with it, and flogging the rights to what was then one their main dealers in Caterham, Surrey. The rebranded Caterham 7, thanks to constant redevelopment, has been a hit ever since.

Naturally, the company's new owners have decided to play up their motorsport links and immediately placed a Caterham in Team Lotus colours next to their F1 car, a move so evocative that they immediately decided to follow this up by offering customers a limited run of Team Lotus Special Edition Caterham 7s.

So what we've now got is a Lotus-designed, Lotus-coloured car made by a company now owned by a Team Lotus which will compete directly for your sports car cash this summer with the Elise, a Lotus-designed, Lotus-badged car made by Lotus, another car company which has given its support to another F1 team called Lotus.

Where will it all end? Probably, I imagine, in a high-flying court case, although if Lotus loses we could end up with the even weirder situation where Caterham is renamed Team Lotus Cars, and the choice of car for anyone keen on their driving boils down to whether you want a Lotus or a Lotus.

My head hurts. I may have to adopt the Lotus position to relax.

The Hillman story with a happy ending

A CLASSIC car owner has been reunited with his rare fuel filler cap after a Champion reader brought it to him after reading our piece in last week's edition.

Geoff Murray, from Lathom, said that a reader based in nearby Burscough had called at his home to give the fuel filler cap for his 1936 Hillman Hawk - one of just seven known to exist worldwide - after reading last week about the rare car component going missing at a nearby petrol station.

“I'm absolutely delighted that I've got the fuel filler cap, which is incredibly rare, back onto the car, so obviously the original article has paid off. I'd only had last week's Champion through my letterbox about five minutes earlier when a man called at the house with the fuel cap,” he said.

“He told me that he'd gone to the same petrol station that day, and as he was paying for his petrol his grandchildren found it, started playing with it and took it home, not realising what it was or how rare it is. He'd completely forgotten about it until he read the piece in last week's edition. If it hadn't been for The Champion, I probably wouldn't have seen it again.”

Last week Mr Murray appealed to Champion readers for their help in finding the filler cap for the 75-year-old car, which he had left at the petrol pumps and driven away by mistake on April 1.

He had resorted to using an emergency filler cap made from plastic but said that due to the rarity of the car, it was unlikely he would ever come across another example of the original chrome filler cap again.

Mr Murray bought the car, believed to be the only open tourer variant of the car in the world, in a partially-restored state in August last year, and showed it to members of the public in Banks earlier this month at the Riverside Steam and Vintage Rally.

My MGB: defeated by the Bank Holiday weekend

ANOTHER week, another reason why my MGB isn't on the road. Only this time, it's been defeated by the Bank Holiday weekend.

This time last week I was a happy chap. The very Seventies sports car had, after what had seemed like an eternity, finally passed its MOT with flying colours. A very dull trip to the DVLA's office up in Preston now meant that it was not only taxed, but taxed for nothing, on account of it being an historic vehicle. Even the cheapo classic car insurance was ready and rolling, meaning all I had to do was jump in, fire up the old girl and drive off into the sunset. Or rather I would have done were it not for the British Bank Holiday.

You see, the slight snag was that the MOT tester noticed it was leaking coolant, which last Thursday we finally traced to being caused by a water pump that may as well have been made of clay. Usually you'd just ring up the following morning, get a new one, and have it fitted an hour later. Unfortunately, the following morning was a Bank Holiday.

In fact, the only day when it wasn't a Bank Holiday was Saturday, when Partco is open for just a few hours in the morning, and, predictably, they didn't have one on the shelves. I don't blame them; would you keep obscure bits for a long-gone sports car in stock for the one idiot who needs them? The upshot is that - as I write this column - a job that should have taken half an hour is now into its fifth day.

This, as anyone who's ever used a Bank Holiday weekend as an excuse to tinker in the garage with their pride and joy, is the nightmare of having shops shut, and I expect with another four day weekend on the way a lot of stout chaps in boiler suits are going to find themselves, thanks to the Royal Wedding, right royally knackered.

Britain's cottage industry of nailing together things in sheds depends on Bank Holiday weekends, so having the shops which supply the stuff shutting for days on end is a nightmare. It's not just cars either; I imagine there must be millions of Handy Andys, Alan Titchmarshes and Fred Dibnahs, who despite finally being freed from their everyday jobs can't buy the bits for their hobby of choice.

I'm not asking for a religious holiday to be hijacked by rampant commercialism to keep some classic car owners happy. I just want my water pump on time.

An apology to the creators of the Triumph Stag

I'VE just realised I've made a cataclysmic cock-up.

Don't worry, Life On Cars service will continue as normal and I'm not about to see the inside of a libel court, but I realised today that I'd made a horrendous mistake with my list of the ten best looking cars of all time.

I'd forgotten about the Triumph Stag.

Regular readers might have already noticed I've got a bit of penchant for traditional British sports cars - I do, after all, own one - but despite my dreams of driving a TVR Griffith when the Champion Euromillions syndicate finally comes good the one model I have on my mantlepiece isn't one of those. It is, of course, a bright red example of Triumph's V8 roadster.

As a car it's always had a bit of a troubled history, which has a little bit to do with being built by British Leyland and a lot to do with the horror stories surrounding its 3.0 litre V8, which Triumph went to lots of expense and trouble just for that one car. The obvious choice would have been the freely-available 3.5 litre V8 available just down the road from their colleagues at Rover, but that's hardly the Triumph way.

If ever I were to buy a Stag I'd almost certainly go for one of the many that's been converted to run the Rover V8, not because it's any more reliable but because it just sounds a lot hornier. As these soundbites, I reckon, prove:

A Triumph Stag with the Triumph V8 fitted from new:

And a Triumph Stag with the meatier Rover V8 it should have been given:

But forget the much-maligned mechanicals and just take in those neat proportions, the Rostyle wheels and the Michelotti styling, which is the reason why it's one of the few 1:18 scale models I have that isn't packed into a box in my loft. It is a stunning, delicately-crafted and timelessly styled sports car, as good looking now as it was 40 years ago.

Anyway, that's my homage to one of the great British sports cars, and my way of making up for a mistake on my part. Won't happen again...

Some car parts you just can't replace

IF you or I lost a car component, we'd simply pop down to Partco or Halfords and order another. But what if your car's more than 70 years old and one of just a few left in the world?

That's the conumdrum one classic car owner in West Lancashire is facing, and he's called for help in finding a petrol tank cap - because it's unlikely he'll ever come across another one like it.

Geoff Murray said that his 1936 Hillman Hawk is one of only seven known to exist worldwide and he lost its petrol cap after pulling in for fuel in Lathom.

Geoff, of Brooklands Grove, Lathom, said:

“With modern cars, the filler cap's usually fixed to the car so you can't leave it by mistake, but with older cars you often have to take them off to fill up. I left it by the petrol pump and drove off.”

“I went back and it wasn't there, so someone may have just picked it up. It's useless to anyone else but for me me it's virtually impossible to replace.”

Mr Murray's Hillman was one of just 300 made by the British company in 1936, and his Open Tourer version is the only one known to exist. He bought the car in August last year and finished off a restoration which its previous owner had begun more than 20 years earlier.

The cap was left at the BP petrol station, on Briars Lane in Lathom, shortly after the car had passed its MOT on Friday, April 1.

The car was still a star attraction at the Riverside Steam Rally, held in Holmeswood last weekend, where many West Lancashire residents visiting the show saw the 75-year-old car.

The classic chrome cap has been replaced with a plastic one, hopefully as a temporary measure. He is appealing for anyone who may have picked up the original cap to get in touch via The Champion.

Let us know by calling 01704 392400 or by sending an email to david.simister@champnews.com

Lost in Yorkshire: Part Two

TECHNICALLY speaking it was a weekend wasted. What I learned was something I already knew: that the best road in Britain is the Buttertubs Pass.

Not that it wasn't fun finding out on the latest in a series of adventures in the Great British Countryside, set this time largely to a soundtrack of squealing tyres and a walkie talkie Sello-taped to the steering wheel. I'm happy to report that none of us, despite my best efforts in the pretty Lancashire village of Dunsop Bridge, got lost. However, I did learn the following:

1) Never do a half-arsed job when checking your car before you leave. This was why I did the entire run in a Rover with one of its brake lights broken and a distinctly unglamorous steel wheel on one corner (I'd forgotten the tyre on the original alloy was knackered). We also had a Mini which permanently needed oil. We got them sorted, but they were still schoolboy errors.

2) Do not stop for lunch at The Anchor Inn, just outside Gargrave on the A65. After waiting more than 25 minutes for fairly simple pub grub, one of our party was served a ham and cheese sandwich which was stone cold on one side and incinerated on the other. He sent it back and was promptly served a second sandwich, which was full of hair. Not nice.

3) By all means do stop for lunch at The Bolton Arms, in the picturesque village of Leyburn. Not only does the beer garden offer a stunning view of the Yorkshire Dales, but the staff are lovely and accomodating and the food is top notch. Thoroughly recommended!

4) If you're taking a party of 12 petrolheads, plan everything with military precision. Otherwise you'll end up stuck in York city centre on a sticky Saturday evening surrounded by refugees from bad hen night parties, wondering why it seems to take an eternity to get a taxi. A particularly poignant lesson if, like me, you're a bit knackered after six hours of solid motoring and fancy a pint on your evening out.

5) The Travelodge in Tadcaster is not as bad as the reviews make it out. After not enjoying the idea of youth hostelling on our previous adventure to Wales, some of our group weren't excited by the idea of cheap-as-chips hotels. But it was nice. No, really, it was.

6) I know a worrying amount about trains, as I found out on our group outing to the National Railway Museum. I'll happily admit to knowing a lot about cars, but should I be able to tell you the High Speed Train is a Class 43 diesel loco hauling a rake of British Rail MK3 carriages? Probably not. I'm sorry.



7) Classic car shows which get organised in York city centre which you didn't know were taking place are well worth the visit, as some of the pictures here show.

Most importantly, it proves that weekends away with your mates are still really good fun. That's why I'm looking forward to the next one.

The clue for cool car names comes from an unexpected source

“SOME of these eco cars have got awful names, haven't they?”

That was what one our subeditors at The Champion asked me after reading a short piece in last week's edition on the Ford Focus Econetic, the greener, leaner version of the Blue Oval's new big hitter. To be honest, I couldn't agree more.

Check out the news pages of any car magazine these days and chances are you'll be washed away by a stream of BlueMotions, Ecoflexes and Econetics, and that's before you come to electric cars with wet, boring names like Leaf and Zoe.

I've said it before and I'll say it again; the names people come up with for eco-friendly cars - as worthy as the vehicles they end up on might be - are awful.

Don't get me wrong, I don't have it in for electric cars, but their slow sales so far show that most Brits have yet to be convinced, and part of the problem I reckon is the pub scenario of having to tell people what you drive. In the same way I couldn't ever see myself admitting to having a Wind - despite it being a great car, I'll let you make your own jokes up - the chances of me proudly proclaiming ownership of an electric car are slashed significantly if it comes with the wrong name.

So far I've only seen two that actually sound vaguely interesting, but despite having the same source of power in common are actually poles apart. The Chevy Volt sounds like something the star of a dystopian sci-fi film might drive, but my favourite by far is the new battery powered Rolls Royce. Whether you call it by its proper title - Rolls Royce Phantom Electric Experimental - or its 102EX codename, it seems to have a name nicked straight from the world of Cold War comic books and action hero fighter pilots. I couldn't care less what it runs on, because it sounds cool.

Yet it seems the idea of giving racy, evocative names to products more suited to the set of The Good Life isn't anything new, and something else in last week's Champion proves it. Flick back through the classified ads section and you'll see the brilliantly named Ace Rallyman and the Swift Corniche up for sale. Despite conjuring up connotations of power, performance and luxury they're not cars. Or motorbikes. Or speedboats. Nope, you're not even close.

They're caravans.

Lost in Yorkshire: Part One

IT WAS when Cheshire Constabulary's finest pulled up behind me that I realised walkie talkies would have been a good idea.

The idea was to head for the hills of North Wales, which you might have read about back in January, but what I hadn't mentioned was the massive cockup as we crossed the Runcorn Bridge. With our convoy split up in rush hour traffic, two of our team took the right lane and two the wrong one. This how I'd ended up parked on a bridge above the M56 with my hazards on, trying to explain to the local Plod how I was trying to spot a lost Mini Cooper on the motorway, which had only minutes earlier escaped the motoring Bermuda Triangle that is the Runcorn one way system.

Anyone who's ever organised a classic car run of any kind will already know what I learned that stressful day; that getting drivers to form a convoy and stick to it is like trying to herd cats. You can plan a route with military precision and offer up page upon page of pointers and directions, but if you're in a strange and unfamiliar corner of the country it's amazing how quickly a traffic jam, a set of roadworks or a confusing roadsign can right royally knacker things up.

So walkie talkies, at £20 a set plus the cost of some sticky tape, could be the best investment I've ever made.

Okay, so strictly speaking the Binatone Latitude 150 is actually a two-way radio rather than a walkie talkie, but more importantly it's as much a tool as it's a toy, as I'm hoping to find out this weekend on the way to the pretty city of York, on our latest adventure.

Some of my motoring mates are already hard at work, thinking of cheesy callsigns and pranks to play to break up the boredom of a three hour slog through the Dales, but what I'm really looking forward to is people having no excuse to get lost.

Will the entire trip disintegrate into a series of silly practical jokes? Will we end up completely lost in a small village somewhere near Settle? Will the sticky tape holding the walkie talkie last the drive out of Lancashire?

Tune in next week to find out...

When Life On Cars met John Pugh MP

Life On Cars has gone from gearbox to ballot box this week after John Pugh, MP for Southport, agreed to be the latest guest on the radio show.

The Liberal Democrat politician has a passion for classic cars, but where does he stand on today's motoring issues?

Cast your vote by clicking the video above...

The VW Beetle: it's time for another revival

STONEHENGE. The Royal Family. Patrick Moore. All things which, like Volkswagen's reinvented Beetle, have seemingly been around since the dawn of time.

You'd forgotten Volkswagen still makes the Beetle, hadn't you? It arrived, in 1998, amid a fanfare of nostalgia, brouhaha and people poised with their flower stickers, desperate to get a bit of the Sixties back, but this time without the acid trip.

With cute, retro looks melded to a modern Golf chassis, it was brilliant. For about five minutes. Then the new MINI came along and suddenly it was old hat. Yet Volkswagen carried on making it and - with technology that the Golf ditched two generations ago - it's now looking about as sophisticated as the Peoples' Car that inspired it.

The problem with the Beetle is that it's a retro car, which means that it'll only ever be fashionable when the era it's trying to evoke is also in fashion, which meant that it was only ever cool for that brief bit of the Nineties when it was first launched. Remember the Chrysler PT Cruiser? The one that looked like a hot rod? Of course you don't, because once the Fifties novelty wore off everyone realised they could buy a roomier and much more practical Renault Scenic for less. The UK just didn't get it.

The only retro cars which have actually pulled off the trick are the MINI and the Fiat 500, but they've managed by being brilliant beneath the skin, and cars that are cheap, well made and good fun to drive NEVER go out of fashion. That's the challenge Volkswagen have got with their long overdue replacement for the Beetle, because otherwise it'll end up having to wait for the Sixties to get groovy again.

Will Volkswagen get it right this time round? Well, you'll have to wait until April 18 to find out, although getting the Black Eyed Peas, best known for mashing old pop records up with the sound of car alarms going off, to promote it probably isn't the best start.

Although for the record I think the company's reviving the wrong hit from its back catalogue a second time round. Where's the reinvented Volkswagen campervan?

April fool!

HERE'S proof that even the most sensible car companies have a sense of humour - a BMW M3 that's been given the Australian outback treatment!

BMW unveiled this pickup version of the M3 earlier today, presumably as an elaborate April Fool's Joke, as the fourth variant of its V8-powered star, which has already proven a hit with keen drivers as a saloon, coupe and convertible. However, this new version, which is the first ever M3 to come with a tow hitch, looks strangely similar to the small pickups popular in Australia, where they are affectionately referred to as “utes”.

BMW has said that despite its “unquestionable stand-out qualities” it will remain a one-off destined to be used as a workhouse for BMW's M Division, which makes M versions of the 1 Series, 3 Series, and 5 Series.