Video: Life On Cars visits the SMMT Test Day

Champion motoring correspondent David Simister gives his verdict on some of 2011's most important new cars at the Millbrook Proving Ground in Bedfordshire:

Full road tests of all the cars in this video will appear in the Fire Up The... section in the next few weeks.

Maxing it at Millbrook again

IT was somewhere near Milton Keynes that my right foot finally, after 13 hours of near constant-driving, began to throb.

The easiest and quickest way to get from the Millbrook Proving Ground, where I've just spent another day speed-dating cars, to the bit of the north west I call home is to head up the M1. Unfortunately, a nasty accident meant it was shut, so my photographer and I ended up snakng through the nation's favourite New Town instead, through what must be the world's longest traffic jam. But I didn't care, because it ended a day of motoring moments I'll never forget.

In true Life On Cars tradition, there'll be full road tests of each of the 15 cars I tested appearing on here in the coming weeks but for now I can tell you that:

• I've finally found an electric car I like, after driving the remarkably unremarkable Citroen C-Zero.

• The car everyone was itching to get a go in wasn't a Bentley or a Jag, but a Vauxhall. After finding out what the VXR8 (pictured) feels like under full throttle, I now know why.

• The Audi A1 is one of the year's big surprises, but probably not for the reasons you might expect.

• Suzuki could have a hit on its hands with its first ever big saloon, the intruiging Kazashi.

• I don't understand why there aren't more Infinitis out there, after I discovered the G37 Convertible is not only a cosseted cruiser, but surprisingly good fun to drive.

• Peugeot, the people who brought you the cracking RC Z last year, are still on a roll. The 508 is a motorway machine par excellence.

• I think, after much searching, I've found the true successor to the slightly loopy Bond Bug of the Seventies.

• The Citroen DS3 Racing, which is one of my favourite cars of last year fitted with an enormous turbocharger, an absolute blast to drive. So much so that one of the other journalists crashed it.

But the real star of the day, unbelievably, was the Rover 200 I'd used to get there. Sure, it doesn't have the polish, the precision or the punch of any of the new cars I drove but it didn't complain once, munching up hundreds of motorway miles quietly and comfortably.

I'd set off from Southport at 4.30am, snaked through traffic for hours on end in Bedfordshire and covered more than 400 miles, but when I finally rolled up at 11 'o' clock last night I was unruffled, relaxed and full of praise for the Rover. On a day where I'd had all sorts of shiny new cars at my disposal, it was a comfy cruiser which impressed endlessly.

Not bad for a car that cost £300.

Would you buy an electric car if it sounded like a Ferrari?

IT'S the question that's on the mind of every motoring enthusiast. What noise should electric cars make?

This, I'm sure, has been occupying your every waking moment, and probably some of the ones where you haven't been awake. No, I wasn't aware it was a problem either but as it's big enough an issue to make it onto the BBC News, it's probably worth probing into further. Apparently, electric cars need noise so they don't silently run down pedestrians who didn't hear them coming.

Only they're not silent, are they? Anyone who's ever travelled on a Virgin Pendelino train with a hangover will know that electric motors are actually things that shriek when you put your foot down. The electric cars I've been in, thankfully, are a lot quieter, but in their bid to rid the roads of engine clatter they've eliminated the sounds that pedestrians, cyclists and guide dogs alike are trained to recognise. Electric cars, the experts have decided, need to make a noise to save all of these people from a nasty accident. But which?

Among the noises tried out by some academic types at Warwick University include what sounds like the two-stroke clatter of a misfiring moped, some soundbytes from a bad Fifties B-Movie and some ambient white noise I'm sure they've nicked from Brian Eno's back catalogue. But they're missing a valuable opportuity. If you've got make the noise, why not have some fun?

You could, for instance, get your car to play something by N-Dubz or the Black Eyed Peas, but then you run the risk of nobody wanting to travel with you out of sheer embarrassement.

Classical's out too, because while something like Elgar's Nimrod would sound splendid in isolation, I imagine a thousand works from history's greatest composers played simultaneously in a busy city centre would like someone trying to slowly kill you with a violin. So no.

Personally, I like the idea of taking advantage of accoustics nicked straight from the automotive world, and bringing engine noises which sound nice - no, I haven't gone mad - to our electric cars.

With everything from the chilling roar of a Porsche flat six, through the burbly woofle of a Rover V8 right up to the full-throated Pavarotti howl of an Italian supercar, there's plenty to choose from. Better still, you could just press a button on the dashboard if you get bored of it.

An electric car which sounds like an old Ferrari when you start it up? Admit it, you know you want one.

A new BMW I'd happily admit to owning

THERE was, lingering in the classifieds of last week's Champion, an old BMW I really rather liked.

It was the right colour (black), had the right number of doors (two) and was even the right model (the 320i from the late Eighties). Viewed from a quarter of mile away through a welding mask, this was the original M3 which ripped up the opposition on the world's racetracks, and then I remembered why I couldn't consider it. It was a BMW.

Don't get me wrong, everyone I've ever met who's confessed to owning a 3-Series has always turned out to be lovely, funny and intelligent, but still there's the perception among motorists that owners of Munich's finest are the sort of people who'll cut you up on the M57 and think nothing of it. BMWs, bizarrely, are coveted cars which simultaneously suffer from a bit of an image problem.

Was it the company making a complete hash of running Rover that did it? Or the X5 and X6 managing to wind up the world's environmentalists? Or the scooter with the roof they designed to be ridden without a helmet, but thanks to UK law you still had to anyway? BMW make some of the world's best cars, but I'm still not sure whether I'd be brave enough to admit to owning a 3 Series, no matter how cheap it is and how right the spec is. So I turned the page.

I then realised, given a bottomless wallet, there are just four BMWs I'd actually buy; the smooth 5 Series of the mid-nineties, the original M5 from the early Eighties, the very cool 635 CSi and the beautiful bit of art deco design that was the original 328 Roadster of the late Thirties. It's the last of those greatest hits BMW's just released a cover version of, which is the car you see above.

The 328 Hommage might be jam-packed with the German firm's latest gizmos and gadgets but stylistically it owes more to the 75-year-old sports car, which was in turn inspired by the same artistic movement which brought you the Empire State Building and the first streamlined railway locomotives. It's a BMW for art lovers, and art lovers don't tend to be tailgaters.

BMW say it's only a concept car they've created for the sake of showing off but don't be fooled; funnily enough, it has the same basic proportions, size and layout as the Z4 roadster, and that's going to need replacing in a couple of years' time.

I'd start saving up now, if I were you.

It's all in the name

COOL car, the Citroen DS3. A typically trendy magazine crowned it the world's coolest car last year, and I complained loudly that I wasn't cool enough to understand why. Then I drove it and discovered it was brilliant, so it got my vote as well. The Citroen DS3 is cool, even when it's being driven by someone who isn't.

Here's the rub though, it is a cool Citroen and - despite the company's drive to make the DS label a sort of brand within a brand - that's the label it's going to live with. There's nothing wrong with that; I've always thought of Citroen as a cool company, because it's behind everything from the beautiful, Maserati-engined SM, through a succession of CXs, XMs and Xantias, to the wonderful floating steering wheel on the old C4. Get quizzed by your mates down the local, however, and you can't tell them you drive a DS. You drive a Citroen.

My point is that I don't think there's ever been a brand-within-a-brand that's ever worked, because most people are badge snobs and just look at the keyfob. BMW's M cars, for instance, are legendary for being giant-slaying stealth saloons, but tell anyone other than a hardened car enthusiast and they'll only be impressed because you drive a BMW. This is the reason, I reckon, for the Honda NSX being a flop over here. For all its Ferrari-bating performance, fine handling and handsome looks, it was still a Honda.

Remember the Xedos 6 and Xedos 9? Don't worry if you can't, because Mazda couldn't master it either. Despite lots of publicity at the time, the two are now considered just two other cars in the company's back catalogue. It didn't - in this country at least - give the MX-5 a fancy badge, but people flocked to it because it was the right product for the right time. Proof that the car itself matters more than the badge it's wearing.

I can think of just one exception to the rule, which comes from all you Range Rover owners out there. It might be built, designed and sold by Land Rover, but for dinnertable bragging purposes it is always emphatically a Range Rover.

Then again, Citroen could well prove me wrong. If the DS4 and DS5 are anywhere near as good as the DS3, we've got a couple of crackers on the way.

Celebrate your Scottishness with a numberplate. Or not

IT is, in case you haven't been watching the news, a great time to be Scottish.

Sean Connery, the Scottish Roger Moore, once said he'd live to see his homeland regain its independence in his lifetime and lots of us down here laughed and gingerly pointed out that, of course, he lives in LA. But now the SNP have won their majority north of the border and it'd be silly to bet against the prospect of them holding their long-promised referendum on the subject. James Bond himself could yet live to see the day when motorists get past Carlisle and are asked to show their passports at Border Control.

Naturally, the DVLA's chosen to celebrate by offering all true Scots what they've always wanted; a personalised numberplate which spells out WA11 ACE which - provided you don't live in Wigan with a dog called Gromit - is supposed to be the ultimate expression of Cool Caledonia for your car. Only it isn't. It's a vanity numberplate which will make you look like a berk.

Obviously it's meant to read out “Wallace” but it doesn't; what it actually says is “Wa Eleven Ace”, and it's the same story with all personalised plates in this country. One of my own favourites was a Toyota Land Cruiser proudly wearing “G1 LTY” upon its plates, which if you're a gangland crook presumably means “guilty” but is completely unintelligible to anyone else.

I have a set I use at classic car shows, but they're only a £15 bodge job only to stop Internet saddos from cloning my car details if photos of my pride and joy make it into cyberspace. To stump up silly prices for the real, road legal deal - and in the case of WA11 ACE you'll get stung for £2,000 by chaps in Swansea - just shows you have more money than sense.

You can, for instance, pay £10,000 to have 15 0 on your numberplate, but to do that you'd have to dismiss a) buying a brand new Fiesta, b) buying any number of classic cars which would impress the ladies far more or c) giving a substantial amount of cash you clearly don't need to charity. American vanity plates are fine - you can get anything you like for $45, as long as nobody else has it - but in Britain it's a bonkers scheme. It is motoring merchandise gone mad.

To be able to justify having WA11 ACE on your car you would have to be not only a diehard Scot but obscenely rich and so cast-iron cool that a personalised plate won't damage your street cred.

Or Sean Connery.

Prepare to fire up the... Morgan Threewheeler

IF you think three-wheelers are best encapsulated by Del Boy's van then you obviously haven't seen what's on the way from Morgan.

Daringly styled, proudly patriotic and just a little bit mad, it's hard to tell whether the Morgan Threewheeler is a car at all, because it's missing a wheel and it isn't powered by a car engine. Nor is it every day that a company announces it's putting its very first model back into production - that's like Ford replacing the Focus with the Model T - but then Morgan isn't your average car company. It thrives on doing things differently.

Get your head around it having an odd number of wheels and it's business as usual for the proudly British firm, because while the Edwardian styling is a throwback to the three-wheelers which kick-started the company into business, underneath the skin it's very 21st century, packing its punch from a V-Twin Harley Davidson engine that's been breathed on by American tuners S&S. Like watching The King's Speech on an iPad, it's anachronistic but suprisingly effective.

A Morgan spokesperson said:

"When did you last regard a journey by motor car as an adventure? The Morgan 3 Wheeler is launched to bring the fun and passion back to personal transport. Lift the safety catch from the 'bomb release' starter, hear the massive twin cylinders detonate and choose your favourite destination.

"The iconic design of the Morgan Threewheeler has been updated with 21st Century technology. The powertrain is a V Twin fuel injected engine mated to a Mazda 5 speed (and reverse) gearbox. This provides smooth 'get in and drive' convenience with the thrill of extreme performance. The car is a fusion of old and new."

Southport-based Lifes Motors, who act as the region's main dealer for Morgan, reckon it'll be available for sports cars fans to try from July, and with an expected before-tax price of £25,000 it's promising to provide offer a completely different way to get your automotive kicks.

So are three wheels better than four? We'll let you know when we drive it...

The troubled history of Jaguar's supercars

THE car-loving chaps at Jaguar, if history's anything to go by, are about to get themselves into a world of trouble.

You'll probably already know I'm a big fan of the Big Cat - and judging by the accolades the XF, XK and XK keep attracting, so are lots of you - but what you might not be aware of is that it's just announced it's going to go to the trouble of making another supercar. That's trouble as in lots of it, because Jaguar seem to be the unluckiest supercar creators in history.

It all started so well when they fitted a windscreen, some doors and an extra-seat to the iconic D-Type which had done sterling work for them at Le Mans in the Fifties. The raw, race-bred XKSS was the GT3 RS of its day, thanks largely to its streamlined shape and a meatier version of the company's XK straighr six which mustered no less than a mighty 250bhp. Or rather it would have been had the factory not caught fire in 1957. They made 16.

Its Sixties successor, the mid-engined XK13, would have been a better-looking GT40 baiter had it ever made the step from racing prototype to actual road-racer, but sadly that never happened because the rules for GT racing changed, making it obsolete before it could tear a track up in anger. They made just the one of those, and that ended up shedding a wheel at 140mph a couple of years later on the banking at the MIRA test track. Rumours that the number 13 is somehow unlucky remain unfounded.

In fact, the only Jaguar supercar you're likely to recall is the XJ220, which was, the company proudly proclaimed at the height of the late Eighties supercar boom when they showed off the concept version would have a V12 and four-wheel-drive. The production version had two-wheel-drive and a V6 - even if it was a rally-bred one with 542bhp - so people tried to pull out of their investments, which got so bad Jaguar ended up taking some of them to court. Still, it was the world's fastest production road car... until Mclaren unveiled the F1. It was beautiful and brutally fast, but it was a CD Walkman in an iPod world.

A couple of years later, even as the last of the XJ220s lingered unloved in the showrooms, they had another bash with the XK180 concept car - a car so beautiful I still have the scale model on my mantlepiece - but Ford, who owned Jaguar by that point, told us motoring enthusiasts that it was a birthday present to celebrate Jaguar's sports car heritage and wasn't for sale. Ever.

That's how the company had left things supercar-wise until this week when it confirmed the C-X75, which wowed crowds at the world's motorshows last year, will go into production (minus the fantastic gas turbine engine technology, it's already admitted). It's eco-friendly, it'll get to sixty in less than three seconds, it'll do upwards of 200mph but more importantly just look at it.

So it's a stunning supercar with green credentials and a Jaguar badge, and absolutely everyone will want one. What could possibly go wrong?

Prepare to fire up the... revised Jaguar XF

LIGHTS do a lot to define the look of a car.

Take the Jaguar XF. It's a handsomely-proportioned success story that's done an awful lot to bring one of Britain's favourite car makers up to date, but most pundits agreed that among its very few weak points were the clumsily-styled headlights, which were a bit of a let down after the sharply-sculpted ones which appeared on the original C-XF concept car which previewed the executive saloon.

It's obvious Jaguar secretly agreed, because after a mid-life facelift the big cat's finally got the nose it deserves, not only improving on the aesthetics of its immediate predecessor but also moving it closer to the look of the bigger XJ saloon, launched last year.

Don't think it's a case of a quick nip and tuck for the BMW 5-Series rival, though, because work's been going on beneath the Jaguar's bonnet too. For the first time there's now a 2.2 litre diesel engine, which makers Jaguar Land Rover reckon is going to account for the bulk of the freshly-revised XF's sales, along with a new eight-speed ZF automatic gearbox and an innovative Stop-Start system.

The XF might be - whisper it softly - related to the old S-Type beneath the skin but that's no bad thing, because with the latest facelift Jaguar's got a luxury car contender which is both modern enough to take on the competition and look good while its doing it.