Qoros leads the way for safer Chinese cars

A GROUP of European safety experts have awarded their highest accolade to a Chinese-built car for the first time.

These days a five star rating from Euro NCAP is a big selling point on new cars, so Qoros will be delighted that its latest saloon, the 3, passed the safety tests with flying colours. Euro NCAP also gave Kia its latest five-star rating, after the Carens people carrier impressed the testers.

If you want to know how your car performed go to www.euroncap.com

VW's electronic nannying makes me want to rage against the machine

IT’S a debate that 21st century philosophers ought to be debating. Is it right to reprimanded by your car?

I was thinking this last weekend, when – having successfully navigated 65 miles across two different counties – the electronic brain of the Volkswagen Polo I’d borrowed decided to give me some help with parking. Help, incidentally, that I hadn’t asked it for.

“LOOK!” the digital readout on the dashboard screamed. “SAFE TO MOVE?”

The Polo might have gained a bit of girth over its 40 year career, admittedly, but it’s still what I’d call a small car. Even Maureen from Driving School could master it. Yet the Polo’s electronic brain, in its better wisdom, decided it needed to remind me anyway that I need to look before I back into a parking space.

It gets worse. Germany’s supermini of choice also decided that the last thing I needed while backing up a small hatchback was music distracting me from the job in hand, so it automatically turned the radio down and steadfastly refused to let me turn back up again.

Katy Perry’s roar, it insisted, would be a distant hum for the duration of the parking. Drivers with tasks as dangerous as a bay park deserve not the dulcet tones of Russell Brand’s ex-wife!

I got out of the Polo a bit peeved, wondering whether I’d somehow annoyed it earlier on with a fluffed gearchange or a cheeky overtake, and it’d decided I was an idiot and therefore needed all the help I could get. Despite it being a sturdily-built, family-friendly package that’s blessed with tidy handling and restrained good looks, my overall verdict on the Polo is that it’s never good for a car to be patronising.

True, drivers too stupid to put on their seatbelts deserve the book – and some safety beeps bonging out of the dashboard – thrown at them, and even I’ll grudgingly admit the high pitched whine almost every modern motor makes when you forget to turn the lights off has saved me the occasional flat battery. When I’m driving, however, I’m the boss and I’ll reverse however I choose to. If I prang an L-reg Fiesta in the process – and, in five years of driving, I’ve never yet come close – then that’s my lookout.

I suspect that, hundreds of miles away, in a bunker in deepest Wolfsburg, some VW engineers decided to instil the Polo with its annoying Nanny State tendencies in a bid to avoid Polo owners going to Claims Direct in about ten years’ time because they’ve reversed into pedestrians. Maybe it’ll become compulsory in the distant future, and for someone who takes pride in how they drive, that worries me.

Given the choice between cars which constantly tell you what to do, and Katy Perry, I know which I’d pick.

Left hand drive opens you to a world of motoring gems

IT was on the rain-lashed lanes of the Ribble Valley that I had a bit of a motoring epiphany the other day.

Normally, the schlep along the A59 from Harrogate, through the Pennines and over the border into the Red Rose County isn’t exactly the most insurmountable of motoring challenges, even on a drizzly Tuesday afternoon when the grey skies make you feel like you’re driving through an old Joy Division record. This particular trip, however, was different.

For the first time ever I’ve been out on British roads in a left-hand-drive car. Not only have the good people of Clitheroe and Skipton survived, but it’s opened me up to a whole new world of automotive opportunity!

Up until now, I’ve always been just a little bit apprehensive about left-hookers. For starters, if a car company simply can’t be bothered to move the steering wheel to the right hand side, it indicates they’re not all that confidently we Brits would have wanted it anyway.

Take, for instance, all those Cadillacs and Corvettes which are relaunched here every couple of years, and always rack up sales figures you can count using your fingers. Surely, if the Americans were that confident in the cars, they’d offer it to us with right hand drive? The other thing is that while I’m happy at the wheel of everything from a Smart ForTwo to a Jeep Grand Cherokee, the idea of being sat on the wrong side of the road, in real world conditions, scared me a bit.

After trying out a left-hand-drive Suzuki on a test track a couple of years back and finding the experience strangely alienating, I really wasn’t sure I’d want to try it out on real British roads. It turns out, however, that the perfect treatment for my mild phobia of left-hand-drive proved to be a dash across the Pennines in a Chevrolet Corvette.

Not only is it more of a four-wheeled-event than a car, thanks largely to its easygoing V8 and cartoonish styling, but being on the wrong side of the cockpit wasn’t as nerve-racking as some armchair critics might have you suggest.

Embracing cars with left-hand-drive opens you up to potential ownership of everything from the original Renault Twingo to the Ferrari F40. It means the BMW E30 M3 and the Lancia Delta Integrale are not fiendishly inaccessible. Perhaps, most pertinently, it means the car the Mazda MX-5 should have been – the beautiful Fiat Barchetta – could be on your driveway for less than two grand.

If you can drive a car, you can definitely drive a leftie. It really isn’t as hard as it might look.

Alfa Romeo 4C is finally ready for the UK

It might have been a long time coming, but Alfa Romeo has finally confirmed the UK details of its striking 4C sports car.

The company said that the mid-engined coupe will cost £45,000 when it goes on sale next month, and will use a new turbocharged 1.8 litre petrol engine producing 240bhp. With the car weighing less than a tonne, Alfa expects the car to hit 60mph in just 4.5 seconds before rocketing on to a top speed of 160mph.

Just 3,500 will be brought into the UK, with the cars being delivered next year.

Why The Goodwood Revival is a motoring event every petrolhead should visit

THIS week I’ve managed to achieve something entirely new. I’ve been complimented by some Belgians, and it’s all thanks to a borrowed hat and a jacket bought in a charity shop in Southport.

Our continental chums had pulled up at something called the Goodwood Revival in an assortment of old Austin-Healey and Porsche sports cars, dressed like extras from Goodnight Sweetheart. They took a fleeting glimpse at the riot of tweed, smiled knowingly, and one of them, who’d just emerged from the cabin of a Jaguar XK120, said it all. “Fantastic outfit”!

The Belgians, the Dutch and the Swiss – and, to be fair, most of the English too if the nearby traffic jams were anything to go by – had all made a beeline for this corner of the deepest Sussex countryside. I reckon quite a few petrolheads in Sefton and West Lancashire did too, to check out what has to be the highlight of my motoring year to date.

The Goodwood Revival is one of those things you have to do at least once, because it’s quite unlike any event I’ve ever been to. To badly paraphrase an office cliché, you don’t have to wear period costume to go, but it helps. The whole weekend is designed to wind the clock back to about 1966, to a time when people would tune into the wireless on their Ford Anglia to catch the latest Cliff Richard record.

It’s marvellously silly, of course, but when you’re battling through a crowd of hippies, Teddy Boys and RAF airmen fresh from the Battle of Britain in a bid to get a glimpse of an E-type Jaguar, you really wouldn’t be In The Mood if you’d turned up in a GAP t-shirt and a pair of Levis.

As my mission there was to help get a hot report on all the action into the latest edition of Classic Car Weekly, I went overboard with the 1950s Fleet Street look, and brought along a tweed jacket which I’d bought from a charity shop in Southport the previous weekend. Combined with an equally tweed hat I’d borrowed off a mate, I actually felt like I’d wandered through the gates and back in time fifty years.

In fact, the retro attire helped me grant me an audience with perhaps the best known car of the Sixties – the very same Aston Martin DB5 used by Daniel Craig in Skyfall! I know Goodwood is miles away and the idea of going to a car show in fancy dress might sound ridiculous, but it’s worth it for the spectacle of seeing no less than 27 Ford GT40s in a row while a Supermarine Spitfire thunders overhead. I cannot recommend donning the tweed and going to Goodwood highly enough.

As Harold Macmillan might have put it, you never had it so good.

Read this week's edition of Classic Car Weekly for a full report on all the highlights and racing action from the Goodwood Revival

Mondeo takes on the Lake District

 

THEY criss-cross the Cumbrian mountains around Derwent Water, chucking in plenty in the way of tight corners and challenging inclines. They give just about any car 23 miles of some of the most challenging motoring in Britain.

They are the Honister and Newlands Passes, and they turned out to be the perfect place to put the Mondeo to the test.

Earlier this week you might have read that I've added a 51-plate Ghia X - bought for a grand - to the Life On Cars fleet, meaning I've got more in-car gadgets at my fingertips than I've ever normally been used to. Admittedly, one of them's aready given up the ghost, with the six-CD autochanger refusing point blank to either play shiny musical discs or go hunting over the airwaves for BBC Radio 2, but replacing it with a single-CD job means I can at least take advantage of the superbly crisp speakers. I'm also particularly loving the cruise control system, which meant the blast up the M6 up to the Lake District was astonishingly easy work.

 

Yet once I'd peeled off the motorway and found some proper roads to play with, it was one thing in particular which really stood out on the Mondeo. The 145bhp from its 2.0 litre, 16 valve engine.

Out on the really demanding roads between Keswick and Buttermere, the leather-lined family favourite was an absolute revelation. Admittedly, the best thing I've ever piloted along these mountain passes was a brand new Lotus Elise S, closely followed by an original Mini and my old, much-missed MX-5, but the Mondeo impressed me hugely through its combination of mid-range torque to blast you up the steep straights, and Focus-but-bigger dynamics to keep me entertained through the bends. How could something so big and so heavy, I wondered, be so much fun?

It might not be the definitive gospel of driving fun - for that, you've really got to go for something lighter, smaller and more specialised - and pushing on is only ever going to give you mild understeer, but the Mondeo more than survived trial by Cumbria, with the tough and twisting roads showing it's got a fun streak running through its steering and handling.

The best bit about visiting Cumbria, however, is that when you've finishing haring around the mountain passes you can go to the Lakeland Motor Museum, which I've already mentioned is a superb afternoon out even if you aren't a petrolhead.

Among the highlights, for me at least, was checking out the Land Rover Series One used as a support vehicle during Donald Campbell's world speed record attempts on land and water, fittingly finished in Bluebird colours.

Even though the Mondeo's impressed me hugely with its speed, its handling and its gadgets, I know which I'd rather have in my dream garage!

Prepare to fire up the... Kia pro_cee'd GT

FAST, frantic, furious and just a little bit front wheel drive. There are certain qualities you need if you’re looking a bit of hot hatch heaven.

Regular readers will already know I’m a big fan of family hatches made fruitier through revvier engines, bigger suspension and sportier suspension, and while there have been a couple of rear-drive and four-wheel-drive deviations it is by and large a recipe for motoring fun that’s worked a treat for more than 40 years. In fact, more than 50 years if you count the original Mini Cooper – which was only ever a two-door saloon, of course – as the one that started it all.

Now the Koreans are having a crack with – unless any automotive anoraks out there can suggest otherwise – the country’s first fully-fledged hot hatch, the Kia pro_cee’d GT. The outward signs are that it’ll have the firepower to take on the establishment, thanks to a trick taken straight from chapter one, verse one of The Hot Hatch Bible; strap a ruddy great turbocharger onto your engine of choice, in this case Kia’s 1.6 ‘Gamma’ petrol lump. The end result is 201bhp and – if we’re being really petrolhead about it – a power to weight ratio of 157bhp per tonne.

It’s also got a seven year warranty and a keen starting price - £19,995 – in its favour but what really gets it for me is the way it looks. Kia’s head honcho of styling these days can count the original Audi TT among the achievements on his CV, and while I’m not going to pretend the pro_ceed’s shape is quite THAT swoopy, it’s not one that’s going to give your children nightmares either.

I can’t wait to get a go, and I’ll let you know whether it’s on the ball dynamically as soon as I do. Would you opt for a Kia hot hatch as your motoring weapon of choice in your next battle at the lights?

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Audi - the tailgater's wheels of choice these days

Did you hear about the new species scientists discovered the other day? Apparently, there’s a new type of shark, which has emerged in a remote spot of sea just off Indonesia, which ‘walks’ along the ocean floor.

In the interests of science, I’d like to put it to the boffins at the Natural History Museum that I’ve found its motoring equivalent, right here in the UK. The Greater Spotted Tailgater, or Secuutus Major to give it its scientific Latin name, has existed for decades in the warm, inviting habitat of motorway outside lanes for generations, but it’s only in the past few years that a new variation of this most annoying of motoring breeds has evolved.

Specifically, the Greated Spotted Tailgaters who drive Audis, meaning the above image is now plastered across rear view mirrors right across Britain.

Not that long ago, history will recall, Audis were driven by nice people who wanted something a tiny bit tidier than the equivalent Volkswagen. My late granddad had a 100 Avant and it really was the epitome of respectable middle classness, a useful, family-friendly estate without the antique dealer connotations of its Volvo and Mercedes contemporaries. At that time, the Greater Spotted Tailgater’s wheels of choice were 3 Series and 5 Series BMWs, and you knew when you saw the Munich motors’ quad headlights flashing at you from behind that you were incurring their wrath.

Things, however, have changed, and I blame the Audi TT. Ever since the gorgeously swoopy coupe started gracing the showrooms 15 years ago, the rest of the range has basked in the glow from its chrome detailing and become a bit cooler as a result, bit by bit attracting the sort of people who used to buy BMWs. The figures speak for themselves; in the past year alone, Audi sales are up by almost 10%.

The sales rises, combined with ever sharper and more aggressive styling updates, means something that’s struck me every time I’ve every time I’ve ventured out onto a motorway’s outside lane in the past two years – almost immediately you are swamped by tailgaters in cars with four rings on their radiator grilles. Don’t get me wrong; there are still lots of nice people happily trundling to the shops and back in their Audis, in the same way it was wrong to label every BMW owner as a lane-hogging loon ten years ago.

Yet the tailgating brigade have, by and large, taken up Audis as their wheels of choice, and the range is a bit less on my motoring radar as a result. The only truly cool Audi you can buy now, I’d contend, is the A7 because it’s not a big seller. Which means Mr and Mrs Tailgater don’t tend to wind people up with them.

If I had a pound for every time an Audi-driving middle management type has sat two feet off my back bumper, I’d have roughly £13,790 by now. Which, incidentally, is the entry level price for an A1.

A new arrival on the Life On Cars fleet!

A full flotilla of electric windows, heated leather seats, cruise control, a heated front windscreen and a stereo that swallows six CDs at any given moment.

That's the sort of specification that would've made an early Lexus owner a little envious, and that's before I get to the electrically adjustable seats, the electric sunroof and air conditioning that leaves you cooler than Steve McQueen on a skiing trip. It also comes with plenty in the way of mid-range whallop from beneath the bonnet, and a dynamism that'll make a BMW owner blush (even though they'd never to admit to it).

Welcome to the club class world of the Ford Mondeo 2.0 Ghia X. Specifically, the one I've just bought. For a grand.

Why have I gone for a Blue Oval badged family saloon, particularly when I'm not a family man? Firstly, because the car that's been my everyday wheels of choice - my Rover 214SEI - is approaching the end of its life as a useful commuting tool. It's been a fine companion and I've grown to love its easygoing vibe, its tasteful half leather seats and plastiwood trim, and its utter refusal to break down, even in a snowdrift in deepest Cumbria. But ever since my offices moved from Southport to Peterborough and my new place of residence became the outside lane of the A1, this £300, 17-year-old slice of Anglo-Japanese engineering has been operating beyond its brief.

What I really needed, I figured, was something with oomph sufficient to deal with all the motorway work I've been assigned of late. A task the Mondeo was born to tackle.

My particular car might have done more than 100,000 miles in its dozen summers of existence, but it's also been serviced on the dot by the only owner it's had from new, and had every worn component replaced with a near religious devotion to reliability. As a result, it actually feels tighter than some cars I've driven with half the mileage.

More importantly - and to revisit something I wrote earlier this year - everyone I know who really knows their stuff on cars rates the Mondeo. The Great British Public might have moved to the Nissan Juke at one end and the 3-Series BMW on the other, leaving the Ford favourite lingering in a sales figures no man's land, but every Mondeo has always demonstrated that family cars can be finely balanced things which revel in a good corner or two. A finely balanced thing which, by the way, comes with absolutely every gadget you could possibly want - most of which are expensive extras in a BMW 320i.

So was I right to opt for a Ford as the Rover's eventual successor? Is it a belting saloon car bargain? Or have I bought a 12-year-old, 108,000 mile breakdown catastophe just waiting to happen?

Watch this space...