Life On Cars highlights of 2013

2013’s been a petrolhead year defined largely by three words for me – Classic Car Weekly.

Thanks largely to landing my dream job in full-time motoring journalism back in April, most of the motoring experiences Life On Cars has encountered have involved blasting into the past in cars which are usually older than I am. This year’s been an incredible automotive adventure, taking me everywhere from the Scottish Highlands to the southern coast of Spain in search of classic car stories. I can reveal, however, that the issue which got Life On Cars readers talking the most this year was rooted firmly in this blog’s home in the North West; the ongoing saga of whether the Woodvale Rally will ever return to RAF Woodvale.

Some of the highlights from a year peppered with petrolhead moments you might be familiar with – others, unless you’re a regular reader of Classic Car Weekly, you probably won’t be. Here are ten of the moments I’m not going to forget in a hurry…

1) Discovering it’s never too cold to drive with the roof down

January is normally a time for wrapping up warm, snuggling up on the sofa and nudging the thermostat into firmly toasty territory. It definitely isn’t the time for heading into a totally deserted corner of the North Wales countryside and dropping the roof on a (much-missed) Mazda MX-5. The temperature, indicating by the mate’s Saab 9-3 following closely behind, was a chilly -1 degrees Celsius.

Not that I cared, because the MX-5 on those roads was a blast. If you’ve got a convertible, wrap up warm, drop the hood, and get out there!

2) Blasting across the New Forest in a Jaguar XK150

Considering it was only my second day at Classic Car Weekly, this was definitely the sort of motoring journalism small boys dream of – a classic Jaguar with lines so fluid you could almost drink them, empty roads to enjoy it on and an incredibly beautiful bit of England to soak up at the same time.

To be honest, I was expecting another Jaguar I drove that same afternoon – the first E-type I’d ever experienced from behind the wheel – to be the highlight, but it was the simpler charms of the older XK I’ll never forget. The howl of the XK straight-six as I nailed it through the New Forest is something that’ll stay with me forever.

3) Listening to this engine

 

Regular readers will already know I’m well acquainted with the charms of the MG BGT. You might also know that – thanks to a childhood spent in the company of old Range Rovers – that I’ll never get tired of listening to the lumbering burble of a Rover V8 engine.

Seeing and hearing the two in the same package for the first time, however, was a treat for the eyeballs and eardrums alike. Hit play on this short video I made, and see what I mean…

4) Finding out the only way is Up!

An ongoing joke at Classic Car Weekly is that I’ve driven the VW Up pool car not just more than anyone else, but probably more than I have my own cars this year!

While I found myself behind the wheel of Wolfsburg’s 1.0 litre wonder for all sorts of trips to cover shows in the North West, for ferrying colleagues to the Goodwood Revival and – for reasons I’m still not entirely sure of – for a slightly mad return trip to Cornwall, I’ve always enjoyed the fizzy personality of VW’s smallest offering.

For every moment its lack of outright oomph, its tiny boot and its impossibly small fuel tank frustrated me, there was another when the bark of its three-cylinder engine and entertaining handling proved utterly captivating. Put it this way – it is the sort of city car that doesn’t feel outclassed on the Cat and Fiddle pass.

5) Finally trading up in the repmobile stakes

This time last year, I was lauding the vaguely indestructible qualities of the 1995 Rover 214SEi, which I bought back in 2010 for just £300, and I’ve been treated to more of the same throughout 2013. While it’s gone everywhere from Peterborough and London to Bristol and North Yorkshire without so much of a whisper of breakdown – and with a bit of newfound fame in Classic Car Weekly.

The increasingly noisy transmission whine and the quietly creeping onset of rot, however, showed that after three years the old dog, which I’d only ever bought for smoking around Southport in, was beginning to feel the strain of its new life of shooting across Britain.

After two final missions, visiting Classics On The Green in Watford and the Severn Valley Railway’s classic car day in Kidderminster, I finally traded up to its thirstier-but-faster replacement – a 2001 Ford Mondeo Ghia X.

Finally, I’d put my money where my mouth was and bought the big saloon I’ve always recommended to anyone who’d listen. It’s superb.

 6) Thundering up Blackpool seafront – in a Chevrolet Corvette

If Blackpool is Britain’s answer to Las Vegas, then surely the ideal classic for experiencing the Illuminations is a big, all American classic with a big V8 and an open roof. Cue a 1980 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray, even if getting it to the resort meant conquering left-hand-drive first by thundering across the Pennines from Harrogate to get it there.

It might have had an appetite for Esso’s finest and drive up a cold, rainy seafront involved never venturing past 25mph, but it was the most enjoyable bits of motoring I’ve ever done. Raucous, traditional and just a little bit showy – a bit like Blackpool, then!

7) Driving an Aston Martin for the first time

While it might not have been the car I enjoyed driving most in 2013 – take a bow, Suzuki SC100 ‘Whizzkid’ – there is a certain pub brag factor about getting behind the wheel of an Aston Martin for the first time. Particularly if it’s a Timothy Dalton-era V8 which uses its 5.3 litre V8 to play a never-ending game of tug of war with the horizon. After doing my best not to get distracted by the James Bond connotations, I found myself truly enjoying its burly demeanour and its thunderous engine note. 2013 also saw me driving my first Rolls-Royce.

Maybe 2014 will be the year I finally get to pop my Ferrari cherry?

8) Seeing Life On Cars printed in a national publication

 Since its launch way back in 2009, Life On Cars has been limited to this humble motoring blog, a series of online emagazines and a weekly column in The Champion series of newspapers in the north west. Seeing a column from Yours Truly printed in Classic Car Weekly back in August, then, was a particularly proud moment. It’s also been great to continue contributing my views to The Champion on a weekly basis, even if a lot of the time those reflections have been e-mailed in from deepest Cambridgeshire!

9) Dressing up in a silly outfit at the Goodwood Revival

I already knew the Goodwood Revival is an unashamed nostalgia trip into the high-octane era of motor racing in the Fifties and Sixties. What I didn’t know, however, was how much fun it is, or how seriously the period charm gets taken. Luckily, I’d donned my best tweed in a semi-successful attempt to look like a period newspaper reporter, as you can see from the not-at-all disturbing shot, and spent three days lapping up the best-before-1966 feel of it all.

Weirdly, thanks to the rigours of helping to produce a bumper report on the show, I didn’t see a single race during a weekend of historic motorsport, and yet I still fell in love with the event. In fact, the only thing which ruined it slightly was the minority of visitors who chose to turn up in tracksuits and trainers. Ban them!

 10) Finding out Petrolhead is a universal language, wherever you go

Until now, my passion of taking pictures and chatting to people at car shows has been limited largely to the North West, but this year my show visits have spanned the nation – and further afield. By far and away the bit of being a car nut I love most is chatting to people about the classics they own, and finding out why it is they love the cars they do. It’s a passion which car lovers, whether they’re in the Scottish Higlands, the North West, the heart of London or tranquil towns in the West Country, have all shared.

It even works abroad too, as a trip to Barcelona to cover Auto Retro proved. Even if the people there, while fluent in Petrolhead, had virtually no grasp of English. Ooops!

 Look out for more of David Simister’s motoring mishaps in both Classic Car Weekly and The Champion throughout 2014. Life On Cars wishes both of its readers a happy New Year

Vauxhall launches four new special edition models

VAUXHALL has launched new, more lavishly-equipped versions of no less than four of its models.

The company said this week it has launched the new twists on the Corsa, Astra, Astra GTC and Insignia, called simply the Limited Edition versions, which include up to £2,000 worth of what were previously optional extras as standard.

The cheapest version, based on the Corsa, has a starting price of £8,995. To find out more about the Limited Edition range go to www.vauxhall.co.uk

Seven cars shortlisted for European Car of the Year 2014

SEVEN very different cars have all been shortlisted in a contest to find Europe’s favourite automotive arrival from the past year.

Judges of the European Car of the Year award confirmed this week the Citroen C4 Picasso, Mazda3, Peugeot 308 and Skoda Octavia, which are all family-friendly and focused on value, would be going up against the eco-orientated BMW i3 and Tesla S and the luxurious new Mercedes-Benz S Class.

The winner will be announced at the Geneva Motor Show in March.

Aston Martin and AMG Mercedes confirm engines agreement

ASTON MARTIN has signed an agreement with Mercedes which will see the British sports car using the German firm’s engines in years to come.

The company this week formalised a deal which will see it collaborate with AMG, Mercedes’ official tuning and motorsport division, to bring new V8s to the next generation of Aston’s sports cars.

It ends the company’s reliance on the current Ford-developed V12 and the Jaguar-sourced V8.

What car would Father Christmas drive?

AN AD in last week’s Southport Champion apparently solved a motoring mystery. When the job gets too tough for reindeer, Santa uses an Isuzu D-MAX!

Plugs for Japanese pick-up trucks aside, the question of what the world’s best known delivery man would opt for as his choice of wheels is a surprisingly tricky one to call. In fact, the topic occupied a surprising amount of time with my colleagues at the Classic Car WeeklyChristmas dinner the other day. Yep, I know we should get out more.

Personally, I reckon it’s still open to debate. Largely because I doubt Father Christmas would use any form of motorised transport – not even something as surefooted and spacious as the aforementioned D-MAX – for the job of dispatching all the ponies and Sony Xbox Ones to all the boys and girls who’ve been nice and enough coal to heat Sheffield for a month to all the ones who’ve been naughty.

If Father Christmas actually issued Rudolph and his mates their P45s and did his rounds next Tuesday night with a car, said vehicle would have to have Antonov-rivalling levels of room inside for all the presents, and still somehow be light enough to park on a snowy roof without either crashing through the slate tiles onto the mince pies simmering below or sliding off altogether, falling into the street below and landing The Champion the festive scoop of the century. 

I reckon, boys and girls, that the prestigious job of delivering all the presents can only be done using a dozen reindeer and a sleigh endowed with a TARDIS-esque quality. Particularly because the only way I can think of him doing the job automotively depresses me. Father Christmas clattering up your driveway in a battered old Mercedes Sprinter would ruin the magic of Christmas!

If our bearded chum way up north does own a car, I reckon he’d use it for rather more mundane duties. Popping to the Lapland branch of ASDA, perhaps, or running the elves back from the pub on a Friday night.

I quite liked the idea of Father Christmas, if he’s anything like the grumpy Englishman portrayed in the 1991 cartoon, bobbing about in something like an old Triumph Herald, but it stands to reason that he both lives and works at either Lapland or the North Pole, both of which require the use of something a bit sturdier. Something which is comfy enough for a portly bloke who’s getting on a bit, but can still fight its way out of a snowdrift.

Therefore, after much deliberation, I’ve decided that Father Christmas is a Range Rover man. Merry Christmas!

What's it like to drive a Rolls-Royce?

IT WAS a curious conclusion to reach. The best car in the world was a strangely underwhelming one.

There are certain cherries, if you love driving cars, you’ve just got to pop. Burying the throttle on a REALLY powerful car on a private track, for instance – take a bow, Jaguar XKR-S – is one of them, and unleashing an Aston Martin for the first time is another. It’s also true that, as much as I love getting to the nitty gritty of whether the latest supermini is or isn’t worth your hard earned cash, I’m still waiting to fulfil that schoolboy fantasy of getting behind the wheel of Ferrari.

That’s why I had a certain giddy sense of expectation about driving a Rolls-Royce for the first time.

There’s a lot to be said for Crewe’s missiles. It’s true, for instance, that almost every Rolls-Royce is best experienced from the rear, but that’s a goal anyone who makes it to the church on time or the Northern English standup comedy circuit can experience. For me, the real fun was to be had by heading up to the bridge, and setting a course through the countryside in two tonnes of Silver Shadow.

Did I like it? Definitely. Would I, if I were to become Peter Kay’s more successful protégé, like to buy one? Not even slightly, largely because I’d be forever feeling sorry for the chauffeur.

The Rolls-Royce has a dignified lollop to the way it devours straights (well it would, with a 6.2 litre V8 stationed in the drawing room up front) but if so much as suggest a corner it goes all to pieces. In this sense at least, the Roller lives up to its name – if you’re playing at being a Middle East dictator in the rear seats, the feeling of it floating into a corner isn’t especially pleasant, but from the captain’s chair it’s actually verging on frightening.

That said, there is something to be said about having the Spirit of Ecstasy proudly protruding from your bonnet – especially if, like me, you want to indulge your Thunderbirds fixation – and the quality of craftsmanship on what is after all a forty-odd-year-old car buts modern Mercs to shame.

A modern day Rolls-Royce, of course, would feel completely different, but to be bluntly honest my first experience of the name synonymous with motoring perfection – the wedding trade’s chariot of choice – didn’t exactly float my motoring boat.

 The best car in the world? That’ll be the Jaguar XJ, then.

Audi S3 now available in saloon form

A HOTTED-up version of the Audi A3 will be offered as a saloon for the first time, it has been announced.

Previously, anyone looking to buy the performance-orientated S3 would have been limited to a three-door hatchback or five door estate, but the company is now offering the 300bhp stormer as a four-door saloon, with prices starting at £33,240.

The S3 saloon will go on sale in March, with an al fresco S3 Cabriolet due to follow later next year.

Walking around the NEC Classic Motor Show? There must be another way

Originally published in Classic Car Weekly, 27 November 2013

Ford goes bigger and bolder for the new Ka

FORD’S Ka looks set to be sold in five-door form for the first time, if a show car unveiled this week is anything to go by.

The company used its European unveiling of the new Mustang to showcase a new hatchback with styling strongly influenced by the current Fiesta and forthcoming Mondeo. It is also significantly larger than both the original Ka, launched in 1996, and its 2008 successor.

Ford has said it is committed to a third generation version of the Ka, but has yet to announce when it will arrive in the UK. 

Nissan LEAF now easier than ever to own

NISSAN is aiming to make ownership of its electric cars a little less shocking with a series of new incentives.

Anyone looking to buy its zero-emissions LEAF hatchback can now recharge their car for free at any of its dealerships, borrow a petrol or diesel car for up to a fortnight if they need one, and get free a European breakdown and recovery package if they get into trouble.

Jim Wright,  Nissan Motor GB's managing director, said: "By making firm promises across five key areas we are tackling head on some of the questions we hear from potential customers when considering electric cars for the first time. These commitments deliver unprecedented levels of support to customers and make the LEAF a practical, desirable and affordable reality for many more motorists.

"The pledge to offer LEAF owners a free diesel or petrol Nissan for up to 14 days a year is particularly revolutionary. It means LEAF drivers can enjoy the many benefits of LEAF ownership, such as running costs of just two pence per mile, on their normal daily commute and then, when they’re going on holiday or have a longer trip to make, borrow a car that’s more appropriate to their journey."

The scheme, called the Nissan CARE-EV Leaf Customer Commitment Scheme, is aimed at helping eco-conscious motorists overcome the uncertainties they face when buying an electric car for the first time.

Nissan has sold the LEAF here since 2011, and earlier this year started building the zero-emissions hatchback at its UK plant in Sunderland.

 

The offer is available at all 205 of Nissan’s dealerships across the UK.