Yamaha MOTIV.e - a terrible name for a promising car

YOU couldn’t make it up. That simplest of ideas – the small, unpretentious car – might be about to be saved by two of the fastest names in motoring.

The first, Yamaha, you’ll be familiar with. Provided you’re not an aficionado of the company’s musical instruments, the name will probably spring to mind most immediately as the makers of mentalist superbikes, although they’ve actually made more of a contribution to the car world than you might expect. 

If you drive a Ford with a Zetec badge on the back, it means your car’s humble engine got flown halfway around the world so the Japanese firm’s boffins could fiddle with it and make it far more rev-happy than it really ought to have been. Well, at least it was until Ford’s marketing boys got in the act and decided ‘Zetec’ was a trim level, rather than a badge of honour to say your hatchback’s humble engine had been tuned by superbike experts.

The second name, Gordon Murray, will either mean absolutely nothing or get your inner car nut immediately excited. He’s a South African car lover who moved to Britain in his early twenties, and having blessed the F1 world with his expertise than turned his technical know-how to making a string of supercars. Put simply, he is the brains behind the McLaren F1 and the Mercedes-Benz SLR.

What connects the dots? Well, you might remember reading about Gordon Murray’s efforts to almost single-handedly reinvent the way small cars are made. The end result, the T25, was so small you could fit three ofthem into a parking space, but it wasn’t a production car in the conventional sense.

It was a more a sort of open invitation to the car world, and Yamaha’s the first company to take him up on it.

The end result, the MOTIV.e, might have a terrible name but it looks fantastic, with lithe lines that make it stand out a mile from the blobby superminis which dominate the showrooms today. While there’s no word on it being a production model just yet, the prospect of being able to drive to work every morning in a car designed by an F1 genius and finished off by a group of superbike experts does have a certain appeal to it.

All Yamaha need to do now is whip the MOTIV.e’s electric motor out and drop in the 180bhp screamer from the R1. Now THAT would be a small car worth writing home about…

The tantalising tech of the McLaren P1

LIFE ON CARS doesn't really do press releases normally but one with the McLaren Automotive logo on it can't help but brighten up your Wednesday morning.

Yes, it's some technical details of the company's new P1 supercar - spiritual successor to the legendary F1, don'tcha know - for you to gawp at. Thanks to its starring turn at the Paris Motor Show last October we all know what it looks like but it's only now Euromillions winners, city bankers and Chris Evans have got a chance to find out what sort of hardware it's got to back up that striking shape.

Hardware that includes a "substantially revised" version of the MP4-12C's twin-turbo, 3.8 litre V8, meaning it now kicks out no less than 727bhp, which is almost exactly 100bhp more than the McLaren F1 had at its disposal. Not that it stops there, however, because like the rival Porsche 918 Spyder it also uses batteries to make it even more of a belter, with the electric equivalent of 176bhp on offer through a Formula One-style boost system for when a P1's pilot really wants to press on. All of which means you have a combined total of 903bhp. Count 'em.

Admittedly, that's not as much as the world's fastest production car, the Bugatti Veyron Supersport, but then the McLaren's much lighter and is aiming to be the ultimate driving experience rather than simply the one which can notch up the biggest numbers. Oh, and as you can see from the pic of the prototype above its exhaust spits blue flames at you when you open the throttle, which is very cool.

All I can do is keep my fingers crossed for my numbers coming up this Friday night!

McLaren unveils new successor to F1 supercar

 

IF YOU liked the McLaren MP4-12C then you'll love the stunning new supercar its creators have come up with.

The McLaren P1 - which luckily has a slightly less confusing name than its smaller sister - is being billed as the spiritual successor to the company's F1 supercar of the 1990s, which held the honour of being the world's fastest production car for more than a decade thanks to its 627bhp BMW Motorsport V12 and its slippery, Peter Stevens-shaped body.

Ron Dennis, exectutive chairman of McLaren Automotive, said: "The McLaren P1 will be the result of 50 years of racing and road car heritage.

"Twenty years ago we raised the supercar performance bar with the McLaren F1 and our goal with the McLaren P1 is to redefine it once again."


There's no official word on the car's performance - the old F1 could shoot to sixty in 3.2 seconds, before heading onto a top speed of 241mph - but expect it to be significantly quicker than the smaller MP4-12C, which can already hit 207mph thanks to its 592bhp twin-turbocharged V8 engine.

At the moment the P1 is being presented as a "design study" but the company has already said it expects a production version to be unveiled within the next 12 months.

Forget the innovations, this car is our Olympic hope

THE man who brought you the McLaren F1 has managed to come up with another motoring marvel; a car surely designed to confuse traffic wardens!

The T25 City Car is being hailed as the most radical small car in years but while it's promising all sorts of innovative features, it's bound to cause local authorities all over the country a right headache. No matter what you make of it, you can park three of them into a normal parking space.

Not that this is a new claim of course; Smart made the bold claim when it launched its very first car that you could squeeze two of them into a parking space, by parking them nose into the kerb. But in over a decade of them tooling around our towns and cities, I've never once seen anyone actually trying it out.

The problem isn't that a traffic warden is going to get confused and slap a ticket on your tiny T25 if you try out the new sport of triple parking, although I'd love to see the headlines if one did. It's that - unless the new arrival is wildly successful - you're never going to get a chance to have a go in the first place.

For triple parking to work you'd need to have another two drivers who just happen to also own the three-seater city slicker, and need to park in the same place as you do at just the right moment. Unlikely if you're in a hurry to get to work and just need to stick the car somewhere where it isn't going to get clamped or nicked.

Don't get me wrong, I like small cars immensely but I get the sense that the latest creation from Gordon Murray - who also brought you the Rocket sports car and the Mercedes SLR - is going to have to be wildly successful if it isn't going to be viewed by snotty British car buyers as the next Sinclair C5.

But I hope it is a success, because I reckon triple parking is a sport we could be world leaders at. London 2012, anyone?