The wonders of Wales from behind the wheel

YOU might not know it yet, but there’s a reason why they call the limestone cliffs that linger over Llandudno the Great Orme.

The official website of the café complex sitting at the top of this stunning piece of seaside geology recommends that you reach it either by a Victorian tramway or Britain’s longest cable car ride, but both, I reckon, sell the place short. If you want to enjoy the journey then you’ve got to head for the twists of turns of the access road instead. That’s what makes it great, and there’s no better way to enjoy it than in an open-top sports car.

St Tudno’s Drive is like a stretch of tarmac that’s been stolen from a mountain pass in the Alps by people who love driving and then draped over a British backdrop for our own enjoyment, so exciting are the series of crests and hairpins which catapult you from sea level to an eatery almost 700 feet above. It’s places like these that make motoring exciting, and the whole of North Wales is awash with them.

Don’t think my trip to one of the most captivating corners of the British Isles was just for fun, though; I was here for a birthday bash, because it’s 20 years since the first examples of Mazda’s MX-5 started arriving on our shores. Time flies when you’re having fun.

You have to remember what small roadsters were like in 1990 to appreciate the original MX-5’s impact - apart from the front wheel drive Lotus Elan, there weren’t any - and after years of no sports cars at all drivers were suddenly treated to an soft-top, rear wheel drive roadster which reminded us of decades ago when everybody drove around in MGBs, Triumphs and Austin-Healeys. It might have been a shameless copy of the original Lotus Elan, but nobody cared because they loved it.

Two decades later and almost every car company now offers its own sports car, but even though the latest 2.0i Sport Tech version is a little flabbier than the lithe original it’s still an absolute delight to drive. It’s something it actually seemed keen to show off on the way up the Horseshoe Pass, an inviting road heading between Ruthin and Llangollen. By combining its flick-of-the-wrist gear change with inspiringly precise steering, it just goes where you want it to.

If anything I reckon it’s actually better than Britain’s own old sports cars, because unlike them the MX-5 actually works and means you can spend your weekends in the countryside, rather than the garage. Just make sure you share the driving with whoever you take along for the ride, otherwise they’ll forget it’s a driver’s car and start going on about the interior being too cramped, the boot too small and the ride too firm.

It’s also got the same problem most convertibles have when it comes to roof-up visibility, but I reckon the Mazda’s folding fabric roof is easier and faster than the metal most of its rivals come with. You can have metal origami as an optional extra, if you insist, but while you get added security it’s slower to shelter you and it weighs the little lightweight roadster down.

While it does have just the two seats it’ll still do everything you’d expect a £20,145 car to do, and although I wasn’t expecting it in something so single-mindedly sporty it was great to have toys like cruise control, a CD autochanger and a Bluetooth system at my fingertips. But you’ll forget all of them on a cross-country blast, because even when it’s not its birthday the Mazda’s partying, and you’re always invited.

That’s the feeling I got when I spotted a group of MX-5 owners out on their own adventures in one of Snowdonia’s more remote valleys, because they all smiled the smile you get when you’ve got a sports car at your disposal. Even though they owned MX-5’s from the model’s early days they all agreed on that what they own is so much more than a way of getting to work and back. It’s a go-kart with a CD player.

There are roomier, comfier cars out there but if you drive simply because you enjoy it you can’t go far wrong with an MX-5, particularly if you’re the sort of person who deliberately takes the long route just so they can go over the Llanberis Pass on the way.

It might be 20 years old, but the Mazda MX-5 isn’t as good as the British sports cars of yesteryear. It’s much better than that.

Read the full story in the Autumn edition of GR8Life magazine, out now, and in the Life On Cars magazine.

Victory, but is it for Peugeot?

WHICH is the fastest way of getting between Settle and Carlisle: Britain’s most famous railway, or a car?

That’s the question I posed earlier this month on Life On Cars, and why I found myself in the heart of the Yorkshire Dales yesterday, with a plush Peugeot cabriolet for company. I was impressed by its fiendish clever entertainment system and the latest in a long line of the company’s folding metal roofs but more importantly, its 150bhp means it’s a quick car.

Quick enough to win, it seems.

Just to clear things up; both the Leeds to Carlisle train and the Peugeot 207 CC GT THP 150 left Settle station at exactly quarter-to-four, and there was no cheating, speeding or foul play involved. Just two very different routes, the decision to keep the Pug’s roof up, and an outcome which wasn’t nearly as close as I was expecting.

I was expecting girlfriend and snapper Conny Kaufmann to be waiting for me at the main entrance of Carlisle station, our finishing point some 72 miles to the North, when I’d finished my blast across the A65 and up the M6, but she was nowhere to be seen. I couldn’t believe it, but when I asked the station staff the train was still fifteen minutes away!

It gave me plenty of time to pull up, stroll to the platform and look smug as the same train I’d seen on the platform at Settle chugged into Carlisle, but what impressed me far more than winning was the car itself. A slight blunder on Peugeot’s booking form meant I was expecting a hot hatch rather than a cabriolet, but from the way it drove it seems the French firm may have forgotten too. Firm and sporty with precise handling, with the roof up I could have sworn I was at the helm of a mild-mannered GTi.

So there you go; a car is quicker between Settle and Carlisle than the Settle to Carlisle Railway. And what a car to prove the point.

Read the full feature in the summer edition of GR8 Life magazine and check out Life On Cars later this week for more driving impressions of the Peugeot 207 CC

Italian Job Mini Run: More information

MORE information on the Mini display in Parbold to preview a cinema screeening of The Italian Job is available by clicking on the picture above, to hear my latest visit to Dune FM.

The run, in case you didn't know, takes place on May 16 and visits the Parbold Picture House, and I urge anyone interested in taking part to get in touch via either this blog or by sending me an email at david.simister@hotmail.co.uk.

I also let listeners of Live From Studio One know more about my race with a train between Settle and Carlisle, which I'm really, really excited about. I'll be posting the results up this weekend, as soon as I know the outcome.

Go on, listen to it. You know you want to...

Fire up the... Morgan 4/4

A version of this review appears in the December 2009 edition of GR8 Life



IF YOU or I were 100 years old, chances are we wouldn’t be anywhere near as quick, agile or downright good-looking as Morgan’s motors.

In fact, if the Malvern manufacturer’s series of sports cars had aged like the rest of us they’d no doubt be fighting off wrinkles and middle age spread. Instead, they’re fighting off the cream of the sports car world with a blend of space-age mechanics and bygone styling charm, and that’s part of the reason why so many people fall in love with them.

Morgan is just one of those motor firms that seems shrouded in mystique built up over decades of defiantly refusing to change the look of its products; the waiting lists that run into years, the cars lovingly made with bits of wood, the TV documentary where industrialist Sir John Harvey Jones urged to it to modernise or die.

Yet for all the mystery, the company’s still soldiering on a century after it constructed its first cars.

Anyone doubting Morgan’s ability to modernise is in for a shock if they visit any of the company’s showrooms, including Lifes Motors, in Southport.

In 2000 the Aero 8 challenged car fans with its unconventional looks but its utterly modern mechanics made it a rocketship roadster, still proving popular almost a decade later.

Yet the cars the company is still best known for are the traditional roadsters, which have faithfully followed the same stunning lines since the early Sixties. Not that many people know the shape’s actually registered as a trademark - and that’s a distinction it shares not with other sports cars, but design classics like the Coke bottle.

With its swoops and curves and lashings of chrome on the bumpers, grille and windscreen, machines like the 4/4 I’ve been driving look like they’ve escaped from a birthday card. Even before you get in it’s busy evoking images of quaint village pubs dotted across miles of empty country roads, in an era long before traffic jams were invented.

Unfortunately, it’s 2009 and losing my Morgan virginity meant threading it through Southport town centre, at roughly the same time as every child in the region finished school. Taking any unfamiliar car out can be a little daunting at first, but the thought of stalling a bright red, open-top sports car on Lord Street is on a whole new level, and somehow terror began to permeate the leather lining 4/4’s cabin.

I managed to avoid that embarrassing fate, but somehow I felt that even if I hadn’t, nobody would have been bothered anyway. Van drivers honked their approval and pedestrians waved as whooshed by, on our way out to quieter roads. It’s clear I wasn’t the only one falling for the 4/4, but the countryside was calling.

Admittedly, the Morgan I’ve always wanted to drive is the Plus 8, which from its introduction in 1968 melded those molten good looks to the rorty sound of the Rover V8, an engine which for decades has scared small children when used in generations of British sports cars.

The 4/4’s Ford unit is a couple of rungs further down the ladder, but it still gives you a surprising stream of speed as it throbs and burbles beneath that long bonnet. Morgan don’t make it in this guise anymore but the 2009 twist on the formula, the 4/4 Sport, starts at around £26,000.

The sensation you get when you finally reach the first sweeping bend is about as far removed from tinbox motoring as you can imagine, but somehow it feels alive!

It’s the not the sort of machine you can master in a day, with its unique umbrella-style handbrake proving a particular challenge, but it’s all the more endearing for it, and a feature you’ll easily get used to.

In fact, the main challenge during my time at the wheel was the wheel itself; it’s a beautiful carving of the finest wood, but a little large for my liking. Not that you’ll mind too much, as the feel for the road it gives you is superbly communicative.

The same goes for the ride, which you’ll either love or hate. It’s firm and fidgety – though not uncomfortable – but it does at least let you know exactly what those pretty wire wheels are doing.

The 4/4’s not the sports car for everyone, but it is an experience in its own right, and well worth a try if you’re bored of Boxsters and tired of TVRS.

I love it, and I can’t say that about many 100-year-olds.

Everybody loves a Morgan

FEW things are more embarrassing than stalling, but I think I've found one. Stalling a bright red sports car - with the roof down - on a busy high street.

Luckily, it's a fate I've just narrowly avoided.

Morgan's 4/4 is a sports car from the old school and - thanks to a blend of luck and being annoyingly persistent - I somehow managed to blag a road test for GR8 Life, the glossy sister magazine of The Champion.

I won't go too much into what it's like to drive - you'll have to read the write up to find out - but it's about as far removed from family hatchback motoring as you can imagine, especially in some of its quirkier charms.

The indicators being on the right (i.e. wrong) side you'll get used to, but what I found trickiest of all was the endearingly unique handbrake, which took me pretty much the entire drive to master.

Taking any unfamiliar motor out onto the streets can be a little daunting at first, no matter how much you revise the controls beforehand, but threading a scarlet red roadster which you only clapped eyes on 20 minutes earlier is in another league.

But I don't think anyone cared, because they loved the 4/4. Other drivers get aggravated if you're in other flashy sports cars, but become a Morgan man and they're suddenly prepared to forgive anything.

I'm just lucky stalling on Lord Street wasn't one of them...

Read my thoughts on the Morgan 4/4 in next week's Champion and in the winter edition of GR8 Life, due out in December.