Car killer or motoring magic?

JAMES May needs worry no more about the dubious title of Captain Slow, because I’ve nicked it.

The Southport and Ormskirk District Mini Owners’ Club have granted me the slightly suspicious honour because I’ve just completed their annual jaunt over some of Britain’s steepest mountain passes and managed to hold up a mass of souped-up Minis because I was driving so slowly in mine. Yet the fact I completed it all, I reckon, is incredible.

This is the very same Mini that just weeks ago let me down in spectacular fashion by deciding it’d had enough of being a car and wanted to become a Reliant Robin instead, and tried to shed one of its wheels at 40mph. You can probably understand that even though it’d taken many hours of someone else’s painstaking work just to get it up to the 2010 Lakes Tour, based on the shores of Ullswater in the Lake District, I was still taking it a tad cautiously.

As a drive it’s the sort of thing you’d think twice about taking any car on, but would you entrust a 200 mile drive over some of the country’s most challenging mountain passes to a car with a one litre engine, an automatic gearbox, drum brakes and a ropey reliability record?

From the cramped confines of an old car on a lashing, wet Cumbrian morning it’s hard to appreciate the scale of just what I’d asked the Life On Cars Mini to do, so here’s the route in its epic entirety:


View Larger Map

It’s a real car killer of a drive, as the occasional Mini from one of the many other clubs taking part proved as we spied them sulking at the side of the country lanes. From the twists and turns of the mountain pass out to Alston to the one-in-three cliff faces of the Hardknott Pass, it was a hellishly difficult thing to do.

Then there was the agonising moment when the temperature gauge shot up, the car slowed to crawling pace and steam starting swirling out from beneath the bonnet. As it would if you’re trying to take a Mini 1000 Automatic up the Hardknott Pass. It looked, sounded and smelt awful, but once we’d let it cool down and given it a taste of mountain spring water, it started going again. And just kept going.

The car almost everyone had doubted just kept on going, soldering on over everything the Lakes could throw at it. On a day mostly marked out by dark clouds and constant drizzle, it was a burst of sunshine, and just to prove it wasn’t a one-off it followed the 200 miles of climbing by getting me home as well.

It might have been slower than everything else there but it was motoring magic. You should try it sometime.

David Simister will be appearing on the Live From Studio One on Dune 107.9 FM next Friday (June 25) at 6pm to talk about Britain’s best driving roads

A car I'm not cool enough to understand

FORGET the Fiat 500, and make sure the MINI's up for sale, because it's official. The coolest car in the world is the Citroen DS3.

Not my words, naturally, but those of Stuff magazine, who've just declared the feisty French hatchback with the funny floating roof as one of just fifteen things funky enough to make its annual hall of fame. Chosen not by fusty motoring hacks, but style gurus who know who Jay Zed is.

Tellingly, it's the only car on their list.

Curious to find out more, I asked Citroen to let me have a spin in their now officially cool DS3. They said no on the basis of me being too young; frustrating, given I'm exactly the sort of impatient twentysomething prat the company's targeting it at. They did let me try out the C3, which is basically the same car but in a frumpy, five-door dress, and from these impressions alone reckon its sportier sister is going to be a big hit with anyone looking for a successor to the old Saxo VTS. It's a fun little thing to hurl about in.

But driving's got nothing to do with it, because even though the C3's an accomplished little thing you might as well be driving around in William Hague. The people from Stuff don't give a stuff unless your car matches the exact, indefinable criteria the DS3 does, which is why I still want to drive one of those instead of being fobbed off with a mumsy shopping car. I just want to know why it's cool and another car that's technically identical isn't.

Anyone who's ever owned a Peugeot 309 GTi - which has always lurked in the shadow of the iconic 205 GTi despite being almost identical underneath - will know what I mean, and I still can't see any logical reason why you'd make a beeline for the Fiat 500 after dismissing the much roomier and equally nice-to-drive Panda. It's not even a problem isolated to cars; I've just bought a Nokia N97 because it's a brilliant little phone, but everyone else ignores it in favour of the iPhone, which is Cool Central. Cool doesn't make sense. I don't understand.

I end this week by stating the obvious - I am not cool. Not even slightly. But if someone lets me borrow a Citroen DS3 for a day or two, I'll at least be able to work out why.

Fire up the... Range Rover Classic

MAYBE it's being in my twenties or having some journalistic sense of derring-do, but I'm honestly not scared of crashing a new car.

Whether it's a supermini for six grand or a swish saloon for sixty, there's always a sense of that if you prang it - and luckily, I never have - they can always make another one. But being entrusted with a priceless piece of Britain's motoring heritage? Terrifying, to be honest.

It's not often you get given the chance to drive the very first production Range Rover ever made, which has been quietly taken out of the retirement to celebrate its 40th anniversary. It's a great way of finding out just how much the most famous 4x4xfar, and motoring has a whole, have come on since 1970. At least I'm in familiar surroundings; my dad owns one in exactly the same Tuscan Blue shade as this one.

The first thing you notice is the sound those big doors - and unlike modern Range Rovers, there are only two - make. Modern cars all have the same, slightly dull thud, but the bank vault metallic clink you get here is from a bygone era. It's the sound of the Sixties, but like The Beatles, it still sounds great.

But the best bit is the burble the Rover V8 under the bonnet makes when you start it up, which even today is still the soundtrack of an entire generation of British cars. It's just a shame that it's drowned out by the whining transmission, which really will give you a headache if you go much about forty.

Compared with almost any modern motor you have to admit it's absolutely terrible; it's noisy, it rolls and lurches through the corners, it's not actually terribly well equipped for a luxury car, realistically you're going to struggle to get past fifty, and it drinks like a fish. It's a creaking British Leyland relic, but I love to bits.

Even with petrol touching £1.20 a litre it just about makes sense - it's tax exempt, for starters - but it's not only blessed with timeless styling, unstoppable off-road ability and an elegance you just don't get from most new cars.

Just make sure you don't crash it.

As published in The Champion on June 16, 2010

Happy birthday, Range Rover

A BRITISH bruiser beloved of footballers and farmers alike is celebrating a birthday bash later this month.

Whether you think it's a cherished classic or a symbol of global warming you can't deny the Range Rover's impact on motoring both here in the UK and abroad, and this month its makers are keen to help the luxury off-roader celebrate its fortieth anniversary.

“Land Rover has a unique history of product innovation, but the Range Rover probably remains the most historically significant vehicle we have ever launched. It is one of the most important vehicles in the history of motoring,” said Phil Popham, managing director of Land Rover, which still makes the model today at its factory in Solihull, in the West Midlands.

“The Range Rover is really four vehicles in one. It's a seven-days-a-week luxury motor car; a leisure vehicle that will range far and wide on the highways and noways of the world; a high performance car for long distance travel; and a working cross-country vehicle. From princes to politicians, from rock gods to rock climbers, from footballers to farmers, the Range Rover has always appealed to a diverse group of customers.”

Today's Range Rover - and its slightly smaller brother, the Range Rover Sport - is a far cry from the original version of 1970. which had two doors, a spartan interior and wind-up windows but for four decades the model has proven popular with royalty and rock stars at one end and farmers and the police at the other.

But in recent years it has also proven a controversial target for the environmental lobby, and in 2005 activists from Greenpeace targeted the factory where it is made as a symbol of their disdain for vehicles with high fuel consumption and emissions.

Later this year, the LRX, a further member of the Range Rover family will be added, meaning the name will appear on no less than three different cars.

I've road tested the very first production Range Rover as part of my duties as Champion motoring writer. Will it still impress forty years on? Find out here on Life On Cars later this week.

So good, it'll make your ears bleed

FOR anyone following my slightly unfortunate Mini here's the briefest of updates: it now has four fully functioning wheels, rather than three and a knackered swivel hub. Here's hoping it'll live long enough to make it to the Lake District this weekend.

Until then, here's a clip of the Mini I always wanted when I was a child:




I particularly love this Mini's ability to make a young Jeremy Clarkson's ears bleed.

That and the fact it works...

Car companies keep scoring an own goal with their World Cup madness

CHAMPION readers who skip past the football coverage to get straight to the Motors section in next week's edition will be glad to discover it's a World Cup free zone. You're a winner just by reading it.

Anyone who's ever seen a Grand Prix, rally or touring cars clash already knows that cars and sport clearly do go together, but I think it's always going to play second fiddle to our jolly to South Africa because it's difficult to get patriotic in the world of all things petrolhead.

Everyone English is expected to back our boys in their bid for World Cup glory and I've always thought it gets a bit messy when car companies get in on the act; the travesty you see above is a Hyundai i10 festively dressed up as all things football, and it looks terrible. I liked the Italia '90-themed Fiat Uno with its nifty hubcaps disguised as footballs, but I think that one vehicle's the exception to the rule.

Ford I can forgive being in a football frenzy because at least their sports advertising is subtle, but dressing a supermini up as a sport is about as sensible as kitting out Wayne Rooney to look like a Kia Sedona. Can't we back our winners from the motoring world as well?

I've always reckoned it's difficult to get into motorsport on a patriotic level because the teams themselves have a history of not doing very well, and I'm still scarred from saying a decade ago that Jaguar's F1 team would be something we'd all be proud of. The cars looked fantastic in British Racing Green and for one glorious season we even had an entirely British crew at the helm, with both Eddie Irvine and Johnny Herbert on board. But did it win any championships? Erm, no.

Fast forward a decade and Lewis and Jenson are still out there showing the world what a talented British sportsman can do if we strap them into the seat of something with at least 700bhp, but what about our touring car stars, our rally drivers and even the hardcore heroes lining themselves up for this year's Le Mans 24 Hours, taking place this weekend?

I know that to catch their exploits you often have to trawl through the most obscure satellite channels but I promise you it's worth it; some of the action's better than anything you'll catch Capello's crusaders up to over the next month.

Fire up the... Renault Megane CC

NO, this isn’t a misprint. You’d be forgiven for thinking this is the Peugeot 308 CC we test drove earlier this year, but it’s actually Renault’s riposte.

Every manufacturer and his dog offers you a cabriolet with a clever folding metal top these days but there’s a good reason why the French companies have the market (if not the roof) sewn up; they do these cars better than anyone else. Which is great news if you’re looking to buy the latest Megane CC but a difficult job for anyone road testing it, because it’s almost identical to its closest rival.

Both the Megane CC, now in its second generation, and the 308 CC are hugely comfortable – particularly in the back, where most CCs aren’t – and effortlessly refined with their tops up or down. They both also cost around £26,000 and while neither of them offer a spectacular sporty drive they handle reassuringly enough while making sure absolutely everyone on board is cruising comfortably.

But while the Peugeot looks like a little Mercedes with its roof up the Megane masters a rather cleverer trick; appearing to still be travelling al fresco! Blacking out the roof panels is an unbelievably simple visual trick but it works, and means it wins in the style stakes when it's raining.

I’m sure that if I spend hours trawling through the statistics there’d be some minute detail that makes one technically better than the other but in the image-driven world of cabriolets there’s only one thing that matters – looks. The quirky charm of the Megane, or the flowing curves of its softer rival? Your call.

You really can’t place a fag paper between either of these cars, because both do what they do excellently (and better than either Ford’s Focus CC or Volkswagen’s Eos for that matter). While both these cars have the substance, in this market it’s all about style.

I’d take the Peugeot because I personally reckon it’s prettier, but that doesn’t stop Renault’s reply being equally impressive.

As published in The Champion on June 9, 2010