Getting stung by stretch limousines

ACCORDING to the scientists bees might be on the brink of extinction but I have absolutely no worries for wasps. They have no purpose other than stinging people.

Usually these pesky creatures go straight to the top of my annual chart of summery things I find immensely annoying, but for the first time since I got stung on a camping trip a decade ago they've been knocked off the top spot by a type of vehicle you can't move for at this time of year.

Stretch limousines.

If you've been out on the roads over the past few weeks you might have seen them out and about, and in isolation they're harmless enough, but stuffing them with noisy Prom night students and then sending them out in fleets of three or four at a time is about as sensible as unleashing a herd of elephants into a city centre. Both are noisy, excessively large and somehow - although I know I'm going to get a bit of stick for saying it - just not suited to Britain's crowded highways and byways.

More than once I've got stuck behind one of these things in either Ormskirk or Southport town centre when the driver realises he's taken a wrong turning, and needs to perform the sort of three point turn which would take but a femtosecond in the miniscule machines us non-limo drivers are used to. But in a Ford Excursion the size of Florida, the manouvere seems to take the rest of time.

When everyone keeps telling us to buckle down and get ready for an age of austerity, manouvering around town centres in a Hummer that's thirty feet longer than its creators intended just smacks of the slightly cheesy consumption you only ever get on hen/stag nights and high school prom nights, which ironically seem to provide most of today's stretch limo passengers. You don't look like Lady Gaga getting out one of these things. You like someone who's wasted their money.

If you need to flash the cash, go for a Jag, a Rolls or anything that doesn't need an aircraft runway to turn in. If you need to carry lots of people somewhere, hire a minibus.

If anything had to be on the endangered species list, I'd rather it be limos than wasps.

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?

Reasonably priced Kia is a Stig decision for Top Gear

TOP Gear's reasonably priced car is now a reasonably priced Kia, after the producers of the hit BBC show switched their celebrity racer for the start of the latest series.

Anyone who watched Clarkson, Hammond and May in their latest TV adventures on BBC Two last Sunday will have seen them switching their affections to the Kia Cee'd , something the car's makers are keen to promote despite the presenters making mischevious comments about their models in previous shows.

“The last time Top Gear paid us any attention I think they tried to build one of our cars out of washing machines – so this is quite a step forward in their understanding of just how Kia has changed over the last six years,” said Stephen Kitson, Communications Director of Kia Motors UK.

“The Cee’d has become a strong player in the mid-sized family car market and just this year J. D. Power named it best small-medium car in their annual quality survey – so it should stand up well to anything the star guests can throw at it.

The C'eed, which has already been raced around the track by celebrities including Bill Bailey, TV dragon Peter Jones and BBC political editor Nick Robinson, is on sale now at a very reasonable £13,930.

The shortest charity radio appeal ever

MY friends in the Mini fraternity are probably thinking of disowning me, because I'm toying with the idea of a Mazda MX-5.

Regular readers will probably already know that I think the British sports car with a Japanese twist is an absolutely cracking invention, a thought not helped even slightly by the fact I've just spent a week with one (more on that later, I promise).

But even I admit it wouldn't be the latest 2.0 litre version I'd be lashing about in, and that's not because I can't afford one. As is almost always the case it's the first of the breed that's the finest, and every time the Life On Cars Mini is jacked up in a garage I'm contemplating the idea of a Life On Cars Mazda MX-5. Any would do, but ideally it'd be one of the early ones with the pop-up headlights, the 1.8 litre engine, the Minilite alloys and Classic Red paint job. Bliss.

After pulling up at the Dune FM studio for my latest spot on Martin Hovden's Live From Studio One show I reckoned, optimistically, that if just a fraction of the station's listeners gave me £1 each to show their appreciation, I'd easily raise the £1,500 needed for a decent Mazzer.



Unfortunately, broadcasting rules mean you can't start charity appeals live on commerical radio. If only I'd known that at the time...

Yes! Yes! Yes!

EVEN if he didn't bring down the Berlin Wall there's one thing we can all learn from David Hasselhoff; never, ever try talking to your car.

I was reminded of the Baywatch star and ambassador of all things slightly cringeworthy while at the wheel of Mazda's MX-5, one of my favourite little sports cars, in what should have been one of the most delightful drives I've bagged all year. With 2010's longest evening, a seaside resort, sunshine and a bright red roadster at my disposal, I had all the right ingredients.

It's just a shame I mucked it up by trying to set up the phone instead.

On the face of it cars with Bluetooth are a brilliant idea, because it removes any temptation to race around with Nokia's finest glued to your face, although it's something I was a bit surprised to find in something as singlemindedly sporty as the two seater MX-5. The problem is - and it's something I've found with every car cum communication gizmo - is that they just don't work.

The little Mazda, for instance, has a button on the steering wheel you press, at which point a female voice which sounds eerily similar to a BBC newsreader asks you to simply say the number you want to call. You then tell Anna Ford that you'd like to ring the missus, at which point she'll read back a number completely different to the one you've just told her.

“Is this number correct?”

You'll then have to say “No, no, NO” repeatedly until the gadget hears you, a task made trickier still by the whooshing wind noise you'll get if you've got the MX-5's roof down. The whole process repeats itself in an increasingly depressing loop, until Anna tells you, in her kindest BBC Breakfast voice, that you can't call your girlfriend, because she no longer exists.

It was only at this point that I realised I was driving around Crossens on my own while shouting “Yes, yes, yes!” at my car, and that absolutely every other road user could hear me because - being in a convertible on a sunny evening - the roof was down.

At least KITT could tell David Hasselhoff he looked like he a lunatic. Mazda's MX-5 might be brilliant, but it's not intelligent enough to do that just yet.

Life On Cars writer in rare trip on bus!

IT WAS the shortest visit to The Concourse I've ever been on.

Not often do you get off the bus at Skelmersdale's premier shopping centre, dash in for a can of Coke and then get straight back on the bus again, but I wasn't here go shopping. For a change, the story was the journey itself.

Arriva, who provide bus services in both Sefton and West, are promising you'll arrive quicker if you take their newly-launched X85 service, which they're saying now provides the quickest link between the heart of Skelmersdale and the fairground attractions of Southport's Pleasureland amusement park.

With no rail link between the two towns, you're forced to either drive or go by bus if you're planning to make this journey, and Arriva are hoping that by introducing a service with limited stops they're going to make the second option more tempting, and boost the economies of both towns by tempting residents to travel between them.

“Southport is a very popular destination for local people, especially those wanting to go shopping or enjoy Pleasureland and other attractions for the day,” said Vernon Roby, general manager of Arriva Skelmersdale.

“We are really happy to be able to offer this new holiday service, it takes less than an hour to travel from Skelmersdale to Southport giving customers plenty of time to enjoy the day when they arrive.”

Although my trip to Skelmersdale didn't get off to a great start, with the X85 arriving at Southport's Central 12 retail park ten minutes after the timetable said it should have done, I didn't feel so bad ditching the car for a double decker that actually feels more modern than my own motor!

But most impressive of all was the slashing of the journey times you'd normally get going by bus; at just over fifty minutes by my watch, it's only slightly slower than driving, and for once I could actually feel slightly smug that I'd gone green and gone by public transport.

The only thing that worried me was it seemed I was one of a select few sharing the joys of this journey; considering it's a summer service aimed at getting Skelmersdale residents out to the seaside, the bus seemed eerily quiet going in both directions.

Even as the Life On Cars motoring writer I'm actually happy that I took the bus for a change, and chances are you will be too if you're looking for a hassle-free and quicker way of getting to Southport or Skelmersdale.

There is one thing I completely agree with the residents of Skelmersdale on though; the town's really overdue for a rail link.

Fire up the... Ford Ka

IT might come as a shock but this city slicker and Fiat’s 500 are twins separated at birth.

The two were co-designed by Fiat and Ford but despite the Ka’s cameo in the last James Bond film it’s been the iconic Italian which has grabbed headlines so far.

The Ka may not have the crowd-pulling looks of the 500 but it’s still a pretty car. It’s also a better machine than its radical ancestor, which proved so successful it lasted 12 long years in production.

Anyone used to the old Ka’s go-kart steering isn’t going to be dissapointed with this new version, even if the ride’s still a bit bouncy.

Ford say they have tweaked the suspension to make it more sporty than the 500, and anyone who hustles this through a tight roundabout is going to love its fun handling and all round ease of driving.

It’s just a shame that this Ka is always going to live in the shadow of the radical original, but that’s more a reflection of how bold the original was when it came along in 1996 than any failing of this one.

It might not be a car to change the world, but the new Ka is better than the old one in every way, and it’s a small car that celebrates smallness.

If you’ve driven a Fiat 500 and been at all dissapointed, you might want to give one of these city slickers a try.