The VW Beetle: it's time for another revival

STONEHENGE. The Royal Family. Patrick Moore. All things which, like Volkswagen's reinvented Beetle, have seemingly been around since the dawn of time.

You'd forgotten Volkswagen still makes the Beetle, hadn't you? It arrived, in 1998, amid a fanfare of nostalgia, brouhaha and people poised with their flower stickers, desperate to get a bit of the Sixties back, but this time without the acid trip.

With cute, retro looks melded to a modern Golf chassis, it was brilliant. For about five minutes. Then the new MINI came along and suddenly it was old hat. Yet Volkswagen carried on making it and - with technology that the Golf ditched two generations ago - it's now looking about as sophisticated as the Peoples' Car that inspired it.

The problem with the Beetle is that it's a retro car, which means that it'll only ever be fashionable when the era it's trying to evoke is also in fashion, which meant that it was only ever cool for that brief bit of the Nineties when it was first launched. Remember the Chrysler PT Cruiser? The one that looked like a hot rod? Of course you don't, because once the Fifties novelty wore off everyone realised they could buy a roomier and much more practical Renault Scenic for less. The UK just didn't get it.

The only retro cars which have actually pulled off the trick are the MINI and the Fiat 500, but they've managed by being brilliant beneath the skin, and cars that are cheap, well made and good fun to drive NEVER go out of fashion. That's the challenge Volkswagen have got with their long overdue replacement for the Beetle, because otherwise it'll end up having to wait for the Sixties to get groovy again.

Will Volkswagen get it right this time round? Well, you'll have to wait until April 18 to find out, although getting the Black Eyed Peas, best known for mashing old pop records up with the sound of car alarms going off, to promote it probably isn't the best start.

Although for the record I think the company's reviving the wrong hit from its back catalogue a second time round. Where's the reinvented Volkswagen campervan?

April fool!

HERE'S proof that even the most sensible car companies have a sense of humour - a BMW M3 that's been given the Australian outback treatment!

BMW unveiled this pickup version of the M3 earlier today, presumably as an elaborate April Fool's Joke, as the fourth variant of its V8-powered star, which has already proven a hit with keen drivers as a saloon, coupe and convertible. However, this new version, which is the first ever M3 to come with a tow hitch, looks strangely similar to the small pickups popular in Australia, where they are affectionately referred to as “utes”.

BMW has said that despite its “unquestionable stand-out qualities” it will remain a one-off destined to be used as a workhouse for BMW's M Division, which makes M versions of the 1 Series, 3 Series, and 5 Series.

Nicking ideas off our neighbours is the key to truly European motoring

BONJOUR, guten tag and benvenuti from a very continental Life On Cars, which is this week embracing the idea that you're no longer a British motorist, but a European one.

That's the thinking behind the latest white paper from Brussels, where European Commission officials have come up with the idea of creating something called a Single European Transport Area. Only it's not a white paper - it's a roadmap. I look forward to buying mine for £4.99 at a motorway service station and stuffing it my glovebox in the near future.

Lots of very British organisations - like the Association of British Drivers, and the UK Independence Party - have already kicked up a fuss about the idea, because it proposes things like road pricing and a complete ban on driving your car into any city - whether it's Liverpool or Lisbon - by 2050.

Naturally, as a Brit and a motorist I disagree with pretty much all of it, but as a - whisper it quietly - proud European I think there's a lot of ideas we can nick off our neighbours.

Here are some policies I've come up with for a truly European driving experience, to save the EU the trouble:

1) All roads must be maintained to the same standards as Germany, which are almost entirely blemish-free and, in the case of most of the autobahns, have no speed limits. Not for us Europeans the potholes of your average British high street!

2) Petrol and diesel prices should be kept at Luxembourg levels, which are among the cheapest anywhere in the EU.

3) Italy should be put in charge of coming up with all the car names, because “Fiat Cinquecento Sporting” is infinitely more rewarding to utter than, say “Renault Wind”. Jaguar XF Competitizione, anyone?

4) French engineers - who gave us the Peugeot 205GTi and the Renaultsport Clio, pictured above - should be put in charge of anything to do with ride and handling.

5) The best car interiors on offer today, which you'll see lining the likes of the Range Rover and the new Aston Martin Virage rather than their BMW and Mercedes rivals, have been crafted by Brits. Because we've long abandoned the idea that our dashboards should look like church pews and gone for the luxury yacht style instead, we should be in charge of this department.

6) Brits - specifically, the ones who run the delightfully quaint Westmorland Services on the M6 up in Cumbria - should also be in charge of service stations.

7) On a serious note all motorways in Europe should cost the same to use (preferably, nothing at all). How is it fair that you've got to pay to use a French autoroute, but their truckers can use the M58 for free?

All ideas, I'm sure, which will help bring Europe together to make it a better place for us humble motorists. My cheque from Brussels is in the post.

The Life On Cars Radio Show, episode 4

Life On Cars speaks to John Bailie of Aintree Circuit Club about plans for the forthcoming Ormskirk Motorfest, to find why he thinks the full-throttle event will benefit the West Lancashire town.

To hear more from Life On Cars Radio click the Radio link at the top of the page or click here.

The singleminded single seater crafted in Cheshire

A British sports car designed to give the sensation of a Grand Prix car is available to order now, its makers have said.

New arrivals BAC, based in Cheshire, have revealed details of their Mono sports car, which as the name suggests is a single seater which makes more than a knowing nod to the world of motorsport.

“All cars are built to order on a first-come, first-served basis and our flexible production facility has the capacity to manufacture between 50 and 100 vehicles per year – or more if demand requires,” Neill Briggs, one of the company's founders, said.

“All I can currently say is, the early response has been extremely encouraging.”

Packing a power to weight ratio of 520 bhp per tonne - that's more than a Bugatti Veyron's - it can rocket to 60 mph in just 2.8 seconds, 100 mph in 6.7 seconds and on to a top speed of 170 mph. Power comes from a mid-mounted 280 bhp, normally-aspirated 2.3-litre Cosworth engine.

The car is more expensive than similar lightweights from Caterham, Radical and Westfield, at £79,950, but undercuts both the similarly speedy Caparo T1 and Ariel Atom 500. For further details, log onto www.bac-mono.com.

Why I've just bought another Mini

ONE of The Champion's directors couldn't have put it more perfectly when I told him that, for the second time, I'd bought a Mini.

“You are a glutton for punishment, aren't you?”

Look at the logo which usually accompanies this column and you'll see Yours Truly with an outstretched finger in the direction of my Mini, but for the sake of being honest I was literally pointing out one of the many, many things that went wrong with it. My 1983 Mayfair, as regular readers will already know, was a car constructed largely from filler and gaffer tape, and it was comically unreliable right up until the day I sold it.

So why on Earth have I just bought another?

It's not as if I'm not already familiar with the Mini's many, many shortfalls. It might be a packaging masterpiece but it doesn't come with a hatchback, so you can forget folding down the rear seats if you're carrying the likes of a large suitcase or a bit of garden furniture, things I could easily chuck into the back of the similarly-sized Renault 5 I ran around in last year. It might be a rally-winning giant killer but the price you pay for nippy handling is an unbelievably bouncy ride. Certainly, it might be a coveted classic, but one designed in the Fifties and built by British Leyland, so reliability isn't its trump card. And don't get me started on safety.

Yet I'd forgive my old Mini absolutely everything and it's the same with this one, because they're never anything less than a giggle to get through corners, they're a doddle to park, and when you do pull up people come over to you when and tell you about the one they used to run 30 years ago. What's more, I'm convinced this one will be much better than the last one because it actually works properly.

It's also got, to keep the speed freak in me happy, the extra oomph of the bigger 1275cc engine and a manual gearbox, which means it'll be a lot quicker than the 1.0 litre Automatic people still ask me about to this day. So I've promised the lady who sold it to me, a Champion reader in Crosby, to let her know how I get on with it.

Will it be rekindle my love of all things Mini? Will it prove I'm a sucker for seconds in the punishment stakes? There is, naturally, only one way to find out.

Watch this space...

Classic cars make financial sense. Honest

THIS week, I'm contemplating starting my midlife crisis at least a decade early. How young - or old - do you have to be to own a flash convertible?

Ironically, I've been pondering this dilemma, pint in hand, because the cost of driving a family hatchback around is soaring. Petrol, the last time I looked, was a scary £1.36 a litre, but the real rise is the one which doesn't get reported very often. The cost of car insurance, whisper it quietly, has rocketed over the past two years.

There is method in the madness, and I know this because I already own one old sports car. A year's fully comp in my everyday runaround, an elderly Rover 200, is £700, which is twice what I paid for the car. Logically, you'd reason the cost of me running around in my MGB, which is faster, more valuable and infinitely more treacherous on a wet roundabout, would be in the thousands for a dangerous twentysomething like me. But it isn't. It's £150 a year.

Why? Because the MG's covered by a specialist classic car policy, which limits me to 6,000 miles a year (what I'd usually drive anyway) and classic car owners are considered by the insurance industry not to be throttle-happy hedonists, but careful drivers who lock their toys away in garages and trailer them to shows. The upshot is that the cost of normal car insurance has shot up and classic insurance hasn't.

Because I've made the mistake of being young, insurance is the single biggest car expense I have, so the idea of saving money to keep an old classic on the road rather than the Go Compare tenor on the telly is wickedly tempting. I would love, for instance, the idea of an original Mazda MX-5 in the garage, which is both old enough to be considered a classic and reliable enough to actually get you to work.

It's not even as if you need it to be a two-seater sports car either, because there's no reason you couldn't get the likes of a Golf GTi or an original BMW M5, which you can just about pretend are practical family cars, if you've got dogs or kids to haul around. Even the very first Renault Espaces, which are now well over 25 years old, can get classic cover if you ask the insurers nicely enough. Sure, they might cost you more than a knackered old banger to buy, but in most cases a carefully-chosen classic will go up - not down - in value.

All you need now is some cheap petrol to run them around on. Oh wait...