Walking around the NEC Classic Motor Show? There must be another way

Originally published in Classic Car Weekly, 27 November 2013

Ford goes bigger and bolder for the new Ka

FORD’S Ka looks set to be sold in five-door form for the first time, if a show car unveiled this week is anything to go by.

The company used its European unveiling of the new Mustang to showcase a new hatchback with styling strongly influenced by the current Fiesta and forthcoming Mondeo. It is also significantly larger than both the original Ka, launched in 1996, and its 2008 successor.

Ford has said it is committed to a third generation version of the Ka, but has yet to announce when it will arrive in the UK. 

Nissan LEAF now easier than ever to own

NISSAN is aiming to make ownership of its electric cars a little less shocking with a series of new incentives.

Anyone looking to buy its zero-emissions LEAF hatchback can now recharge their car for free at any of its dealerships, borrow a petrol or diesel car for up to a fortnight if they need one, and get free a European breakdown and recovery package if they get into trouble.

Jim Wright,  Nissan Motor GB's managing director, said: "By making firm promises across five key areas we are tackling head on some of the questions we hear from potential customers when considering electric cars for the first time. These commitments deliver unprecedented levels of support to customers and make the LEAF a practical, desirable and affordable reality for many more motorists.

"The pledge to offer LEAF owners a free diesel or petrol Nissan for up to 14 days a year is particularly revolutionary. It means LEAF drivers can enjoy the many benefits of LEAF ownership, such as running costs of just two pence per mile, on their normal daily commute and then, when they’re going on holiday or have a longer trip to make, borrow a car that’s more appropriate to their journey."

The scheme, called the Nissan CARE-EV Leaf Customer Commitment Scheme, is aimed at helping eco-conscious motorists overcome the uncertainties they face when buying an electric car for the first time.

Nissan has sold the LEAF here since 2011, and earlier this year started building the zero-emissions hatchback at its UK plant in Sunderland.

 

The offer is available at all 205 of Nissan’s dealerships across the UK.

Meanwhile in Russia sets a dangerous UK precedent

HOPE you’ve enjoyed a pleasant week’s motoring, bereft of bumps and scratches. Meanwhile, in Russia, footage of a fishtailing Lada has been uploaded to YouTube for your evening entertainment.

You can’t have failed to notice the sheer quantity of clips being uploaded to YouTube of Russians crashing things, badly filmed by dashcams of family saloons slogging their way through a snowdrift somewhere in Siberia. This compelling concoction of spins, rolls and crashes – think of it as sort of You’ve Been Framed meets Police Camera Action, with added Moscowprofanity – has proven so popular that petrolheads over here now happily use #meanwhileinrussia as a hashtag on Twitter.

If you don’t know what a hashtag is, get your children to fire up YouTube and enjoy someone else’s motoring misfortune to while away a few idle minutes. It is weirdly compelling for the same reason that you’ll always slow down on the motorway to gawp at a car crash.

Yet what worries me isn’t these clips’ weirdly addictive edge. It’s that the things which make them possible – those crude, dashboard-mounted cameras – are becoming increasingly fashionable over here too.

Already I know of one court case which involved a lorry driver whose dashboard camera proved an unfortunate meeting between his cab and motorcyclist wasn’t his fault. As a result of this and the increasing appetite for the insurance companies to have our every movement monitored – black boxes, anyone – dashboard camera sales are booming in the UK. You might even get one under the tree this Christmas.

While the idea behind them has an appeal – film your drive to work, so you can prove it was the prat in the Audi A3 who drove into your front bumper at 40mph – I can’t help but wonder if we’re unintentionally creating Channel Four’s next comedy series for them, free of charge.

At the moment at least, there’s precious little to prevent these clips escaping into cyberspace, where spotty teenagers will be able to compile them into amusing ten minute videos, which will amuse office workers in Moscow endlessly. The clips will be just as morbidly compelling, but with fewer errant Ladas involved. Being involved in a crash, for whatever reason, is frightening enough, but knowing it’ll sit on YouTube for the rest of eternity or be forever repeated on Britain’s Best Car Crashes is something else altogether.

Meanwhile in Russia, for now, has a certain crude ring to it, but Meanwhile in Formby is a scarier prospect altogether.

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…

Are you ready for a Europe-friendly Ford Mustang?

Ford’s Mustang will celebrate its impending 50^th anniversary with something a little special next month – the first ever version of the car designed with European motoring in mind.

While British drivers have long been able to buy the all-American coupe by having one imported from the States, Ford has announced they will unveil a new generation of the car next Thursday (December 5) which will be officially offered for sale across Europefor the first time.

Jim Farley, Ford's global vice president of marketing, sales and service, said: “Mustang has come to be much more than just a car for its legions of fans spanning the globe from New Zealand to Iceland and Shanghai to Berlin.

“When you experience Mustang, it ignites a sense of optimism and independence that inspires us all. We have kicked off the countdown to the all-new Ford Mustang – with a new design, greater refinement, performance and innovative new technologies, Mustang is ready for the next 50 years."

Mustang fans can go to www.mustanginspires.com to find out about the new car - and to immerse themselves in nostalgic tales from 50 years of its predecessors.

It's all over for the Life On Cars Rover

Click the image to see a larger version of the feature. Article reproduced from the November 13th edition of Classic Car Weekly. All rights reserved.