Autocar - First for car news and reviews

John McToon March 19, 2010 4:23 PM

I think you should say *** and get a second hand petrol Range Rover. Life is just too bloody short.

RacingPuma March 19, 2010 4:41 PM

Probably the most practical economy upgrade to an old car is modern low rolling resistance tyres (eg Michelin Energy Saver).  

There is also good potential in retrofitting ceramic wheel bearings.  Hopefully they will become widely available soon - they are currently used in race cars, karts, motorcycles and bicycles.

Lanehogger March 19, 2010 4:58 PM

On a serious note, is there anything British motorists can do that will realistically have an effect in preventing fuel prices rising by an exhorbitant amount on what appear to be an almost weekly basis?

Blockades are banned and boycotting certain retailers will have no effect on the huge amount energy companies generate (BP generated $246.1 billion worth of revenue in 2009), although the problem lies maninly with government and the cost of fuel duty they levy on each litre of fuel. I suspect profit from the energy companies is also a reason too, particularly as a barrel of crude oil is lower.

rosstopher March 19, 2010 5:08 PM

Use what I do for my high fuel bills......

Company fuel card!

fuzzybear March 19, 2010 5:18 PM

If there's enough alternative on the roads to petrol then that would keep the prices down. If people bought enough cars that could run on petrol/lpg/ethanol/eventually hydrogen. Maybe each fuel would compete against each other to keep competitive

LP in Brighton March 19, 2010 5:28 PM

Right now, I'd suggest that the price of fuel is about right. Cheap enough for us to enjoy our cars pretty freely, but expensive enough to encourage the industry to develop better, more fuel efficient products for the future. Just look at what cheap fuel did for the American car industry...

(OK, I accept that it is highly annoying for the government to extract such a large proportion of tax to invest in wars, banking, unemployment etc).

If the price of petrol is a problem, there are any number of fantastically efficient cars out there which are fun to drive and which eek out the maximum number of miles per gallon - not forgetting that most people could gain a 10% improvement in consumption just by driving a  bit more sensibly.

Otherwise, just enjoy the freedom of being able to burn up as much hydrocarbon fuel as you can afford. I expect that we will be the last generation able to do so...

adrian888 March 19, 2010 5:30 PM

Perhaps we should ask every Labour politician who comes canvassing what has happened to the 'ring fencing' of fuel duty we were promised by Brown in 1997.... and why we will be paying another 3p in duty come April 1st.... Has anyone worked out how much cheaper fuel would be if ALL the duty increases' of the past 13 years were removed..... And as for alternatives promoting competition, not in the foreseeable future and bear in mind lpg and ethanol prduction is controlled by the oil companies or unreliable countries such as Russia......

On a less serious note perhaps we should collect all the cow produced methane.....

Leslie Brook March 19, 2010 5:32 PM

fuzzybear:  If people bought enough cars that could run on petrol/lpg/ethanol/eventually hydrogen. Maybe each fuel would compete against each other to keep competitive"

The trouble is fuzzy, if we all switched over to say hydrogen or LPG, the Government would shift the tax bill over too, so the cost would remain the same. They will always make the driver pay.

VirginPower March 19, 2010 5:46 PM

I probably shouldn't tell you this, because Ford is about to buy the idea off me as far as I can tell, but I have invented a VPSPV, as I call it myself, quite nicely, I think.

"That stands for what?" you're eagerly asking. Hold on there, bucko. Not so fast. I've got a couple of things I have to say first.

Firstly, battery technology has what I like to call a technical ceiling; that is to say current projectile theory says that there comes a point when a battery at any given output can get no smaller. That point is due to arrive in 2045, and when it does: oh boy!

Now, by this time you're probably gnawing away at the wheel wondering what a VPSPV is. Well, this is your lucky day, buster! It's a Vane Powered Solar Panelled Vehicle.

The cunning has been in combining the idea of the vane and the solar panel. What happens in the modelling I done is that the vane or VR (Vane Rotor) goes on the roof.

Now, the beauty of this is that, we (or Ford and me more accurately) place vehicle-orientated (to give you the internal blurb) solar panels across the outer 'surface'. You can have any configuration of body shape you want. Anything at all! The only limitations are that you can't have anything smaller than a Ford Focus, because there isn't enough room for everything.

One natty little idea is to say, "You can have this car in any colour you want, as long as it's black!" That would be great, because it's what Ford used to say, and solar panels are black and work best when they're not painted over, you see?

The major innovatory advantage over all other systems you'll hear inventors like me spouting on about is that my system will have 'open-loop shaft locking' OLSL, or SL - depends. Depends what they want; I don't care. Now, this OLSL or SL (depends, as I say) will be a system by which the driver will be able to effectively 'lock' the shaft.

On the road, this will appear to onlookers as if the vane is no longer going around - and they'll be right. It won't be going around due to the locking. This affords the user some key advantages over a closed-loop shaft. If he stops it at the right time, he can get a better view out the sunroof, and, more importantly in terms of motion, he can sailboat the car. If, at some later point, after finding out it was possible, it was possible to fit a motor to the vane, thereby making it an 'active vane', then he could do what I call 'motorboating' with it.

A sensor in the car could, if asked to, tell you how windy it is, and, as intuition suggests to you, this would help.

The car would be much lighter than something with a bigger motor than the one I would choose, because I would choose a smaller one. This works to the advantage of my guiding principle: efficiency.

To further ram home what I think, I like to think of myself as using three 'E's. They are efficiency, efficiency, efficiency. As you can tell, with that sort of thinking, it will be efficient in the utmost if I can make it as efficient as I want.

Harry_Boy March 19, 2010 6:10 PM

James, I'm with John McToon. We only lease our time on this planet - I'm proud that my STi 330S did 14.7 mpg last weekend...

There again, there is a reason why I don't use it every day - now let me think, what was it again...?

John McToon March 19, 2010 6:55 PM

VP....if you have invented and own the rights to some magnificent solar device then announcing it on a car magazine's forum might not be the most sensible thing to do, especially if the deal is not sealed. This makes me suspect that you may have had some input into the technology but you are certainly not the commercial owner of this technology. I suspect the commercial brains and owner will not be best pleased at this disclosure which is bound to be subject to some kind of confidentiality. If something smells of fish, it flaps like a fish and swims without recourse to air then it's likely to be a fish. Very fishy in fact.

gregor60 March 19, 2010 7:28 PM

Wind-up city, Arizona. With luck, you might just generate enough electricity from sunlight to overcome the extra air resistance produced by having a vane on your roof.

Now here's a serious idea. Our local garage's unleaded pumps ran dry, so they sold super unleaded at the same price. I was driving my daughter's car at the time, filled up and, having monitored mpg over a few tanks, reckoned the super unleaded gave me 5-10% more mpg. Now, as far as I am aware, super doesn't produce more carbon dioxide per litre compared with standard. I asked a chemist I worked beside, who concurred. So, if tax on super was brought down to make super and ordinary unleaded the same price, or at least to balance the extra cost of super with the gains, would that not cut carbon dioxide emissions from petrol motoring by a few percent virtually overnight? I know all cars won't get the 5-10% benefit, but all should gain something.

I'm willing to have any flaws in the above pointed out to me...

kcrally March 19, 2010 8:50 PM

buy a horse

Elvisisntdead March 19, 2010 10:14 PM

Horse n Cart, Motorbike & side car, tram, canal boat, penny farthing, get someone to walk in front of you with a flag, stay at home, all of these will save you money.

My solution is to fill my car with fuel ( stll got the Saab James and now the value has doubled to a quid )   it would cost me £68 here to fill up, so I pretend I am in Dubai, where £10 max, and I give the petrol garage £10 and tell them to sue me , arrest me ot get it out of the car. As you can believe they do not do any of the above and I walk out.  WE are way too soft in this country,  we get ripped off for eveything and all we get in return are pot holes, poor service, wan**rs of politicians, high tax and of by the way 8 million in active people.

Me things World War 3 isnt too far away

sorrel March 20, 2010 12:00 AM

There's nothing else left for us but to begin the revolution!  

Can't ever see it happening here mind you - but it sure is the only way to break this cycle of halfwits who spend years ruining the country and then hand over to the next lot who do the same!

James, buy a good, cheap tdi car as an everyday user and keep a V8 for fun days!!  :)

Phillip McCavitie March 20, 2010 4:18 AM

Who IS this VP fellow?

Phillip McCavitie March 20, 2010 4:19 AM

And I think he spelt Vane wring, It should be Vain.

Phillip McCavitie March 20, 2010 4:20 AM

*wrong.

oh the irony.

Leslie Brook March 20, 2010 9:24 AM

VP, top marks for a good wind up. I too am working on advanced automotive engineering. My Continuously Revolving Automotive Power Plant or C.R.A.P.P. as I like to call it is at the forefront of blue sky thinking and should be available from Perodua if all goes well.

Phillip McCavitie March 20, 2010 10:09 AM

I invented the question mark.

Here it is.

?

sorrel March 20, 2010 7:03 PM

What!!  I patented the question mark many years ago!  Watch yourself my friend, I may sue!  :)))

Rover P6 3500S March 20, 2010 8:42 PM

Blockades are banned? This is the problem with us Brits. We look at rules and say 'Oh no! We mustn't do that!'. The French do do blockades and they couldn't give a flying fvck about the rules. We invented the two-finger V-sign at Agincourt (which is why I call it the Agincourt Salute), so let's use it against the rules! Farmers, bring all your tractors, trailers, combine harvesters, etc, truckers, bring your trucks... we're gonna riot!

James Ruppert March 20, 2010 10:18 PM

As there have been no constructive suggestions I've decided to link up[ with P6 and be deconstructive and man the barricades. White Riot, I wanna Riot etc sf The Clash...

40summat March 20, 2010 10:34 PM

Such racy talk, James, has no place on a serious internet message board.  

Not since you made me buy a 9-5 this week.

James Ruppert March 20, 2010 10:53 PM

40summat, do tell us more. Hope the coil pack is in one piece....

Samiur Rahman SHAH March 21, 2010 3:52 PM

James,

Back home in Pakistan, before Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) became the norm for almost 3/4ths of petrol powered cars, cars were converted (with varying success) to diesel engines.

Natural gas is a very good alternative in my opinion to petrol as a fuel, however, do keep in mind that power is almost always reduced.

LPG is probably better as far as power output is concerned, and methanol/ethanol blends might help you sleep better (less CO2 production) although the politics of increase in prices of some crops may cause you to lose some of that aforementioned sleep. Keep in mind with alkys that even if the produce less HCs and CO, they produce more aldehydes, so be careful with non-catalysed engines. E85 will produce about 4 times more aldehydes as compared to petrol.

Other than that, I suppose you could do some or all of these things:

1. Pump more air into your tires.

2. Put fairings / spats on your rear wheels

3. Add an undertray to the underside of your car - take car of cooling airflows though.

4. Add vortex generators to the trailing edge of the roof

5. Add a "hot air intake" - decreases pumping losses at the expense of peak power.

6. Drive like a grandpa - the gentle kind, not a Fangio re-incarnate.

Cheers!

FR3000 March 21, 2010 10:17 PM

Buy a bike then just keep going fast everywhere on cheap road tax and insurance using not a lot of fuel.  

Make sure you smile on the forward facing cameras though; you wouldn't want the treasury to feel completely unloved and ripped off by the lack of plates on the front.

RacingPuma March 22, 2010 12:58 PM

@ James Ruppert

"As there have been no constructive suggestions...."

For the record, my suggestions (2nd comment) were meant to be both serious and constructive.

www.twitter.com/RacingPuma

40summat March 22, 2010 3:06 PM

James Ruppert March 20, 2010 10:53 PM

40summat, do tell us more. Hope the coil pack is in one piece....

Didn't get that far..it sold before I set off yesterday, but it was a lovely facelifted 1.9 TiD saloon.  Still in the meerkat though...

BWalker March 22, 2010 9:35 PM

I watched a show a while back called 'planet mechanics' they highlighted the issue of renewable fuel sources and the globally dwindilling supply of fossil fuels thus the soaring costs.

They proposed an idea whereby wood is heated (not burned) to produce a flamable gas that can be burned by an unmodified four stroke petrol engine in a car, thus creating energy. after a few filtering processes and petrol tank mods they made a pickup truck run on wood!!

May not be them most environmentally freindly thing to do but if you have any spare sticks, branches or just planks of wood in your back garden it could be a good idea.

FR3000 March 22, 2010 10:23 PM

Oh brilliant - one of the rises that expected in the budget report will include fuel in an effort o cut the deficit that we currently have in this country.  

So the banks p*ssed out money away, they are now screwing us on loans and mortgages while giving us next to nothing on savings - the government have pretended to help by giving out our money to banks and as part of recovering that money we are expected to pay for it on fuel duty hikes.  

It also seems that the next rise on the cards, which is cunningly being delayed until after the election, is a potential increase in VAT to 20% - or put another way more fuel TAX and vehicle purchase price TAX

If anyone fancys a revolution then shout up, grab a sledge hammer and head for the doors of parliament - this whole situation stinks to high heaven.

overboost March 23, 2010 2:19 PM

Colin Chapman led the way- cut weight and you can still have a fun car and good MPG. Porsche have been doing it with the 911 for years (pity nobody notices/cares). My advice is to throw out the interior bar the two front seats. All that padding. Ask McLaren if they will do you a carbon fibre front bonnet and perhaps roof. Dump the Air-con (use fresh air and keep a trendy ski coat in the car when its cold). Also dump the elec windows motors, sub-woofer, rear audio speakers. Find a way to dump the front Passenger seat when you are driving solo. That or a good 500c superbike with good wind protection, ABS and blow some of the savings on good leathers and the best helmet. Most of China still rides to work and they're not complaining

sorrel March 23, 2010 5:37 PM

I'm definately up for the revolution.   I have to channel my rage at this pathetic, bunch of halfwits who call themselves a government into something constructive!    When and where???!!!

fuzzybear March 25, 2010 4:00 PM

Or you could get a Brabus Smart roadster , 53mpg combined.

Alternatively , can a person buy a classic car that's road tax exempt? put a new engine and mechanicals from a donor car- then if that amount equates to what you had initially planned to spend on your next purchase , the savings from £0 road tax could be calculated into the price per litre of fuel- if that makes sense.

It might mean a person could drive a big comfy car instead of an econobox

Mondeo Owner March 26, 2010 11:04 PM

Fuzzy, I believe you can at present, though the govt are looking at that loophole.

Minor with a Fiat Twin Cam is popular.

You'd also get low company car tax (22% of purchase price of original car) that way as well

boromoor March 29, 2010 3:01 PM

Just a thought but we could always write a nice polite letter to the PM asking him to please reduce the tax or at least do something about the profiteering of the fuel companies.  One letter wouldn't do much but the PM might take notice of several thousand or hundred thousand motorists, particularly if they wrote every week.  If the reason for the letter was contained within the body of the letter rather than the header then every letter would have to be read before being discarded.  Question is, would it cost more to cut the cost of fuel or deal with the mountain of letters?  

Mr_H March 31, 2010 12:23 PM

Here's my solution. Buy another car. I currently spend £260 a month on diesel to tire myself out with a daily 110 mile round trip, pounding up and down the M40. This puts 22000ish miles a year onto my already old car.

So, my solution is to keep my existing car for 'best' and get the train to work, cutting out the tedium of motorway driving, and cutting my diesel bill to a much more respectable £60 a month. As I need a car for work, I'm buying a £500 banger to keep at the office, which will do only about 100 miles a month, if that, which my employer will pay me for anyway.

Gross monthly saving £135 (fuel, tax, insurance and servicing accounted for), gross yearly saving £1500 (including the 3 services I no longer have to fork out for on my 'best' car).

Impact on journey time - about 30mins a day (which will be spent reading the paper, snoozing or eyeing up attractive female passengers)........