Anything goes

Diesel doing very nicely

2008-07-17T10:42:46Z

It might not sound as thrilling as tearing around a circuit in a brand new sports car, but there really are few things more enthralling in a motoring journo’s life than visiting a car factory.

The cutting-edge technology, the sophisticated processes, the thoroughness and coordination of the work, and the sheer attention-to-detail involved with screwing cars together will simply blow your mind.

Ford’s Dagenham diesel centre, which knocks out close to a million engines a year for the Blue Oval’s many and various models, is just such a place. Ford of Britain opened up this engine factory to a few of us yesterday, in advance of the London motor show next week, where it will be ramming home its improving environmental credentials.

We got an hour-long tour of the Tiger engine production line, on which it produces 1.4 and 1.6-litre diesel engines for the likes of the Ford Fiesta, Mazda 3 and Volvo C30. And it produces them all without consuming so much as a volt of national grid power, thanks to the two massive wind turbines you’ll see if you happen to drive past on the A13.

Five hundred workers, and almost as many robots, beaver away on this snaking production line. The metal castings for each of them are machined on site and come in at one end of the building, along with all the ancillaries and electronic gubbins; two hours later, at the other end of the building, completely finished and tested 1.4- and 1.6-litre TDCi motors roll out. And here’s the staggering bit: at full tilt, Ford can deliver one finished engine every 27 seconds, whether it’s a 1.4 or a 1.6. I’d struggle to make a decent cheese sandwich in that sort of time.

Further down the factory is the line for what Ford calls its Lion family of engines (the 2.7 V6 and 3.6 V8 diesels for Land Rover and Jaguar). If you’re wondering, it takes slightly longer to make one of those (they can only manage one every two minutes, according to line manager Craig Caves).

One thing’s for certain: I’ll never lift the bonnet of a diesel-powered Ford, Volvo or Land Rover and feel quite the same way about what I find under it. I used to think Ford engines were ordinary. Trust me, they’re anything but.

Goodwood? It’s positively great

2008-07-14T15:17:06Z

As our manufacturing industry disappears down the throne, inflation rises, credit crunches and our leaders gaze like stunned rabbits into the headlights of approaching recession, there is at least some crumb of comfort that can be derived from knowing there are still some things we do better than anywhere else.

There is no tennis tournament like Wimbledon, no cricketing venue like Lords and no motoring event anywhere in the world quite like the Goodwood Festival of Speed.

It’s 15 years since Lord March held a small garden party and let a few nice old cars run up his drive, more as a way of passing the time until he could get his beloved Goodwood Motor Circuit reopened, and from that tiny acorn sprang the mighty oak that is the Festival today. The numbers are mind boggling: 150,000 people, over 300 cars and bikes, a course that takes 2000 man hours to prepare, not least because it requires 4000 bales of hay and the laying of over four miles of temporary roadways.

This year as ever there was gathered at Goodwood a collection of cars you could not find at any time in any other country of the road. Grand Prix cars from over a century of racing took turns to clatter, rumble, roar, howl, shriek and scream their way to top of the narrow 1.16 mile course, with everyone from Sir Stirling Moss to Lewis Hamilton taking time to thrill the crowd with their mere presence.

But the most spellbinding sight of the weekend were the efforts of ace classic car racer Justin Law and former BTCC star Anthony Reid to claim the fastest time of the weekend. Law was armed with a Jaguar XJR-8 from 1987, Reid with a 1980 Williams FW07. Law was flawlessly smooth in a car about as suited to a narrow hillclimb course as a race horse to a dog track, while Reid looked over the limit everywhere.

Two contrasting cars, two contrasting driving styles but two fabulous British machines driven by two extraordinary British drivers. Law came out on top, crossing the finishing line on Sunday a scarcely believable 44.19sec after dropping the clutch, with Reid less than 0.4sec behind.

It was a dramatic culmination to a weekend I’d call irrepeatable if I did not know already that, this time next year, it will all happen again.

If you’ve never been, you don’t know what you’re missing.

Movie trivia: ask British Car Auctions

2008-07-14T14:42:45Z

If you wait for long enough a press release will arrive to tell you just about everything.

Take this morning’s announcement from BCA auctions that it will shortly be flogging off a Jaguar XJ saloon that’s currently the property of actor Herbert Lom.

Talk about spectacularly good timing: I spent Saturday evening arguing with a mate as to whether or not Mr. Lom was still extant. My reasoning was that, as the star of the Pink Panther films (where his infuriated Chief Inspector Dreyfus was the perfect foil to Peter Sellers) we’d have heard if he wasn’t. My friend reasoned that, as IMDB reported he hadn’t done anything for about 20 years, he probably wasn’t.

So thanks, BCA, for settling the argument.

For all Lom’s love of fine Jaguars, there aren’t many spectacular motoring moments in his long and distinguished collection of films. He got to drive the getaway car in The Ladykillers, playing a psychotic bank robber opposite Alec Guinness and Peter Sellers. And he also had a small part in Hell Drivers, a 1950s British B-movie about dodgy lorry drivers, which is well worth wasting a Sunday afternoon over.

Anyway, for anyone interested in owning some automotive movie trivia, Lom’s 1996 XJ will be going under the hammer at Blackbushe on the 22nd, estimated at £3000.

Technorati Tags: Herbert Lom Jaguar XJ BCA The Ladykillers

Mitsubishi Lancer GS3 CVT - Is this the most undriveable car on the road?

2008-07-14T14:39:00Z

I've just spent the weekend in a Mitsubishi Lancer 1.8 GS3 with continuously variable transmission. I wish I hadn't.

The car's positive features - a large boot, low kerbweight and good chassis - do little to compensate for the horrendous drivetrain. The engine/gearbox pairing is the worst that I've found in any car I've tested.

When you fully depress the throttle - what might be erroneously termed the accelerator by those who haven't driven the car - the engine revs up and the gearing lowers, but the car does not surge forwards.

In fact, nearest you'll get to a push in the back is when you lift off and find that the gearbox shifts to as high a gear as possible, which combines with engine over-run to provide a momentary burst of acceleration.

The reward for all the snail's pace progress is the fuel economy... or should be. I averaged 32mpg on the M11, most of which is speed-restricted to 50 or 70mph. This dropped to 22mpg, after a 40-minute trip through London.

To put it in perspective, our long-term Mercedes C320 CDI has never dropped below 37mpg in 15,000 miles of very mixed driving conditions.

This is all a great shame, because the Lancer bears many of the hallmarks of a sensible, light, fun-to-drive saloon. It just isn't.

The passing of a great snapper

2008-07-14T11:11:06Z

It would be wrong of me not to record the passing of one of the most accomplished of F1 photo-journalists with the death last week of the much-respected Bernard Cahier at the age of 81.

Cahier's photo archive now looks like a social history of the sport in which he worked assiduously across four decades from 1952.

There are many great tales involving this charismatic Frenchman who washed up in California after war service with the Resistance in Brittany. He quickly got a job as a car salesman at Roger Barlow's International Motors operation in Los Angeles, one of the biggest sports car dealerships in the USA, where is gravelly French accent ensured that his career was a great success, particularly selling British MG TCs and TDs which were much admired by the female population.

"You wanna Tissy, or a Tiddy?" was Bernard's regular opening gambit and, by all accounts, these little English sports cars flew off the shelves and out of the showroom doors. It was during this time he would meet his wife Joan, the newlyweds moving to Paris in 1952.

Cahier quickly penetrated the sport's inner circle and became involved in helping the careers of a number of drivers, most notably Phil Hill and Dan Gurney, the former going on to become the first American world champion in 1961.

There was sometimes a fat commission available for pairing off various drivers with particular teams and for the 1958 French GP Cahier did a deal for Troy Ruttman, the 1952 Indianapolis 500 winner, to make his Formula One debut driving a Maserati 250F for the Italian private team, Scuderia Centro-Sud.

Perhaps in the excitement of the moment Cahier got carried away with his sales pitch, but it seems as though Ruttman formed the impression he would be getting a car the equal of five-times champion Fangio's works machine.

Sadly the Centro-Sud cars were past their best. Ruttman finished 10th, five laps behind Hawthorn's winning Ferrari. The American driver was not best pleased and, legend has it, Cahier made himself scarce, A gregarious personality and staunch friend to many in the Grand Prix community, Cahier is survived by his wife and son Paul-Henri, also a accomplished racing photographer who continues the family business.

Technorati Tags: Alan Henry Bernard Cahier Photography Formula One Juan Manuel Fangio

New TVR: it's a never-ending Sagaris

2008-07-11T16:38:00Z

There's no doubting that the new TVR is a snappy-looking vehicle.

The TVR Car Club has enthusiastically posted shots and details of the Sagaris 2. The 'production-ready' prototype has some minor body mods, a reworked interior and the company's Speed Six engine.

The problem is, when I read all this I think: "I wasn't reborn yesterday." And sadly the same can be said for TVR.

The world has moved on. The Speed Six engine was introduced in the second half of the 1990s when oil and petrol were much cheaper than they are now. Oil was selling for as low as $12 a barrel in 1999. Ten years later it's above $130. That doesn't sound like the most propitious time to bring back a 4-litre engine.

Each time we herald the grand return of the great British car maker, we forget about the amount of time that goes into developing today's cars to provide airbags, ABS, traction control and Euro 5 emissions compatibility, to name four minor engineering obstacles.

Porsche makes serious, fast, fun cars and it hasn't ignored these issues, so why does the TVR believe that it can?

Few things would give me greater pleasure than to be proved wrong about all this - and none of them is legal - but as far as I'm concerned they haven't even rolled the pastry for the 'production-ready' humble pie.

The perfect car?

2008-07-10T15:03:00Z

If you could drive one car – just one, mind – for the rest of your life, what would it be?

Tricky, isn’t it? First of all, let’s discount anything practical. I know, I know. If I actually had to choose one car forever, it would need to be big enough for a family, have a tow-bar and respectable economy. But that would be boring, so for the purposes of this blog, boring is banned. Let’s imagine you can teleport your kids or, like a B-list celebrity’s wedding, you have a fleet of Audi A8s on-hand to ferry people and things hither and thither. Leaving you to drive what you like.

So, what’s it to be? Type 35 Bugatti? McLaren F1? Caterham 7?

Me? I’ll have a Porsche Cayman please. We’ve group tested one in the 9 July issue, against an Audi TT and a BMW 135i and it wins convincingly. Which is no great surprise.

The surprise is still just how good the Porsche feels when you drive it. It’s not perfect, but it’s about as close as cars get these days.

If one were to be mine forever, it would need a bit more power, a six-speed ‘box (so long as it shifts as sweetly as the five-speeder), a limited-slip differential and perhaps a couple of mods here and there to make it a bit more GT3-like, while not making it too harsh. A suede-rimmed wheel, beefier seats, that sort of thing, though I’d still like a stereo and air-con, thanks.

It is a really brilliant thing. The sort of car that’s at home on a hack up to Scotland as it is a night out in town or a thrash on a track day. Its breadth of ability is rare indeed.

You may, of course, beg to differ. After all, an F40 outside the house every morning would be pretty compelling...

Technorati tags: Porsche Cayman, Audi TTS, Ferrari F40, perfect car, matt prior

East loves West

2008-07-09T16:05:03Z

Well, Russia has become the largest European car market nearly 18 months ahead of predictions. Carlos Ghosn reckoned it would happen within two years. That was in January… of this year. Just a month ago, John Fleming, boss of Ford Europe, shuffled that deadline to 2009.

Yet, as of today, Russia officially spends more on cars than Germany.

Here’s the rub, though. Chevrolet is the most popular foreign brand in Russia. It sold 103,000 vehicles there last year, but look at the GM share price. Its hovering just above $10. On 3 May 1999 it was above $90.

How can this sales success have such a negative effect on the value of the company? Is it discounting? Is GM actually selling cars for less than it costs to make them?

Answers on a postcard. Actually, on second thoughts, please put them in the comments as usual.

Why nobody wants your car

2008-07-07T16:48:41Z

Anybody trying to sell a car at the moment will be likely to tell you that it would be easier to make a last-minute selection to represent the country at the Olympic games.

The overcast economic climate and sky-high fuel prices have conspired together put the market into slow motion, and anything that can’t get near the magic 50mpg barrier might as well be superglued to your driveway.

Of course, there is a solution: part-ex your existing clunker against a new motor. Only, as people are noticing, the depressed state of the market means that dealers are similarly reluctant to find themselves landed with your old wheels are are offering the smallest amount they think they can possibly get away with.

That’s what car dealers do, of course: make money. As otherwise they will be making a guest appearance in the Bankruptcy Court. Good dealers will be perfectly honest and say that they don’t want your shed – sell it yourself and come back clutching a sheaf of twenties and then start talking.

Indeed, if a trader shows too much interest in your motor then start to worry because it must be worth considerably more than he’s offering you to somebody else. Some of the best deals I ever did involved reselling a part-ex for retail money, making a tidy profit at both ends of the deal.

Of course, in the 21^st century there’s a web-based alternative. No, not listing your car on eBay motors – although who can resist the opportunity to read through a passionate, if mis-spelled 800 word description of a 1994 Ford Fiesta – rather websites that offer to help you turn your motor into ready cash.

There are several of these, and I don’t feel like giving any of them the oxygen of publicity – but they all have names on a theme of “www.wereallywillbuyyourshed.com”.

Basically they portray themselves as charitable institutions that will roll up at your gaff like an eager private punter and pay top whack for your motor. Or not, as the case will almost certainly be – they are car traders too, motivated by the same profit motive that keeps the rest of the tank swimming. And comparing the online quote that entering your car’s details earns you to the value you’ll find in the back of a £3.99 price guide will reveal just how keen the motive is.

The truth is that, unless you’re trying to get out of a year-old Mini or Fiat 500 that nobody really wants your old car. Dealers would rather keep their money in the pockets of their sheepskin coats – and anyone coming from the private market needs to sell their old motor before they can buy yours.

A five-letter word beginning with E

2008-07-04T17:13:50Z

We’ve always called it the Eagle, but now it looks like the production version of Lotus’ all-new 2+2 sports car will have a different name when its launched at the London motor show in a few weeks time.

So what's it going to be called?

I'd be amazed if Lotus abandoned its modern naming nomenclature (Esprit, Elise, Exige, Europa etc) so I reckon we're in for another punchy word beginning with ‘E’. That leaves us with this short list.

Good start. But the real clue comes from a weird viral advertising campaign called ‘the faceless people’, which Lotus won’t admit it has anything to do with, even though we know it does.

The big-font strap line on www.facelesspeople.com, the campaign’s website, is ‘True Character will emerge in...’ with a countdown clock to the British motor show. Now, 'true character' roughly defined means ‘Ethos’.

And 'Lotus Ethos' sounds pretty good, doesn't it? It would fit the bill perfectly.

We did some digging on the patent office’s public website and found that the name ‘Ethos’ was copyrighted to Lotus Cars UK in America on March 12th 2008. The name Eagle, by the way, was not.

By now we were quite enjoying this Friday afternoon word game, so we put in a call to Lotus asking about their new Ethos, which was promptly rebutted with a hard “no comment”.

So no confirmation. It might be called the Lotus Ethos, or this might be an elaborate red herring. But if I were a gambling man, I’d bet £100 that we've got our name.

Anyway, looking forward to the motor show to find out.

So, the GP goes to Donington

2008-07-04T15:28:25Z

Is the Grand Prix going to Donington a good or a bad thing? In theory, it should be wonderful for Donington has it all. It has the history, holding Grands Prix back in the 1930s while Silverstone was still a sleepy little village. It has the location, right in the middle of the country with excellent motorway connections and an international airport literally next door.

It has the topography, with gradients to make it a great circuit not just for drivers (which Silverstone undoubtedly is) but for spectators too (which Silverstone undoubtedly is not). And I bet almost all of us remember that cold, wet day in 1993 when Ayrton Senna used the track to prove there was a God after all.

But before we all get too carried away, I think a couple of notes of caution need to be sounded. First, even though the deal appears to have been done, nothing surprises me in F1 any more. Last year’s French Grand Prix at Magny-Cours was absolutely the last until it turned up again on this year’s calendar for categorically the final time. Guess where it’s being held next year… So I’m not quite writing off Silverstone just yet.

Secondly, it will take £100 million of investment to turn Donington into a facility deemed worthy of holding a Grand Prix. Presuming for the moment that the money is already there, the planning goes through on the nod and what seems like a fairly tight schedule is completed on time, it will be interesting to see how the circuit adapts to such huge change.

Of course it won’t be the first time the track has been rebuilt, for that is precisely what Tom Wheatcroft did in the 1970s. He ensured the new track followed as much of the original course as possible, preserving a unique character that exists to this day. In all the years I’ve driven and raced there, I’ve yet to meet a person with a bad word to say about the main track: it appears to be universally adored.

And I hope the same remains true after 2010. So many wonderful circuits around the world have been carved up to keep them in line with modern safety requirements. And while some like Silverstone and Spa have been modified with great sympathy, many more like the Osterreichring, Nurburgring, Kyalami, Hockenheim and Monza, have not. If the true cost of bringing the British Grand Prix to Donington is not so much £100 millio,n but the destruction of one of the world’s most revered, historic tracks and its replacement by another faceless facility that could be anywhere in the world I’d say that was a price not worth paying.

Autocar writes, Boris listens

2008-07-04T14:33:38Z

This morning, there were a lot of strained looking people at the London Transport Museum. Boris Johnson, the new London mayor was announcing a competition to design a new ‘open-platform’ bus. Johnson had made reviving the Routemaster bus concept a theme of his successful election campaign.

The transport establishment and Transport for London (then chaired by Ken Livingstone) rushed to condemn the idea out of hand, while defending the 390 controversial ‘bendy buses’ that are currently running in the capital.

After Autocar commissioned leading bus designers Capoco to show how it could be done last December, the letters page of The Times lit up with arguments for and against the idea.

At the Transport Museum, the assembled press were gritting their teeth, looking for holes in the plan. ‘Wouldn’t ending the bendy bus contracts cost a fortune?’ ‘Wouldn’t people kill themselves falling off the back?’ ‘Surely we can’t afford it?’

Standing next to Boris was TfL boss Peter ‘bendy’ Hendy and David Brown, TfL’s Head of Surface Transport. Both looked uncomfortable. But then they had helped attack Boris when he was chosen as the Conservative candidate for mayor.

Cleverly, Boris fielded the press’s cynicism by getting Hendy and Brown to defend the ‘New Bus for London’ competition.

Amazingly, Hendy started to wax lyrical about the possibility of building a cutting-edge bus. As cutting edge as the aircraft-influenced Routemaster was in its day.

“Current technology uses truck axles, engines and transmissions. It’s a wonderful opportunity to get away from truck-derived parts” Hendy said. “A new generation bus is necessary for capacity, necessary for lower noise levels and necessary for emissions.” Hendy also suggested that such a cutting-edge bus would eventually be adopted throughout the UK.

And with that, the cynicism subsided and a gradual realisation dawned on the press pack: Boris wasn’t completely nuts after all.

Maybe a new-generation Routemaster is possible. And maybe Britain could still manage to lead the world in cutting-edge transport design.

Crossed wires

2008-06-26T15:17:31Z

There aren’t many areas of the automotive world where Britain still rules the waves, but the lightweight sportscar is one of them.

It’s a thought triggered by the first drive of the Austrian KTM X-Bow, a car that I’m struggling to see the point of in a big way.

At risk of sounding a mite xenophobic, foreigners just can’t do these motorised bedsteads as well as we can. Back in the mists of motoring history, Britain’s anti-car taxes created a trend of lightweight specials, stripped down versions of normal cars with their meagre performance offset by added lightness.

In the ‘50s Colin Chapman gave a new direction to the genre with the Lotus Seven. Which, give or take some carbonfibre bodywork and a Ford Duratec engine, is still going strong as the Caterham 7.

Other manufacturers climbed aboard the bandwagon – and occasionally fell off it. Caterham ended up suing a couple for the uncanny resemblance between their products and the official Seven.

And then the Ariel Atom appeared – getting rid of bodywork itself in the cause of lightness. It was, both literally and figuratively, the coolest thing to happen to the sportscar in years.

So why would anybody want to spend £50K on a car that lacks the Atom’s minimalist design chic while sharing its near-total lack of real-world practicality?

To my eyes, the Austrian-built KTM looks clumsy and contrived: like an Atom that’s been sent out in testing distinguish. The standard of finish might be high, and it’s certainly not lacking in performance, but as a trackday tool it’s appeal is going to be limited to those with deep pockets and limited imagination.

It reminds me of the (non) contest between two other lightweight sportscars in the mid-1990s, when the Renault Sport Spider got its nose bloodied by the Lotus Elise.

I don’t see this one ending any differently.

Is the Mito good enough?

2008-06-25T11:27:13Z

It’s one of the big questions of the year: is the new baby Alfa capable of turning around the brand’s fortunes?

After most of a day spent driving the full-house, 155bhp Veloce version on crowded, usually badly surfaced roads north of Milan, I’d have to say it most definitely is.

Instant impression: it’s good enough, good-looking enough and well enough priced to be an instant hit. Drives well, too. It’ll crack 135 mph, and can sprint from 0-60 mph in under 8.0 seconds. Better, its level of standard equipment beats its rivals, including the Mini.

This, however, is not the end of the story. Great Alfas have to be special. Knowing this, the car’s creators have surrounded Mito with loads of Alfa heritage, even launching it in Milan at the very same castle that inspired the designer of the famous cross-and-serpent emblem 100 years ago.

They have also artfully linked its styling directly to that of the 8C supercar, a dead concept until revived by Fiat group boss Sergio Marchionne to become the design inspiration for two vital hatchbacks to come — Mito for 2008-9 and 149 for 2009-10.

This pair is scheduled do most of what it will take to lift annual Alfa volume from today’s 150,000 to 300,000 in a couple of years’ time.

We drove for long enough, and on road bad enough, to discover a couple of bad Mito points among all the good. Our test car’s steering was rather woolly at the straight-ahead, and it seemed to lack front suspension travel and was inclined to crash into ruts, neither characteristic brilliant for the UK’s demanding roads

Secondary impression (after a few hours’ driving): still good. It’s quick and it looks great, but it might not be quite the hit the Fiat 500 has been. All that heritage threatens to overload a simple, good-looking, well-equipped, and competitively-priced car.

My suggestion to the company brass? Go easy on the heritage and spend a bit more time on the steering.

Why the diesel 911 will never happen

2008-06-24T12:09:53Z

So Porsche has finally done what it always said it would not do and is going to put a diesel engine into one of its production cars.

But for those of you who think a diesel is about as appropriate a power source for a Porsche as a steam engine for an F1 car, it requires nothing like the mental leap we all had to make when Porsche abandoned half a century of building lightweight two door sportscars and produced a two tonne, five door, cod off-road leviathan called the Cayenne.

And history recalls the buying public in general and the Americans in particular took to the Cayenne in their hundreds of thousands. Truth is the Cayenne owes nothing at all to traditional Porsche values and if putting a diesel in one will make it more frugal, give it a better range while still performing approximately as well as the already hardly electrifying standard Cayenne, then who cares?

Not me. It's when they conclude its a good motive source for a Cayman or a 911 - otherwise known as proper Porsches with proper Porsche values - that we should start to be really concerned.

Personally I think the last well will run dry before Porsche lets that come to pass.