Top ten: Life On Cars motoring moments of 2014

IT’S NOT often you get to compare a Ferrari F355 with a Peugeot 306 diesel snapped up for less than the price of a shirt.

Yet both managed the same trick – leaving a big impression on me in a year packed with great motoring moments.The tricky bit hasn’t been picking out the highlights, but working out which ones to leave out. Here are the ten I remember most fondly:

Discovering driving heaven is an MG TD…

 …or a 1954 MG TD Midget MkII, if we’re being precise about the draughty, exposed two-seater I drove on that bitterly cold day back in February for a Classic Car Weekly road test.

I remember spending most of that morning with a runny nose, numb fingers and shivering limbs but I was stunned by how sublime the steering and handling was this 60-year-old car.

It was not only more enjoyable to drive than my own old MG, a 1972 MGB GT, but it made me smile more than a Ferrari F355 did. That’s how big an impression it left on me.

Doing a lap of Fiat's rooftop test track (even if it was only on foot)

 The banking on top of the former Lingotto factory in Turin isn’t just where Fiat used to shake down its newly-built cars; anyone who knows their car films will instantly recognise it from the chase sequence in The Italian Job.

Normally, it’s off-limits to the public, but because I ended up staying in a hotel on the same complex I had the huge privilege of being allowed to go up and have a wander around this wonderful slice of automotive folklore.

Even if I didn’t have a Mini Cooper S to pound around the circuit, being able to walk around Fiat’s rooftop test track was an experience I’ll never forget.

Winning a national award for Life On Cars

Being named as one of the winners in the inaugural UK Blog Awards was a huge honour, and helped Life On Cars get – as I remember telling The Champion back in April – “national recognition as being one of the best motoring blogs out there”.

In true Life On Cars style, though, a motoring misadventure meant I never actually made it to the glittering awards ceremony in St Pancras. Classic Car Weekly had me exploring Rutland on the same day for its annual spring tour – highlights of which included pushing a broken-down Austin Montego out of harm’s way at Rutland Water!

Discovering what would happen if Carlsberg did classic car shows

Regular readers will already know I’m a car show junkie – at the last count, I’d gone to more than 50 in 2014, ranging from cosy charity events like the Lydiate Classic Car Show to European giants like Techno Classica Essen.

So you’d think my favourite would be the sun-kissed Auto Retro Barcelona or watching 20 D-types going head to head at the Goodwood Revival, right? Erm, not quite; it was the Lakes Charity Classic Car Show, which has about 200 cars and is held in a field just outside Grasmere.

There wasn’t a D-type or a celeb in sight but it had everything I look for in a show in spades; a great mix of cars, a stunning location, sensible prices and – best of all – a friendly atmosphere. Count me in for the 2015 show!

Applying the word ‘stagulent’ to just about everything

Spending quite a few occasions in 2014 driving a borrowed Triumph Stag inspired me to come up with the idea of stagulence – applying the slightly kitsch, retro qualities of this V8-hauled convertible and applying them to other objects.

So far reruns of The Persuaders!, Directors Bitter, Joanna Lumley and the entire town of Harrogate are among the things I’ve managed to describe as stagulent. Which is a shame, because I’ve always quite liked the Triumph in question.

Watching the car that started it all (briefly) resurface

I began 2014 by pondering what had actually happened to the old Life On Cars Mini. Sure enough, it reappeared a couple of months later on eBay – in worse condition than I’d originally sold it back in 2010.

Despite being flooded with nostalgic thoughts and suggestions from chums that I should buy it back, I resisted the urge to throw in a bid and let it go. Hopefully its new owner will be able to restore with the sort of money I didn’t have when I ran around in it!

Driving to the Nürburgring in my own car

This is a petrolhead pilgrimage everyone who really loves cars should do at least once, and I even though I was a bit apprehensive I even did the compulsory blast around The Green Hell in my MX-5 at the end (and no, I didn’t buy one of those sad stickers to put on my car afterwards).

Despite suffering a fairly dramatic air conditioning leak on the way – and being forced to mend it with a condom of all things – CCW colleague Murray Scullion and I had a great weekend on our assignment at the AvD Oldtimer Grand Prix. If you’re going to venture over to the continent for a show in your own car, I’d seriously consider this one.

Being in two places at the Ormskirk MotorFest at once

It was a tricky call – while I knew the job in hand was photographing the classics parading around Ormskirk for the annual MotorFest, I’d also got an invite to do a lap in the MGB. How, I’d spent the entire morning wondering, was I going to do both?

In the end, I finishing snapping my first set of cars, set the camera up, handed it to my girlfriend, and ran for it. I made it through the thousands of spectators in the nick of time, and managed to fire up the ‘B with seconds to spare before my designated slot.

It was worth it for this shot. Good times!

Rediscovering bargain basement motoring

2014 hadn’t begun on a great note when it comes to Life On Cars workhorses – looming transmission trouble had led me to sell the old Rover 214SEi and its Ford Mondeo replacement was destroyed when an errant BMW ran into the back of it.

This Peugeot 306 was the belated hero of the year, not only acting as a £750 stopgap for my girlfriend’s mother before she bought another car, but then being passed onto me as an everyday chugger for just £150.

It hasn’t been perfect but – as the first Life On Cars diesel car – I’m enjoying regularly getting upwards of 50 to the gallon. Like the £100 Renault 5 I ran years ago, I’m forgiving the 306’s imperfections because I love its bargain basement Frenchness.

Putting my foot down – in a Ferrari

I ended 2013 – having driven my first Aston Martin – wondering whether I’d get to pop my Ferrari cherry this year.

Sure enough, Classic Car Weekly needed someone to test a Ferrari F355, so my hand shot up quicker than the car itself can get to sixty! Truth be told, I barely got to scratch beneath the surface on real world roads, but on this few occasions when I really got to nail it this mid-engined supercar really was as good as everyone said it should be.

It really was utterly, utterly wonderful. New Year’s resolution for 2015 – get a go in a TVR Griffith. Here’s hoping!

Life On Cars wishes both of its readers a happy New Year

Car makers should resist the urge to do cover versions of their classic hits

A MATE of mine put it to me the other week that the Volkswagen Type 2 – known to surfers, hippies and holidaymakers everywhere as simply the Campervan – is the most depicted car of all time.

Just about every bit of tourist tat imaginable, from teatowels and tee-shirts to pint glasses and USB sticks has featured the rear-engined workhorse at some point in order to lend said souvenir a groovy air of free love. Everybody knows what a Type 2 looks like – even if they insist (normally incorrectly) on calling it a Volkswagen Campervan. 

It’s one of a handful of old cars that still have that cult currency no matter where you are – and one of only two, I reckon, that haven’t been shamelessly reinvented. The Mini, the Fiat 500 and the Volkswagen Beetle have all been done. There are only a couple of names which people really remember left – so why are the car makers still at it?

Take the Maserati Ghibli, for instance. If you’re a Champion reader who’s ended up on the motoring pages because you’re looking for the Sports section but got a bit lost then chances are you won’t be able to picture a Maserati Ghibli without consulting Google – so it’s got no resonance. If, on the other hand, you pride yourself on being a petrolhead, you’ll know it’s an old Italian supercar. So you’ll feel a bit fobbed off to discover the revived version isn’t a ground-hugging missile, but a diesel-engined four-door saloon. 

The other trip down Memory Lane which I’m still yet to understand is the new Vauxhall Viva. There is, of course, much to commend about the old Viva, but do you see it on teatowels and mugs at souvenir shops in holiday resorts? Nope. I understand why it’s a revival in a name only, but unless you owned one back in the Seventies or read Practical Classics, it’s just not a name that’ll ring a bell with your mates.

Redoing your old offerings as new models is duller than hearing those breathy-voiced Eighties cover versions that always seem to pop up in John Lewis’ festive ads, or seeing the best the cinema has to offer are yet more comic character reboots. I don’t want a new Ford Cortina or a revived Vauxhall Chevette in the same way I’d dread a TV remake of Only Fools and Horses or yet another outing for Do They Know It’s Christmas.

Why hasn’t there been a new Type 2, or a new Citroёn 2CV or Ford Capri? It’s simple; the manufacturers have resisted the urge to do cover versions of their classics because they’ve got more exciting and innovative things to show you. The makers of these great cars from the past were doing them as ‘new’ to their best of their abilities – and that’s why we cherish the good ‘uns as classics decades later. I applaud the people still doing that today, resisting the urge to do cover versions of their old cars and using their imagination to come up with genuinely modern – and usually brilliant – new cars.

More of that in 2015 please!

You'll love these 1980s off roader pictures

A BIT of snow didn't bother the owners of these old school off-roaders back in the 1980s. Nor did mud, rivers, dirt tracks up the side of Cumbrian hills or disused quarries, looking at these great shots.

I've spent most of this afternoon trawling through this treasure trove of photographs showing Britain's off-roader fraternity in action throughout the 1980s. There are more than 75 pictures in the collection, taken by my father when he was the greenlaning officer for the Red Rose Land Rover Club. Two of the vehicles shown are his - the modified Land Rover Series IIa (710 GDM, where are you now?) and the FLM Panelcraft-converted four-door Range Rover, now believed to be the only surviving example in Britain.

Most of the mudpluggers, shown at greenlaning and trials events throughout Lancashire and Cumbria, are Land Rovers, ranging from Series Is to two-door Range Rovers, but the likes of the Suzuki SJ and Lada Niva make appearances too.

In fact it's hugely refreshing seeing these early 4x4s - particularly the Series I and II Land Rovers - being used as their creators intended, without anyone worrying about what they're worth these days. Here are ten of the best from a great collection of images, some of which were taken more than 30 years ago...

Spare a thought for the nation's breakdown recovery crews this Christmas

THE BIGGEST hazard of driving home for Christmas – at least according to Chris Rea’s 1988 hit – is being top to toe in tailbacks. Yet if it wasn’t for a trusty AA man the other day, I wouldn’t have even made it that far.

It’s typical Simister luck. After months of managing to avoid a visit from the breakdown fairy, she would have to strike on the Friday before Christmas, just as I was preparing to pack the boot with freshly-wrapped presents and head home for the festive season.

Naturally, being the sort of chap who’d rather run a42-year-old car built by British Leyland and a 15-year-old French hatchback acquired for less than most of my mates would pay for a decent shirt, I’m used to the occasional thing going wrong. It’s just not the sort of thing you want to happen on the day you’re driving home for Christmas!

In this case, the Peugeot 306 I’d bought a few weeks earlierdecided it only wanted to use three of its wheels for the long trip north – the offside rear wheel had completely seized up, and nothing I did was freeing the brakes off. Defeated, I dialled the fourth emergency service – and resigned myself to being in for a long wait.

In all my time peddling automotive tat in lieu of a shiny new car, I’ve had a distinctly mixed experience of all of Britain’s big breakdown recovery firms, including one instance when it took a staggering ten hours to recover my oldMini from Carlisle. So – on the day when most of the nation’s motorists were bound to be having the same festive intentions I was – I was hardly expecting miracles.

Yet within half an hour the stricken 306 had been jacked up and a chap in a hi-vis jacket had given me a diagnosis – the rear brake cylinder had given up the ghost and needed replacing before it was going to be safe for any pre-Christmas cruises up the A1. All of which meant finding a garage who’d be prepared to do the job inside of a day.

My usual menders of choice were too busy mending an equally problem-prone old hack – my colleague’s Saab 9000, no less – but Mr Hi-Vis had a mate at another place, and after a quick phone call and a bit of arm-twisting said garage agreed to getting the job done the same day. Sure enough, a couple of hours later I was reunited with a Peugeot ready for the important job of running the Simister family’s Christmas presents home. While I’ve had some distinctly ropey breakdown recovery jobs in the past, this time my knight in hi-vis armour genuinely was the difference between getting home and being stranded at the office, 200 miles away.

So spare a thought for the chaps in their brightly-coloured vans as they chug across the North West this Christmas. Every driver they get back on the move over the festive break is another Christmas that hasn’t been ruined by the breakdown fairy.

Here’s to them – and Merry Christmas to you too, obviously!

A 50mph limit on an empty motorway is hardly a 'smart' move

THE roads were eerily empty when I plodded over the Pennines last Friday night.

Perhaps the four-minute warning had been issued and – totally oblivious, given the radio on my Peugeot 306 doesn’t work – I was about to be wiped out in a Russian nuclear missile strike. Maybe there was a particularly riveting repeat of I’m A Celebrity keeping everyone off the roads. Either way, on a Friday night commute which cris-crosses eight counties over 200 miles the traffic jams I normally encounter were nowhere to be seen.

So you’d think I’d have storming progress, then? Erm, no. Even though the roads were so sparsely populated I was overtaking a lorry every other ten minutes, there were still long stretches where I couldn’t go one measly mile an over 50. The culprit, the average speed limit preceding the new ‘smart’ motorway sections, is one of my real pet hates of motoring.

I love the idea; rather than have every Audi or BMW fly into the fog at 75mph and wreaking havoc on your morning commute, someone flicks a switch and lowers the limit to 50mph in an instant, massively reducing the odds of a pile-up. The powers-that-be spent ages calling them ‘managed motorways’ – largely because they always managed to make you do less than 70mph, but nowadays the idea is they’re ‘smart’ because they’re brimming with technology to make life safer.

All of which would be great apart from the one thing even the greatest gizmos can’t control – the highly evolved monkeys controlling the machines.

Why, when the limit is 50mph and clever cameras control all three lanes, is there still a prat in an Audi A5 doing 70mph (who, incidentally, never seems to get flashed)? Why do the lorry drivers, who seem to be on autopilot at 55-60mph, do everything in their power to get past?  It’s not just the motorists either – why, at stupid ‘o’ clock in the morning on an empty motorway with nobody working, is the speed limit still switched to the lowest possible setting? All that does is encourage drivers to switch off and listen to The Archers. 

Last month the Department for Transport announced the M62 and the M53 will be smartened up in their entirety, and chances are once they’re finished they’ll have a crack at the other ones too. While I’m all for clever roads that can alter their speed limit according to the conditions, I’m genuinely dreading having to spend years on end crawling along empty motorways while they’re doing the work.

Saving lives with adjustable speed limits? That’s a clever idea. Forcing motorists to spend years doing 50mph along an empty motorway because everyone in a position to change it back to 70mph has turned in for the night?

That’s not very ‘smart’ at all.

How much of a classic car pop picker are you?

Life On Cars has been facelifted!

EAGLE-EYED readers - yes, both of them - will have already spotted that Life On Cars has been treated to a bit of a facelift.

The blog's had a great year, including being honoured as one of only two motoring blogs to win in the Automotive category of the inaugural UK Blog Awards back in April.

In the aftermath of the awards I got a lot of great feedback about Life On Cars and how to tweak the blog. In particular, the authors of Creditplus - another nominee in the UK Blog Awards - made quite a few useful observations.

Creditplus writer James Dwyer wrote back in September: "Two things immediately stand out. One, David is an authority on his chosen subject (classic cars), and two, the blogpost is written in a personal and friendly style that gives the reader an insight into David’s character.

"The posts are long and detailed, covering a variety of topics within David’s area of expertise. The website isn’t that flashy, but it's the high quality content that appeals."

I couldn't agree more - a motoring hack I might be, but a web design guru I'm emphatically not. That's why I've entrusted fellow blogger Natalie Bassling to give the site a complete refresh, meaning I can concentrate on bringing you more motoring tales - even ones which involve looking a bit silly while standing next to a Corvette - without getting bogged down in how Life On Cars looks and works.

Personally, I think it looks great, but I'd be keen to know what you think. Feel free to get in touch with your motoring stories and details of shows!

Why I dread my rubbish parking being exposed on Facebook

“MATE!” one of my fellow petrolheads sometimes shouts when I’ve parallel parked. “Did you get your licence in a LUCKY BAG?”

You’d think for someone who’s driven everything from the Smart ForTwo to a Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow that I’d be able to park anything perfectly, perhaps with my eyes shut. Not so. I might as well ‘fess up there are occasions when, dear reader, I can still fluff up a bit of parking in finest Maureen-from-Driving-School style.

There were, for instance, the handful of occasions when my Renault 5 would make me come over all French and adopt a distinctly laissez faire – and not entirely parallel – approach to slotting a small hatchback alongside a kerb. Then there was the time I spent ten minutes circling Tesco’s car park looking for one of those elusive double spaces, largely because I didn’t want the shame of pranging a very pricey Lotus Evora that wasn’t mine in a bodged bit of easing backwards into a tight space.

My worst – and simultaneously best - spot of parking, however, was making the most of owning a Mini by successfully squeezing it into the smallest space possible. It was a brilliant endorsement of everything Alec Issigonis stood for, but it might have made life a bit difficult for the chap parked in front. 

Handful of confessions aside, however, I normally pride myself on not parking like a berk. This is a mighty good thing, because now there’s a Facebook group whose sole purpose is to expose when you do in Southport.

Ever since it’s entered my Likes list it’s amused and alarmed me in equal measure. On the one hand, there’s a childish delight at seeing all the dented hatchbacks dumped diagonally across a set of double yellow lines and wondering how anyone – especially anyone who’s mastered the theory test – can park THAT badly. There’s also the tense thrill of knowing my mate - who regularly parks his pride and joy across three spaces to prevent anyone else accidentally scratching it with a clumsily-opened door – is going to end up appearing on it.

Yet there is something unnerving about knowing there’s a band of cameraphone vigilantes deciding, using the powers vested in them by the internet, what does and doesn’t construe a decent parking job. Yes, there are plenty of bits of parking which can’t be anything other than just plain rude, but there are always shades of grey in what is, after all, a skill which we all have to some degree or other.

If you’re arrogant enough to dump an Audi Q7 in Asda’s only disabled parking space then you deserve everything you get, but I’ve seen plenty of pictures of what are just normal parking manouveres that – for whatever reason – aren’t quite bob on. Given I’m sure it’s happened to all of us, I’m not entirely sure I’d want smartphone addicts laughing at them between stints on Candy Crush.

Still, at least the Facebook group’s achieved its intended effect – I’ll be triple-checking all my parking jobs this Christmas.

Why I want a Ferrari F355 for Christmas

THE NATION’S best pub, I’ve long maintained, is hidden in a hamlet in a remote Cumbrian valley.

It’s 15 miles from the nearest train station and the bus service is next to non-existent, so the only way you can realistically reach it is by bringing a designated driver who’ll happily ferry you home afterwards. The ales on offer are also a bit limited – there are six of them, and they’re all brewed in the building next door.

As a practical proposition it’s pretty much useless, but the tipple is so tasty the pub counts Prince Charles and Sir Chris Bonington among its fans. The location alone means it’ll only ever be an occasional indulgence, which makes the few occasions I do manage to enjoy it that little bit more special.

In other words, it’s a bit like the first Ferrari I’ve been fortunate to get a go in. Even for someone who writes about and drives all sorts of cars, taking the helm of Maranello’s finest is something I’ve spent years longing to do. So far I’ve managed to bag the keys to a Lotus, a Jaguar, an Aston Martin and a Rolls-Royce, but until now people have always been too sensible to allow me access to a Ferrari.
 

Better still, it wasn’t some tired old Mondial that’s overdue its next service or a 400 that’s missed a decade’s worth of TLC; the Ferrari in question was the F355, which the motoring mags in period always praised as being as being the company’s return to form after the dud that was the old 348. A 1997 F355 GTS which had been meticulously maintained 360 days of the year, just those five days when it’s deemed sensible to take it out for a blast.

The weird thing was that, even as a hugely expensive mid-engined supercar, it was no harder to drive in the real world than the Nissan Note I’d been piloting a few hours earlier. I didn’t know whether to be delighted or dismayed; on the one hand, you really can take a Ferrari F355 to Tesco, but on the other it’ll feel strangely anodyne when you do. The steering’s too over-assisted and the V8, at real world speeds, is barely awake.

Nope, the only way to treat a F355 is the way Ferrari intended. Plonk your right foot into the carpet on the wrong day (which in Cameron’s Britain, is pretty much every day) and you’ll either end up heading backwards into the nearest hedge at high speed or looking at your shoes in the nearest police station.

But on the right day, with great weather and a road where you can safely exploit it, the Ferrari sings. The perfectly-weighted steering, the howling 3.5 litre V8 and the electronic dampers join forces, doing magical things you previously didn’t think were possible in a car.

It is, like my favourite pub, something best enjoyed on a handful of occasions. To answer all those questions your inner eight-year-old is asking – yes, the Ferrari F355 really is as good as everyone says it is.

You just have to choose your moment carefully.

Introducing... the Peugeot 306

A SWISS Army knife might have dozens of different gizmos attached to it, but none of them are ever quite as good as a individual tool dedicated to doing that one job alone. For much the same reason, I've always believed in having a couple of different cars than entrusting it to a single set of wheels.

How many motors you have to hand depends on a couple of things - largely the size of your wallet and where you keep them when they're not racking up the miles - but for me, three has always been the right balance. The Life On Cars petrolhead mix has always involved having a classic to take to shows, a hairpin hooligan to enjoy on mountain passes on sunny afternoons, and a workhorse for all the less glamorous - but hugely important - mundane tasks.

For years, I've entrusted the first of those two tasks to the trusty MGB and the fun stuff to two Mazda MX-5s, but I haven't been as lucky at finding something that does the unremarkable remarkably. Four years ago, I bought a Renault 5 for just £100, which for eleven months went everywhere from Dumfries to Stonehenge without so much a whimper of complaint, but ended up getting scrapped when the MoT tester discovered the terminal rot around its D-pillars. Its hastily drafted-in replacement, a Rover 214SEi, spent three years conveying Simister junk to tips across Merseyside, but its increasingly sickly-sounding gearbox eventually drove me to sell it last year for half the £300 I paid for it.

I thought it'd be third time with its replacement - a grand's worth of top-spec Ford Mondeo, which behaved impeccably despite helping me develop an unhealthy obsession with its fuel economy. It was the perfect workhorse to compliment the MGB's nostalgia and the MX-5's love of al fresco adventures - or rather, it would have been had a chap decided not to drive his BMW into the back of it. As a result, I've spent almost all of 2014 relying entirely on two-seater sports cars for just about everything.

That's where this S-reg Peugeot 306 comes in. It is - as eagle-eyed readers might have already spotted - exactly the same 1.9 Diesel which I helped my partner's family buy earlier this year, but having just helped them buy a much newer Ford Fiesta they've been more happy to give me the venerable old Pug for a fraction of the price.

It's done 161,000 miles in 15 years, which might sound like a lot but it's got plenty of history to prove it's been cared for throughout its life. It's also got an absolute gem of an engine counting in its favour - PSA's legendary XUD diesel engine, known for their ability to go on forever providing they've been looked after. Naturally, it's not going to win any concours events any time soon and - being a diesel of the old school - it's a bit agricultural on cold mornings, but it's a small price to pay for a 50mpg family hatchback which costs less than some of my pals spend on a night out.

Is it £150 well spent or an expensive repair waiting to happen? I'd like to think it's the former, but that's one of the fun things with buying and running cars for next to nothing. Either way, it means I can go back to the Classic Car Weekly offices in it and have the option of bringing my mountain bike back in it next time.

Try doing that in an MGB GT!

Volkswagen Golf R: Now available in handy estate form!

VOLKSWAGEN needs to get a move on. The coolest car it’s announced in years won’t be going on sale here until next summer, but I get the feeling it’ll be hot stuff in Lapland almost immediately.

There are no prizes for guessing what the Golf R Estate is – it is, put simply, the fastest hot hatch Volkswagen currently offers, with the added bonus of 605 litres of luggage space. Drop the back seats and that more than doubles, meaning you can cart a couple of cupboards home and still get to 60mph in a shade over five seconds.

Anyone who’s familiar with the Audi RS2, the Skoda Octavia RS Estate or the Volvo 850 T5 will know where I’m going with this one; hotted-up estate cars are MUCH cooler than hot hatchbacks. It’s something to do with an entire genre of car associated with antique dealers and Sunday afternoon schleps to B&Q being able to embarrass hot hatches and – as much as I hate to admit it – small sports cars at the lights.

Fast estates are cool because the boys in blue love ‘em too. One of my earliest and most exciting outings was sitting alongside a traffic officer as he reeled in speeding motorists on the roads of North Wales, and he needed something both quick enough to administer a bloody nose to a Golf GTi and capacious enough to carry a set of traffic cones in the back. His weapon of choice was pretty standard issue to most forces at the time. A Skoda Octavia RS Estate, of course.

If you appreciate bonkers-fast estates, you’ll understand why the prospect of a Golf R Estate is far more enticing than the 300bhp hatchback it’s based on, but I also get the feeling its talents would be perfect for a bloke I know who lives up North.

He works in the delivery business and has a big job coming up next month – a job that requires dropping off a heck of a lot of stuff in a single night. Every single year he insists on doing it the old-fashioned way, but the combination of the new arrival’s grand total of 1,606 litres of loadspace, the sure-footedness of the permanent all-wheel-drive system and the 300bhp shove of the 2.0 litre turbo engine would make it perfect for his line of work.

Make no mistake, I reckon my mate Nick would do well to get a Golf R Estate in his garage.

This year's NEC Classic Motor Show was overwhelming but brilliant

PETER Capaldi probably should have landed his TARDIS in the middle of one of Britain’s biggest car shows last weekend.

The National Exhibition Centre might be all the way down in Birmingham but it’s also one of the few shows outside the North West good enough to draw in petrolheads in significant numbers.

Even though I’ve only just got back from four very long days at the NEC, I’d urge anyone thinking of going next year to start planning now. One of Britain’s biggest car shows, I’ve discovered, has an annoying knack of corrupting time and space.

For starters, even though the venue itself isn’t an inch bigger than it was 12 months ago this year’s show somehow managed to squeeze an extra 100 cars in, almost all of which were bathed in the unsettling orange glow you only seem to get from 1970s tungsten lighting. The show itself was also populated by thousands of humanoid beings trudging between the Ford Anglias and Triumph Dolomites; they looked and sounded human, but plenty of them had an unerring ability to talk for hours on end about kingpins and trunnion bearings. I should know, because I’m one of them.

Worst of all, however, is that by depriving you of natural light and overloading you with cars to look at the NEC Classic Motor Show completely screws with your perception of time. The show’s eleven halls had the ability to shrink entire ten-hour days into what felt like twenty minutes, and then to spew out all that vacant time into the period you spend queuing for a Subway meal deal outside. 

Three days to look at 1,800 cars in even the briefest of detail just isn’t enough, which is why if you’re planning on going next year – and if you love cars, you really should – get booking those hotel rooms rather than in 11 months’ time. No matter how blistered your feet end up after wandering around those halls, it’s worth it because of what you get to see.

Despite time and space being utterly warped in this alien, orange-tinged landscape I managed to find plenty of cars to fall in love with. There was, for instance, a one-off Rover P6 rebodied by Zagato, a Ford Capri convertible – a car Ford itself never actually produced – and an utterly wonderful Maserati Sebring I desperately wanted to just drive off the stand and take home. 

Best of all, however, was an unrestored Jaguar XK120, which I could have bought had the NEC’s distortive qualities somehow expanded the tenner in my pocket to £57,000. Maybe next year!

Why the perfect winter car is a hot topic

I SHOULD go to London more than twice a year. Largely because if I did I’d quickly learn that - even in November – tube stations are no places for wearing a wax jacket.

It was slightly surreal wiping the sweat from my brow on the platform at Oxford Circus, contemplating as I waited for my connection to King’s Cross how it could be so hot and humid when I knew just thirty seconds upwards people were buttoning up their coats and popping up their brollies. Never at 8am on a November morning had I wished I’d been wearing shorts!

Sweltering tube stations aside, however, we as a species have got wearing the right clobber for the right conditions nailed. You don’t have to be Ray Mears to work out that wandering up Skiddaw on a snowy morning in a t-shirt isn’t a bright idea, in much the same way that disembarking from Ryanair’s finest at Barcelona is going to be jolly uncomfortable if you’re wearing a woolly hat and a scarf. The same, I’ve long reckoned, goes for cars.

That’s why I’m currently in the process of adding the four-wheeled equivalent of a wax jacket to my motoring wardrobe. For the first time in my motoring career I’ve ended up with the scenario where both my vehicles are what you could call summer cars; rear-wheel-drive two seater sports cars, which are about as suited to chilly commutes as sandals are. What I need, then, is a winter car.

A summer car and a winter car are much better than entrusting everything all year around to just one set of wheels, largely because you can afford to have something fine-tuned to each rather than one blunter instrument which isn’t really ideal for either.

My housemate reckons his Saab 9000 is the winter car, partly because it was developed in Sweden – where they know thing or two about cold mornings – and partly because it has a heater more powerful than Simon Cowell’s influence on The X Factor. Having driven it several time and realised it has to channel upwards of 200bhp onto winter’s slippery roads using its front wheels alone, I’d disagree.

The perfect winter car, I’d wager, would have to be four-wheel-drive to deal with all that treacherous tarmac, quick enough to get you to your destination before the sun sets at 4pm, comfortable enough to ease the winter blues, reliable enough not to let you down first thing on an icy morning AND equipped with a stupendously powerful heater.

In other words the Audi A4 - which means I’ve recommended a car I've never really had much time for. Maybe the heat on the tube’s been getting to me!

The new Jeep that's secretly a small Fiat

GREAT THINGS happen when America and Italy get into bed together.

How else do you explain Spaghetti Westerns, deep pan pizzas and The Godfather Part II? It gets even more special as soon as cars are involved – how else do you explain the Ferrari 250 GT Spyder California – so it was probably only a matter of time before Fiat’s transatlantic tie-up with Chrysler finally came up with the goods.

That’s because the latest unbelievably rugged offering from Jeep is, if you peel away all the Action Man packaging, basically the four-wheel-drive Fiat 500X unveiled earlier this year.

In fact, it’s more than that; because it’s built around the underpinnings developed by Fiat for its small cars (the company’s imaginatively-titled ‘Small’ platform) the new Jeep Renegade is also a distant relation to the Fiat Punto, the Alfa Romeo MiTo and – by virtue of the firm’s previous infatuations with General Motors  - the Vauxhall Adam.

The fact the Jeep Renegade manages to do the motoring equivalent melting down a Barbie doll, putting it back together and flogging it on a second time as a G.I Joe action figure is all down what the car industry called platform sharing. Ever wondered why a Volkswagen Golf and a SEAT Leon feel strangely similar to drive, or why the Toyota Aygo and the Peugeot 108 have the same vigour for small, twisty roads? It’s because under the skin they’re basically the same.

In the new Renegade’s case, it’s a bit like Fiat taking two pizzas and lavishing them with radically different toppings – olives and pineapples for the Fiat 500X, and every red meat imaginable for the muscular, macho Jeep. It’s great news for the car makers because they can sell the same basic product to two completely different sets of people.

Would I ever buy a slightly bloated version of the Fiat 500 that’s then been given four-wheel-drive to remove it even further from the 1950s micro marvel it roughly apes? No. Chances are, however, that I would buy something that looks a bit like the Jeep Cherokees which were all the rage here a decade or so ago, but shrunk down to make it more manageable in a Britain where petrol costs £1.30 a litre.

After what feels like an eternity of being treated to blobbily-proportioned family hatchbacks which only vaguely resemble off-roaders, it’s great that Fiat’s small car know-how has finally given Jeep the chance to make something which actually looks the part.

Fingers crossed it’s as good off the road as it’s Fiat-developed siblings are on it.

Why the BMW M3 deserves its brutal reputation

THE original BMW M3 is a sort of automotive Al Pacino. Despite having a sophisticated side, you can’t help looking at it and concluding it’s hard as nails.

There have been other go-faster saloons since – in the same way there have been plenty of American gangster films before and since Scarface – but this is the one everyone always remembers. It’s always been held up as being not just one of the greatest BMWs ever made, but one of the best cars, period.

Yet in the same way that I remember feeling weirdly underwhelmed when I watched Scarface for the first time, I initially got behind the wheel of this German performance motoring icon last week, taking it for a brief run and concluded it wasn’t much cop.

Why, I wondered, did people in the distant past of the late 1980s get so fizzed up about an expensive, two-door saloon which was only available in left-hand-drive? Didn’t the descendents of today’s modern man find the dog-leg racing gearbox, where you shift the gearlever backwards to get first, utterly infuriating to use? And why were they going for something which was only so-so to drive in the real world when you could have a TVR S2 or a Ford Sierra Cosworth for less?

It was only as I was pondering these questions – and why the original M3, codenamed the E30, attracts such a whopping premium over its faster successors – that the motorhome in front finally turned off and the road opened up, finally giving me the chance to actually see what one of the most sought after BMWs ever can really do.

It took about 20 seconds for Al Pacino’s automotive equivalent to pummel my scepticism into submission. Only when you take the M3 by the scruff of its neck do you really appreciate that it really is as good as everybody says it is.

You can tell from the howl of its four-cylinder, BMW Motorsport-developed engine above 4000rpm and the sensational handling that this car was developed with one thing in mind; winning races. The M3 Evolution version I drove might only develop 212bhp, which is less than half of what today’s M3 churns out, but because it’s so much smaller and lighter it still feels ruthlessly frantic.

Which is really frustrating thing about driving an E30 M3 – the magic moment when you get its steering and suspension to sing is also the moment you have to back off, because you just know you’ll lose your licence if you carry on.

The BMW E30 M3 not only lives up to every bit of its hard-earned reputation as a roadgoing streetfighter, but it’s a bit too brilliant for British roads. Mess with one at your peril!

Why now is the time to have your say on MoT testing

THERE is less than a week left to have your say about proposed laws which could spell the end of the MoT if - like me - you've got a car made before 1988.

Over a pint last night I spent a good twenty minutes trying to explain the implications of the European Roadworthiness Directive to my tame mechanics, who for the crime of being classic car specialists get the dubious honour of rescuing both my MGB and my MX-5 from their various mechanical maladies. It left me a bit worried - if two classic car mechanics aren't quite up to scratch with what the British Government are currently consulting over, what chance do the rest of us petrolheads have?

Unpeel the proposals from the EU bumph however, and it's fairly simple; in the plainest Northern English possible, the British Government has agreed to implement some form of MoT exemption for cars over 30 years old, as long as - and here's the tricky bit - they haven't had "substantial changes".

As it's a directive from Brussells rather than a fully-fledged law, however, it's entirely up to the boffins at Whitehall to work out exactly what substantial change is, which is why the Department for Transport is currently carrying out a consultation on the issue (albeit one that's not exactly been massively publicised).

It is a hugely divisive issue in the classic car world. I've always been of the opinion that ALL cars should have to go through an MOT (and I was definitely against pre-1960 cars being given MoT exemption) but I know plenty of people who reckon it's a good idea to exempt 30-year-old cars too, plenty of people who'd like classic cars to be tested every two years instead, and plenty of people who just want the European Union to get off our back and let us deal with our own motoring matters ourselves.

Whatever happens though, the important thing is to go on the consultation and get your thoughts across sooner rather than later - the consultation ends next Friday (24 October), so time's of the essence.

Hopefully, someone in Westminster or Whitehall will take note.

We must stop a new scrappage scheme consigning classic cars to the crusher

THERE'S a scary statistic I came up with last week to illustrate the scale of the biggest culling of cars the nation’s ever seen. 

If you took all the vehicles sent to the knacker’s yard five years ago as part of the then government’s efforts to boost new car sales and put them bumper to bumper, the line would stretch from Land’s End to John ‘o’ Groats AND back down as far as Edinburgh. A third of a million cars – most of which had nothing much wrong with them – went to the great garage in the sky.

Chances are if you’ve been reading the motoring publications (including the one I write for) you’ll already know about the metal that met its maker as a result of 2009’s Scrappage Scheme, but if you haven’t it’s worth reading on, because it’s one of the great automotive atrocities of our times. Largely because thousands of perfectly good, and very significant, cars went to the crusher just so someone could have a £2000 discount on a brand new hatchback.

There are thousands upon thousands of entries on the list of cars scrapped in 2009 as a result of the scheme, and it makes for very depressing reading when you see what headed into scrapyards across the country.  52 Porsche 944s, for instance. 45 Jaguar XJ-Ss. Four Riley Elfs. Even a Lancia Delta Integrale, mystifyingly, got chopped because someone somewhere wanted a discounted car instead of Italy’s Escort Cosworth in their garage.

Admittedly, some fairly terrible cars were also consigned to the scrapheap – several hundred Proton Personas, for example – and it goes without saying that some of the cars in the list probably would have been in such poor condition that the best thing for them was to recycle them to make something else. Scrapping a car under those circumstances is fine; I was hugely fond of my old Renault 5 and know they’ve got a cult following, but no amount of fondness was ever going to repair its body rot economically.

Yes, I know the Scrappage Scheme did act as a sort of defibrillator for the UK car market, giving it the jolt it needed at a desperate time, but any price that involves sacrificing a Jaguar XJ-S 45 times over is too high.

Hopefully we’ll never need the scheme again, but if we do I’d implore the powers-that-be to make sure perfectly good and very lovely old cars aren’t sent straight to the crusher. 

It’s too late to save the motoring heritage we lost five years ago, but we can stop it happening again.

The Mazda MX-5 has lost weight. I have not

A BIT like those village fete competitions where you have to guess how many pickles really are in the jar, every petrolhead and his dog are trying to work out how many ounces Mazda really has shaved off the new MX-5.

It’s an important question, largely because the prize, rather unlike a village fete, isn’t a bottle of wine or a weekend for two in Cleethorpes. It’s the promise of what could be the most exciting new car you’ll drive next year. 

Mazda itself is being coy for now as to just how much of a Gillian McKeith regime its two-seater roadster has been through. It won’t say exactly how much weight the new fourth-generation car has lost over its predecessor, only that it’s ‘more than 100kg’ lighter than the car that went before it.

When you do the maths that means the latest car will weigh at tops 1,053kg – or 2,321 pounds to you, Mr Farage – but probably less. All of which means it’ll be tantalisingly close to what the original weighed in at when it was launched 25 years ago – and the new car will have more power to play with too!

Why, you might be wondering, do a few pounds and ounces matter here and there, particularly when you’ll freely admit you can’t fit into the skinny jeans you wore a quarter of a century ago? It’s important because I’ve held my ground in pub debates for the last three years that the MX-5 is the best small sports car ever made.

The reason why it is the best-selling roadster the world’s ever seen is largely because it offers up the previously unthinkable combination of Triumph Spitfire fun with Toyota Yaris reliability. It is the darling of motoring journalists everywhere largely because it is beltingly good fun – and it’s why I’m on my second, having very reluctantly sold the first one.

It’s also important for the wider car industry as a whole because – as any eco-friendly car company exec will tell you – weight is the enemy, blunting performance and meaning you have to kill more polar bears with exhaust fumes to make up the shortfall. Making the new MX-5 lighter at a time when the trend is making cars ever heavier is an important example to the car world of less being more.

In fact, the MX-5 brings with it only one real problem. Being so light means any excess weight you’re carrying will only undermine its own brilliance – what’s the point of shaving the equivalent of a fat mate off the car’s weight when taking a fat mate along for the ride will cancel all Mazda’s hard work out?

It’s a good thing it’ll be long after Christmas before the new MX-5 lands here. The post-festive diet will have kicked in by then!

The tax disc dies today. How will you fill the void it leaves?

WHAT do a sticker with Southport’s coat of arms, a curious period reproduction of some 1970s paperwork and a Volkswagen Owners Club badge – even though I’ve never owned a VW – have in common?

Nope, they’re not prizes from the worst ever round of The Generation Game. They are, in fact, just three of the automotive ornaments competing for windscreen space in my small fleet of cheap used cars. As of today, you no longer need to display a tax disc in your car – and literally and metaphorically, the demise of this bit of DVLA bureaucracy is going to leave a big gap.

In case you hadn’t already heard, the DVLA has decided to do away with the little perforated discs. It means that for the first time since 1921, motorists won’t end up accidentally ripping them as they carefully try to free them from the bit of Swansea paperwork they’re posted out with, and the end of nosey neighbours trying to get one up on you when they point out your disc is a day out of date.

Naturally, there are downsides too, particularly if – like me – you love idly flicking through The Champion’s classifieds, hoping to find a rubber-bumper MG Midget for next to nothing. Thanks to some complicated and frankly rather boring changes to the law, you can no longer buy a car with six months’ tax thrown in as part of the deal – you have to pay for yours from scratch, and the seller has to ask for a refund for theirs. I’m keeping my fingers crossed the changes don’t spark another Passport Office-esque nightmare IT meltdown, but hopefully the new system should be second nature in six months’ time.

Nope, the real change for me is having a circular sea of emptiness in the bottom-left corner of my windscreen which no longer has to be filled with a redundant bit of paperwork. In my instance, I’ve already opted to fill the space left in my MX-5’s windscreen with a sticker celebrating Southport – a nice reminder of home when I spend most of my working week in deepest Cambridgeshire – while the MGB’s being treated to one of those period recreation tax discs that’s all the rage with classic car fans right now.

The possibilities are endless for that little circular wallet which will otherwise sit unloved and empty – you could replace your tax disc with a Liverpool FC badge, a photograph of Keira Knightley, whatever you choose.

In fact, my favourite suggestion was a colleague’s – just the words TAX IN PAST, scrawled on a circular bit of paper. 

I can just picture it now, plastered on the windscreen of a yellow Reliant Regal. Cushty, Rodders!

The jury's out on the new five-door MINI

I AM reserving judgement on the latest MINI until I get myself behind the wheel.

Over the past 13 years we’ve had a MINI convertible, a MINI estate, a MINI coupe, a MINI van and much more so it’s still hard not to get the impression that every possible permutation of BMW’s brilliant British-ish hatchback for the 21st century has already been invented.

With the notable exceptions of a reinvented Riley Elf and a Moke for the 21st century the MINI is the automotive My Way, because there are only so many different cover versions you can do.

Which is why I need to reserve judgement on the latest offering - the new MINI five-door hatchback.

On paper it sounds like just another hatchback - the ingenious twist on the MINI formula this time is, in their own words, that “two additional doors facilitate entry to the rear, where three seats are available”.

The MINI five-door hatchback is, in fact, a hatchback with five doors!

Some reviewers have been quick to say the new model is no better proportioned than the Morris Marina Coupe before it went out of production.

Another asked how the new model, which enjoys its official world debut at next week’s Paris Motorshow, can still legitimately be called a MINI when it’s so much larger even than the three-door car it’s based on.

However you must appreciate that beauty is very much in the eye of the beholder.

Don’t get me wrong – if my experiences with the visually challenging MINI Countryman are anything to go by it’ll be a hoot to drive and impeccably built.

It’ll also have that MINI trump card of a wonderfully detailed interior – in fact, I still don’t think most other manufacturers have caught up with 2001’s original MINI, 13 years on!

I’ll reserve my own judgement until I’ve driven it, but a MINI five-door hatch does prompt one very big question. Why? Stay tuned for the answer!

I want to put the brakes on one of my motoring pet hates

PETER KAY would have been proud of the perfect comic timing with which I rediscovered one of my motoring pet hates the other night.

Four of us had spent a very long day working at the Goodwood Revival – an enormous celebration of the cars, clothes and culture your mum and dad used to enjoy in the early 1960s – and we’d broken out of the long traffic jams on the nearby roads to venture into nearby Chichester for dinner. While we’d all embraced the 1960s theme and were dressed from head to foot in marvellously silly period costumes, I’m ashamed to admit the car I’d brought along was a not even remotely period, 11-reg Volkswagen Passat.

A truly accomplished cruiser of a car, but one with a nasty surprise.

It was just outside the city’s branch of Pizza Hut that I nosed past my chosen parking spot, flicked the gear lever into reverse and gently backed the German repmobile favourite into the bay perfectly, the VW badges on the alloy wheels lined up perfectly with the painted white lines on either side.

As I switched off and we clambered out of the car I turned to my colleagues to share my smug moment of Passat parking prowess.

“Never let it be said that Mr Simister can’t park a car”. As I finished my sentence I was met with a mixture of shrieks as the Passat started rolling forward, as though it were on a mission to turn the adjacent Italian restaurant into a drive-thru of its own accord. The people of Chichester were treated to the sight of four men – three of them dressed in tweed suits and the other as a 1960s F1 pit mechanic – fleeing a runaway Volkswagen. 

I realised my moment of motoring brilliance had been cruelly taken from me - by the electronic parking brake!

I’ve driven a couple of cars equipped with such devices, and I hate all of them because they replace something perfectly good with a system that’s as best clunky and at worst downright dangerous. The Pizza Hut parking calamity might have generated an entire night of mickey-taking at my expense, but a couple of us did find it genuinely trickier to set off on hills without the finesse a proper handbrake affords you. The split second you have to wait for the computerised system to strut its stuff, we found all too often, was that split second you needed when pulling out at a busy junction.

What was wrong with the old-fashioned handbrake? It is, like the manually-operated gear lever, a perfectly good device that’s being slowly phased out by car makers. I’d love to be proven wrong by one that works properly, but until then I’ll maintain they just aren’t as good as the proper handbrakes they’re increasingly replacing.

Next year, I’ll have to embrace the Goodwood period thing properly and go in my MGB. Largely because it doesn’t roll into Italian restaurants when you park it.

Jaguar XE - why it deserves to succeed

FORGET Euro 2016. The most realistic chance of watching England going up against the Germans and giving them a comprehensive thrashing is in the car mags, sometime next spring.

It’s not often you get three hugely important automotive unveilings within a week of each other, but that’s precisely what happened when the Land Rover Discovery Sport, Mazda’s new MX-5 and Jaguar’s XE all waded into your Twitter feed at roughly the same moment. For what it’s worth, it’s the unveiling of only the fourth MX-5 in 25 years which pressed all my petrolhead buttons, but that’s a small, open top sports car enjoyed by hedonists in search of a hairpin bend in the Welsh countryside.

The XE, on the other hand, could very well be the most important new car launched this year. Largely because it offers to take the fight to the BMW 3-Series and Audi A4 and actually win. A victory which – and I know Jaguar Land Rover is owned by an Indian conglomerate – would be fantastic news for UK Plc.

It’d be a particularly hard-earned result if the Jaguar’s new saloon did pull it off because – in a well-established tradition of so-near-yet-so-far established by England’s footballers on their business trip to Italy back in 1990 -  the company got so close to pulling it off originally with the X-type 14 years ago.

It was far from a bad car, essentially being an improved and upgraded twist on the hugely accomplished Mk3 Ford Mondeo, but even being that wasn’t quite as talented as the contemporary 3-Series, and as a result few BMW salesmen lost any sleep over the British upstart. All anybody remembers about it now is it being a bit of an also-ran in terms of sales figures and (unfairly) that it’s a Mondeo-in-drag.

The XE, on the other hand, has got everything going for it. It’ll be keenly priced - £27,000 should get you into the entry-level version – and comes with the exactly the sort of small diesel engine which has helped the 3-Series storm past the Mondeo to earn the top spot as Britain’s favourite big saloon. It’ll also be rear-wheel-drive (which is important, given the X-type was also castigated for being propelled by the ‘wrong’ wheels) and it looks like a younger, fresher version of the XF, which is a bit like Dannii Minogue looking like a younger, fresher version of Kylie.

Obviously, the real proof will be out on Britain’s roads in a few months time, when we’ll discover whether England really has scored the automotive equivalent of 5-1 over BMW and Audi. If it has, expected every motorway outside lane to be packed with XEs this time next year.

Mazda - please don't ruin the MX-5

AT 2am tomorrow morning (4 September) petrolheads will be treated to an event that’s only happened three times in the past quarter of a century. Mazda will unveil a new MX-5!

Regular followers of Life On Cars will already know I’m a big fan of the rev-happy Japanese roadster and its appetite for British B-roads. In fact, I’m now on my second MX-5 (and before points it out, I know it’s badged as a Eunos), and I’m yet to tire of its never-ending appetite for a blast down the nearest country lane.

It is the one car which - no matter how many times I hear the hairdresser gags – earns the respect of even the most hardened cynics by blending traditional sports car thrills with pretty much unshakeable levels of reliability. I’m the fifth motoring journo I know at Classic Car Weekly’s offices to have owned one, and even a mate who’s been firmly of the MGF-is-better mentality for years surprised me by rocking up in a Mk2 1.8 Sport version the other day. The MX-5 is, I’ve long maintained, the best small sports car ever made.

That’s why the unveiling of the fourth generation car in the early hours of tomorrow morning is such a big deal.

Mazda itself said itself earlier this year the winning formula for what’s gone on to be the world’s best selling sports car is a lightweight design and perfect front-rear weight balance, so every keen driver from Norfolk to North Virginia will be hoping Hiroshima’s best engineers haven’t forgotten how to make a cracking car.

Jeff Guyton, Mazda’s European president, said: “The MX-5 is the product that best epitomises Mazda’s convention-defying spirit and our love of driving. “It has been grabbing people’s attention for 25 years, and with the new generation model we’re aiming to share this passion with yet another generation of drivers.”

Fingers crossed, then. Mazda, please don’t muck it up!