Happy birthday, Toyota RAV-4!

TOYOTA has celebrated the 20^th birthday of one of its models by offering the latest version with more gadgets at a lower price.

The original RAV-4 proved a hit back in 1994 with its blend of edgy styling, off-roader stance and its inviting driving experience, and the name has remained a staple of the company’s range ever since.

The latest version, which with a starting price of £22,195 is now £400 cheaper than its predecessor, is also offered with a more generous helping of standard equipment than previously.

Farewell, Ford Mondeo

FORGET oil, diamonds or the mysterious underground gas that's been getting you so fracking angry lately. I reckon the world’s most valuable commodity is attention.

Studies have shown that while attention occurs naturally in all human brains – even the ones of reality TV stars – it runs out completely if you try to mine it for more than about 45 minutes or so. Once that’s gone, all you’re left with a dangerous void of mentally planning your next holiday, pondering the plot of Sherlock and wondering whether you really did lock your front door when you left the house this morning.

Even a few seconds of not having an abundant supply of attention at your disposal can cause all sorts of problems. I know this, because that’s roughly how long it took for another driver to write my FordMondeo off beyond repair.

Regular readers might recall how proud I was to finally depart the 1990s and plump my posterior onto the leather lined throne of something modern for a change. The 2.0 litre Ghia X might have been 12 years old but it came stashed with an armada of gizmos so extensive it’d make viewers of The Gadget Show proud. Electric seats and an electric sunroof. Cruise control and a six CD autochanger. It had all of these things, and just about everything else besides.

Yet none of these gadgets could have prevented its fate on that dark evening in deepest Peterborough, as I gradually drew to a stop on the approach to a roundabout somewhere near the A1. The only clue I had that a rather rushed sales manager was about to indulge in a spot of creative parking – as in parking his company 3-Series half a foot into the Mondeo’s rear bumper – was the fleeting glimpse of a set of headlights in the rear view mirror, racing towards me through the darkness.

It is, to my mind, the worst kind of collision you can be involved in; the sort which you can do absolutely nothing about, other than watch it happen. You can be the best driver in the world (which, incidentally, I’m definitely not) and it still isn’t going to stop an errant Audi ploughing into your pride and joy. 

For the sake of driving too fast, too close and not nearly attentively enough, you end up causing weeks of headaches for people you’ve never met. In fact, having a car written off through no fault of my own is getting off lucky; what would have happened if Beemer Boy had been doing the full 70mph he was legally entitled to on that stretch of road?

So the Mondeo is gone. Luckily, I’m not.

Vauxhall launches the smartphone-on-wheels

A LIMITED edition hatchback billed as ‘a smartphone on wheels’ is Vauxhall’s latest offering for fashion-conscious motorists.

Just 250 of the new versions of the ADAM supermini, called the ADAM Black and the ADAM White in honour of their distinctive paintjobs, are being created, and are designed to be fully compatible with the latest versions of the iPhone to help make it easier for buyers to use them on the move.

The new model, which is powered by a 1.4 litre petrol engine good for 87bhp, is available now and costs £14,995.

Subaru brings an affordable performance icon back to Britain

A rally-bred favourite from Japan is being brought back to Britain by popular demand, it has been confirmed.

Subaru said that the turbocharged version of its Impreza – now called the WRX STI – will be sold in this country from June, with prices starting at £28,995 for the turbocharged, four-wheel-drive saloon.

While the company has said it will only be sold in limited numbers, the company’s decision to sell it here reflects the dedicated following Subaru’s performance models have previously enjoyed here.

David Brown will have a tough job developing a new sports car

IMAGINE the biggest number you can think of and then multiply it by ten. Nope, you’re still nowhere near how much it costs to develop a new car.

It’s such a fantastically enormous quantity of money that it hurts your head thinking about it. VW, for instance, threw £50bn at developing what it calls the MQB platform, which in layman’s English refers to the bits and bobs which hold the current Golf, Audi A3 and its family cousins together. Spend much less and you get the David Simisters of this world poking fun at the fact your latest sales rep special has a cheap-feeling dashboard.

My point is that because it costs such an extraordinary amount of cash to develop a new car properly, very few firms can actually afford to, which is why MG Rover went bust and why – despite the best efforts of the Chinese – you haven’t been able to buy a new Saab for nearly three years. It’s why Aston Martin’s ‘new’ models are always thinly-disguised rehashes of the decade-old DB9 and why Fiat ended up buying Chrysler outright the other week. Virtually no one can afford to develop a car.

Which is why I’m just a bit cynical about what’s roughly the 327^th attempt by a British businessmen to set up his own sports car company.

Last weekend I got word of David Brown’s efforts to set up his own firm, called David Brown Automotive. The name’s great – chiefly because it immediately conjures connotations of a (non-related) David Brown’s involvement in Aston Martin, which led to a string of beautiful GT cars – and the badge, a stylised Union Flag, pushes all the right patriotic buttons. He’s got talent on board too, in the form of Land Rover’s former design boss, and he’s confident he get a new car, as if from nowhere, ready to wow us this April.

It’s bold, it’s British, and it’s a new sports car. But haven’t we heard all this before?

For every Ariel Atom or Caterham there’s a Marcos or a Jensen, or an Invicta or a Lea-Francis, that has promised to take on Johnny Foreigner with a new sports car developed for about 50p – and subsequently vanished without trace. There are handful that crack this toughest of automotive nuts, but I’ve just got a horrible feeling that the David Brown will join all the other old sports cars you’d forgotten existed.

I would love, of course, to be proven wrong and for a plucky Brit to come good for a change. Sadly, I have my doubts.

Kia gets it right with the GT4 Stinger

THINGS are looking grim in America at the moment.

While you were busy worrying about high tides and gale force winds, people on the Eastern Seaboard have been enduring something which Michael Fish types call a polar vortex, nudging temperatures to so comically cold that the Niagra Falls actually froze. People haven’t been going to work. They’ve uploading footage of freshly boiled water turning instantly turning into snow onto YouTube instead. 

As a result I was surprised anyone actually braved the bitter conditions for a trip to this year’s Detroit Motor Show, but those who did have been rewarded with an historic moment in motoring. A Korean company unveiling a genuinely gorgeous and exciting car.

This, as far as I’m aware, has only happened twice before in the entire history of South Korea’s car industry, making it a sort of solar eclipse of motoring. The first was back in 1995, when Hyundai launched the Coupe, which caught the car world napping because it was curvaceous and charismatic when everything else it made at the time – the Accent, the Sonata and so on – was at best bland and at worst visual pollution. Then, in 2008, it launched a rear-wheel-drive GT car called the Genesis, but none of us ever got to see it because the company has never sold it in this country.

The rest of the world launches cars designed solely with the wow factor in mind every other week – we’ve got the F-type, Italy’s got the Alfa 4C, Japan’s got the Toyota GT86. Korea’s upped its game lately with attention-grabbers like the Kia Soul and the Hyundai i40, but its ‘wow’ cars, the sort of thing your eight-year-old son Blu-tacks to his bedroom wall, are few and far between.

That’s why I really hope Kia gets its latest concept car into production. Even without the freezing Detroit weather outside, it is a truly cool car.

For starters, the name is spot on – ladies and gents, meet the Kia GT4 Stinger, which makes it sound like a fighter plane. It also might only have a 2.0 litre engine, but it’s turbocharged, and chucks 315bhp through a six speed gearbox at the back wheels. Yet the thing which really stops you in the GT4 Stinger’s tracks is the way it looks, which is stunning.  It’s all bulging wheelarches and narrow windows, and it looks like it means business.

Think of it as Kia’s answer to the Nissan 370Z or – if you’re a bit older – as a sort of Korean reinvention of the Ford Capri. Get making it, chaps!

Porsche 911 goes back to its roots for new Targa model

PORSCHE has gone back to the Sixties for inspiration for its latest twist on the 911.

Recent versions of the 911 Targa – an al fresco model for anyone who doesn’t quite want a full cabriolet – have used full length sunroofs, but this latest version harks back to the original 1965 model, with a lift out roof at the front and a wraparound glass panel at the rear.

The new model, which arrives in the UK in May, is available to order now, with prices for the entry-level Targa 4 version starting at £86,281.

It's time to find out whether the new MG range is any good

BROKEN your New Year’s resolution yet? I haven’t, although for 2014 one of my goals seems to be a bit more ambitious than most.

This isn't about shedding a stone by sweating it out on a treadmill or deciding to raise a few more quid for charity. This year, one of my aims is to actually drive one of the modern day MGs and let you know if they’re any good.

Largely because I want to come to my conclusions about one of 2013’s great motoring mysteries. Why, when you weren't looking, has MG’s market share halved?

As someone who owns an old MG, I was actually quite excited about seeing the octagon badge back on the front of a brand new car, even if it was – whisper it quietly – engineered and designed at the behest of the firm’s Chinese owners. Yes, I know that quite a bit of the development work for the new range of MGs was done in the West Midlands, but the result still – visually at least – feels more Peking Duck than Yorkshire Pudding.

I’d love to be able to let you know definitively if you should cancel that Ford Focus order after all and rush out and get a new MG, but the sales figures suggest that the worthy-but-bland range of hatches and saloons just isn’t doing for us Brits. The most stats reveal that just 384 of you treated yourselves to a new MG, and that’s the figure for the whole of the UK. Compared to this time last year, sales are down 44%.

While the MG6 and MG3 might divide opinion among the motoring press – and I have read lots of favourable reviews, so this isn't just about cheap MG bashing – for whatever reason they just aren't cutting it with the great British public. 

Where, chaps, is the successor to the MG TF? Abingdon’s most famous automotive export – for all the turbocharged Maestros and Metro rally cars – is about keeping it simple, dropping the top and enjoying the sunshine for not much outlay. China, as we know, is the world’s fastest emerging superpower and MG’s owner, the Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation, is state-owned. Surely it has a few quid to chuck at designing a proper MG, which people might actually buy?

While I've no doubt the current range isn't THAT bad, MG deserves to do so much better. A brand that gets just about everyone nostalgic, a world that’s no longer too credit-crunched to buy into it and the state funding of an Asian superpower to make it happen.

A properly marketed, cheap, simple sports car is the MG we all want, but until then I'll have to contend myself with finally blagging my way into an MG6.

Watch this space…

Whatever happened to the Life On Cars Mini?

AS the wind howled in from the Irish Sea and lorries thundered past I could feel the Mini’s speed sapping away, its tiny engine coughing and spluttering under the strain. The A55 in North Wales is a lonely place to be when you’ve just broken down in a car that’s older than you are.

It’s almost exactly five years since I encountered what would be the first of many breakdowns in my first car. Having only passed my test two months earlier, I probably should’ve been sensible and sourced a secondhand Micra or a lightly-cuddled Ka for my motoring debut. That, however, would have been boring, so I opted for a 1983 Mini Mayfair instead.

A car I grew to love and hate in roughly equal measure, depending on how much it’d broken down in any given week.

Even though I sold it more than three years ago, it is still the one car I get asked about more than any other. A860 JKC wasn’t so much a car as a source of automotive anecdotes. One day, I’d be revelling in its go-kart steering and how many mates and bags of Tesco’s finest you can cram into just ten feet of car. The next, I’d be cursing its British Leyland build quality and welding so bad you didn’t need a Haynes diagram to see its internals.

For all its foilibles, the car that became known simply as The Life On Cars Mini took me on thousands of miles of adventures everywhere from Caernarfon to Carlisle. Even though I’ve owned another, better-built Mini since – and quite a few other cars besides – I still miss it. In the same way you might miss your old teddy bear.So I was delighted to discover earlier today that the old girl’s still very much alive.

My automotive answer to Who Do You Think You Are was inspired by fellow Classic Car Weekly scribe Greg Macleman, after reading about hisefforts to track down his old, mid-Eighties BMW. A quick check on the DVLA’s vehicle enquiry website (well worth a go if you’re keen to ascertain your old car’s pulse, by the way) revealed that while it wasn’t on the road, it was still very much on its records. Which meant it’d escaped the crusher.

Next port of call was to dig out the Mini’s old records and give the chap I’d sold it to three years ago a quick ring, expecting it to prompt the start of a lengthy search. I was overjoyed to discover that he’s still got it – and that the car I fell in love all those years ago is finally being treated to the restoration I could never afford as a trainee reporter.

The Mini which graced The Champion’s motoring section every other week with its breakdowns all those years ago is, you’ll be pleased to hear, currently in a bodyshop being given a bit of TLC.

I feel a bit of a reunion coming on. Preferably not on a windswept dual carriageway on the North Wales coast, though!