Fiat's new lease deal for the 500 is young at heart

FIAT is pitching a new lease deal on its 500 to teenage motorists who would otherwise struggle with the cost of insuring their first car.

The company’s i-DEAL scheme, agreed jointly between the Italian manufacturer and Carrot, an insurance firm, allows drivers as young as 18 to drive a brand new 500 fitted with a telematics system which encourages them to drive more safely.

The three year deal costs £239 a month to take part in. While it’s not the cheapest way to get motoring at the age of 18 – there are of course, telematic monitoring systems which can already be fitted to secondhand cars – it’s ideal for parents who want their offspring to start their motoring career in a safe, hassle-free way.

Karl Howkins, Commercial Director for FIAT Chrysler UK, said: “This all-inclusive insurance package deal will make the dream of driving a brand new FIAT 500 a reality for many young drivers who would otherwise be forced to drive an older and potentially less reliable and safe vehicle.”

To find out more go to the new website covering the Fiat 500 insurance deal.

Why I've signed the motorsport noise petition

BLIPPING the throttle on a Jaguar F-type, hearing the scream of that supercharged V8 and the lovely crackle from the exhaust overrun is one of those things I reckon I’d never get tired of doing. 

It’s a truly beautiful bit of automotive acoustics, but I reckon if I moved next door to your house and did it repeatedly, day after day, you’d start to find even the F-type’s sonorous song a bit annoying after a while. It’s the same story with anyone who thinks they can get away with playing with the Black Eyed Peas in the next room – noise, when you’re not expecting it, is utterly annoying and thoroughly deserving of a strongly-worded Post-It Note.

But what if you move somewhere where a bit of racket is to be expected – in fact, where a bit of racket is actually encouraged? I reckon that’s a different story. Luckily, about 36,000 of you happen to agree with me, which is why an ongoing petition to protect motor racing circuits from people who move in next door and then complain about the noise is well on its way to getting debated at Westminster.

I completely get where the likes of Mallory Park, brought to its knees two years ago by a noise-related complaint, and Mildenhall Stadium, which is currently fighting its next door neighbours in the Supreme Court, are coming from. You can’t just move in across the street from a motor racing circuit that’s been there for years, find it a bit annoying and then take the operators to the cleaners.

I grew up in a house less than a mile from RAF Woodvale, which has been there since Spitfires were taking off and predates the nearby homes by at least 30 years.  Equally, the place I put my head down for the night during the working week is less than 50 yards from the A1, and I’m not exactly in a position to moan about what’s been the road from London to Edinburgh since the Romans set up shop here. If I didn’t like either, I’d just move somewhere else.

If you value going to somewhere like Oulton Park or Donington and you enjoy watching racing, then go online and sign the petition. Britain is the de facto motorsport capital of the world – just ask all the F1 teams based within an hour of Silverstone – and it needs protecting from the numpties next door.

Honda's clever cruise control is computing witchcraft

THE OTHER week my smartphone – having worked out I was on a train chugging its way through Sandhills station – decided to give me an update on how Brendan Rogers’ boys were getting on against Arsenal.

Somewhere deep within the phone’s brain, a complicated algorithm had worked out that, as I was vaguely close to Anfield at the time of a Liverpool game, I must have been interested in the results. All it proved was that my phone probably knows less about me than you do. It knew where I was, but couldn’t figure out why.

If you’ve ever bought someone a gift on Amazon – say, Michael Bublé’s latest album – and then been hounded with emails suggesting you buy all his other albums despite the fact you hate his records, you’ll know what I mean when I say I don't really trust computerised technology. It makes even less sense when you apply it to real world driving – a colleague and I were circumnavigating London’s North Circular the other day, and even though I’ve never driven the capital’s roads before I could still work when to change lanes long before Lady Satnav did.

That’s why I’m genuinely going to have to take a leap of faith with Honda’s latest invention. I don’t know how they’ve done it, but they’ve managed to come up with an automatic cruise control system that can predict if someone’s about to cut you up. Not only that, but it then applies the brakes to prevent them causing a pile-up.

Surely that’s just witchcraft? Predicting who is going to cut you up on the M58 is something best done with common sense rather than computers. Even a really good computer, developed by Honda’s brainiest boffins, cannot scan every car on the motorway, work out which one is the BMW X5 on personalised plates and take pre-emptive action to prevent them from ruining your drive into work.

However, it’s not something nicked from a science fiction movie. It’s called Intelligent Adaptive Cruise Control – or i-ACC, as Honda’s insisting we nickname it – and it’ll be available on range-topping versions of the CR-V off-roader later this year.

I can’t wait to give it a go and see if it actually works. Perhaps more worrying it’s that it’s being hailed as a step towards a whole new generation of clever gadgets that can predict what other people are about to do and take pre-emptive decisions to improve the situation.

Maybe such a technical marvel shouldn’t just be limited to motoring. Have Liverpool thought about bringing in i-ACC to replace Brendan Rogers?

Nissan LEAF leads electric car sales charge

SALES of electric cars more than doubled in 2014 compared to the previous year, new figures from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders reveal.

Among the biggest sellers are Nissan’s LEAF and Vauxhall’s Ampera, but even at current rates the electric vehicles still only account for one in every 220 new cars sold in the UK.

SEAT joins the fast estate club

SEAT is following Ford, VW and Skoda into the world of practically-minded performance cars by launching its first ever fast estate model.

The SEAT Leon ST Cupra has the same 280bhp engine and six-speed gearbox as its hatchback sibling, but despite all the extra luggage room it’s only two tenths of a second slower in the dash from 0 to 60mph.

It goes on sale here in March, with prices due to be announced in the next few weeks.

New classic car show in Preston today

CLASSIC CAR owners in Lancashire might want to head to this new event, which takes place near Preston today.

The 10am-4pm event takes place at the Smiths Arms in Lea Town, and is open to all classic vehicles, and if it's a success more gatherings are on the cards at the pub later this summer.

For more information call John Deuce on 01772 760555.

Don't miss tomorrow's Wirral to Llandudno Mini Run

ONE of my favourite motoring events - the Wirral to Llandudno Mini Run - gets underway tomorrow morning (11 January, 2015).

It's not only a great opportunity to blow off the festive cobwebs, but you get to see scores of classic Minis from right across Wales, the north of England and the Midlands being enjoyed in and around the picturesque resort of Llandudno.

The run takes more than 100 Minis from Bromborough on the Wirral to Rhos-on-Sea, the Great Orme and into Llandudno, but the best place to see them is on Llandudno's promenade from 11am. The display is held on the town's seafront until 3pm.

If you've never been, these pictures from the event in previous years will give you an idea what to expect...

 

For more information have a look at the event's website.

It's the beginning of the end of the Land Rover Defender

LAND ROVER has announced a trio of special editions to mark the Defender's final year of production.

The Heritage, Adventure and Autobiography editions, which are all powered by the company's 2.2 litre diesel engine, are available to order now and will be on sale until the end of the model's production in December. The cheapest of the three is the Heritage edition, which costs £27,800.

The off-roader has been in production since 1984, and was given the Defender name a quarter of a century ago. Land Rover is considering keeping the model in limited production outside the European Union, but it will disappear from the showrooms at the end of the year.

However, there is a crumb of good news - work is very much underway on finally creating the trusty Land Rover's replacement.

Nick Roger, the manufacturer's vehicle line director, said: 'Passion and enthusiasm surround everything we do with Defender, and that will never change. With a history stretching back 68 years, this is a Land Rover that has thrived for decades on its unquestionable capability and iconic shape.

'I now have the honour of being one of the many enthusiasts at Land Rover committed to creating a fitting successor to the legendary Defender.'

Land Rover has also marked the Defender's final year by using six classic Land Rovers to create the UK's biggest ever sand artwork. To see the video, have a look at this article I've writen for the Classic Cars For Sale website. 

Lotus and Ariel take their sports cars off road

THE INTERNET is currently bursting at the seams with people wondering whether they’re going to get their hoverboards this year. It’s 2015, which if you grew up in the Eighties or early Nineties only means one thing; finally being able to see how much Back to the Future II jumped from fiction to fact.

It’s odd looking back at the all the things proclaimed as being the future back in 1985, and I don’t just mean the Sinclair C5. Things like four-wheel-steering and talking digital dashboards were about as futuristic as Human League records – but how of many today’s cars actually have them? On the other hand, Eighties luxuries like folding door mirrors and reversing cameras are making it into even the cheapest of today’s cars, and safety essentials ABS and airbags are de rigueur. 

But I’d love to know is what petrolheads will be thinking in another 30 years when they look back at motoring’s latest rethink. This is the year, it’s looking increasingly likely, when the British sports car whipped off its trainers and slapped on some walking boots.

I’m not talking about Jaguar’s four-wheel-drive version of its F-type, but sports cars designed specifically for venturing up forest tracks rather than setting blistering lap times around Oulton Park. We’ve had sporty off-roaders before, of course, but it’s looking increasingly likely 2015 will be the year of the off-roady sports car.

Word on the automotive grapevine is that Lotus is making an off-road version of its Evora, which will keep its rear-wheel-drive but will be jacked up and fitted with knobbly tyres. It might sound preposterous, but given Lotus’ engineering talent I’m really looking forward to seeing if they can pull it off. The existing roadgoing Evora cope that badly when I treated it to a spot of impromptu off-roading for a photoshoot at Southport Beach when I test drove one a few years ago, either!

Luckily, you don’t have to wait until Lotus finishes to see what an off-road sports car looks like. Ariel has managed to cross its already mildly unhinged Atom with something you might find in an Action Man toy set, called it the Nomad, and is about to put it on sale. It hasn’t got four-wheel-drive either, but with the chunky tyres, the minimal weight and the 200bhp the 2.4 litre Honda engine chucks out, it’s unlikely you’d need it on the rough stuff. As unlikely as an off-road Ariel Atom sounds, I think it’s going to be fantastic.

So is the off-road sports car something that’s going to catch on or is it an automotive dead end? Given the appetite for cars that even look a bit off-roaders but aren’t – take a bow, Nissan Qashqai – I’d like to think it’s the former.

I’m more likely to pilot an Ariel off-road than to take up hoverboarding, that’s for sure!

How to save hundreds of pounds on your next Mitsubishi

MITSUBISHI has announced a New Year deals involving savings right across its model range.

The offers include pre-VAT discounts on the L200 pickup truck, Outlander off-roader and ASX hatchback, and a zero per cent hire purchase on the Mirage supermini.

For a full round-up of the current offers, go online to www.mitsubishi.co.uk or pop into your nearest dealer.

Check out these 1980s 4X4 images

A LOT of you enjoyed the 1980s off-roader pictures, which I've been scanning in digitally over the Christmas break.

However it turns out my father had another old photo album with even more archive shots, including these shots from across Lancashire and Yorkshire.

Here are few more gems from more than 30 years ago, including everything from Land Rover Series Is to Mercedes G-Wagens. There's even a Daihatsu F20 getting stuck in - when was the last time you saw one of those?

There's no grey area with these special edition Mazdas

TWO new special editions of the Mazda2 named after their paint colours have just gone on sale across the North West.

The Black Edition and White Edition are both based on the five-door family hatchback but behind their bonnet stripes is a lavish helping of normally optional extras, including heated folding door mirrors and rear privacy glass.

The two special edition cars, which went on sale on New Year’s Day, costs £12,145.

New classic car gatherings planned for the North West

CLASSIC CAR owners from across the North West are being invited to a new series of monthly meets which begin this spring.

The meetings will be held on the Sunday morning of every month between 9am and 11.30am at the Corner House, a pub and restaurant in Wrightington.

The events are being organised by David Morgan, who is also involved in the long-running New Year classic car meet at Briars Hall in nearby Lathom. Clubs and individual classic owners alike are encouraged to bring their cars along to the inaugural event, which takes place on 1 March (EDIT: incorrect date published on event flyer).

For more information email info@cornerhousewrightington.co.uk or call 01257 451400.

 Click on either of the images to enlarge them for more details

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