CarsDampers and tuning

My family and I spent the latter part of last week in the wilds of Snowdonia staying with friends. Our new V70 long termer still isn’t ready, so Volvo kindly lent us a new XC70 3.2 SE Sport to tide us over - here it is at Caernarfon castle, the castle built by Edward I in the late 13th century to control Wales. The current Prince of Wales was invested here in 1969.

I joined up with my family having had an energetic journey up there from Birmingham where I was attending the Used Car Awards event, changing trains three times to finally make it to Llandudno Junction. Getting off a horrid Network Rail (or whatever they’re called this week) seat and into the sumptuous leather of the Volvo was a miraculous change. The big squishy air-conditioned seats (fitted as standard to this particular model) were a wonder to behold.

Not such a wonder was the 3.2 straight-six engine. I thought this new engine was smooth on the S80 when I drove it last year - but the S80 has 300kgs less than this heavy 4WD car. It lacks torque - less than a Mondeo 2-litre TDCi - and really struggled to get going. This in turn meant that in a car where smoothness is key, you actually jerked on rather too much for my liking. It also meant that overtaking moves - usually easy enough in a 240hp car - were more challenging than I would have liked. Fuel consumption was heavy - 23mpg - and I have a feeling the D5 diesel is the engine to go for, delivering much more torque from a wider RPM range - but I haven’t driven it yet so can’t say for certain. I am glad the V70 has a D5.

The radar-assisted cruise worked well and is well worth the £900 option. The car clocked in at nigh on £42 grand though - and for that you still didn’t get satnav…

Certainly it has plenty of room for kids and their stuff, and our daughter Isabelle and Sarah and her daughter Anna clearly enjoyed themselves:

It looks good - purposeful and modern without being OTT - and of course it has all the versatility of an SUV (it tackled bumpy tracks with aplomb) - with none of the planet-destroying stigma that is now slowly but surely bringing the 4×4 party to an end:

Roll on the V70,

Tom

Original post by MSN Cars Space

Henry and I attended an Alfa Romeo event at Rockingham last week. You’ll see our impression of some of the cars in roadtest from shortly. But perhaps even more interesting is the positive news surrounding Alfa’s market performance, related to us by recently appointed UK Managing Director, Christopher Nicoll.

• The 169 may seem like folly, given the disappointing performance of the 166, but the company apparently believes a car of this size is essentially if Alfa is to be properly recognised as a premium brand - and for its imminent return to the US. This is pure speculation, but given the 8C Competizione’s Maserati connections we wouldn’t be surprised to see a bit of platform sharing here as well.

• The ‘CXover’ will clearly be getting a catchier name, but the working title is at least descriptive. A crossover SUV, it will be "like the BMW X3 - only smaller, more agile, more efficient" according to Nicoll. Given how good the X3’s road manners are this should make for a stonking device, assuming Alfa can deliver.
  

• As for the ‘Junior’, we’ll be seeing this launched in the new year. Its arrival in the UK is anticipated to be early 2009, with some dealers getting demo cars before next Christmas. The petrol engines will be all new, and we’re getting some heavy hints about turbocharging - great for efficiency and performance, and hardly a surprise given what we’ve seen from close relation Fiat recently.

Right, back to the market performance. This is interesting. Honest.

‘…and so I said: Alfa Spider!’ [internal]

Original post by MSN Cars Space

Dan spotted this over the weekend, and it would be a shame not to share it with you all. Since we don’t know the circumstances it’s best not to jump to any conclusions about pitying or deriding the owner. But suffice to say considering the beating it’s evidently taken, this car is actually in pretty good shape…

For what the 600RE is supposed to look like, see below [click to enlarge]:

Original post by MSN Cars Space

Original post by MSN Cars Space

Original post by MSN Cars Space

To remind everyone that for used cars, Auto Trader is the place it’s at, they have inaugurated an annual used car award - loosely associated with ITV’s Used Car Roadshow programme, and the awards were held at the Hilton hotel at the NEC last night.

Ian and I drove up in our trusty Skoda Fabia long-termer, in which I got some much needed kip:

Despite it being a business hotel and it being 2007, there was unaccountably no internet whatsoever in either of our rooms, which was deeply annoying but there you go.

MSN Cars was a sponsor of the Luxury Car category, and on our table it was myself, and regulars Ian, Dan Trent, Richard Aucock, and occasional contributors James Mills and Mike Valente. It was a good night, hosted by Jason Dawe and Penny Mallory. Being filmed for later broadcast on ITV4, we occasionally had to go back and do everything again which was quite aggravating. They had a standup from a somebody Mc-something who was surprisingly funny with some laconic and amusing looks at contemporary driving, especially the macho game-of-wits that is B-road overtaking.

The luxury award went to the Jaguar XJ, 2003 onwards, which as Jason pointed out can now be had for as little as 11-grand - a lot of car for your money. Awards were collected by a car firm rep at the awards, and amusingly the family category was won by the Rover 75, and we were all wondering who on earth would collect it, Rover not being entirely in business any more. We were half expecting a Chinese bloke from NAC to go up there but instead we got a fellow from the R75 owners’ club instead.

The overall winner was the ultra-rare, but people’s favourite, the Ford Focus RS:

We had some good chats with various friends old and new, including new contributor James Baggott, who will be doing a bunch of new accessories coverage for us. Also had a nice chat with the PR folk from Audi, who were not getting bored of being told how great the R8 is. Talk about pushing at an open door - pushing Audi and its strong range of cars right now must be one of the easiest jobs going right now.

Keep well,

Tom

Original post by MSN Cars Space

Original post by MSN Cars Space

Car advertisements may soon be forced to carry warnings
about the environmental impact of the model in question.Not content with his party’s own internal squabbles, Lib Dem
MEP Chris Davies is calling for 20% of the space used in advertising a car to
highlight its CO2 emissions, in much the same way that tobacco advertising,
before it was banned, carried dire warnings of the consequences of lighting up.

Unsurprisingly the car industry, which spends £550 million
on advertising in the UK alone, has reacted angrily to the proposals, which, on
the face of it, look as half-baked as most of the European Parliament’s ideas. The Society of Motor Manufacturers and
Traders called the plans “absolute nonsense”.

KIA UK managing director Paul Philpott said: “I fear what’s
going to happen if there are too many regulations. Car companies will stop
advertising and find other ways of doing things. Advertising is there to
increase the desirability of your product. Sticking government health warnings
on car ads will lead us to find alternative ways of getting to our consumers.”

Actually this got me wondering whether all car advertising
should carry banners proclaiming the truth about the cars. Imagine an advertisement for a large French
saloon would wear the strapline: “Depreciation may damage your wealth”. A
sports car ad would proclaim: “Driving this vehicle may lead to accusations of
onanism”, large SUVs: “Owners may have the legitimacy of their upbringing
called into question” and MPVs: “Warning: may cause drowsiness.”

Maybe honesty isn’t always the best policy.

Henry

Original post by MSN Cars Space

Original post by MSN Cars Space

I have just handed to Richard the keys to a Toyota Auris. Not our long term 1.4 diesel, but something much funkier. It’s still a diesel, but this one has the 2.2-litre engine that produces double the power of our 1.4: 175bhp instead of 89bhp. Toyota calls it the Auris T180 which is somewhat misleading, but that’s another story. Thing is, this beefier Auris should feel like a hot hatch but it doesn’t. Sure, there’s slugs of torque when you tickle the throttle but it never feels remotely sporty; the Auris fails, like all of Toyota’s previous attempts at sexing up a family car. However, the thing that really marks it down is the economy. Back and forth to work, a 12 mile trip on country and village roads, I never got better than 32 mpg. If there’s one thing a diesel should excel at, it’s short-run efficiency. And this is rubbish. (And it costs over £18k, which is also madness!)

Peter

Original post by MSN Cars Space