Big Little Car

Another video from one of the YouTube Channels I subscribe to...

This is a review by the petite Imogen Bhopal of the Hyundai Ioniq 3 on Robert Llewelyn's Everything Electric CARS channel.

I say "petite"...

...she looks quite large here:

 

Or is it just a small car?

 

Then again? 

   

Is it a small woman and a big car?

 

At the start of the review, she states that they only had 30-ish minutes with the car.

 

And the more I watched it, the more it looked like she and the car were nowhere near each other.

 

She and the car appear to be digitally combined. 

 

Like Marc Almond & Gene Pitney in the video to the brilliant "Something's Gotten Hold Of My Heart."

 

Then, all of a sudden, just before 6 minutes into the review, she opens the boot!

 

She also climbs in to it:

 

This really excites the commenters.

But I suppose the biggest takeaway is that you can stash the body of a petite person under the boot floor of a Hyundai Ioniq 3.

Which I suspect isn't what they were really going for.

Local Car Reviews for Local People

I stumbled upon a car review show today.

It felt like Top Gear...

...during the 1970s.

It was on local free TV (financially struggling Bay TV in Liverpool - not to be confused with new local free TV channel Bay TV in Swansea) which I thought was a bit endearing imagining a couple of Scousers driving around the locality talking cars.

But as I watched it, I noticed that they weren't actually saying anything bad about the cars - in fact, if they couldn't say good things, they just said neutral things and factual things.  It wasn't as bad as a full-scale infomercial but it was irritating.

It reminded me of the local restaurant reviews in our local free newspaper.  One restaurant was so impressed with their review that they added it to their Website.  But the reviews are a complete waste of time because the paper has obviously been paid for some advertising and the reviewer gets a free meal for two.

So I did a bit of digging on the show - iCarReview - it was lucky that The Apple Corporation didn't copyright that name for their car reviews.

They have a Website which is linked to the Website of Car & Driving who sponsor the show and seem to be some sort of resource for car reviews and footage.  The show is obviously not made in Liverpool and it appears on other local free TV stations like this:

I'd not seen the third presenter there but no matter how the first two aspire to be like Jeremy (but then don't we all?) they seem to come over as a cross between William Woollard and Alan Partridge.

 

Come on Bay TV, if you want a car show, I'll do it - and I promise not to punch the producer.

Everything's Getting Smaller

We used to buy our Coca-Cola in 2 litre bottles.

Then suddenly, last year, they became 1.75 litre bottles.

For the same price.

Were they hoping we wouldn't notice?

Apparently not.  And we're supposed to be happy about it too.

That's still three-quarters of litre more than some Mondeo drivers will be getting though.

This car review from The Telegraph caught my eye this week.  It's of the Ford Mondeo 1.0 EcoBoost.

Don't know why they used this picture though - that's a Ford Mondeo Titanium Tdci.

The review is by Andrew English who is described as "Motoring Correpondent, Telegraph Cars" - I wonder what other sorts of correspondent Telegraph Cars have.  He gives it three out of five stars.  Andrew English also provided the review for Auto Express and gave it 3 out of 5 stars there too.

He says that the engine looks small in the engine bay - I would have liked to see a photo, the nearest I could find anywhere was this Ford diagram:

He also quotes Ulrich Koesters, Ford’s vehicle line director for larger cars, who says: “most customers do not trust that such a small displacement engine has enough torque to pull a large car like the Mondeo.”  I can well believe that - it would be a concern of mine - even though it is turbo-charged.

I am guessing that this car is being aimed at the fleet market where engine size and economy play their part with tax incentives.  I have visited a few Ford dealerships over the past year or two and you never see a Mondeo on the lot.  I guess Focuses and Fiestas have gotten bigger so these have taken over the family car market along with the SUVs, people carriers and German upmarket marques.  So when I say "Everything's Getting Smaller" that doesn't include Focuses or Fiestas (or Corsas or Golfs or just about any other car too)

Can't see the average sales rep being happy driving one of these although it does have a claimed top speed of 124mph - but it might struggle if you put some passengers in it.  Probably won't be a big hit with the Caravan Club either.

Unless...

Car Review - Vauxhall Corsa SXi

This shiny vehicle that I have lived with for the past few days is a Vauxhall Corsa SXi in sovereign silver.

Sovereign Silver!? – well that’s wrong for a start, sovereigns aren’t silver are they? - they’re gold.

Anyway, when I saw “SXi” on the key fob, I was looking forward to a reasonably sporty experience. Maybe not a VXR or even an SRi but an “X” must mean something good mustn’t it?

Then I also spotted “1.2” on there. The figures in the back of Top Gear Magazine suggest 85bhp and also 85 torques with a top speed of 107mph and a 0-60 time of 12.7 seconds. Oh well – I’ve got a shopping car.

So I took it shopping.I’m not too sure about the side profile and what’s with those little windows in front of the door-mirrors? Who is ever going to look out of them?This is my favourite view, though - it shows the new corporate Vauxhall face and I think it has an attractively aggressive stance.

The boot, although it looks small, (but then again – I usually drive a Jag estate) coped adequately with a week’s worth of Tesco products. But to illustrate it better, and in the true spirit of car reviews, I have photographed it with just one item in it – an item that everyone immediately knows the size of – a box of 6 Askey’s Brandy Snap Baskets:The interior is very grey with shiny piano-black trim and red stitching which I guess is what makes it sporty enough to be called an SXi.No fancy infotainment unit but what there is plays Radio 2 just fine so no complaints in that department.

The steering wheel is fully adjustable but the position that is most comfortable for me means that I can’t see the top of the dials so I have to guess how fast I’m going and how much fuel I have unless I duck my head down to see under the rim. This gets quite irritating at speed cameras although may mean that if I get caught by a speed trap, they mightn’t be able to prove from the photo that it was me driving.Unlike all other car reviewers, I am not 6 foot 2. Consequently I have no size issues with the back of this car and I can also categorically state that there is plenty of room for a nine-year-old boy to be driven to school back there without complaining – well, complaining about the car anyway.

So what’s it like to drive?

It’s got the usual irritating Vauxhall quirks that I had forgotten about since I once drove a Vectra about 5 years ago. Apparently, if you want to learn how to fly a helicopter, you move the joystick and see what the helicopter does – so if you want it to do that again, move the joystick in the same way again. The same method works with training sheepdogs. It doesn’t work, however, with figuring out the indicator and wiper controls on Vauxhalls. Even reading the manual doesn’t help.

So, assuming you’ve got a road with no turns on a rain-free day, I’ll ask the question again, what’s it like to drive?

I know that the sweep of the bonnet is important for aero-dynamics and not killing pedestrians but it means that you can’t actually see from the driver’s seat where the car begins – that’s just daft in a small car.

It copes well with my motorway and A-Road commute, albeit a bit engine-noisy on the motorway when cruising at 70 to 75 at a bit over 3000revs. Maybe a sixth gear would fix that but it would also give the car an extra excuse to nag you to change up with a green “SHIFT UP” symbol that appears in the rev-counter when it decides that you need to. If it was moved to near the top of the rev-counter, then I wouldn’t be able to see it – so a suggestion for Vauxhall there.

A smaller engine than I’m used to means that you have to downshift (or “drop it down a cog” to use car-reviewer speak) to get past lorries and old people that I’m more accustomed to sailing past. To make up for this, I’m getting better fuel economy. Top Gear suggest 53.3mpg is achievable but my town and country mix of driving is currently giving about 40 – a figure I could only dream about in my own car.

The fact that this car only has 300 miles on the clock means that the engine still needs a bit of time to loosen up or bed in or whatever it is that new engines have to do - so I can’t be too critical.

So, what is my final verdict?

A competent small car. Comfortable and copes well, if noisily, at motorway speeds. Not enough room in the boot for a set of golf clubs – but then again, I don’t play golf. Talking of golf, does this car score a birdie or a bogey?

Well, overall, I think I’d have to say that it’s par for the Corsa.