A Colossal Mistake

Fox News got me all excited.

But I'd made a colossal mistake.

I thought they were going to be holding a round of next year's NASCAR at The Colosseum in Rome:

The story is here.

It looks really exciting. They are laying down a temporary track like did at Wembley for the Race of Champions.

It will also be a showcase for the Next Gen NASCAR cars. Which are nowhere near as innovative as the next Gen BTCC cars.

But they seem to like them.

Now although the Colosseum is the right shape, I wondered about the size.

I was right to wonder - I'd got the wrong Colosseum - even the spelling is wrong.

It should have been the L.A. Coliseum:

Much more suitable.

And easier to get to for your average NASCAR fan.

The only NASCAR Racing that would fit comfortably into the Roman Colosseum would be this version:

And that set isn't even an oval.

Fiat is Coining it in.

A seemingly counter-intuitive idea from Fiat in this Autocar story today.

Drivers of the New 500, will get to "earn" digital coins by driving in an economical manner.  Unfortunately, we are not talking Bitcoins here - we are talking KiriCoins - the invention of UK Start-Up Kiri Technologies who, being a start-up, nobody will have heard of yet - especially not people who you may want to spend their new coins with.

Now I thought that the new 500 was meant to be electric only so you couldn't help but to drive economically but, according to their Website, there are also hybrids in the range.

And, talking of their range, are they including the larger 500X and 500L models?

The idea is, according to the story, "By driving efficiently, owners will earn an ‘Eco:Score’ for each journey, with one kilometre of city driving roughly equal to two euro cents."

So, basically, the more you drive, the more you earn - see the problem here?

And, is the technology clever enough to give extra coins to people car-sharing in a Fiat 500L?

My Wife Doesn't Like Jeremy Vine

He irritates her on his Radio 2 show.  I am indifferent towards him.

We both like his brother though.

But I am going off Jeremy myself now.

 

Because of this article.  He says that the Drivetime show (as discussed by me last month) shouldn't be called "The Drivetime Show" because it celebrates "a form of transport that kills 1700 people a year."

 

Vine said "the show needed a new name for post-car Britain".  But there are still plenty of cars about when I'm driving home.

 

He added that "our addiction to the motor vehicle has made our cities traffic sewers; made us asthmatic, fat and angry; and made our planet suffer".  Speak for yourself mate - I'm not a fat asthmatic.

 

This means that he has slipped right down the rankings in my list of favourite Jeremys.  Obviously Clarkson and Corbyn are at the top closely followed by Hardy but Vine has now gone from mid-table (Paxman, Irons etc.) right down to Hunt, Kyle territory.

 

I wonder what he thinks of hybrid cars - I suspect that he will be very unimpressed by this BBC story.

 

The gist is that lots of fleet buyers bought hybrid cars for the subsidies and tax breaks offered by the Government and many are never charged up so just end up as fuel inefficient petrol cars. "Many drivers may never have unwrapped their charging cables" it says - I'm not sure how they can know that but I suppose it is quite possible.

 

Basically, the Ministry of Transport have not thought this through properly.

 

I think that the Transport Minister should resign.

 

Oh. He has.

Government Powers - Off The Grid

This rather disturbing picture has been appearing on the Telegraph and the BBC News Websites a fair bit this week:

It is because the news broke that the Government is banning all petrol and diesel vehicles in 2040.

 

Except they aren't.

 

What they want to do is ban the SALES of all NEW petrol and diesel vehicles in 2040.

 

Like France do.

 

There may even be a clause allowing hybrids - like the Volvo story from last month.

 

And, given that this Government may not see the year out and that 2040 is 23 YEARS AWAY, I wouldn't be putting that dodgy pipe on my news website just yet.

 

It must be a library photo.  Here is another motoring-related library photo:

Meanwhile, Stateside, where they don't believe in climate change, they are still doing their bit for electric vehicles. Here is a story from Autoguide about a new all-electric ‘Sport Utility Truck’ from a  company I've never heard of before - Bollinger Motors - as in the champagne.  Meet the B1:

At first I thought it looked like the love-child of a Jeep Cherokee and a Land-Rover Defender.

 

And then I worked it out: 

Infernal Combustion Engine

The new Honda Civic looks pretty spectacular:

That is going by Editor-in-Chief of Top Gear Mag, Charlie Turner's, comment that "...our cover story, where the battle for the hot-hatch heartland continues with the arrival of the fifth-generation Civic Type-R"

 

Ah, of course - it's the Type-R - that explains the spoiler.

 

Or maybe, while us subscribers to this fine magazine get our own covers, maybe we should also get our own welcome message from Mr.Turner.

 

In case you're wondering, that's an Aston-Martin Valkyrie not a Honda Civic.

 

Meanwhile, on Page 20 of the mag, we learn that Volvo's high-performance division, Polestar, will now be exclusively building electric cars.  Which is a shame.  But it also fits in with the big Volvo news from last week - Carmaker Volvo has said all new models will have an electric motor from 2019.

 

They were actually quite clever with their wording there.

 

My own car for example has several electric motors - at least one in each door.

 

They got the headlines though.  It plans to launch five fully electric models between 2019 and 2021 and a range of hybrid models.  But it will still be manufacturing earlier models that have only combustion engines.  And those hybrids will still have some carbon being ignited - so it is nothing more than an indication of the direction that the car industry is moving in.

 

Further illustrated by the story a day later that France is set to ban the sale of petrol and diesel vehicles by 2040.  No indication of what happens to internally combustion engined cars bought in France in December 2039 though - or those bought over the national borders that may get driven in to France.

 

I suppose they still have 22 and a half years to fine-tune the rules...

 

...and to come to some sort of agreement in Paris.  Probably not involving this foolish fossil...

who may well be personally adding to the world's fossil fuel stocks by then.

'96 Hybrid Phaeton For Sale

Hang on a Mo'.

All Volkwagen experts, together with those of us who have access to Wikipedia, know that VW didn't start making Phaetons until 2002:

And, they've never produced a hybrid version.

But, of course, I never said it was a Volkswagen - nor did I say 1996.

No, this car coming up for auction is a 1896 Armstrong Phaeton:

 

Fox have the story here.

I had assumed that Phaeton was just another model name (like Escort and Cedric) and Wiki helpfully informs us that "The name Phaeton derives from Phaëton, the son of Phoebus in Greek mythology."  But it also helpfully informs us that "A phaeton is a style of open automobile or carriage without weather protection. It is an automotive development of the fast, lightweight phaeton carriage."

Which sort of explains why Wayne Carini keeps encountering them in "Chasing Classic Cars".

In fact it looks like in the 1920s and 1930s you could get Ford, Packard and Buick Phaetons to name just three of many.  Go back to 1910 and you get this:

 The VW Group have come full circle - that's an Audi Phaeton!

I Asked Google for a picture of Christopher Lloyd with a Taxi

But there weren't any decent ones - despite him being a star of the brilliant series Taxi.

Here's one of him from around that time:

In this photo, I think he looks like that bloke who plays Nick in New Girl who was also in Jurassic World.  If they ever do a Back To The Future where they go back to when Doc Brown was about thirty, then that's the guy to play him.

Talking of Back To The Future, here's a picture of Michael J.Fox with a taxi.

Also talking of Back To The Future, have you noticed the date?  It's October 15th, 2015.

Which is nearly October 21st, 2015.

Which is the date that Marty & Doc travelled to in Back To The Future II.

Here's a taster for a video that Toyota will be releasing on that date next week:

And remember, Toyota's posh arm, Lexus, have been working on a Hoverboard:

Unfortunately, it uses Maglev technology so we won't be seeing it on the streets of October 2015.

Meanwhile, Toyota's own view of the future doesn't look brilliant for us petrolheads.  Not if you only read the headlines anyway:

TOYOTA AIMS TO PHASE OUT REGULAR GASOLINE VEHICLES BY 2050 

TOYOTA AIMS TO NEARLY ELIMINATE GASOLINE CARS BY 2050

TOYOTA: CONVENTIONAL ENGINES WILL BE GONE BY 2050

Although if you click on the links (these are just 3 of plenty) you will see that they want to concentrate on hydrogen and hybrids so there will still be some gas being burned in the hybrids at least.

And they do all state that electric cars are not a big part of their plans.

So I guess the guys at Investor's Business Daily just went by the headlines.

If only there was some way of travelling forward to 2050 to find out...

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly...and The Beautiful and the Blobby

All, and when I say "All", I Mean "ALL" of the car press today are going on about the 2013 Geneva Motor Show.  The show opens on Thursday in, of all places, Geneva.

But they've let the press in already.

Very much as I'd love to be there with them, I cannot be for various reasons including work commitments, family commitments, finances, logistics and the fact that I'm not a real journalist.

So I have to pick apart what they are all reporting.

Let's start with the good. That would be The Mitsubishi CE-MiEV.

This is the much-better follow-up to the i-MiEV.  Autocar cover it here.  It is an electric car with better range and recharging times than the i-MiEV but still not as good as the Silex Power Chreos.

 

Most importantly, though, it doesn't look stupid like the i-MiEV - actually, I think it looks a lot like a Prius.  But not as good looking as Mitsubishi's other offering at the show, the GR-HEV:

A futuristic- looking  hybrid pick-up with a one-tonne payload.

 

OK, so that's the "good", evironmentally friendly and all that, now for the "bad".  I don't mean "bad" as in "not good", I mean "bad" in the Michael Jackson way.

 

Now, I don't mean "Michael Jackson way" as in the dodgy allegations that saw him in Court, I mean the "Michael Jackson way" as in the 1987 album he called "Bad".

 

Now that's clarified, I expected the "baddest" car at Geneva to be the McLaren P1 but it seems to have had the headlines taken off it by the Rolls-Royce Wraith. 

Here's one of Autoguide's stories on it. It is described as the most powerful Rolls ever. I'd say it would be a bit of a Bentley-worrier. They claim it's in a different price-bracket but I think it's a lot more attractive and should appeal to the Cheshire set - it's only the suicide-doors that I don't like. It also has a neat headlining inside which looks like a starry sky at night. It has been done before but will give that "out in a cabriolet on a warm Summer's evening" feeling that everyone loves so much.

 

Don't they?

 

Oh well, even so, it does look appealing.

 

Which brings me neatly round to...

 

...THE UGLY!

Not sure what the man in the photo is doing.  That thing is a Toyota i-Road.  It's an electric three-wheeler, two-seater much in the vein of the Renault Twizy.  And the glass doors means it shares a problem with the Twizy in that people will be able to see you driving it.  I've read a few reviews of the Twizy being tested in the UK and each time the reviewer has commented about derogatory remarks being shouted at him.  Now I can't possibly condone such action. 

 

But I can well understand it.

 

Now to "the beautiful".  When I read this article in caradvice.com.au about the ItalDesign Giugiaro Parcour concept, I immediately thought of  the Silex Power Chreos in as much as it is a pretty, computer-generated car:

However, if this is vapour-ware, it is very solid because here are some people having a good, close look at it...

I think it is gorgeous and very reminiscent of the supercars of my childhood in the '70s.

 

That was a time when ItalDesign were doing their only other work that I am aware of - ie, the squaring off of the Morris Marina to produce the Morris Ital:

Also, the peak time for Ford to be producing the Escort.  I keep thinking they've started again because I keep seeing stories about this car at Geneva:

It's the Ford EcoSport - which looks like "Escort" when you're flicking through car stories.  This car looks nothing like an Escort, though. It looks like a tall Ford Kuga - the Ford Kuga it will be replacing as opposed to the bigger "World Car" Ford Kuga that seems to have replaced the outgoing Ford Kuga here in The UK.  Confusing eh?

 

So, in summary, that's the 2013 Geneva Motor Show.  You don't need to go now.

Scaremongering

No, not Fox News for once. Although they do cover this story, unusually for them they go with a headline that immediately reassures. Maybe they are still reeling from Obama's success so haven't got back to their vitriolic best yet.

The headline that grabbed my attention was in caradvice.com.au and reads "Toyota Prius joins Fisker Karma in Hurricane Sandy fire troubles"

Their story seems to add fuel to the fire (intentional pun usage) of the worries that electric cars can spontaneously combust.

Fisker have had a few issues with car-fires in the past which pleases the right-wing, Fox News watching, Oil-Industry tycoons but these have been identified and resolved.

Not sure if these non-electric ones have been yet although I have heard glue may be at fault.

Anyway, the caradvice site refers back to The New York Times home of this brilliant quote: “We can’t be certain exactly what happened at the port,” Russell Datz, a Fisker spokesman, said in a telephone interview. “But we think being submerged in 13 feet of saltwater had something to do with it.”

These latest fires do not seem to be connected to the fact that Fiskers and Prius's (what is the correct plural there?) are electric or hybrid so restraint is needed. Otherwise, this brilliantly eloquent man needs to get on the case:

I found him on the Car&Driver site when I read this excellent article which coincidentally mentions electric car fires and Toyota. I'm not sure why he has a European number plate in his picture but his rant is perfect - I could easily imagine Lewis Black coming up with it - and if you don't know who Lewis Black is, look him up on YouTube and prepare to hear some swearing.

So, in summary, don't park your electric car in the sea and, most of all, as the great Clive Dunn who passed away yesterday would say, "Don't Panic!! Don't Panic!!"

Lotus Global Small Car

Auto Express have this story today. Due for unveiling at the Paris Motor Show, this is a hybrid electric/1.2 petrol capable of 100mpg but there's no indication of mph. It will be available as a five-door Proton in Malaysia and a three-door sporty Lotus elsewhere.

I think I like the look of it but it also reminds me strongly of the Mitsubishi Colt...

Can't help thinking it'll need a better name though.