False Idol

I refer to Billy Idol - rebel from my youth:

Only now, according to Fox News, he's promoting snitching on people who leave their engines idling when stationary, especially when parked outside schools.

Now I am actually in favour of this scheme - although not sure how it is actually policed - you're supposed to get a financial reward for grassing someone up.

But this is Billy Idol!  Not cool.

Meanwhile, in other Fox News, I learned that on Saturday, when I was looking for famous people born on Feb 29th, I could have had one of the greatest American racers of all time - if only he'd born one day later.

I refer to Mario Andretti who turned 80 on Friday:

If you look him up on Google you see he is the Italian-Born American whose birthplace is in Croatia. (But it was in Italy 80 years ago - they moved the border in the meantime)

 

I'd have thought he was even older than that.

 

Not that I need an excuse, but now for a picture of the most beautiful F1 car ever:

Fools Seldom Differ

It's been April Fools Day today.

The Express decided to make up a story about how the EU want us all to swap out EU Registration Plates after Brexit for "safety reasons".

Incidentally, I've always wondered about the Irish system like this example - I mean if you saw a car with this registration, how could you tell if it was built in 2005 or 1905?  Daft eh?

It was probably just an excuse for the violently pro-Brexit "paper" to spout a bit more anti-EU propaganda to its readers who happily lap it all up.

And they did - as reported in The Independent's Indy 100:

And, apart from the guy who only has two short words to say, NONE OF THE COMMENTER'S CAN SPELL.

I'm afraid it's a sad indictment on the world we live in today.  It sort of explains Brexit and Trump that there are lots of gullible people out there who would rather just take in the bile espoused by the Express, The Sun and, the worst of them all, The Mail rather than do a bit of simple research and look for the truth.

Meanwhile, on a completely unrelated note, Lotus announced their new range of crash helmets for cats today:

 

Expanding Peugeot

Last week, a brilliant young car blogger stated this:

"It looks like Peugeot are involved in negotiations to take over Vauxhall and Opel.

This would given them Peugeot, Citroen, DS, Vauxhall, Opel & Ambassador - and probably too many factories - not good news - especially since they have had financial problems over the last few years while Vauxhall & Opel have been losing money."

It appeared in this article by me.

Now, this other article, by Autocar, says they also want Proton.  It also says that their financial worries seem to have subsided - which will hopefully be good news for the workers of Peugeot, Citroen, DS, Vauxhall, Opel, Ambassador, Proton & Lotus.

Did you spot the way I stuck Lotus in at the end?

That's because Proton effectively own Lotus.

Now, that could mean some nice modern takes on collaborations from the past such as when Lotus got together with PSA (Peugeot Citroen Group) to produce the Lotus Sunbeam:

...or when they got into bed with Vauxhall/Opel for the Lotus Carlton (or Omega for the Opel badged version):

If Peugeot really do splash the cash, then why not a Lotus DS4 and a Lotus Insignia?

Of course, this could all be speculation - or even some of this fake news that the POTUS keeps warning us about (perhaps he should start by fact-checking Fox & Breitbart?)  Maybe we should swap the word "president" with "liar" and call him the LOTUS?

Anyway I'm pretty confident with reliability of the sources for the Hindustan and Vauxhall/Opel stories.

And as for Proton, I'm positive.

Lotus Appoint Caroline Aherne

Actually, her name is Carmen Jorda which sounds too much like Jordan to me - which implies bimbo when applied to an attractive woman.

I haven't a clue whether Ms Jorda is a bimbo or not - I would suspect not - but she is incredibly lucky.

She has been appointed as a Lotus F1 team development driver. CarAdvice have an article on it here.

Her racing history is spectacularly unremarkable.  She has clearly been given the job because she is an attractive woman who can drive a bit.  However, don't expect to see her in a race.  Like Susie Wolff at Williams, she is there to gain headlines, not drive cars.

And it seems to be working.

It just seems a bit unfair on more talented drivers who are missing out on a chance to show what they can do because they happen to have a Y Chromosome.  Or because they don't have lots of money.

It is also very unfair on women racing drivers everywhere (and I'd like to see more of the good ones at all levels of motorsport) who will probably be told that they are only getting chances because they are female.

Maybe this is a sign of desperation in Formula 1 - viewing figures continue to fall - shall I mention the shameful BBC/Sky deal again?  No.  But you don't see my beloved, successful, free-to-view-on-ITV4 BTCC resorting to female drivers.

But we should.

There are plenty of talented women competing in the BTCC support races.

Come on Team bosses - you know you want to.  Give a girl a chance - and give her a grid-guy to stand in front of car - you may get more lady viewers and that can't be a bad thing.


Sorry about that - I don't normally say anything sensible - I promise everything will be back to normal for my next post.

Hope His Air-Brakes Work

This is impossible, right?

Apparently not.

 

What you are looking at is a picture of an articulated lorry jumping over a Lotus F1 car - including driver!

 

FoxNews had the story yesterday.

 

Well, the story is true - but the picture misleading.

 

This is what actually happened: 

They broke the World Record for the distance jumped by a tractor & trailer unit and also the suspension of the tractor unit.

The F1 car was racing alongside (or behind as the photographer was looking) the jump and would have been flattened if it had been where the photographer initially wants us to believe it is.

Still very impressive.

Here they are receiving their World Record certificate.

I knew there had to be some interesting F1 news somewhere this week.  (Sorry Lewis, only joking, well done to you too)

Don't Cry For Jeremy Argentina

I thought that the hoo-ha about the Top Gear Argentina Special would have blown over by now.

But watching Have I Got A Bit More News For You? last night convinced me otherwise.

For those who have been out of circulation for the last couple of weeks, the Top Gear presenters and crew has to abandon their trip through Argentina due to an unfortunate number plate on a Porsche driven by Jeremy.  Most news outlets reported it - here's the Telegraph's take on it.  The offending number plate was H982 FKL.

Some say that was a deliberate reference to The Falklands Conflict.  Top Gear say that it was a coincidence.  Others say that H982 refers to the year of the conflict (although it actually 1982) while obviously the FKL is from FalKLands which the Argentinians like to call Las Malvinas.

I can see some concern there.

Although a local councillor there lost some credibility when he said that the digits 269 on the number plate of the Ford Mustang Richard Hammond was driving were close to the 255 Britons killed during the 1982 war and that the numbers 646 on James May's Lotus could be taken as a reference to the 649 Argentinian casualties.

No they couldn't.

Top Gear are insisting that this was an unfortunate coincidence and that nobody realised the significance of H982 FKL until it was pointed out to them and then lots of war veterans (aged in their twenties according to Jeremy) started throwing stones at them.

There is no doubt that that Porsche has had that number plate for at least 10 years - this means that they didn't deliberately change it.  However, they could have deliberately bought that car due to its number plate.

They deny that they did this.

They also point out that when the significance of H982 FKL was pointed out, they changed the plates on the car.

This is true, there are photos of the car carrying H1 VAE.

That plate apparently belongs to a Porsche 911.  Maybe the original owner (maybe with initials VAE - perhaps ex-Brookside actor Vince Earl?) traded in the Top Gear Porsche for his 911 taking his personal number with him and left the old physical plates in the car when it got re-registered.

Sounds a reasonable scenario - it would explain why there was a spare set of plates in the car.

So the story can die away now?

Wrong.

Clarkson writes for The Sun so the other papers want to keep twisting the knife.

This weekend, The Independent had an interview with the Argentinian ambassador to the UK, Alicia Castro.  She accuses Jeremy of portraying Argentinians as savages.  I only really mention it because I like her quote, "We eat a lot of beef, but we have never eaten a journalist."

However, news has now emerged of another set of plates with the car.  This is what they were talking about last night on HIGNFY.

These were almost certainly meant for Jeremy as a joke to be used at some point in the show.

 

Being pedantic, I hate mixing upper and lower case letters in words - I find it particularly iRriTatINg.  But "BE11 END" is clearly meant to be "Bell-End" - a penile insult probably lost on most non-Brits.

 

So why would they expect to need a new set of plates?  Without seeing a script it does look a bit dodgy.

 

The Star took it a bit far though, claiming Jeremy could end up in prison.  Apparently, "The DVLA has said it is an offence to drive a car in the UK or abroad with a plate which is different to the one assigned to the vehicle."

 

Well, I doubt if the DVLA have any authority in Argentina and there is no evidence of it being driven with the wrong plates over here.

 

Besides, The Star's main story today is a complete hoax that they have fallen for about a giant crab.

 

So maybe not a very reliable source of news?

I Want That Car

The second episode of I Want That Car was broadcast on ITV4 last night. 

 

It is ITV's new "Daisybeck Productions give you a male motoring journo & female racer presenting a show giving punters a choice of 3 cars to buy and after test-driving 2 of them they have to select one to purchase while telling you a bit about them and trying to get a good deal off the unseen seller while the car's number plate is covered with the initials of the programme" show.

 

I watched the first one last week and found it irritating but decided to give it another go.

 

This week, I still found it irritating.

 

It could be the music.

 

It could be the fact they go to a racing circuit to do the show while racing is going on but just show little clips of the same racing cars over and over again in the middle of the main element of the show.

 

But I think it's probably the presenters. 

Rebecca Jackson makes big deal of how she is a used car expert (a saleswoman perhaps? - after I suggested they may not exist - no, an "expert" - although judging by her own website, she's only sold one car) and how she races Porsche Boxsters - but she only looks 15 - and she and the cameraman refuse to stand still when she is doing her pieces to camera.  And she's overly enthusiastic.

Mat Watson, meanwhile, works for Auto Express.

He comes over as too chummy and his Brummie accent keeps slipping in and out.  He likes the punters to "floor it" on the test drives and then states that they didn't go over the speed limits.  I wonder if the producer was involved in making that statement.

 

At this point, I suppose, I'd have to admit that I'd be crap at presenting a motoring show, especially if I was an unknown - I'd feel awkward pretending that everyone should just accept me straight off and at least these two do have the right professional backgrounds.

 

But I'm not presenting a motoring show and they are.

 

The show doesn't even have its own Website.  The nearest is this which is really looking for people to take part in it.  They do have a Facebook page which doesn't have many contributions apart from themselves looking for people to take part.  The couple of people who have commented are mixed on the show but one person thinks it is better than Top Gear - idiot!

 

They also have a Twitter feed which doesn't have many contributions apart from themselves looking for people to take part. The couple of people who have commented are a bit pro the show but one person thinks it is better than Top Gear - idiot!

 

The first show consisted of a bloke who used to own a Lotus (we don't know what happened to it) looking for a suitable sporty replacement - he is offered a TT, an Abarth (sporty Fiat 500) and a Porsche Boxster - he chooses the Porsche.

 

The second show consisted of a bloke after a classic.  He is offered a Mini, an MGB and a Porsche 911 Carrera Targa - he chooses the Porsche.

 

Actually, I think I've worked out what irritates me the most, and why I probably won't bother watching the rest of the series - it is because it isn't Used Car Roadshow.  If you aren't sure what Used Car Roadshow was, it was ITV's "Daisybeck Productions give you a male motoring journo & female racer presenting a show giving punters a choice of 3 cars to buy and after test-driving 2 of them they have to select one to purchase while telling you a bit about them and trying to get a good deal off the unseen seller while the car's number plate is covered with the initials of the programme" show.

Lots Of Trouble - Usually Serious

That was the old acronym for Lotus, given that the old Esprits and Eclats were never the most reliable of cars - much smoke and oil-leakage would often ensue.

They seem to have sorted their engines out nowadays so we can use the acronym to describe the wranglings going on in their F1 ambitions instead.

Last month, I gave my take on how I understood the sitiuation to be.

Today, the BBC business department have kindly clarified things.

I'm very optimistic about what the new Lotus boss, Dany Bahar, is doing and what he wants to do with the brand - he's already announced a series of five new cars over the next couple of years - and, most importantly, their names all begin with the letter E.

But this is a big gamble for Lotus and I think he's missing a serious trick by getting involved in F1. It will be bloody expensive and it will be linking Lotus with Renault - another Company who have had vehicle reliability issues in the past.

By leaving Tony Fernandes to continue with his plans, Lotus get a load of free publicity (albeit with a less successful and less attractive car) - expensive Court time and bad publicity are avoided and there is a lot more cash available to keep the road car business going while the new models are introduced.

Oops, I've just noticed that I've accidentally put up a picture of Dany Behr - silly me! Here's Dany Bahar:








Oh well - third time lucky:

That's better.

Was Chris Hughton Sleeping with Mike Ashley's Wife?

No. Mike Ashley is divorced so he doesn't have a wife. So that can't be the explanation for his sudden sacking as Newcastle United manager this week. No, the straightforward answer is that Mike Ashley must be an idiot.

If only everything in sport was nice and straightforward like that.

Take Formula 1 for instance.

For a couple of seasons now, we have two teams sponsored by Red Bull, there's Red Bull and Toro Rosso (which happens to be Italian for "Red Bull") - one uses Renault engines, one uses Ferrari engines. Renault meanwhile had their own team powered by a Renault engine - but then again, they sold their stakes in their team so the Renault team isn't really the Renault team at all, it just had their name and their engine - they also had sponsorship from Lada and a Russian driver - but then again, Renault own a bit of Lada. Meanwhile, Lotus, who are owned by Proton, also rejoined F1 in 2010 using an attractive green livery and a quite unsuccessful car.

Renault and Lotus were both successful during my favourite F1 period from the late '70s into the early '90s with lovely looking cars such as these...It was announced today, though, that Group Lotus has joined F1. Does that mean the existing Lotus team has been renamed?

Does it buggery!

Well, actually it has been renamed to Team Lotus, but that isn't to be confused with Group Lotus who will own the team but also own "Lotus Renault GP" which is what the old Renault-but-not-owned-by-Renault team will be known as..

I think.

So, we'll end up with four Loti (James Hunt invented the word "Loti" as plural of Lotus - I invented the word "Double-decker-bi" as plural of Double-Decker bus), four Red Bulls, two McLarens and two Mercedes, as opposed to two McLaren-Mercedes as we had before 2010, two Ferraris (but at least four Ferrari engines) and Lord knows what other combination of Hispanias, Williams, Saubers and the like.

I think I know which will be the best looking cars on the grid though...

Attack of the Clones

This morning, as I often do, I clicked on Autocar Car News. The coffee hadn't quite kicked in so, looking at these accompanying pictures, I thought the first two stories were going to be about Hyundai and Mitsubishi.



















Only problem is, the first picture wasn't of a Hyundai i-30 like this one...




...but, in fact, the new 2011 Ford Focus. What on earth are Ford playing at? They are supposed to lead the way in design.

Similarly, Audi seem to be copying Lotus in copying Mitsubishi as I reported a while back.

Or is it me?

I often say things like "Doesn't that woman in Tescos look like such an actress?" or "Doesn't that policeman look like your Aunty Maud?" and I usually get the same response...


No.

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.