Three for All

Happy St.Stephen's Day!

If Good King Wenceslas is looking out on the feast of motoring news this Christmas, he will have spotted the big story which is the potential merger of Nissan, Honda and Mitsubishi.

The story came out with this photo:

Assuming they are standing in front of their respective logos, the Mitsubishi guy looks slightly less unhappy with the deal than the other two.

It took me a while to work out what that photo reminded be of.

At first I thought of Kraftwerk - maybe performing Autobahn:

But they have lecturns.

And there are four of them.

As I have mentioned before, here and here for example, three is the magic number - although I was talking about Top Gear at the time at the start of the Chris Evans era.

You don't hear of him nowadays.

But maybe that is a clue as to what the photo reminds me of:

Except they look too relaxed.

And they are stood in the wrong order - Hammond is definitely Mitsubishi and Clarkson is definitely Nissan.

This photo is a bit closer:

Sir Kier even has the pose right.

But this is the photo that captures the mood best:

Now, what sort of vehicle will these three automotive icons come up with?

How about this?

Getting Down With The South Side Posse

Autoguide call this video...

..."The worst car dealership ad you've ever seen"

Bit harsh.

The story is here.  I think it is great fun and derserves more Youtube hits.

Note that this video has the sobriquet "CLEAN VERSION".  That will be because there is a naughty word bleeped out.

At the bottom of that Autoguide Mitsubishi story is a link to another Autoguide Mitsubishi story that includes a video that contains a lot of swearing.

But when you watch it, you may just understand why.

Seeing Things...

...like a mirage.

A really ugly little car with teeny tiny rear wheels, a 1.2 engine, and the blandest interior that could have come from the blandest 1990s Japanese design studio.  It could make One Direction look interesting.

Canadian motoring site autos.ca have the story today that Mitsubishi are threatening to unleash this on the Canadian motoring public.

 

I warned back in June 2012 that we could get The Mirage here in the UK.

 

And we did - the hatchback version.

 

Fortunately, I don't think anyone's bought one.

 

This monstrosity here, though, is the saloon - or "sedan" as North Americans like to call them.

 

Autoguide had the story a couple of days ago.  Comments were invited...

Three people have commented on it - two favourably, one not so.  The two favourable comments have been voted up while the one sensible negative comment has been voted down.

 

I think I must be seeing things.

Doncaster Rovers

...and other cars badly parked appear a lot in this Facebook site.  The Mail pointed me at it.

For those of you who don't know where Doncaster is, it's about 15 miles from Pontefract.

For those of you who haven't joined the Facebook revolution yet, here are the sort of pictures that appear:

...or a  not very smartly parked
Smart car.










I'm a little uneasy about pictures of Police Cars though - whoever parked this may be extremely lazy & selfish - or they may be on serious police business - or, in these modern day times maybe even disabled?

As ever, The Mail want to put their slant on things.  They start by asking "Are these Britain's worst drivers?"

No, although they may score badly as Britain's worst parkers.

They then have the following list:

• Facebook page shames dreadful parking in Doncaster
• It invites users to send in pictures of shoddily-placed cars
• Irate drivers often go on site to defend their parking
• Site also has a serious message about the dangers of blocked pavements

to which I say:

• True
• Yes, also true
• Not that I noticed
• Definitely not that I noticed

The Facebook page (entitled "Parking Like A Twat In Doncaster") has about 8500 likes including one from Metro's Car Blog - not bad considering it was only started this April.  It shouldn't be confused with, "Spotted :Parking Like a Twat" which seems to do the same job but more nationally and with added car crashes which is not the point of the exercise.  That site has over 55000 likes and only started last month.  Impressive but I think I'll stick with the original and best.  It does give you the option of having your badly-parked car removed from the site though - which Doncaster's doesn't seem to do.

Parking on the pavement seems to the current issue where I live where we have been treated to this story with this picture:

It comes with the caption, "Cllr Harry Smith ‘ticketing’ a car which is obstructing the pavement, forcing a young mum to push her buggy and child into the road."  Don't know the significance of it being a "young" mum - maybe older mothers have narrower pushchairs.  Cllr Harry Smith is clearly not a Tory councillor or he would be stood pointing at the gap between the car and the wall - or maybe the front of the car and the kerb.

 

Instead, he is placing a leaflet on the car that is designed to look like a parking ticket.

 

It was very fortunate for his argument that a badly-parked car was at the same place as a young mum and a photographer while he had some of those leaflets with him - and I bet the owner of that Mitsubishi is glad this didn't happen in Doncaster - he'd have looked a right twat.

Scooby Doo, Where Are You?

You're not in Britain, that's for sure.  Back in December, Top Gear had the story that Subaru were, due to dwindling sales, ceasing the sale of the WRX boy-racer special in the UK.  To mark this passing, the February edition of Top Gear Magazine had an interesting potted history of the model including its many forms dating back into the last century when it was better known as The Impreza.

Your average boy-racer who wanted a rally-inspired 4WD saloon always had two choices, the Mitsubishi Lancer Evo or the Subaru Impreza.  They were always very evenly matched so it became more a brand loyalty issue or just a case of going by the looks.

Not being a boy-racer, I never really considered either car but I did think that some of the Imprezas (like the one Richard Hammond took to find the source of The Nile) were very visually challenging.

Today, Autoguide have the unveiling of a new WRX Concept at the New York Motor Show - a foretaste of a car we won't be seeing on British roads until the importers catch on.

Autoguide claim it looks quite Jaguar-ish but I can see quite a bit of this car in it...

Quite an evolution.

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.

Evo Schtick

A story in Autoguide about how a Mitsubishi Mirage Evo Hatch is a possibility.

My initial reaction was "What is a Mitsubishi Mirage?" We don't have them in the UK.

My follow-up reaction after taking in this picture......was "Bloody Hell - that's bland!"

Apart from anything else, how can a car like that share it's name with a plane like this?...Anyway, an Evo version might be OK but I can't see it taking off.

Checking out the UK Mitsubishi range, it seems like there is a big hole in it. You've got the quite passable Colt and the quite ugly little electric i-Miev:...Tata Nano anyone? Sticking silly graphics on the side doesn't make it any prettier you know.

And then they do the big cars starting with the proper Evo - based on the Lancer - which itself doesn't seem that big until you add on all of the Evo gubbins.

So we could have the basic Lancer to fill that gap - except they tried that and it didn't sell.

So how about the Mirage?

Err, no thanks!

We'll take the hole please.

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.