HONDA might be suffering a touch on their return to the Formula One fold, but when it comes to road cars they appear to be in pole position.
2015 is going to be a big year for the Japanese manufacturer. As well as the just revealed new Civic and CR-V models, Jazz and HRV also get serious revisions in 2015, so it’s a fair assumption that things are going to get pretty busy down in Swindon, Honda’s UK manufacturing plant that has just had a £200 million investment.
STICK ‘COD’ in the name of a car and you can be forgiven for thinking there’s something fishy going on…
But when it comes to VW Group products the abbreviation has its plaice (sorry…)
I’ll stop carping on and explain that Cylinder On Demand (COD) is the rising star of the latest refettled Audi Q3 range, now on sale.
SKODA’S latest Fabia is proof, if it were needed, that you really can have your cake and eat it.
Their recipe for success is building a car that’s one of the best value for money machines in its class.
Although some might question whether the Fabia is really a supermini, because there’s not a lot miniscule about its dimensions.
A FEW damp laps round a racetrack can do little else than whet the appetite for a car that has undoubted performance on tap – but what’s it like to live with one for a week?
SEAT’s latest Cupra model, crafted into the three door Leon SC bodyshell, wears the badge of being the fastest and most powerful car the Spanish manufacturer has ever built – but while its get-up-and-go credentials are unquestionable, so is it’s ability to behave as sensibly and sedately as any of the other offerings in the Leon range. You just don’t want it to.
I’M beginning to think the French have got a little touch of German fever.
They probably caught it back in 1939 when there was a knock at the door and outside were the seried ranks of the Wermacht and the SS, intent on dominating western Europe and indeed further afield.
WE start with a special plea – but it’s not one the total git who keyed the Porsche Macan in our care is going to want to hear.
Quid pro quo in this instance for this particular Bletchley lowlife will be a puncture in the outside lane of the M25, at a particularly inconvenient time. Let’s say 8.14am on a Monday morning.
It can only be a particularly green eye that prompted the initial deed, but while there’s no excuse for the reaction, you can retrospectively see why.
FORGET any thoughts of limitless broadband – here’s an Infiniti that communicates on an all-together different plane.
It can’t do anything but with its two big touch screens dominating the central dash area.
A wide gamut of information is but a touch away in this 2.0 version of the Q50 saloon – a car they hope will help them turn passing interest into concrete sales.
BACK in the mists of time, I can recall sampling what was then the latest Volkswagen Passat – and getting the fright of my life.
Moving the seat back to get a more comfortable position behind the wheel, I was suddenly aware that I was rapidly getting closer to the boot than the dashboard. ‘Dear God’, I thought (or something like that….) they’ve forgotten to put stoppers on the end of the seat runners.
But of course they hadn’t. It was just that the Passat was the exception to the rule in that it offered an exceptional amount of interior space for a family car.
TO win awards you have to impress the judges – and Mitsubishi‘s Outlander PHEV certainly did that.
It’s green credentials caught the eye of those picking the winners in the Green Apple awards for cars that are a bit more Eco friendly than the rest. Those judges were my colleagues in the Midland Group of Motoring Writers who made it a class winner and the top performer overall.
WHO would ever have thought that naming a car after a desert dwelling nomadic tribe from South West Iran would bring Nissan sales success they had probably hitherto only dreamed of.
But the Qashqai did just that.
it brings together in one package the best of all worlds: the fun-to-drive dynamic abilities more usually associated with conventional passenger cars as well as the tough stance, excellent interior packaging and commanding seating position of an SUV.