Quiet News Day?

Most of the car sites today, like Autocar for example, are going with the announcement of the Vauxhall Insignia Country Tourer - a four-wheel-drive family estate car.

Not particularly interesting, even for someone like me who drives a four-wheel-drive family estate car.

It's brown:

 The Telegraph have been running two non-stories since the weekend.

A pointless review of the first episode of series 20 of Top Gear.  Pointless because it is written by someone more interested in repeating the fact that he is "not the target audience" for the show and then telling us that he didn't enjoy it.  Well, what a surprise!!!  Prat.  Some of the reader comments are suitably scathing though.

Their second non-story promises us the Top 10 Long-lived cars still on sale.

Only it doesn't.

I was expecting a list of cars that haven't really changed much in many years like the Land-Rover Defender or Porsche 911 (OK the 911 has changed a lot, but it still looks the same).

But no.  What we were given were a bunch of car names that have lived on - like the Ford Fiesta.  The early Fiestas bore no relation whatsoever to the new ones.  Pointless journalism.


Meanwhile, Autoguide have got hold of the story that "Ferrari is limiting its employees to only three in-house recipients per email."

This will cause problems if Fernando Alonso wants to send an amusing jpeg of a cat to Felipe Massa and all of their mechanics.

He will probably have to send the email several times to groups of three each time.

I'm not convinced that Ferrari have really thought this through.

Making a Mokka-Ree

When Vauxhall let the British press loose on their new compact SUV thingy, the Mokka, it got absolutely slated for its ride and handling and consequently scored very badly in their reviews.  The name didn't help either, with lots of coffee jokes to go with the coffee-coloured car in the picture.

 

The mistake they had made was to give the journalists some early, European-specced cars designed for European roads - and with bits of sound-proofing missing.

 

Anyway, they seem to have sorted things out by letting the British press loose on much-improved versions specifically aimed at British roads.  The press were impressed enough - for example Top Gear reported thus.

 

A report in AutoGuide today, could reverse things, though.  It refers to a recall on the American-badged version of this car, the Buick Encore - the one in their picture is also coffee-coloured but that's probably coincidence.  The problem with the Encore is that the steering wheel might come off!

 

 This could be amusing if you are Lauel & Hardy or useful if you are a racing driver and have a wheel like the one here on the right.  But, if you are taking the kids to school, it may be a tiny bit dangerous.  (Incidentally, if you take a closer look at this particular racing wheel, it isn't quite what it seems)

 

There is no mention of whether or not the Mokka has the same issue as its American cousin but if it does, it'll be wheely bad.  No coffee jokes here.

 

 

 

X Marks The Ugly Spot

I was following a BMW X6 the other day.

I still think they look stupid.

And when I say "following" - I was behind it in traffic - I don't associate myself with anyone daft enough to own one.

Maybe it's something about cars that have names beginning with "X".

Autoguide today have this story about the Volkswagen XL1 testing in Spain. They use this still from a spy-video:

It is a diesel hybrid with a 2-cylinder engine so it sounds absolutely awful in their video but it looks beautiful in the picture.

So what about my argument about X cars being ugly?

Well, I give you how the car is meant to look:

That is pig-ugly and the only real difference is the covering of the rear wheels - a bit like the McLaren X-1 which features on the cover of this month's Top Gear Magazine.

Note the X name. It was built by McLaren as a one-off for a very rich, and presumably blind, customer.

Which brings us back, rather neatly, to BMW and their X1:

Quite ugly, although the earlier incarnation looks OK in this Top Gear story from 2009...

...although that may have something to do with the bikini.

Now, regular readers of my Blog will know that I, myself, drive an X car - a Jaguar X-Type.

This is clearly the exception that proves the rule.

If I was on television right now, I would turn to a side-camera, shrug, and say, "No, I don't understand that saying either."

As a child of the '70s, I like my cars to be big and square and I love the looks of my car even if some people think the X-Type boring. Mind you, designer Paul Smith (turn to side-camera and shrug in an "I've never heard of him, either" sort of way) was obviously inspired (or commissioned) to come up with this:

Enough said, I think.

What's the Point?,,!'*-."

I saw my first VW Up! today.It looked OK - I quite liked the snazzy rear lights but apart from that it was unremarkable - so why does it get an exclamation mark!?

That got me thinking about punctuation in car names. Volkswagen weren't first to use an exclamation mark - the Scandinavians got there first with the mostly defunct TH!NK electric car that also used the rather shouty CAPITAL LETTERS too!

Alfa went with the full stop in their Mi.To while Top Gear's "Reasonably-Priced Car" is Kia's Cee'd.

It all seems a bit daft to me - marketing types would find it impressive but nobody else would bother.

So, to take my mind off it, I might go for a drive in my X-Type, perhaps to Westward Ho!




P.S. A note to my American readers - Westward Ho! is a real town in the English county of Devon - it doesn't mean the same thing as in America and has absolutely nothing to do with prostitutes.

Just like the Devon town of Ilfracombe.

What's in a Name?

A story this week from Car Magazine about how Mercedes are "simplifying" their car naming structure. You have to read it to believe it - it makes no sense whatsoever. They are trying to make their naming system which uses letters to identify the postion the model has in the range more logical.

They are failing spectacularly.

Maybe they should rethink the whole letters and numbers thing and just use names instead. They will need to be careful though - GM's Nova for instance didn't do too well in Spanish-speaking countries where "No va" means "doesn't go".

Ford's Pinto had similar problems as this is allegedly slang for "small penis" in South America.

Ford had better luck in Britain naming their cars after "gentlemen's magazines" like Escort and Fiesta.

All of the names in my little picture above are real car names - except one!

There's a prize of much kudos for anyone who spots my fake one.

Some names are so good that several car companies choose them independently of each other. For example, my profile picture is of an Austin Metro but anyone sitting at a computer on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean will expect a Metro to be a Geo Metro - so for those people - here's a nice picture of one of them...