Mazda's mistake

A facelifted Mazda3 arrived at my house this week but the snow meant it didn’t venture out for a couple of days. Its first trip was a late-night run to Farnborough Airport for an early flight the next morning. I got in the car, started the engine, switched on the headlights… and the reason I will never buy a Mazda3 hit me between the eyes. I realise style and design are personal choices, and I accept some people couldn’t give a monkey’s how the dashboard looks. But I’m not one of them; creating the interior should be as much a labour of love as the exterior. Designers will spend months carefully ensuring the windows, bonnet, bumpers and doors all blend together to produce something beautiful. So why on earth don’t they do it with the cabin? What about the Mazda3 so offended me? There are two digital information screens centrally mounted at the top of the dash. One is a trip computer, the other has ventilation and audio details. They are about an inch apart, yet Mazda has somehow managed to make them look totally hideous. Each is completely different to the other. Screen shape, font style, font colour, background shade – nothing is shared. They have quite clearly come from two different suppliers who had no idea what the other was doing. The result is a mess. The Mazda3 might be the best driver’s car on the planet but I wouldn’t open my wallet because that one element would irritate me every time I sat behind the wheel. My gripe may sound irrational to you but I guarantee I’m not alone.

Driven: Hyundai i40

Why anyone buys a saloon is a bit beyond me. The back end is just so impractical. However, if you insist on having one – or it’s a company car and you don’t have a choice – you could do a lot worse than a Hyundai i40. I’d take the estate over the saloon every time as it’s a smarter looking design and obviously far more versatile, but the four-door model is another excellent vehicle from Hyundai. It’s hard to argue with performance figures of 113g/km and 65.7mpg, which are pretty much class-leading. Prices start at under £17,400 and you get a lot of kit as standard, including alloys, Bluetooth connectivity with voice recognition, leather steering wheel with audio controls, electric heated door mirrors and an electric parking brake with automatic hold function. I’ve nothing against the Ford Mondeo – it’s a great car – but the bottom-of-the-range Edge trim is £500 more than the i40 and doesn’t have half that kit on it. The Mondeo is undoubtedly a better car to drive but there’s not much wrong with the i40. If I was spending my own money, I know what I would be buying.

Driven: Hyundai Veloster

Spent a couple of hours in the new Hyundai Veloster yesterday, which I really enjoyed. It’s a sporty coupe for people who don’t want anything too extreme – there’s only 138bhp from the 1.6-litre engine, though a more powerful turbo is on the way – and is perfectly acceptable for that. It looks good, drives nicely and will still hit 60mph in under 10 seconds. The Sport trim I was driving has a panoramic sunroof as standard, and that makes it a little tight inside for headroom. It’s a trend I’ve noticed a few times on coupes recently; the new Porsche 911 suffers in the same way. If you want a sunroof it means the interior headlining is lower because the roof has to be thicker to accommodate the glass and mechanism. I wonder how many taller drivers are put off a car because of that, without knowing that if there’s a no-sunroof option available, the car would actually be more comfortable for them.

Teenage dreams realised

On Friday, in common with around 50 of my colleagues, I was unable to resist the draw of the Heritage Motor Museum in Gaydon, Warwickshire. The attraction was that Jaguar was firing up a couple of examples of the iconic XJ220 supercar – at one stage officially the fastest production vehicle in the world – and offering hot laps round the test track. That in itself was the fulfillment of a teenage boy’s dream; the car is a world away from the refinement of today’s supercars and at 165mph the experience was far from smooth. The thing that made most impression on me was the quality for the interior. Sure, it’s all leather but what hits you between the eyeballs is the MkIV Ford Escort switchgear. Three crappy plastic knobs and surround for the ventilation controls, nasty square buttons for the things like the fog lamps. Cabin detailing just wasn’t on the radar of the car designers of the day. We’ve got switches so why spend money styling new ones? It shows how far we have come in the last 20 years – the reason for the event – and how much more today’s ultra-rich buyers expect for their money.

When's Skoda going to do another one of these?

Been doing some research for a book I’m contributing to, and found out something I never knew about Skoda. It used to have a convertible in its range – and a little cutey it was, too – and that was where the name Felicia orginated. Originally known as the 450, this two-door convertible – the only proper one Skoda has ever sold (let's ignore the aftermarket Rapid conversion) – was reworked and rebadged as the Felicia in 1959. The name is derived from the Latin for ‘happiness’. The drop-top came in two formats; the standard Felicia had a 1,089cc engine, but a more powerful 1,221cc version was launched in 1961 and badged the Felicia Super. The bench-style front bench seat could accommodate three, with further space for two passengers behind. Exterior styling was broadly similar to the Octavia, which also debuted in 1959. It just goes to show that even when it was a budget volume brand for the Soviet Bloc’s aspiring classes, Skoda knew a thing or two about auto design.

Vital to our lives or just a gimmick?

I was flicking through the pages of Auto Express this morning over breakfast. The magazine has recently had a redesign and one of the new innovations is QR codes linking to video content on the website. Want so get “up close and personal with the new Mondeo at its world debut in Detroit”? Take out your smartphone, scan the code with the QR reader app and it links straight through to a YouTube clip of a journalist talking about the car on the Ford stand at the recent US motor show. Last week I wrote a story for a industry magazine about dealer marketing initiatives and QR codes cropped there, too. Include the black and white squiggle in a newspaper advert and readers who scan it get details of an offer on fixed price servicing. QR codes are becoming an increasingly frequent part of our lives. People like scanning them because it’s quirky. Is it a gimmick that will fade in popularity with time? Not sure. But did you know they started out as a motor industry invention? A Toyota supplier invented them about 15 years ago to track stock moving through the factory production line. Now they’re everywhere and you can even create your own. Scan the one above to see what I mean.

Motorhomers breaking the law?

One of the more left-field titles for which I write irregularly is Motorcaravan Motorhome Monthly (MMM), and this week I’ve been doing some digging into the issue of towing cars. We’ve all seen motorhomers dragging a city car along behind their vehicle as local transport for when they arrive at their destination. I’ve always assumed that it’s legal – the owners must have checked it out – but it turns out it’s such a grey area as to be almost black. The bottom line is that the regulations, as defined in the Road Vehicles (Construction and Use) Regulations 1986 and subsequent amendments, never envisaged this situation and it’s never been tested in court. The issue is to do with braking; when towed, the car is considered to be a trailer and that opens a whole can of worms. Specifically, it’s to do with brake disengagement when reversing. As for touring and towing in Europe, Germany and the Netherlands say they will tolerate it but that technically it’s illegal. Everywhere else says anyone caught doing it will be pulled over and told to unhitch the car. That might make for an interesting holiday if you and your partner are driving separate vehicles.