MINI has Christmas all wrapped up

MINI has this week shown it hasn’t lost the creative touch when it comes to marketing. If you’re looking for something last minute and unique for the MINI fan in your life, this might do the trick. It’s not an actual present, but might liven up an otherwise dull one! Available through MINI UK’s Facebook page, the app allows you to devise and customise your own wrapping paper. Starting with a blank page, visitors choose the background colour then ‘drag-and-drop’ from a selection of festive icons to create their own design. These include images of snowmen, mistletoe and Santa. Message options include ‘It was alive when I wrapped it’ and ‘Isn’t it amazing what you can find in skips these days’. Once the paper is designed, simply print it out. Genius. This is the last post before Christmas, so have a great one and thanks for supporting me during 2011.

Taking Italian cars to a new level

So to the Panda, which I really liked. The design has kept all the character of the outgoing model, on sale since 2003. This new Panda is only the third one in 31 years and Fiat bosses hope it will help banish the reputation of iffy reliability in Italian cars for good. The above picture was taken in a whole new department at the Pomigliano plant just outside Naples, where the Panda is now being built (previously it was in Poland). It’s essentially a quality control division, which Fiat has had before but never to this sort of standard and attention to detail. The plant, formerly the home of the Alfa 159, has been given a massive and hugely expensive overhaul to bring it into the 21^st century. Staff have also undergone a major retraining programme. If anything is going to help save the Italian economy it’s initiatives like this. The Panda goes on sale in the UK from late February. The issue is going to be finding customers; back in 2003 Hyundai and Kia were nowhere. Now, cars like the excellent i20 and Rio are going head to head with the Panda and have a headstart.

Driven: Mercedes SLS AMG

The head-turning power of a rare car never ceases to amaze me. Add into the equation an ability to offer something genuinely extraordinary – a party trick that no one else can perform – and there’s literally no end to the queue of people who will leave a sticky noseprint on the glass. This week’s wheels belong to the Mercedes SLS AMG, a car launched a couple of years ago but which I never got to drive at the time. Its ‘party trick’ is the gullwing doors, harking back to the classic 300SL of the mid-Fifties. So far I’ve driven it as far as Gatwick Airport (I’m writing this in a hotel room in Naples, where I’m driving the all-new Fiat Panda. More on that next week). But after a brief trip to our village school on Tuesday I returned to the car park to find a small crowd. Same story yesterday at the cashpoint. It’s all the usual questions; how much, how powerful, how fast. I answer happily then swiftly follow up with the truth – it’s not mine. Looking forward to the journey home later today when I’m back in the UK. Let’s just say I won’t be going the most direct route home.

Do we know how to treat two-wheelers?

Keep seeing stuff on Twitter about the number of cyclists being killed on London’s roads this year. AA president Edmund King has been quite vocal on the issue (along with how many goals his young sons score each weekend in their football matches. They seem to average about six a game.) Don’t know if fatalities are higher than last year, but some reseach for an article I was writing last week dragged up some interesting cycling facts. Bike use was up 12 per cent between 2009 and 2010 – which can only be a good thing – when almost every other type of vehicle use was down. What’s worrying the insurance companies – I was writing for the customer magazine of one – is that riders’ lack of protection means massive claims and pay-outs. It’s not fixing bikes but bones that’s expensive, and in some cases paying out on life policies. Do car drivers know how to treat people on two wheels? Many riders would say not. It’s a fair point, and why does the Government’s long-standing THINK! road safety campaign feature no advice for drivers on how to deal with cyclists? There’s nothing about it all; no adverts, no posters, no guidance, nothing. That seems plain wrong to me.

Indians head here as MINI heads for India

Interested to learn that MINI UK is entertaining a group of top journalists from India ahead of the brand’s launch there next year. January’s Delhi Motor Show is the formal announcement of what’s happening and when, so 17 hacks have travelled here to visit the Plant Oxford factory and the MINI Park Lane showroom in central London. Wonder how the cars will go down there? If it’s like the rest of the world, a storm. MINI is now on sale in 90 countries, and sources tell me it could go live in anything up to another 12 next year. Vietnam and the Bahamas are apparently high on the list. The MINI is about as far away from India’s best known car – and supposedly the world’s cheapest, the Tata Nano – as it’s possible to get. But the middle-classes are apparently growing like Topsy. So will they want to personalise their MINIs with vast numbers of options as the Brits do? Will they go for the budget One model, or the flagship JCW? I don’t imagine Indian roads are the best in the world so the ride might be pretty harsh. I’d have thought it would be the ideal opportunity to launch the MINI Scooter, seen as a concept a couple of years ago!

Driven: Audi Q3

Is Audi running out of niches to fill? You have to wonder. The latest model is the Q3, which I had the chance to drive for the first time yesterday. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that it fits in beneath the Q5 and Q7 as the smallest SUV in the range, but how much smaller is it? The Q5 is 4.62 metres long while the Q3 is 4.38 metres, so just 24 cms difference bumper to bumper. Get a tape measure out or just hold your fingers up. Is that enough to justify a whole new car? I’m not sure. Audi says the Q3 will appeal to a younger buyer but it seems a moot point to me. That said, Audi is having another excellent year; sales and market share are at a record high and 14 new or replacement vehicles due in 2012. Unsurprisingly it drives very well and is full of premium features. One element that interested me was the driver’s seat, as it always does because I’m 6ft 4ins tall. Opt for the electric adjusting chair and there’s a far smaller range of movement than if you pick the one with levers to manually pull and push. In the former my head was brushing the ceiling lining when on the lowest setting, on the latter I had clear space. Bizarre.

End of the road for Maybach

To the surprise of no one, Daimler has killed off Maybach. I’ve been around the industry long enough to remember the ridiculous launch of the brand back in summer 2002. It involved craning a car in a glass case on to the QEII’s sun deck (pictured), then taking a load of journalists on a trans-atlantic cruise with it. When they arrived in New York harbour, a helicopter lifted the case off the ship and carried it to Wall Street where the car went on show. I wasn’t important enough to get the invitation back then, but I do remember my colleagues didn’t come back on the boat – they took Concorde. At every major motor show of the five years I’ve wondered how long Maybach had left. To be honest I’m surprised it has lasted as long as it has. Maybach always had a tiny little stand, always in a corner and always in the shadow of the much larger Mercedes one. It must have been massively galling for the Germans of Daimler to see just how much more successful their rivals at BMW were being with Rolls-Royce, which always had an enormous stand. How much more successful? Since 2003, Maybach has sold 3,000 cars globally, with around 115 coming to the UK. In the same period R-R has shifted more than 12,000 units. It might sound like a daft thing to say, but somehow Maybach always lacked the class of R-R. It’s been an expensive folly.

Could you do me a favour...?

I'm keen to know who is reading the blog and if it's hitting the spot. Please could you spare me an extra few seconds and post a quick comment below, just let me know why you're reading it. Tell me if you're a car enthusiast, industry PR, fellow journalist, friend of mine or just an interested member of the public. Thanks.

What should an EV sound like?

I spent a couple of hours last week in the company of Steve Levine. The name might not be familiar but his client list will be – Culture Club, The Beach Boys, Motorhead, etc, etc. From his garden shed studio, record producer Steve is working with tech firm Harman to create sounds for electric vehicles (EVs) so visually impaired pedestrians don’t get run over. Obviously there aren’t many EVs on the road at the moment but the number is set to grow. Harman has done its own research on what drivers want, and the answer is it depends on the type of car. Family drivers want something fairly dull and uninteresting, sports car owners want something a bit more involving. The EU is looking at how this issue should be regulated, but with no legislation in place right now Steve has a blank canvas. It’s purely a research project at the moment so there’s scope for some fairly wacky stuff – think space ships – but serious thought is going into Steve’s work. Take the issue of volume; how loud should an EV be? In urban areas you get ‘noise reflection’ from buildings so arguably it doesn’t need to be as loud as in the country, where hedges just absorb the sound and offer no bounce-back and there may be less pedestrians anyway. Will future EVs be smart enough to know where they are and if people are present then adjust the volume accordingly? Perhaps.

Driven: SsangYong Korando

I mentioned in the last post that I was meeting the new team behind South Korean brand SsangYong. Three years ago it went into administration globally, but has been rescued by Mahindra & Mahindra, a massive Indian conglomerate that builds cheap and cheerful SUVs for its home market. SsangYong gives it something more upmarket for those customers, and allow it to exploit the no-frills SUV sector in Western Europe, particularly for people who need to tow. The problem is the product. Take the all-new Korando (pictured); it looks okay from a distance, but it lacks the refinement of pretty much everything else in the sector. It’s a world away from best-selling Nissan Qashqai, and even rival products from South Korea, the Kia Sportage and Hyundai ix35, are a class apart from the Korando. To be fair to the SsangYong UK top brass, they’re reaslistic about the car’s shortcomings and accept they’re only ever going to be a niche player. The ‘at least 10 per cent cheaper than our rivals’ tag will get customers through the door, but I’m afraid you get what you pay for.

Fog and how not to drive in it

Yesterday was very foggy in East Anglia and the Yarrow family was heading up to Southwold, on the Suffolk coast. It’s back roads and tiny villages all the way, so narrow 60mph speed limit zones broken up by occasional 30mph areas. In the fog, I didn’t want to be doing much than 20mph in any of it. I was pretty content following a Ford Fiesta doing that speed and there was no chance of getting past anyway. But that didn’t stop two young lads in an old VW Golf having a go at a double overtake. Needless to say, they got halfway through the task before bottling out and diving into the gap between me and Fiesta. A friend travelling the same route a few minutes behind had also come across them and had a similar experience. Drivers like that will kill us all. Idiots. More fog today, so a slow trip down to Hatfield, Herts, to meet up with team behind the relaunched SsangYong and drive the all-new Korando (pictured). Key question is why are they bothering. Finding customers might be a challenge.

Beetle misses the boat... again

Saw the Beetle R concept (above) at the Geneva Motor Show in March and liked it. This week it’s made its US debut at the LA Motor Show and I reckon the Yanks will probably love it. Their enthusiasm for the original Beetle was always strong thanks to the Herbie films (a machine Auto Express readers this week voted the seventh greatest movie car of all time). It’s hard to think of the new Beetle, the one launched in 1999, as anything other than a missed opportunity. When the MINI came along two years later, it showed VW what it should have done. The Fiat 500 only compounded the problem. Early next year we get the new Beetle, the one this R version is based on. So will VW be offering a vast array of accessories and personalisation options in the way MINI and Fiat has done? The answer is I don’t know; the VW public website gives you the option to download the accessories brochure, but when you do you get a message saying it’s currently unavailable. What about the brochure for the actual car? No, that’s unavailable too. Seems VW hasn’t learned any lessons about marketing its heritage in the last 10 years.

Honda's hi-tech car sales technique

As well as being an example of hideous spelling, the Motorola Xoom is a tablet PC along the lines of the Apple iPad. Every Honda dealer in the country will soon know this because each is getting a couple of them to help sell the all-new Civic (pictured above). Using what’s known as ‘augmented reality’, customers will be able to use the Xoom’s built-in camera to view a specially prepared showroom car. Doing so will bring up additional information on various aspects of it – design, engines, environmental technology, etc – to the Xoom’s screen. Honda bosses say the benefits are numerous; firstly, it’s a hi-tech and fun way for customers to interact with the car. Secondly, it helps motivate the staff by giving them more to play with than just brochures. But it’s the third reason that I thought was most interesting. Using a Xoom helps standardise the messaging about the car. In short, sales staff can’t be trusted to give all the information – or all the right information – about the new Civic. I would have thought that was a key criteria for the job, and if they can’t get that right they shouldn’t be working in car sales.

Driven: BMW 1-Series

Had the pleasure of visiting Bracknell, Berks for the first time in my life yesterday. Not sure I’ll be hurrying back. Called in on BMW to borrow a new 1-Series for a couple of hours as I couldn’t make the launch event. The 2004 original was nobody’s favourite BMW – mainly because of the styling – but you can’t argue with 100,000 units sold in the UK alone. It was a good car to drive, and the engineers haven’t lost that spirit in the MkII model. It’s also a damn sight prettier, looking far more like a compact estate. The newcomer rides and handles very well, and it’s less crashy over bumps than its predecessor. But what struck me most was the attention to detail on the interior. My 116i Sport had delicated touches of Coral Red trim around the cabin, and they were replicated on the key fob. I’ve never seen that on a new car before. Also, the twin cupholders ahead of the gearstick had removable plastic inserts, which turned them from a dumping ground for the car key and a mobile phone into an appropriately shaped storage area. The car’s one problem is the rear; it’s still not very spacious, despite an extra 30mm in the wheelbase.

The route to the future?

I spent a couple of days with infotainment expert Harman recently. You might know the company better by some of its brand names, such as Harman/Kardon (in Mercedes cars), or Mark Levinson (Lexus). It’s also behind speaker maker JBL. I was with the company to hear about some future technologies that it’s working on, much of which are to do with reinventing the electrical architecture of the car so manufacturers can offer more and better features. But Harman is also developing the software to be used on these next-generation cars, and a great example is what it’s doing with sat-nav. Take a look at the picture above. If you’ve seen the Leonardo DiCaprio sci-fi thriller of last year, Inception, you’ll be quite familiar with this! If you haven’t, you won’t know what I’m talking about! The point is this system is called MultiPerspective, and it folds the map at the horizon through 90 degrees. It allows you to see much more of the route ahead, so you can pre-empt junctions. Pretty clever, huh?

A cracking little Suzuki

Suzuki isn’t a brand I write about very often, perhaps because it’s a minnow compared with some. It has a stable one per cent share of the UK car market, almost entirely made up of retail rather than corporate customers. It has loyal fans, but not much of a reputation for taking risks and offering niche vehicles. A good example is the news that it’s to launch rivals to the Nissan Qashqai and Juke. Hardly a surprise – Suzuki isn’t alone in spotting those vehicles have struck a chord with buyers – but neither model will be arriving for at least another three years. ‘Late to the party’ doesn’t really go far enough! Replacements for the ageing Jimny and Grand Vitara are also on the way, but they don’t and won’t sell in great numbers. Volume for Suzuki comes from the Swift, which is a reliable and affordable supermini. However, with the launch of the Swift Sport in January – a car I’ve driven this week – the range has been given a real lift. It’s a cracking little hot hatch and while 136bhp doesn’t sound like much, the car only weighs just over 1,000kg. It’s not the fastest, but it’s certainly one of the most fun. And at £14,000 it’s a lot of car for the money. I loved it!

Hyundai Santa Fe gets everywhere

It’s funny what you notice when you’re out on the road. And once you start noticing something, it’s hard to stop. For me, over the last few weeks, it’s been the number of Hyundai Santa Fe SUVs I’ve been seeing out and about. I live in rural Suffolk, so I’m used to a higher percentage of 4x4s that perhaps there are in other parts of the UK, but just lately the dominant model has been the Santa Fe. It’s timely because this week What Car? named it Used SUV of the Year. The judges said: “The Hyundai Santa Fe has improved with age, offering space, practicality and reliability and an ever-more bargain price. The only drawback is its rarity, so you may need to hunt to find the perfect car.” Not much of rarity in East Anglia but I think it means on the used car forecourts. By chance I’ve been driving a Santa Fe this week, revised for 2012. There have been a number of very minor tweaks, not even enough to call it a facelift. But I think the What Car? guys are right: it’s an excellent package and living where I do, and coming into winter, it makes a great deal of sense. It’s excellent family transport.

A sad seven days

Two horrendous and high-profile motorsport deaths in two weekends is a tragedy. Inevitably it prompts TV and radio debate about safety and how it can be improved, whether reviews are needed, etc. In our media-driven age you can see Dan Wheldon’s crash from countless angles and it’s clear there was nothing the Brit could do to avoid what happened. He had a split-second to avoid the car in front and unfortunately didn’t. After that, the die had been cast and he was a passenger in flying machine. So was it unavoidable? Yes, but having 30-odd open-wheel cars going round in circles at speeds of 220+mph is a recipe for disaster. It was an accident waiting to happen and if the drivers have any sense they will call for a closed season review. For Moto GP rider Marco Simoncelli, yesterday’s crash was clearly just a freak accident. He lost control of the bike as happens to numerous riders several times every season. A split-second earlier or later and the others would have missed him. He’d have been nursing some bruises and maybe a broken limb, that’s all. Motorsport is dangerous and there’s no way round that. It’s the risk you take when you sign up.

Things can only get better

Been touring the country this week in a Renault Megane coupe. It’s the first time I’ve driven one since the media launch in 2009 and I have the same feelings now about the car’s cabin as I did then. All the design effort went into the exterior and the dashboard, instruments and centre console were left to the work experience boy. Particularly in the Monaco GP limited edition model I’m driving – white with black wheels (above) – car the really stands out from the crowd. It still looks fresh today. But the interior – the bit I have to look at all the time – is woeful. True, on this car they’ve livened it up with some sporty white trim, but that can’t hide the basic problem – far too much grey plastic. I’m sure nobody within Renault would admit it was a poor effort, but with a new design chief I hopeful things will get better. They have to, because rivals – particularly Hyundai and Kia, Citroen and Peugeot – are doing smart-looking, design-led cabins which make the Renault Megane look very dull indeed.

Rip-off Britain: still on the go

I live near Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk and on Saturday was left my Renault Megane Monaco GP – more on that another day – in a shoppers’ car park. I picked ‘over four hours’ and it cost me £2. On Sunday I did the exact thing in Lincoln, another historic city with another impressive cathedral and more ruined walls. So why did it cost me £6 in Lincoln? Outside of London, which is a different case, I’ve never paid that much for parking. The change I’d specially acquired before setting off, to feed the machine, wasn’t enough. I had to pay by credit card. I can’t remember the last time that happened. How can Lincoln Council justify £6 when Bury charges £2 for same service? I was genuinely gobsmacked.

DAB Day on the way... but when?

Ford Ennals is not the name of a new car but the CEO of Digital Radio UK. That's the umbrella organisation overseeing the switchover to DAB. There’s no firm date for when the old analogue network will be turned off, but he’s been tasked with preparing for it to happen in 2015. What it means is that the vast majority of in-car radios will stop working overnight. I’ve just been chatting to him for a piece I’m writing for Metro, the free commuter newspaper that you see in London and other UK cities. There are certain criteria that we, the listening public, have to meet before switchover can take place. Ennals confirmed what I suspected: that we’re not on target for 2015 unless there’s accelerated take-up of DAB both in-car and at home. If we carry on at the current rate of growth it will be 2017. Good news for drivers, then? A stay of execution? Yes, but motorists are only delaying the inevitable. I think they're doing it with good reason. I have a theory that most will put it off as long as possible, because the price of the technology will come down, just as it did with TV digiboxes. The other thing is drivers rightly believe they won’t have the same car in 2017 – or even 2015 – as they do now. Why pay for a DAB system today when you might have to do it again in a couple of years?

Vauxhall's quest for 'premiumness'

Interviewing car designers can be a thankless task. God knows how many I’ve sat down with over the years, but I reckon more often than not it’s a waste of time. They talk a different language, which I’m sure makes sense to them, but to me and the general public is a mystery. There are a few exceptions, and to my list of those I will happily add Mark Adams, head of design at GM Europe. I sat with him at dinner last week after driving the Vauxhall Zafira Tourer (pictured). It’s the new name for the Zafira because this MkIII version is bigger and more upmarket than before. Adams was remarkably honest about the Luton brand, where it’s been and where he’s trying to get it to go. Here’s what he told me: “I don’t think the British public perceive Vauxhall as premium. Most people think of us as Vectra and all the other older cars on the road, and we are mainstream as it’s possible to be. But I hope that with consistent execution of cars like Insignia, like Zafira Tourer, people will see us as at the very top of the volume brands, and with ‘premiumness’ as part of the package. Vauxhall lacks emotion big time. How do we add that? With visual appeal, by making the cars look exciting.” Adams came across as a genuine bloke – which is rare when designers chat to people like me – and I wish him well.

Near miss

Came pretty close to getting knocked off my push-bike this morning. A van driver was sat waiting to turn right out of a T-junction and I was approaching from that direction. I saw him look directly at me, turn to glance left then pull out. I’m 6ft 4ins wearing a hi-vis vest, riding on an XXL-framed bike, about 10 yards away and getting closer all the time. Yet still he decided the gap was big enough. Defensive riding learned during my motorcycling days meant my fingers were covering the brakes and I missed his back end by a couple of yards. I shouted a loud and sarcastic ‘Thank you very much!’ that he must have heard, but needless to say he just carried on. Another case of ‘looked but didn’t see’? Poor decision-making? Just an idiot who shouldn’t be on the road? Probably all three. Shook me up a bit, though.

Am I a bad driver? Turns out I am

Interesting conversation with my wife as I was driving the family back from seeing friends in Worcester yesterday. We were in the Porsche Panamera Hybrid (pictured), which I though was excellent. The battery technology works seamlessly with the 3.0-litre petrol engine, giving a total of 380bhp, fuel economy of 41.5mph and emissions of 159g/km. That’s about the same as our own Ford Focus estate, which surprisingly won’t do 0-60mph in six seconds like the Porsche can. Back to the debate; she said I was driving more aggressively and getting closer to other drivers than I normally do. I didn’t think I was but it was making her uncomfortable. Here’s what I think; whether I was doing it or not is irrelevant. If your passenger is getting stressed then you’re being a bad driver. Part of the skill of piloting a car isn’t just about getting from A to B, it’s about doing it in a way that keeps everyone calm. If my wife was getting nervous I was failing, simple as that. So I left larger gaps and if they got filled by other people I backed off. She was a happier passenger so I was driving better. Having been a passenger myself on countless thousands of occasions, it’s amazing how many people don’t appreciate this point.

Driven: Chrysler Ypsilon

First the corporate message. These are the thoughts of Saad Chehab, president and CEO of the company, who I sat next to at dinner on Tuesday night. “Chrysler is an American brand and people have an affinity with that here, like Apple and Nike. If I was to think about all the mistakes that have been made [in Chrysler and Lancia’s history], the inappropriate cars, the inconsistencies, I’d get nothing done. I can’t help that and we have nothing to be ashamed of today. We have to reach out and think about what makes a Chrysler. Walter P Chrysler was always the middle finger to brands like Lincoln and Cadillac. He wanted to do it better and cheaper, and had a history of thinking outside the box. We have the capability to build great and high quality cars.” All well and good, and sales aspirations for the Ypsilon supermini are ultra-low, only 4,000 cars next year. Ford sells that many Fiestas every fortnight. I’m sure the brand’s 50 dealers – plus 20 new ones next year – can achieve that. But the car is a bit of a disappointment. It’s just not premium enough, its exterior looks aren’t conventionally handsome and the instrument layout (above) is a bit of a mess. And why on earth does the digital temperature read-out noticeably flicker when the standard-fit stop-start system re-engages the powertrain? That can’t be right. I tried two versions of the 900cc TwinAir and they both did it.

Nearly 20 years on, Lancia is back... (sort of)

Brand image isn’t everything, but it’s not far off. Lancia quit the UK in the early Nineties with not much of one left. Unreliability and rust were its biggest problems, coupled with dealers who didn’t seem to give a monkey’s. But this week marks the UK media launch of the Lancia Ypsilon (above), except it’s wearing a different badge on the front grille. Since Fiat Group rescued Chrysler from admin – so it now owns that brand plus Jeep and Dodge – the car is being sold here through showrooms that shift Grand Voyager MPVs and, well, that’s about it. I’ve never driven a Lancia and I have to say this is a launch I’ve been looking forward to for a while. What I’m most fascinated by is the business case; the Ypsilon is a premium supermini, territory occupied very successfully by the Audi A1, the entire MINI range and, to a certain extent, Fiat’s own 500. They’re cars that sell based on brand image, and neither Chrysler or Lancia, nor the unknown Ypsilon moniker, have much of that in the UK. I’ll admit I’m sceptical – and from chatting to colleagues I know I’m not alone – but will be going along Tuesday/Wednesday with an open mind. Find out my thoughts later in the week.

MINI on the move again?

Writing this from an Austrian hotel room, where I've been driving the new MINI Coupe (not in the hotel room, obviously). At dinner last night I was chatting to senior executives from the company about future plans. The Paceman concept, a sort of Countryman coupe, has been given the green light for production and the brand will launch in the potentially huge market of India in 2013. MINI seems unable to do anything wrong; the Coupe we drove yesterday is another great little car, a two-seater with a surprisingly big if slightly odd-shaped boot to add a dash of practicality. But what about extending the brand in new directions? MINI showed some scooters a couple of years ago so could there be a two-wheeler on the way. I'm told not. Top brass say the core competence is cars and it will always be that way.

Smart wheels... literally

Fascinating chat on the Peugeot stand last week with its design boss Gilles Vidal about the use of active aerodynamics. The stunning HX1 people carrier concept had some genuine innovations on it, including the six seats which slide into the back of each other like spoons, allowing maximum use of cabin space. But I was most interested in the wheels, which as you can see from the picture above, feature fold-out blades. At speed they automatically deploy to create a flat wheel surface to improve airflow. There are three rear spoilers which move away from the boot top to do the same thing, and even the headlamps have an active element to reduce vortices. Vidal told me: “Active elements such as a rear spoiler have traditionally been about generating more downforce, but now we are moving to a time when it’s more about aerodynamic efficiency. For example, we all know that a tapering rear end of the car is good for that, but it’s not always good for the aesthetic. So we design the car as we want, but when you move in it, elements of it move too.” He was honest enough to say this is long way from a production possibility, not through design and engineering competence but from a development cost perspective. Clever stuff, though.

Car of the show

Highlight of the Frankfurt Motor Show for me were the Land Rover Defender concepts. Just reading the opening few lines of the press pack on the stand confirmed this car has the potential to take the rugged 4x4 deep into the 21st century.The car features Terrain-i scanning tech to warns of hidden obstacles ahead and can even suggest alternative routes. The excellently named Wade Aid uses sonar to assess water depth and suggests the optimum speed to get through safely. A dashboard button can activate integrated tyre spikes for ice routes, and the permanent 4x4 system can be turned off with Driveline Disconnect that physically decouples the rear axle when so much grip isn’t needed. Fantastic. I love it all.

It's Frankfurt time again

Writing this from the departure lounge at Heathrow, heading off to the Frankfurt Motor Show. Pretty much everyone I can see around me is someone I know, either journalist, PR or car company executive. It’s hard to convey the size of this event, which starts with press days tomorrow and Wednesday. It alternates every year with Paris, so the travelling circus of motoring media only goes to Frankfurt every other year. But it’s always one no one really looks forward to, from a logistical perspective anyway. That’s because it’s an exercise in German willy-waving – my stand’s bigger than yours – and trying to navigate your way around in a hurry, as we always are, is a nightmare. The upside is the vast amount of new product and concepts that will be on show. Will post some stuff later in the week.

The boy who cried wolf

Dot-matix signs over motorway carriageways are an excellent invention. They can warn you of accidents ahead, future events that might cause traffic problems and a host of other stuff. But their effectiveness – and drivers taking them seriously – relies on accuracy. How many times have all of us seen them giving duff information? On the M25 last Sunday night near Heathrow they repeatedly warned of fog. There was none and little chance of any. It was laughable. Then two days later, on the same stretch but in the opposite direction, they were doing the exact same thing. Again, no chance of fog. Not fives miles later they suggested there was a queue ahead and changed the limit to 40mph. We all dutifully slowed down expecting to find a problem. Yet again there was nothing. They’re the classic example of the boy who cried wolf. It’s no wonder drivers ignore them and don’t stick to the variable speed limits.

Loving the NILS concept

Is this the future of urban transport? I hope so because it looks fantastic. VW’s single-seater EV concept will be unveiled at next week’s Frankfurt Motor Show. Called NILS, it has a range of 40 miles and a top speed of 80mph, which mean it will easily cover the daily return journey of almost three-quarters of Berlin and Munich commuters. Technically, it’s the same as a Formula 1 race car, with the driver in the middle, the engine in back and free-standing outboard wheels. It tips the scales at just 460kg. I can’t help thinking this is the sort of pioneering vehicle that could have been wearing a Smart badge, had Daimler not got confused and tried to go mainstream with a four-door reskinned Mitsubishi Colt.On an almost totally unrelated note, news of a excellent initiative. The people who were sacked from the military last week through no fault of their own are being encouraged to seek work in the low-carbon vehicle industry. Forces’ careers advisors and Cenex, the UK’s Centre of Excellence for Low Carbon and Fuel Cell Technologies, reckon ex-Service personnel have the kind of advanced engineering skills and experience now being sought in hi-tech EV manufacturing. Top idea.

New safety concerns for Toyota?

Texting while driving has led people to prison because they’ve not been paying attention to the road ahead and caused an accident. On many cars, if your phone is bluetooth-paired, you can read an incoming message on the dashboard screen. Mercedes’ COMAND system has offered this function for years. But to date no new car has permitted you to reply, for what Mercedes called “obvious reasons” when I spoke to them about it. In short, it doesn’t think it’s safe. But all that is about to change, and the car in question isn’t some high-end model from a German brand. It’s the new Toyota Yaris. Driving it yesterday, it has a multimedia system called Touch & Go and you can reply to texts. You can either input the characters individually or use templates that you have set up earlier, eg, “I’m driving now, will reply later”. What came as a surprise to me is that the Yaris allows you to do this while the car is moving. Interesting to see how that plays out. Not convinced it’s a good thing.

Driven: Kia Rio

There is little doubt that the Kia Rio is an excellent new supermini. It continues the Korean firm’s transformation from budget brand to company that should be genuinely taken very seriously. It looks great, drives well enough, and the pick of the engines is the surprisingly lively three-cylinder 1.1-litre diesel that, on paper at least, offers 80+mpg. All good then… so why do I feel a bit disappointed by the car? I think it’s the interior. I was hoping for more. I was hoping it would continue the standard set by the Cee’d, and then bettered by the Soul, Sportage, Sorento and Picanto, but I don’t think it does. The reason is the toggle switches you can see in the picture above, just below the three round ventilation knobs. I’ve seen this photo a few times since it was released earlier in the year and hadn’t picked them out as something of concern, but in reality they are big and ugly and pointless. They don’t really fit with the rest of the dashboard design. I’m writing this in my Portuguese hotel room, having chatted last night to Kia’s design director Peter Schreyer. He said the toggles were a deliberate attempt to move away from a flush-fitting, soft-touch, integrated cabin design, and that he will be using them again on future cars. I think they might have better suited to the Sportage or Sorento – altogether chunkier cars – rather than the Rio. But hey, it’s just an opinion.

Van-tastic

There must be a degree of a frustration when the sector your vehicle sells in is defined by the opposition. The Vauxhall Vivaro is a perfectly good van, but if I wanted to describe it to you any further I would say it is Transit-sized. And you would know exactly what I mean. It’s got three seats across the front, is driven by tradesmen the nation over and has a utilitarian dashboard with plenty of room at the base of the windscreen for a copy of The Sun. I don’t drive vans very often, but I borrowed this one from Vauxhall for a group of 10 of us to transport our camping gear to a music festival. It proved perfect for the task, in part because we could get one of those large trollies you see at garden centres into the back to help move our stuff at the other end. (I should say we didn’t steal the trolley, one of our number runs a nursery). The main issue when driving one is the lack of visibility when reversing; sure, there are door mirrors but it’s amazing how little use they are when you’re the size of a Transit – sorry, Vivaro – and have no rear view mirror. Ironically it had an optional extra called the Vision Pack (£100). Not sure what benefit that brought.

The most influential interior ever?

Spent the last couple of days immersed in the world of the Jaguar XF for a buyer’s guide that I’m writing. One of the more interesting bits was a chat with a main dealer who said it was the interior of the car that really wowed potential buyers. It’s not just that it remains a sophisticated reinterpretation of a Jag cabin (pictured), but what the dealer referred to as the ‘Jaguar handshake’. By that he means the active elements of the ignition process, which are the pulsing red ‘heartbeat’ on the starter button, the rotating dashboard air vents and the rising round gear selector. In his opinion, it was those which had helped redefine modern Jaguars and brought a new and younger type of customer into the brand, people who would never have considered one before. Up to a point he’s right. The exterior design, such a departure from the S-Type, also helped. But it got me thinking about other examples of where a new style of cabin had sparked such a transformation in public thinking about a brand. And I couldn’t think of a single one.

Light fantastic? Er, no

Just had my first experience of headlights that automatically swap between main and dipped beam, a feature on the 2012 model year Jaguar XF (pictured). You might wonder why I’ve not come across this before, and the reason is that on launch events – unless you get seriously lost – you never drive at night. Me and the Jag had an eight-mile trip down the A14 dual carriageway at about 11pm on Sunday night and the auto-function kicked in. Sensors scan the road ahead for movement and light, and if they find none they switch to main beam. As soon as they spot something coming the other way, or a vehicle overtakes you, they select dipped. Clearly it’s very clever, but actually I have to say I didn’t really like it. It must have flicked between the two options 30 times in the space of those eight miles, and sometimes staying on one for just a couple of seconds before switching back. Had I been controlling it myself I doubt I would have been close to half that number. The theory is it will help road safety by improving the driver’s vision, and maybe you get used to it, but I found it quite irritating. It’s a feature I could live without.

My wife's car of the year

It’s awards season in the motoring world, and it seems there’s a new set of gongs being handed out on pretty much a daily basis. I’m not going to burden you will my personal honours – I’m not pretentious enough to think anyone cares that much about my views, and if you read this blog regularly you will know my thoughts on the latest good and bad cars – but I will pay tribute to the VW Golf Cabriolet. It has achieved what most of the test cars that come to and go from my Suffolk driveway fail to do… and that’s get the nod of approval from Mrs Y. I’ve been busy writing at home all week and as it’s school holidays she’s been running around in the Golf – roof up and down – with the kids. There is no greater seal of approval for a new car than her broad smile and the words “I really like that car, what is it?”. Her face turned rather sour when I dropped the bombshell that it was £27,000 and she wouldn’t be getting it for her 40^th birthday next year. The good news is I’m off to drive it this morning. If I think she’s right about the Golf Cabriolet I might start sending her on launches…

The road to hell

I will do pretty much anything to avoid spending time on the M25, mainly because however long I leave to complete that section of the journey, it’s always way short of the mark. Friday night was a case in point; got stuck through the roadworks going from the A12 junction down to the Dartford Crossing. What should be about 20 minutes maximum took more than twice that. There was no obvious problem or reason for the delay. Coming back the same way yesterday, I witnessed first hand how one person’s idiotic and selfish driving can cause these so-called ‘phantom jams’. A VW Golf GTI came down the slip-road on to the motorway at a ridiculously fast speed, cutting across the white hatching to head through too-small gaps to get to the outside lane. I was probably eight cars back but everybody in front of me instinctively stood on the middle pedal because of this one reckless individual. We all bunched up, we all came to a virtual standstill and for no real reason. This Mexican Wave of red lights spread back and suddenly what was a perfectly happy snake of drivers became a traffic jam. Brilliant. Some people don’t deserve a driving licence.

A worthy winner

Went to the Auto Express awards on Tuesday night to see the Range Rover Evoque crowned Car of the Year. It’s a mould-breaking model for the company and for the SUV sector generally, and that’s always a points-scorer with the magazine’s judges. I drove the car (pictured, above) last week and it’s an excellent machine. I was most impressed by the interior space; the dropping roof/rising waist combination tricks the eye into thinking it will be tight in the back, but actually it’s not. There seemed to be general agreement that the Evoque was a worthy winner amongst the industry VIPs present. One of them was Nick Reilly, on hand to be inducted into the Auto Express Hall of Fame. That was another popular honour; Reilly was MD of Vauxhall when I started out in this game, and has since risen through the General Motors ranks to be president of European operations. Nobody has done more to secure the future of the car industry in the UK than Reilly, helping transform Ellesmere Port into a state-of-the-art operation and promoting Luton’s van plant where the Vauxhall Vivaro is built.

VW Sharan makes ideal camping car

Been away camping for a few days with the family and Volkswagen kindly loaned me a new Sharan for the trip. As a seven-seater it would be too big for us as a regular family car – it’s me, my wife and two kids most of the time – but it proved its worth over the weekend. With the third row of chairs folded flat the people carrier swallowed all the camping kit, and when we met up with grandparents on a day out, I reconfigured it in seconds and it was ideal transport for the six of us. It also impressed a friend of mine who was part of our multi-family trip. He’s also got a wife and two little ones, but works as a photographer and needs space for all his camera kit. He was very impressed with the flexibility of the Sharan’s interior, and also the little ‘attention to detail’ things. He was genuinely impressed with how the second row seat base tilts to allow it to slide further forward to create better access to the third row (pictured, above). I think he might be visiting a VW dealer very soon to trade in his ageing Peugeot estate!