Jensen (Interceptor not Button) returns

Even the people who are passionate about cars don’t always appreciate the idea of owning a classic. There’s a hassle factor attached, whether it’s running a Ford Anglia from the Sixties or a Rolls Royce from the Thirties. I have friends with both and they regularly moan about cost, reliability, etc. It’s equally true for a sports car such as the original Seventies’ Jensen Interceptor The Chrysler V8 engine meant impressive performance, but the infamous leaking windscreen meant there was a price to be paid. Talking of money, if you’ve got £107k lying around and don’t want to sit in a damp patch, why not buy a new Interceptor? A new business has recently launched taking old versions and uprating them with the 6.2-litre V8 from the Corvette. Give the 2+2 interior a new leather trim and respray the bodyshell and you’ve got a very handsome beast indeed with a year’s warranty and an engine that’s guaranteed for 100,000 miles. Have a look at http://www.jensen-cars.co.uk for details, but I paid them a visit on Friday and took an Interceptor R out for a spin. They’re hoping to sell up to 15 cars a year and there are plenty of people willing to sell them an old Interceptors to be used as the donor car. Thankfully there seems to be a decent queue of buyers for the finished product, and a mention on Top Gear a week last Sunday has helped too. Good luck to them!

Welcome back Toyota

Many motoring journalists get quite excited by Formula One, and with the new season just round the corner, there’s lots of talk about the rule changes and how that will impact on the leading contenders. Personally, I find it a bit the races a bit dull. Touring Cars is more my thing and it’s nice to see the return of Toyota to this year’s BTCC grid. The firm has pedigree; three championship titles fell to Corolla drivers Win Percy and Chris Hodgetts in the Eighties, while a Carina racked up numerous race victories in the Nineties. Erm…. yes. And that’s about it. The car maker is heavily plugging the Avensis-based Next Generation Touring Car (NGTC). Built by Bucks-based GPR Motorsport, it will make its competition debut in the opening round at Brands Hatch on 3 April. I’ll be there and will be putting in an appearance at my nearest circuit, Snetterton, later in the season as well. Two privateer teams – Dynojet and Speedworks – have so far committed to running an Avensis. Others may follow suit, or could wait to see how the season pans out before signing up in 2012. My feeling is Toyota wouldn’t be doing this if it didn’t believe the car was competitive. It’s had enough bad PR in the last year with all the quality recalls. I hope it lives up to the expectation.

PS: off to meet the team behind the reborn Jensen tomorrow. More on that next week

Renault trio do it again

It must have been interesting sat on the Renault table at last week’s What Car? awards. In the hot hatch category there was a short-list of three vehicles – the Twingo Renaultsport 133 Cup, the Clio Renaultsport 200 Cup and the Megane Renaultsport 250 Cup. You will no doubt have spotted that all three of these potential winners are from Renault, and it’s the second year in a row the French firm has achieved that feat. For all its problems – lacklustre design on the current range and, bizarrely, an industrial espionnage scandal involving leaked secrets on its pioneering electric vehicle programme – the Renaultsport team do know how to build a hot hatch. In the style of a BBC presenter, other cars are available – Golf R, Leon Cupra R, MINI Cooper S, Polo GTI, 500 Abarth – and I know for a fact all these were considered for the short-list. But none made it; as one of the What Car? team said, the stock versions of the Twingo, Clio and Megane are hardly class-leaders, but with the expertise of Renaultsport they certainly cut the mustard. So what was the overall winner? The Megane edged out its siblings, just as it did in 2010. The test team say the Cup version “grips and changes direction like a Scalextric car” yet amazes because it’s so undemanding to drive.

Loving the Hyundai Veloster

I have fond memories of the Hyundai Coupe. In the first weeks after I started in motoring journalism – on Auto Express magazine in 1998 – I was sent on a performance driving course. It was somewhere in North Yorkshire, involved learning advanced roadcraft, but also the ins and outs of taking a car round a circuit while getting the low-down on the dark art of automotive evaluation. As my previous assignments on local newspapers had been covering courts, councils and cats up trees, this seemed impossibly glamorous. The weapon of choice for this two-day funfest was the Hyundai Coupe. It was the most sporty car I’d ever driven, and even thought I didn’t fit in it particularly well – it’s not built for people who are 6ft 4ins – it was something I will always remember. Hyundai has been missing that kind of halo car since the last of the Coupes were shifted at basement prices in 2009. Now, with the Veloster, they have something to compete with the likes of the VW Scirocco. It’s got a unique door arrangment, with one on the driver’s side and two for the passenger, and is certainly a striking looking – if not obviously attractive – machine. It will be in showrooms by the end of the year priced around £19,000.

Vauxhall Corsa VXR Blue

Looking for a new hot hatch but can’t afford a Golf GTI? You might want to consider this special edition of the Vauxhall Corsa VXR. Called the Blue, it’s priced £19,425 – which seems like an awful lot of money for a supermini, even one with 190+bhp. I accept the fact it’s good value compared with rivals such as the Citroen DS3 R and MINI Cooper Works, but it’s almost £20k for something you will struggle to fit four average-sized adults in. I’m genuinely amazed people can afford to spend that on any new car in the current economic climate. Included in the price is the unique metallic paint job – described as Arden Blue – plus the 18-inch alloys, dark-tinted glass, bespoke interior air vents and Recaro seats. It’s a saving of £445 over the cost of speccing a standard Corsa VXR with this kit. Inside, blue detailing can be found throughout, including the stitching on the leather steering wheel, the interior air vent and the trim on the sports seats. Power comes from a 1.6-litre turbocharged petrol engine, pushing the VXR to 60mph in 6.8 seconds and a top speed of 140mph. The Blue is on sale now but won’t arrive in showrooms until the end of next month.

New Porsche in Detroit

Any new model from Porsche is an exciting event, but a whole new vehicle really gets most performance car hot under the collar. This mid-engined coupé is a test bed – company top brass called it a ‘racing laboratory’ – that demonstrates what happens when the technology from the 911 GT3 R Hybrid race car is mated to the design of the 918 Spyder concept, from last year’s Geneva Motor Show. I’m sure you’ll agree it’s a heady cocktail, and colour scheme of the iconic 917 track car only adds to the pleasure. The newcomer was unveiled at this week’s Detroit Motor Show and is called the Porsche 918 RSR. The V8 engine is a development of the direct injection unit from the RS Spyder race car, but tuned to give 563bhp at 10,300 rpm. The electric motors on the two front wheels each contribute another 102bhp, giving a grand total of 767bhp. The additional power, which is generated during braking, is stored in an optimised flywheel accumulator.

The allure of Allora

The Autosport Show at Birmingham NEC starts later this week and runs through to Sunday. For the first time in a good many years I’m not going at all – too many other commitments make it impossible – but despite the impact of the recession, the event and that end of the automotive industry seem to be going from strength to strength generally. Evidence comes in the form of Creation, a British company making its Autosport Show debut, which effectively exists to fill the gaps caused the recession. If you’re the boss of a performance engineering firm, and you’ve been hit hard and are lacking the finances to redevelop tooling and infrastructure, outsourcing to someone like Creation is one way round it. Evidence of what Creation can do is pictured above. This car, bearing a striking resemblance to the McLaren F1, is called Project Allora and is a design concept and production feasibility study for an undisclosed international client. The mid-engined two-seater features a composite body over a steel underframe and uses a V8 engine to deliver supercar performance. My guess is it will never see the light of day; it’s a technical advert for Creation’s skill and ambition, designed to drum up trade from other companies. Just goes to show, for every one person struggling because of economic conditions, someone else will prosper.

Loving the power of online comment

I’m not sure why, but an article I wrote which was published in the Daily Telegraph’s Saturday Motoring supplement in September suddenly appeared on its website earlier this week (pictured above). No fanfare, no fuss. It just appeared as ‘new’ news with a 4 January dateline on it. I’m not complaining – I’ve been paid, I’m happy enough – but what’s interesting is the online debate it prompted. Have a look at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/green-motoring/8027759/Is-your-car-as-clean-and-green-as-you-think.html The article says that while CO2 emissions are important as they’re reckoned to cause global warming, oxides of nitrogen, carbon monoxide and particulate material from diesels are just as significant because they cause asthma. Cars you think are green because they have low CO2 actually don’t do so well on some of the other nasties. Within a few hours there were more than 20 comments from people on both sides of the debate. Some said it was great the issue was being highlighted, others got very heavy into the science and questioned my agenda. What’s facinating to me as the author is that when it first appeared in print I got a couple of emails from random people who had found my contact details online, offering their opinions. But stick it on the website and suddenly lots of people want to have their say and more importantly they can. I love that about the internet.

Fuel prices: a personal story

Lots in the news at the moment about fuel prices, because of the duty and the VAT both going up this week. There's no doubt it's going to impact on everyone, from the private motorist to the hauliers who transport goods around the UK. Personally, it means my ancient 4.0-litre Jeep Wrangler that lives in the garage on a trickle charger is going to get even less use this year than last because I it just drinks fuel. It will probably get sold because of that. Anyway, that's not the point. Spare a moment for the smaller petrol retailers who don't have a choice about what they charge for their fuel. It's alright for the supermarket forecourts, which can have lower pump prices because of the volume of traffic going through, or offer store-linked incentives. But the independent operators are going to the wall because they simply can't compete. My local filling station is in a village about three miles away. I called in about a month ago and they had no fuel because they were in the middle of swapping supplier. Fine, so the pumps were off for a couple of weeks. I called in again yesterday and was told it was all over. They've taken a decision to be a village shop with a jet-wash and a large area for parking. They can't make enough profit out of fuel to justify the expense. I'm told this is happening at the rate of about two a week. It means people like me who live in rural communities have limited choice about where we buy our fuel. We also have to drive further to get it. I know it's market forces which can't be interfered with but that doesn't make it right.