Driven: Chrysler 300C

When it arrived in 2005, the exterior styling of the all-new Chrysler 300C was a breath of fresh air. It was like nothing else in the class. The same was also true of interior quality, but not in a good way. Its replacement goes on sale next month and is a vast improvement in every respect… except the once-striking 'gangster' design which has been watered down and now has something of the Cadillac CTS about it. Under the stewardship of Fiat, the car still lacks the dynamic excellence of German rivals on twisty A-roads. But the ride is pretty good considering the 20-inch wheels and if you want a motorway cruiser it wafts alone nicely. The cabin is much more premium, but the attention to final detail stuff that Audi, BMW and Merc are so good at is still missing. The insert coin tray hidden in the centre armrest is a classic example. On the face of it, it’s fine. But pull it out and turn it over and you’ll see just how badly finished it really is. In a German car it would be perfect. Headroom for rear passengers is a compromise and there will be no estate this time. Sales of 450 units a year are achievable but as it’s priced from £35,000 it won’t do many more. 

Driven: Skoda Citigo

Was driving a Skoda Citigo during my travels last week, and on paper there’s a lot to recommend it. The Czech firm’s smallest ever model, it’s based on the same platform and running gear at the Volkswagen up! and SEAT Mii. The 1.0-litre three-cylinder engine is giving me 50+mpg despite spending much of the last seven days sat on the motorway. The problem is the three-door model’s seating set-up; it’s fatally flawed and I wonder how many buyers aren’t going to realise until they’ve bought one. The issue is the driver and passenger seats, and how they slide/tilt to let someone into the back. The ‘going forward’ bit isn’t the problem, it’s the return element. Firstly, for some reason which I can only conclude is an oversight, it doesn’t slide back to where you last had it locked. It just goes all the way to the end of the runners. Aside from mangling my son’s legs, it means you’ve got to manually adjust it every time you sit down again. And at the same time you’ve got to do the seat back, because it’s afflicted with the same fault. After a weekend of running the kids about – and having to reset the seat about eight times – I was ready to scream. I know the VW up! suffers the same problems because I’ve already tried it out, so I assume the Mii does too. My advice – pay extra and get the five-door version whether you need the rear doors or not.

Mu-ving to the future of car use?

 Spent much of Tuesday at a Peugeot dealership in Chiswick, West London. It’s one of only six in the country which operates the French firm’s innovative vehicle rental scheme. Called Mu – the Greek word for movement – here’s how it works. The dealership has every one of Peugeot’s vehicles for hire, from 107 through to RCZ, plus any of the four vans it sells. There are also two types of push-bike, e-bikes, scooters of different powers, and from later this year e-scooters as well. Add in anything from the accessories range – sat-nav, bike carrier, roof box, tow bar – and you’ve got a pretty comprehensive offering. I’ve always thought this a clever idea and am constantly amazing no one has copied it. If you live close by, where an annual parking pass is £600, and you don’t need a car every day, why wouldn’t you use Mu? Chatting to the customers, many think along similar lines. They work in London and commute on public transport, but need a car a couple of times a week. It’s cheaper to rent something for the day or even half-day – costing as little as £20 – than pay to own a car and have it sat on the road most of the time. Mu is expanding to four more urban dealerships this year, and a tie-up with Newcastle University means the first campus site for students who want to head home at weekends. Excellent idea.

A weekend at the Nürburgring

Went to the Nürburgring over the weekend for the 24H race (if you follow me on Twitter @richyarrow you will know this already!). Never been to the venue or event before and was genuinely looking forward to both all last week. It didn’t disappoint; a great race summed up by the fact that after 18 hours on track, the top two cars were split by less than a second. It was also a great event for people-watching and the Germans know how to support an all-nighter like no one else, even the French at Le Mans. The Nürburgring 24H is famed for the legions of fans who turn up the weekend before and party hard in the woods for seven days. I spent a couple of hours strolling trackside on Saturday afternoon and saw all humanity there. You have to admire their commitment – tents, caravans, motorhomes, woodens sheds complete with well-stocked bar, scaffolding arrangements up to 5+ metres high covers with tarpaulins, beds with mattresses, countless sofas, a satellite TV dish and even a piano. I got chatting to a German chap who has watched on the same patch of earth on the same corner for the last 15 years. The irony is their interest in the actual race is very small and a huge percentage leave on Sunday before it’s finished. Memorable weekend though.

A pointless waste of time

A significant percentage of drivers are idiots and you don’t need a PhD to realise it. They go too fast in bad weather and dick about with mobile phones when they should be paying attention to the road ahead. They also drive too close to the car in front and are forced to jab the brakes hard when they finally spot it has slowed. That action dominos its way back down a busy carriageway and creates ‘phantom jams’, the official name for a hold-up caused by nothing of substance. Some clever people at the University of Tokyo think there might be a PhD in studying this phenomenon. They’ve developed world-first technology which monitors acceleration and deceleration patterns to determine whether a person’s driving pattern is likely to create congestion. Good for them. Here’s what I think. Get motorists to believe that answering texts or updating their Facebook status while moving is socially unacceptable, just like drink-driving has become. If they kept back like they were taught – whatever happened to ‘only a fool breaks the two-second rule’? – we wouldn’t have phantom jams.

Last night on TV...

Watched the fascinating documentary ‘Grand Prix: The Killer Years’ on BBC4 last night. By no means am I a big motorsport fan, and I hadn’t appreciated quite how many F1 drivers died during the late Sixties and early Seventies. The two most shocking things for me were Roger Williamson burning to death in his upturned car at the rebuilt and supposedly safe Zandvoort circuit in Holland in 1973. One rival, David Purley, stopped to try to rescue him, but the rest just kept racing round the burning wreck, unchecked by the marshalls. The other was the Grand Prix Drivers Association calling for improving safety measures at the Nurburgring in Germany, and being told it wasn’t going to happen and they should get on with the race. Can you imagine that happening at yesterday’s Spanish Grand Prix? Really excellent programme, available to watch on the iPlayer.

Camtronic: a new innovation in petrol engines

Apologies for this being a day late. I went to Stuttgart and back yesterday, and had no access to wifi. The reason for the trip was to find out about Mercedes’ new Camtronic petrol engine technology, debuting in the all-new A-Class which goes on sale in the summer. It’s a deceptively simple idea; the world’s first split camshaft, which moves horizontally in two sections a few millimetres to the left or right. The shape of the cam then allows the four valves at the top of each of the four cylinder heads to other open fully or partially. The latter is the interesting element, because if the car is being driven at lower revs – say under 2,000rpm – a full opening isn’t required. It’s a waste of fuel. Partial opening means fuel savings of up to 10 per cent depending on how the car is being driven. Clever stuff.

Cable cars: the future of commuting?

Hidden in a press release announcing how interesting parties are coming together to form a new pressure group for the UK cable car industry – yes, really – was a little nugget of gold. This new organisation believes cable cars could play a much greater role in our public transport network. The first urban cable car in the country is currently under development in London. Called the Emirates Air Line. Open this summer, it will cross the River Thames at Greenwich, close to the O2 Arena, as part of the Olympics transport network. So where else might cable cars work? I contacted the new organisation – UK Cable Car Advisers – to ask, and they said in places like Liverpool or Bristol where rivers, harbours or valleys create transport challenges. The believe there may also be opportunities for additional systems in London. It’s an interesting idea, one I quite like, because there’s obviously a tourism attraction to cable cars as well. 

My money down the drain...except it's not

I’m abiding by the hosepipe ban. It’s not the end of the world but I’d quite like to get the pressure washer out and blast the patio clean. I haven’t because I’m trying to ‘do my bit’. If only everyone else ‘did their bit’ too, like the water companies and the local council. We’ve had a stack of rain, as predicted, yet many of the roads round my village are flooded. Part of the reason is that all the drains are clogged up with leaves and other crud. I see this when I walk past them on dry days and think it would be nice if someone came and unclogged them occasionally. Perhaps the council or water company, both of whom I pay ridiculous amounts of money to every month. I live in a rural area and there are trees. Leaves fall off trees and clog up drains. This has been happening since time began. So there are large puddles of water everywhere – a friend can’t get to work today because the A12 is shut because of flooding – yet it can’t get into the drains where could be collected. If it did we wouldn’t needn’t a bloody hosepipe ban and I could clean my patio (I realise how ridiculous the last sentence sounds but you get my point).