This is the end. Beautiful friend.

I think this blog has perhaps reached the end of its life. Just got too much other stuff on at the moment. Maybe I will resurrect it in the future. Thanks for your support.

Driven: VW Caravelle

It's a measure of any car that appears on the Yarrow driveway when my wife pays attention to it. This is a rare occurrence because she doesn't give a toss about motoring, other than the fact it pays our mortgage. And yet not only did the Volkswagen Caravelle warrant a 'what is this?' when we were on our way to the Lake District, by the time we'd returned she was all for buying one. The big VW's claim to fame is that it swallowed everything we needed for our family holiday without me once saying "I'm not sure all that stuff is going to fit in the car". This is very regular occurrence indeed. With the two middle row captain's chairs removed, and the rear bench slid forward, the boot is truly vast. I love the fact I don't have to squeeze everything in with the sort of planning that went into beating Hitler, but that's not what I love about the Caravelle most. No, that honour goes to the bike rack on the back, which can accommodate four Yarrow-sized velos and keep them rock solid for hours on end without a second thought. That alone is enough reason to buy a Caravelle. Add in the fact it's a comfortable motorway cruiser and you've got yourself the perfect family car. Manoeuvrability in the supermarket car park isn't its strong suit, but even then there's plus point. The sliding rear doors mean it's impossible for the kids to bash another vehicle. Genius.

Driven: Citroen C4 Picasso

The all-new C4 Picasso is head and shoulders above anything Citroen has ever done in this segment. The five-seater is 4cm shorter than the outgoing model and also 4cm lower, but clever packaging means it’s actually bigger inside. As customers demand, it’s extremely versatile inside and there’s a real design flair to the interior for the first time. It’s also the first sub-100g/km car in the class and my 1.6-litre 115bhp diesel test car, with six-speed manual, was perfectly pleasant to drive. Don’t expect sporty, but it’s quiet, refined and offers a a good balance of low-speed manoeuvrability and faster cruising.

MINI Camper Van

I know it doesn’t look it but I’m working hard in this photo. Or at least I had been. I’d just transformed a MINI Clubvan into a MINI Camper Van, which took a good five minutes even with instruction and was very tiring. I deserved that beer. Later I actually spent the night in there and very comfortable it was too. MINI put out a press release last week about this vehicle, which is an in-house conversion done for publicity purposes. You can’t actually buy a MINI Camper Van but it would be very easy take out the passenger seat and built a plywood frame to put a mattress on, which is all MINI did. The clever bit and slightly more complicated isthe slide-out kitchenette, complete with two-ring stove, fridge and storage area. When you feel like cleaning up there’s a jerry can of water built into the spare wheel well and an electric pump to get it out. Brilliant.

Idiot drivers who think they own the road

Was out on my push-bike yesterday with my wife and came to the conclusion there are some very stupid people in control of cars. Riding in single file, we got a variety of hand-gestures out of side and rear windows, plus got squirted by windscreen wiper jets as cars passed. I’m assuming this was because we held some drivers up for a few seconds. We also got hooted at and abused because were were riding two abreast at one point, and a car approaching from behind had to slow down because something was coming in the opposite direction. I lost count of the number of times drivers couldn’t be bothered to give us enough space. All depressing, but what was more depressing was the number of drivers doing this who had kids in the car with them. We were heading to the coast for the day and so were they. Small-minded parents teaching their kids that this is acceptable behaviour. I’ve had all of the above before, but never so much in one day. 

Apologies for radio silence...

I've been a bit busy. Writing this from the launch of the new Subaru Forester, so will post something on that in the next 24 hours.

Driven: Suzuki SX4 S-Cross

Just driven the all-new Suzuki SX4 S-Cross, not to be confused with the Suzuki SX4. Completely different cars, one old, one new, in completely different sectors. The latter is a B-segment crossover, the for former a C-segment crossover. Apparently there’s been a bit of a ‘battle’ – Suzuki’s word, not mine – about the naming strategy. Japanese HQ wanted to call the new bigger car the SX4, but eventually understood the confusion it could cause, not to mention the effect on residual values. So it’s the SX4 S-Cross in Europe but nowhere else, with everyone shortening that to S-Cross – vital as the old car will remain in showrooms for the foreseeable. The S-Cross itself is just what Suzuki needs, a pleasing if unremarkable family car in a sector it’s never been in. It’s never going to have the emotional appeal of the British-built Nissan Qashqai or the award-winning potential of the Skoda Yeti, but it’s got plenty to recommend it – class-leading fuel economy and emissions, a world-first double panoramic sunroof and more boot space than the Nissan. Five thousand sales a year looks perfectly possible.

The problem with EVs...

A colleague made a very good point about electric vehicles the other day. It sounds obvious now I think about it, but it was one I genuinely hadn’t really considered before. EVs are a parking bay-based fuelling solution. As such they take up space for an extended period of time, several hours or more. The current system of filling up with petrol or diesel is a five minute job and obviously doesn’t require such a commitment in land. If too many people buy EVs too quickly, the infrastructure isn’t going to cope. Going forward, the only viable solution is charging at home, and that’s presuming you’ve got a drive. There simply aren’t enough parking bays, or places to put them, for everyone to have an EV. Good job no one much is buying them, then…