Ford B-MAX arrives for long-term duties

Just taken delivery of my new long-term test car. I’ll be running Ford’s family-friendly B-MAX compact people carrier for the next three months. I’ll be blogging about it regularly here, and also tweeting some thoughts. You can follow me on Twitter @richyarrow. The car is powered by the critically acclaimed 1.0-litre 100PS EcoBoost engine, and I’ll be interested to see how close I can get to the official combined fuel economy of 55.4mpg. The car is in standard Zetec trim, which means 15-inch alloys, LED daytime running lights, front fog lights, manual air-con and electric windows all round. The only options are metallic paint (£495) and the City Pack, which for £300 adds rear parking sensors – already useful given the excess of cars on my drive at the moment – and power-folding door mirrors. That pushes the on-the-road list price of £16,195 to £16,990. More to follow in the coming weeks…

Fuel cells to the power of three

Finally what everyone realised needed to happen has happened. Three of the world’s biggest car companies have announced a joint venture to develop hydrogen-powered fuel cell vehicles. The costs are simply too big for any one brand to bear them alone, so we have Daimler, Ford and Nissan in a collaboration. They say it will lead to the launch of world’s first affordable, mass market fuel cell electric vehicles as early as 2017. The key phrases there are ‘affordable’ and ‘mass market’ – the bottom line is they’re very subjective terms. I’m sure I’m not alone in thinking we’ve heard them before with reference to electric vehicles. Yes, they’re on sale from mainstream car makers. And yes, they’re within the price range of a significant chunk of the population. But they’re not exactly flying off the shelves are they? A combination of public apathy and range anxiety is putting people off. Given the lack of hydrogen infrastructive and the fact I imagine these cars are going to cost considerably more than EVs, I can see the same thing happening.

Mark Hales and Kevin Ash

A brief addendum to today's post on the Mazda6, with two stories which illustrate the perils of motoring journalism. First, highly respected classic car journalist Mark Hales faces bankruptcy because of damage caused to a car he was driving. Secondly, Kevin Ash, a vastly experienced and well-liked motorcycle journalist who I met only a couple times, was killed on Tuesday after an accident at a BMW media launch. Google their names and you will find plenty of details. Both events are playing on my mind as I write this. Very sad.

Dear Mr Mazda, why are your door bins so small…?

I realise it’s somewhat petty to start a review of a new car by talking about storage solutions. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen door bins on a proper family car – the all-new Mazda6 – that are so small. It’s like they got an infection in the womb that is the Japanese brand’s development centre and growth was stunted. You can get a thin drinks bottle in each one and that’s it. Utterly useless. Ironically they’re the only thing I can find to moan about on the Mazda6, because beyond them it’s an excellent addition to the D-segment. The two versions of the 2.2-litre Sky Activ diesel engine, 150bhp or 175bhp, will be the top sellers because this is car for the corporate sector, and both are top performers with plenty of torque. Lovely ride and handling, great styling, particularly on the estate, practical fold-flat load space in the boot and a smart-looking dashboard layout. Pretty much nothing to criticise. Except the door bins.

Public or private settlement? The answer is obvious

As the late Michael Jackson said when accused of all sorts of unpleasantness (and I’m paraphrasing here), I didn’t do it but I can’t prove that, and to try would be expensive and fill up a lot of column inches. So it is with Toyota, which has settled a wrongful death lawsuit in the America. It’s over a crash in Utah three years ago where a Camry is alleged to have accelerated into a wall of its own accord and killed two occupants. The company maintains there’s nothing wrong with the car, but with a slew of safety recalls in recent years, it’s cheaper to settle this case – and others that will follow – than have everything repeatedly dragged through court for years to come, have its reputation sullied time and again, and spend just as much money, if not more. It’s a business decision, one of the head not the heart, and probably the right one. Is Toyota innocent or guilty of the charge? We'll never know, but if I was looking for a safe and reliable car for my family, there would be plenty of brands behind Toyota. Never quite sure about Michael Jackson's innocence though...

I love winter

Cold weather transport chaos in the Yarrow household and we weren’t even off the driveway. Yesterday morning my wife went outside to defrost our Ford Focus and once she’d prized open the driver’s door she couldn’t get it shut again. It would bang against the surround, not latch and irritatingly pop open again by about an inch. Sensibly not risking a one-handed drive to work she got the Jeep Wrangler out of the garage – probably better suited to the conditions – and took that. Putting the Focus in its place, where it was slightly warmer, was enough to thaw out the mechanism and get the door closed. Expecting the worst, I’d already rung the local Ford dealer to see how much a replacement latch would be – £90 for the part, £80 for fitting and then VAT on top, making just over £200. That would have been very, very irritating. Given I got away with it, it's hard to be too annoyed... particularly when I've got this view out of my window.

The power of 800...

Two stories featuring the number 800, revealed within hours of each other. There can be no clearer indication of what’s going right and wrong with brands who participate in the car industry in the UK (as opposed to the UK car industry, which is virtually non-existent). Eight hundred jobs lost at Honda, a company which has struggled in the last few years through problems it could do nothing about, such as the Japanese earthquake and flooding in Thailand which both affected its factories badly. But it’s also been crippled by its own decisions, such as the almost total absence of creative vision behind the door marked Future Product. For the UK, it has a supermini, a C-segment hatchback, a D-segment saloon/estate, a big SUV and a couple of hybrids which aren’t exactly flying out of showrooms. That’s a product line-up from 15 years ago. Honda desperately needs B and C-segment crossovers, a small SUV, a small estate car, a couple of people carriers (where was the replacement for the FR-V?), a sports car or three and something to fit below the Jazz. Are they on the way? In the required volume, no. If I was a Honda dealer I'd be worried. Contrast all that with Jaguar Land Rover, riding a wave of critically acclaimed products that’s seen record sales and the promising of more with the F-Type on the way. Eight hundred new jobs means in the last two years it’s taken on 8,000 new employees. Read that sentence again. Genuinely staggering.