Author: Tony Lewin
Paperback: 540 pages
Publisher: Merrell Publishers Ltd (14 Oct 2011)
Price: £24.95 (RRP)
Recommended? Yes

The A-Z Of 21st Century Cars is being sold as “The most comprehensive guide available to the international automobile industry of the first decade of the twenty-first century“. Whilst this is quite a specific remit, the fact that so much has changed over this time period highlights the importance and necessity of this book for anyone with even a passing interest in cars.

Written by Tony Lewin (a former editor of What Car? and an acknowledged industry expert of over thirty years experience, the breadth of the book covers 300 entries of various vehicles and features over 1500 images. Whilst some of the images are stock, the quality cannot be denied and the sheer number means that the simple turning of the page can offer something new and fresh to the reader.

The book is arranged into three categories; being models, marques and designers. Each are colour coded differently to help you navigate through the book (given the number of pages this proves to be extremely helpful). Cross referencing is simple to follow and where there is another related entry to look up there’s a double arrow (marked >>) to highlight this fact to the reader.

Each vehicle entry covers year of production, engine size, length, layout, horsepower, max speed and the ever present CO2 emission levels. Descriptive text frequently details a brief history followed by a commentary on the design of the car.

To give a flavour of how it really steeps you in the designer’s world, let me provide another small quotation for you: “On the 458 Italia, the visual mass is also reduced by the placing of the engine air intakes under the car, allow smooth sides undistorted by slots or ducts“. It is this language and attention to detail that purveys itself throughout the book, making it a pleasure to read.

The included glossary (based on the terms used by the noted Coventry University) is a particularly welcome addition as it helps the reader understand how the designer thinks when coming up with the aesthetics for a car. Also included are company histories, principal model listings and designer biographies. Finally, a ‘who owns whom’ section rounds out the facts.

So should you buy it? If you are a car enthusiast or have an interest in design, this might well be for you. The scope of the book means that there’s very little left out of any great significance and the photographs are beautiful too. Whether you want to read up for more pub facts or you are more serious about your design knowledge then The A-Z Of 21st Century Cars may well be for you. Definitely recommended.

Last month I got an email offering to send me a jacket which would be well suited to driving. Not being averse to a freebie for review I was happy to oblige and the following rather smart jacket arrived a few days later.

It got me thinking about driving clothes. I wouldn’t have previously really considered which jacket was good for driving but having switched between this and my usual winter coat I can see what they are getting at.

For driving you need something warm, comfortable but not too bulky. Anything too bulky starts to restrict your movement, looking over your shoulder etc

This is a nice lightweight, waterproof (vital when you get out the car!) shell jacket which I’m enjoying wearing. Do you have a favoured driving jacket? What sort of thing do you wear?

If you are looking for a driving jacket or any other outdoor clothing then have a look at the Berghaus range.

Michelin is launching its new Primacy 3 car tyre, which will be available in the UK and Europe from February 2012. The tyre is set to open a whole new era in road safety.

Compared with its four market-leading competitors, the Michelin Primacy 3 delivers the best grip when braking on dry or wet surfaces and when cornering on wet roads. This fact was proven in tests conducted in 2011 by TÜV SÜD Automotive and IDIADA, two independent organisations. One example of the tyre’s superiority is that at 100 km/h, the Michelin Primacy 3 stopped 2.2 metres shorter on average than its competitors on a dry surface.

The new tyre’s name reflects its qualities: the Michelin Primacy 3 enhances safety in three different areas of performance. And like all Michelin tyres, it also offers high total mileage while reducing fuel consumption – in this case up to 70 litres over the life of the tyre(2).

To deliver this performance balance, Michelin has deployed an innovative design process that integrates the in-depth understanding of road accidents acquired by its R&D teams.

Why safety? Because according to a 2010 survey conducted by GFK in five countries (France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom), safety is what consumers expect most from a tyre.

The fact that safety is a top priority comes as no surprise. However, behavioural analyses have provided additional information.

Road hazards are often present where they are least expected.

How many people know that 70% of road accidents occur on dry surfaces?
Who is aware that 60% of accidents occur in cities and at low speeds?

These two statistics, which are contrary to preconceptions that are firmly anchored in people’s minds, show the need for taking a fresh look at accidentology – the study of accidents. By disproving these preconceived ideas, Michelin can provide meaningful solutions and reaffirm its commitment to improving safety for all road users.

Manheim Auctions, the world’s largest car auction company, recently completed a survey looking at whether people are moving to winter tyres this year. The results may surprise you:

Less that 5% of motorists are planning to buy winter tyres this year even though weather forecasters are already predicting another winter of chaos on the roads. A recent survey by Manheim Auctions has found that 95.5% of respondents are not planning to buy winter tyres despite the chaos caused by the snow last year. Reasons for not buying include: cost – 41% said they could not afford them; weather – 28% didn’t think the weather will be bad enough to justify winter tyres; and ignorance – 16% didn’t really know what winter tyres are.

The survey also revealed that 92% of respondents do drive differently in the snow. Of those that didn’t, 63% claimed they didn’t need to as the snow didn’t cause them any problems when driving and they were skilful enough to handle all weather conditions!

“Winter tyres are an investment in safety. They will help to keep you on the move and on the road, reduce the risk of accidents and can be used over several winters. The fact that 16% don’t really know what winter tyres are suggests that calling them cold weather tyres would be more helpful,” said Craig Mailey, Marketing Director, Manheim Auctions.

Halloween seems to become a bigger event every year. While some of us think of it as just a bit of trick or treating, Halloween has escalated and become a national event and is generally accepted as being quite a fun holiday. If you’re not satisfied by dressing up, hollowing out a pumpkin and eating your way through a year’s worth of sugar, there are actually some genuinely spooky parts of the UK that have a fascinating and long history of ghoulish goings-on. To celebrate this, we’ve teamed up with Mio Navman to put together five of the scariest places you can drive to this Halloween, all of which are sure to get you into the real spirit of Halloween.

Kent: THE VILLAGE OF PLUCKLEY

Listen out for the blood curdling screams of a ghost around the Brickworks in Pluckley Heath, or take a trip to the Church of St Nicolas, where Lady Dering is buried within three lead lined coffins. Locals to this date report seeing her meander the pews looking for her dead baby. If this isn’t enough then why not take a ride down Dicky Buss’s lane, where a headmaster, known to have taken his own life in the 19th century, is regularly seen.
POST CODE: TN27 0QS

Built up an appetite chasing Lady Dering? Pop into the Black Horse in the centre of the village using the Near Me mode on your Mio Navman 575, for hot food, a busy bar and a warm welcome

York: 35 STONEGATE

Countless visitors have felt the icy touch of invisible fingers and heard eerie screechings from the attic in this 700 year old house. Numerous ghostly apparitions have been seen drifting around the house and when top ghost hunter Derek Acorah came to investigate the house, he was grabbed by an angry spectre and shortly after the crew were seen running out screaming. Restless spirits still wander the rooms.
POST CODE: YO1 8AS

Scared of spectres? Click Near Me on your Mio Navman 575 to escape to the spectacular York Castle Museum for a look into Victorian Britain

Minstead Hampshire: THE RUFUS STONE

In a clearing near Minstead stands the Rufus Stone, marking the site where William Rufus, the second son of William the Conqueror, met his untimely death. On August 2nd 1100 William joined a hunting party in the New Forest and, at some stage found himself alone with Sir Walter Tyrrell. According to the inscription upon the stone, an arrow fired by Tyrrell at a stag glanced off an oak tree and struck Rufus “on the breast of which he instantly died”. The King’s lifeless body was placed onto the cart of a charcoal burner named Purkiss and transported to Winchester for burial. As the cart bounced and jolted over the rough forest paths it is said to have left in its wake a trail of blood which the ghost of Rufus follows each year on the anniversary of his sudden demise.
POST CODE: SO43 7HD

Need to bed down after a day of dodging arrows? The Bartley Lodge Hotel is two miles away and can be found using Near Me on your Mio Navman 575

Gone are the days when people used to spend hours trying to locate where they were on a map; today we have the ‘Sat Nav’ which uses GPS to direct drivers from one location to another, however sometimes ignoring that reassuring voice you hear is the best option; as these drivers found out when they were unlucky enough to have been misdirected by their Sat Nav systems.

10: Taxi Driver takes royalty the wrong way

When Earl Spencer’s daughter was hoping to go and see Chelsea v Arsenal at Stamford Bridge in London, she called a taxi to get her there, only for the driver to put the wrong ‘Stamford Bridge’ into his Sat Nav. After confirming with the control team if it was correct, the driver headed into a small village outside York, some 230 miles away from the desired location, causing the passengers to miss the football match.

9: Kebab & Chips, and a side order of a car stuck on a railway track

A student who was working part time as a takeaway driver to earn some extra money was on his way to deliver an order to an area he didn’t know, and was told by his Sat Nav to ‘turn left’ onto the railway track, only to get caught between a cattle grid and the track. After trying to move the car with his passenger’s aid, the driver admitted defeat and the police were alerted. Trains in the area were stopped for over an hour whilst the car was removed from the tracks. The food went cold and had to be thrown away.

8: BMW driver seeks adrenaline rush

The Sat Nav isn’t always right – as a BMW driver found out when he was left hanging on the edge of a cliff, having followed directions down a Pennine footpath in Todmorden. The car was dangling over a railway bridge, which meant trains had to be stopped whilst the vehicle was recovered, and resulted in the driver being sent to court for driving without due care & attention.

7: Learn to spell before you drive!

A pair of Swedish tourists driving to Capri in Italy were sent 400 miles in the wrong direction, after the incorrectly spelt the town as ‘Carpi’. Their error was only discovered as they reached a local tourist office asking for information on the local sights.

6: If in doubt, accelerate!

A Belgian truck driver racked up £20,000 worth of damage after admitting he ‘panicked’ and decided to accelerate when he followed his trusty Sat Nav into a cul-de-sac and got lost. Residents of Wadebridge in Cornwall were understandably annoyed when the driver destroyed a roundabout and crushed a car in his moment of madness.

5: At the motorway; head into oncoming traffic!

A retired nurse was on her way home from a party at 3am, only to be told to head the wrong way up the M5 into oncoming traffic. After wondering why cars were going past her in the opposite direction, the driver put her hazards on and slowed down to 20mph, before the police were alerted. A £450 fine was handed out for driving without due care & attention.

4: No Ho Ho Ho for these Christmas shoppers

Shoppers from Gloucestershire decided to head to Lille in France to buy their loved ones some extravagant presents, and arranged a coach trip costing £150 each for the privilege of doing so; but ended up in Belgium after the coach driver entered the wrong Lille as his destination into the Sat Nav. They were 100 miles from where they wanted to be, and lost 4 hours shopping time, meaning they only had 2 hours to find presents before heading home. “It was ridiculous,” said one unlucky passenger. “The coach driver obviously had two Lilles to choose from on his Sat Nav and he picked the wrong one.
“A few of us started to wonder what was going on when we saw signs for Eindhoven, which clearly isn’t in France. But the driver wouldn’t be told – he insisted he knew what he was doing.

3: Rock on to… Skegness!

When a Turkish lorry driver was told to deliver goods to Gibraltar, he entered the “Rock of Gibraltar” into his Sat Nav, only to end up in Skegness, some 1600 miles away from where he needed to be! He was directed to Gibraltar point near Skeggy, rather than the sunny Gibraltar south of Spain.

2: Turn right into the river Nar.

A taxi driver was blindly following his Sat Nav, and was told to head into the River Nar. Rather than ignoring these directions after they sounded odd, the driver persisted, carried on 200 yards down the river before becoming stuck in the riverbed, and had to be recovered by a tractor. An onlooker commented: “The minibus still had its engine running and headlights on and he was sitting in it with his trousers rolled up around his knees.
“I shone a torch in the river and there were fish swimming around the headlights.”

1: The £96,000 mistake

The costliest mistake in our list; a £96,000 Mercedes SL500 sinks into a Leicestershire river after being told to head into it by a Sat Nav on her way home from a christening party. The lady owner was lucky to be alive, as the electrics failed causing the windows to open, allowing more water to flood the car within seconds. Fortunately, there were locals nearby who wasted no time in pulling the driver from the vehicle which was later confirmed as a write off.

Written by Tony, part of the car rentals team at travelsupermarket.com

Moov Spirit V505 TV

Recommended? Yes
Pros: Simple to use, TV function, Clear maps, Lane departure, Foot navigation, Lane Guidance system, Safety camera, Traffic warning
Cons: Unnatural sounding nav voice, At times confused warnings, Fiddly when in a rush to put on windscreen
Price: Around £170
Time Spent: Three months

Introduction
With a much greater choice in the sat nav market, manufacturers have to come up with better and better devices that can see off rivals with similar functionality or even cross-platform offerings such as the iPhone. The Mio Moov Spirit V505 TV is a sat nav that pretty much has it all, including a digital TV for when you’re actually parked up somewhere. Frankly it is a product that comes with so much out of the box you’d have to be crazy to not consider it if you’re in the market for a navigation device.

What’s In The Box
Everything you need is supplied directly within the box of the V505, including the unit itself, the DVD disc with the software for your PC, TV card, USB cable, windscreen attachment, TV antenna windscreen attachment.

De-boxing
Probably one of the best moments of getting any new piece of gadgetry is taking the thing out of the box. Immediately, I was impressed by the overall size and quality of the unit. It looked both well put together and the high resolution display on start up was a very welcome sight. I then slotted in the TV card (extremely simple) and started charging the main Mio unit via my computer.

Placing The V505 In Your Car
I found this to be one of the awkward elements to the device until I got used to it. I was keen not to get fingerprints all over the unit and attached the holder to the windscreen. I then slotted the unit into place and plugged the charger into the 12v cigarette lighter slot. This definitely took a little longer than my other GPS devices, though this could be down to the larger size and flat screen nature of the Mio.

Once in place, it was extremely easy to access all of the menu options and add a route selection to the Mio. Perhaps best of all, it was settled well onto the glass and had no problems. Previously I’ve had GPS systems jump off the glass when on the move so it was a pleasure to see that the Mio was both safe and secure.

The Display
Crisp, quality and a nice high contrast display means that you’ll be quite happy looking at the Mio (not too much obviously!). The device will change from day to night colours automatically and will show on a large screen when you need to stay in a lane/stay on the motorway. I can’t really fault the colours and the little touches like zooming out when travelling at speed makes the V505 that little better from other similar products on the market.

I couldn’t finish this section without mentioning the TV – which does actually display very well on the screen. Colours are vibrant and I experienced few artefacts when using it. In fact, you might well be surprised at the quality of it.

Audio
This was one of the very few drawbacks I could find on the device. The basic selection of voices was poor and a little ‘matronly’. It would have been nicer to have a more pleasant choice – my preference is for a gentler female voice on the move, especially when stuck in traffic. On the plus side, lane departure and accurate naming of roads made navigating junctions and complex roundabouts a doddle. On the TV/audio front, there was a little distortion at the top end but on the whole it was actually quite good.

Using Mio Moov Spirit V505 TV
A power switch includes three different options – on, off or reset (couldn’t be much easier now could it?). There are a wealth of navigation options on offer including favourite destinations, nearest points of interest, petrol stations etc etc. All of these are accessible from the very simple to use navigation menu that you get from using the single button. Oh yes – it’s easy to use!

Route planning is very quick – having said that, if you’ve used one of these GPS devices, then you’ll have used most of them. The V505 falls into this category – it didn’t seem to direct me any ways which were quicker than my usual routes, but then that’s probably to be expected. I did notice that it was slightly less inclined to demand a ‘U’ turn from me though that some other similar products.

Safety Camera Information
I found this to be an excellent feature. The warnings were clear, well in advance and correctly noted cameras coming up. One thing to be aware of is that as new cameras can go up almost overnight and due to my penchant for back roads, there was a couple that the V505 wasn’t aware of – but they were very much the exception rather than the rule.

Traffic Warning
This is something that is missing on my other satellite navigation systems – namely something to tell me when I’m soon to be encountering major traffic problems so I can re-route my journey as necessary. It is a relatively new field for sat navs to head in and many of them charge a significant premium for this. I found mixed results from the V505.

On one occasion, it told me I was about to hit a jam that I’d been in for over five minutes already. On the flip side, on another couple of occasions it correctly pointed out tailbacks that I otherwise wouldn’t have been aware of. I’d suggest that all things in consideration it actually works rather well and I’d be loath not to have it included!

The TV
The V505 has a very pleasant display with which to watch the in-built digital TV – which of course should only ever be operated when stationary (I used it when parked up recently at a service station). It is very simple to operate and the aerial that comes in the box is of the sucker variety, making it easy to place on the windscreen of your car. It also has a built in antenna that’s within the unit – but I’d recommend the external version if you can use it.

As the unit is set up with a digital receiver, a scan is needed to pick up channels prior to commencing use. I found this took a short while (a couple of minutes), but when it was complete all of the channels I was expecting based on my Freeview unit at home showed up. The seven day programme guide is particularly good for checking what’s on.

How Does It Compete With Other Devices?
This Mio certainly looks like a premium device from the front, with a nice clear display and a lot of kit coming as standard. In comparison, my TomTom looks extremely dated and is hampered by less useful software. It does however have a slightly more intuitive interface, though this could just be down to a lot of use. It’s very clear that this is a good dedicated sat nav with extra functionality and it blows away most pretenders that have other things as their primary function. If you’re looking for a GPS with something that offers a little extra than navigating around the M6, then this could be your answer. Definitely one of the top three to consider.

Specification list for the Mio Mio Moov Spirit V505 TV:
Screen size: 4.7 inches
Weight: 160g
Touch: Yes
Battery life: Up to 3 hours
Auto backlight: Yes
Memory: 1GB and MicroSD card slot
Traffic warning: Yes
Speed camera warning: Yes
Multiple destination system: Yes
MP3/Photo: Yes
TV in-built: Yes

If there was ever a reason to say that something has been over done, then this must be the case. Galpin who are the USA’s largest Jaguar dealer have come up with their own version of how the XF would have looked if they were designing it.

To be honest it looks ok from one angle, but when you look again it looks terrible, so it is hard to decide whether this car is good looking are completely awful. It’s just too hard to decide, you know that the car is fantastic, but this version is strange, maybe it is the colour!

The Galpin Jaguar XF is finished in a two tone red and black paint job, with colour coded red 22 inch alloy wheels, which incidentally look really cool! To finish off the rear tail lights have been smoked out, there is tinted glass all round and yes the red and theme continues into the passenger compartment, with the leather seats being finished in colour coded tones. No doubt there will be some one who likes this car, but it does remind you of the early eighties when people used to do this sort of thing to their Mark IV Cortina’s.

Source [Car Scoop]

There is a huge amount of bad press given to the so called white van man, so there little wonder why he would not splash out and disguise his white machine and turn it into something a little more hot! In this case the Peugeot 207 van this can be really supped up and changed into something that resembles a mini hot rod.

The accessories for the 207 has been launched by Peugeot UK and although not all of them have to be used, the finished article looks simply stunning and so it should really because the difference between the van and car, that the rear windows and seats have been removed, giving the van a distinct speed advantage because of the missing weight.

The ‘Sports’ accessories range consists of the following items (Prices exc. VAT):

Sports Front Bumper Conversion kit – £430.13

Fog Lamps – £92.57

‘SP’ Body Kit (inc mesh radiator grille) – £989.68

‘RC’ Stripe Kit – £180.79

Four x 17” Alloy Wheels excluding tyres – £579.08

Sports Gear Knob – £41.80

Sports Handbrake Lever – £32.71

Sports Exhaust Kit – £112.12

iPod Docking Kit – £180.62

Stainless Steel Sill Guards – £42.22

Bluetooth Kit – £158.71

Sports Interior Trim – Air vent trims – £6.24

Sports Interior Trim – Centre fascia trim – £10.81

Sports Interior Trim – Centre console trims – £10.05

Source [Carscoop]