Skoda's new engine

What a milestone! Well done to Skoda for making engines for 110 years, and especially for the new 1.2 TSI engine. This extremely efficient little powerplant manages to chuck out 105bhp and will debut in the new Yeti, before being featured in the full Skoda, Audi, VW and SEAT range.

The all-new engine is a far cry from the flame-ignition motorcycle unit produced by company founders Laurin and Klement in 1899. It features both direct fuel injection and turbocharging technology to maximise the low CO2 emissions and fuel consumption characteristics of a small-capacity engine but with the power and driving pleasure of a much larger one.

“This brand new TSI engine provides a unique opportunity of combining environmental friendliness with a well-balanced driving performance,” explains Škoda Auto BOD Chairman Reinhard Jung. “With substantially lower CO2 figures, this new engine needs to be seen as a contribution to a significant reduction of average emission volumes in our cars.”

Honda Civic Type R

British made cars of a certain era are known for their unreliability and generally being ill-put together. These days though, it’s de rigueur that some of the best manufacturing in the world takes place on our own fair isle, which should mean it comes as no surprise that Honda is capitalising on this and exporting the Civic Type R to other shores.

From next year, the Type R EURO will be despatched from the Surrey Honda plant over to Japan (how mad is that!) as an alternative to their (in my own thoughts at least) extremely cool four door Civic Type R saloon. This latter car is one I definitely want to own at some point, but they are very hard to come by in the UK.

Interestingly, Japan is the third country outside of Europe to import the Type R, alongside Australia and South Africa (of all places). Swindon is the only UK plant producing the Honda Civic Type R.

Nissan Note

In what is actually a bit of a local success story, I’m pleased to report that it’s not all doom and gloom in the motor industry.  In fact, Nissan has reported some outstanding sales results for June, 2009, with figures up 9% over the same period from last year!  Nissan is proudly the top Japanese brand for passenger sales, but, and arguably more importantly for my region, 83% of cars sold last month were produced at the Nissan factory in Sunderland.

It’s arguably not surprising that Nissan are seeing such success, after all they produce everything from the mighty (and recently reported on) Godzilla of cars – the GT-R, all the way through to the incredibly easy to drive Nissan Micra.  There’s a few family cars in between, including the excellent Qashqai and the versatile note.

Nissan’s UK MD, Paul Willcox comments: “Everyone here at Nissan is proud to be one of the few brands to have made positive growth in June. It’s been one of the toughest periods for new car sales we’ve ever known, but we are in a better position than most with high quality, popular models built here in the UK offering exactly what customers are looking for.”

Ron Dennis

In a move that’s no doubt going to be seen by some as a ‘falling on the sword’ tactic to take the heat from the team, Ron Dennis has spectacularly quit Formula One after more than forty years in the business.

Dennis insisted that his decision had nothing to do with the recent scandal that’s rocking McLaren – in the form of Lewis Hamilton apparently misleading race stewards by informing them that he wasn’t told to allow Truilli to pass him under safety car conditions.

Unfortunately, other rumours abound that Dennis hasn’t been getting on too well with Hamilton’s dad – a big problem given how close the father and son are, especially when the father is the manager of the World Champ!

Other statements to come out from the FIA state that Dennis leaving McLaren won’t have an impact on their hearing – which takes place on April 29th.

Whatever you personally think of Ron Dennis – and there’s no doubt he was and continues to be a divisive character in the industry – you can’t help but feel that on this occasion he was pushed from his chairmanship position (now to be taken over by Richard Lapthorne).

Of course, it’s not like Dennis is going to be joining the dole queue.  He’s off to take charge of McLaren’s road car division, so you’ll still be hearing from him and perhaps, just perhaps, actually getting in a vehicle that he’s had something to do with, unlike the team’s F1 car.

Now is not a good time to be in the manufacturing industry in the UK, especially if you’re manufacturing something like cars that whilst necessarily used by many people can be picked up extremely cheaply second hand. Unlike, for instance, housing, which is suffering exactly the same problem in its’ own manufacturing industry. Lack of bricks and mortar? You bet!

Anyway, it will come as a great sadness to us all to hear that in these economically unstable times, Tata Motors has made the decision to cut 200 of the workforce across Birmingham, Solihull and Merseyside. Whilst Jaguar Land Rover employs around 15,000 people in the UK, these 200 being ‘let go’ are expected to be in the form of voluntary redundancies.

Unfortunately, the credit crunch has seen new car sales drop by a fifth compared to the same time period last year, putting many dealers (and forecourts) on extremely nervous footing. Of course, what affects the top of the market also affects the bottom – if you’re rich and can’t get a loan for your next £40,000 Jag, what’s to say Joe Bloggs down the road can get the £6,999 he needs for his new Corsa?

Of course, the inverse of this is that there are some good deals to be had, if you know where to look that is. You can’t just go waltzing into any old (or new) showroom and expect to have your arm bitten off for a sale simply because you have some cash to spend when the majority don’t. If anything, the dealerships are in need of more revenue, not less.

However, hopping onto the previous point let me just highlight a deal I have found:

Perrys are currently offering to take your old car as full deposit, you don’t pay until 2009 and you get a 2 year servicing plan completely free. If that doesn’t sound good, then I don’t know what does. Here’s a car I’ve picked out for you too:

I found a used Subaru Impreza WRX on a 56 (07) plate, with only 9,000 miles on the clock. Surely, surely a bargain at only £11395! Go buy it now before I do.

On a serious note, these are hard times for us all and we certainly hope that the market picks up soon.

The new Ford Fiesta is a great looking car and by all accounts is just a brilliant all-rounder. This is confirmed in the fact that it is one of the few cars that will be seeing a global release – making it almost as significant as the Ford Model T (albeit not as groundbreaking).

What Ford wanted to do was make sure that the car appeals to, well, just about everyone. To this end, they’ve created a specialist website to attract younger female drivers. Here’s the skinny:

Neon Candy is an uber cool weekly, next generation style e-magazine set to feature the latest trends in arts, entertainment, events, fashion, lifestyle and music that every young woman should know.

Each week, the magazine presents the cultural passions and tastes of Jen, a young journalist who goes out of her way to be at the cutting edge of popular culture – from reviews that tap into the underground, current and breaking trends and parties to interviews with celebrities and new talent.

Hip, maybe; real she ain’t for Jen is a fictional character, and alongside each real edition of the magazine is a web drama that follows her whirl-wind working week as her deadline inevitably looms.

Each episode follows Jen journey through style city as she chronicles her experiences at the coolest cultural happenings for the coolest fans who wish they had her address book – and effortless charm.
Visit Neon Candy for yourself at www.this-is-now.co.uk/neoncandy for the latest webisodes and edition of the magazine.

If you’re a younger female driver, I’d love to know if this actually appeals to you.

Oil oligopolies Shell and BP have a new plan to get more of the lovely black gold that we all need to get around – to extract it from new sources.  Unfortunately, these new sources could apparently lead to catastrophic climate change.

The new sources include tar sands and oil shale – formerly problematic to produce oil from, but now seen as an easier option than having to create massive rigs that can channel down many miles to sea beds.  The issue remains of course the turmoil seen in the Middle East, as well as the continuing price rises that we’ve all suffered recently.  This alternative source would give an opportunity to Canada and the US to have their own sources.

Unfortunately, to use these sources, the refining process can put out more than eight times the pollutants of ‘standard’ oil production, according to a report by the WWF and Co-operative Financial Services.  However, in line with current trends, both Shell and BP are showing moves to significant investment to non-standard production.

This, in my mind, is sensible.  However, it highlights exactly how separate the objectives of money and the environment can be.  What would happen if the companies invested all their cash into really alternative products to move the nation?  Well, we’ll never know.  Why would they bother when they are making record profits?  It’s bad business sense, even if it is good the world.

The estimation of 1.1 trillion barrels of oil being recoverable in the US and Canada seems quite high – it’s almost enough to get me hoping for prices to return to a £1.10 or less per litre cost.  But at what cost to the planet would this be when it could release 980 billion tonnes of CO2?  Some argue that this would push the planet well into dangerous climate levels.

What do I make of it all?  Well, there’s going to be a trade-off at some point.  Either the government will say this process is acceptable (I think this is likely, even if Obama is in power) or they’ll say it isn’t.  If it’s true that the suggested amount of CO2 will be released, we’d better be prepared for all of the many predictions we’ve been hearing about for a while – more unpredictable weather, further melting of the polar ice caps, more extreme typhoons etc.

Climate change, whether we like it or not, is a fact.  If even Clarkson can I agree it then I probably should too.  Are fuel prices too high though?  Oh yes, very much so.  For my mind, with nations such as China and India wanting more cars, these are set to rise.  What will we do?  Well, it may be damaging in the long run but perhaps ‘unconventional’ oil sources are our only option.

Hummers are, for true car lovers, a bit of a laughing stock.  They are big, cumbersome, ugly, smaller inside than they should be and terrible in terms of their fuel economy.  They are also not very cheap.  Worst of all perhaps is that they aren’t fit for purpose.  Such a vehicle should surely be good off-road, yet they are about as much as a BMW X3 – i.e. none at all.  However, they do have one thing going for them.  That thing is character.

One thing though is obvious.  Character cannot save you in today’s climate of $130+ barrels of oil and finally the Americans have woken up to the fact that they live on the same planet as the rest of us.  This means that sales are down by one third and (almost exclusively) gas guzzlers are off the menu globally.

Apparently, General Motors has confirmed that the future of the Hummer brand is hanging on a knife-edge.  Will they sell it on?  Will they keep it?  Then tension is almost too much.  Perhaps it’ll take a revamp to make the range more economical and look like the current trend for crossover coupes before it’ll be successful once again in the US.  Who knows.

Ironically, here in the apparently environmentally concerned UK and Europe sales of Hummers have gone up by 34%.  Mind you, they weren’t selling very many so that figure still only puts about 300 cars on drives.  Is that saying much then?  Well no, not really.  We’re far to sensible and enjoy our Land Rovers just too much thank you kindly.

In light of all the big American brands fault, I still like Hummer.  In the same way that I most American things.  It’s a bit too brash, bold and showy but there’s just something about it.  I’d hate to see all cars look the same and that’s perhaps one of the problems with British roads.  To those 300 people out there I’d like to say I want to see your Hummer (as it were).  Just don’t expect me to foot the bill for a refuelling when you head home.