Driving long distances isn’t always easy. Traffic jams, roadworks, accidents and bad weather can all spoil the experience but despite all of these difficulties one thing remains true – driving a car is the very best way to take in a country. To prove the point, I planned a tripContinue Reading
Under normal circumstances it wouldn’t be terribly sensible to pound down the outside lane of a motorway at 160mph in the pouring rain. These were not normal circumstances. For starters, we were in Germany driving on an unrestricted autobahn and, on this stretch at least, it was relatively free ofContinue Reading
Sense and sensibility: Can the revised Auris finally add some star quality to the safe and solid base?Continue Reading
The Suzuki Alto and Splash have reached the end of their lives so, in typically sensible Suzuki fashion, both models have been replaced by just one – the new Celerio. It presents an appealing package on paper, with prices starting at just £6,999 for a car that packs DAB radio,Continue Reading
Here’s something you didn’t know about the Honda CR-V; it’s the best-selling SUV on earth. Not just in the UK, or Europe, but around the world. It must be doing something right, but Honda feels there is still room for improvement, so here’s the facelifted CR-V. That means there areContinue Reading
Getting the chance to experience the future of personal transportation isn’t something to turn down, so I went to Grenoble to see if Toyota’s i-Road is good enough for the road…Continue Reading
It’s been a long time coming, but the Honda Civic Type R has finally been let loose. Honda’s vision of a hot-hatch differs from that of Volkswagen or Ford, by eschewing the safe predictability of four-wheel drive for potentially tyre-shredding front-wheel drive. Can you really direct 310PS to the frontContinue Reading
It’s taken a few years, but the new Honda Civic Type R is heading for the UK….Continue Reading
Three months can be a long time when you’re trying to run a 17-year old French hatchback, but time has been relatively kind to the Twingo since the last long-term update. The first task was to get it through an MOT, something that can be surprisingly difficult with a carContinue Reading
The recently refreshed Ford Focus has been going down quite well, with the car striking an excellent balance between refined ride quality and engaging handling. It’s less clear-cut when looking at the performance end of the range; the ST has always been the effervescent option when compared to more refinedContinue Reading
Look back at 2012 and you might remember that the Peugeot 208 was something of a talking point in the world of small cars. Its predecessor, the 207, had presented Peugeot to the world as a company that had rather lost its way; the car was too heavy and tooContinue Reading
The Volkswagen Golf Plus was never a car to tug at the heart, but offered a handy practicality boost over the standard Golf. Now it’s been renamed as Sportsvan, or at least it has in Germany where that sounds like a good name. Over here it’s accepted that it’s neitherContinue Reading
The M1 near Luton. Four lanes of boring motorway, usually too choked with traffic for progress to be anything other than sedate. Only a few miles from Toddington services, this is the natural home of the repmobile. And I’m in the perfect example of a repmobile; the Vauxhall Cavalier. IntroducedContinue Reading
The motor industry can be a funny place at times. Six months ago I popped over to Italy to drive a new Fiat but spent more time in presentations or on a bus than I did behind the wheel of their car. Cynically, I did immediately wonder why that was.Continue Reading
A Wednesday afternoon on the A44 would probably not, for most people, be the kind of place to provoke thoughts of now near long-forgotten road races, especially road races that once took place on the island of Sicily. But it’s not the scenery that has my head filled with fadedContinue Reading
Ford’s new C-Max has a simple job; to build upon the solid if unspectacular foundations of its predecessors. To its credit it manages to go about this in its own way. It’s a car for the thinkers as, while it never really inspires or moves you to place down thatContinue Reading
It’s been delayed for a couple of years, but is the replacement for Ford’s most important model worth the wait? Ford has been producing the new Mondeo for the last few years over in America, where it sells as the Fusion, but it’s only just made it to the UKContinue Reading
