Life On Cars: Car of the Year 2009

RATHER than the usual motoring fix, I’ve launched the inaugural Life On Cars Car of the Year Awards to honour the good, the bad, and the Susan Boyles of the motoring world.

For 2009, I’ve decided to start with a recurring joke in The Champion office…

The Austin Mini Award for Least Reliable Vehicle goes not to my Austin Mini, which requires you to mend it as you drive it, but to the Vespa scooter it replaced. I know it’s not a car, but any machine badly built by someone with no understanding of electronics means a truly scary reliability record.

The Toyota IQ Award for Best Toyota IQ goes to the Toyota IQ. I absolutely loved the fun factor of this tiny Japanese tot, which lets you get four adults into something no bigger than a Smart. Blend nice dynamics and zany looks and you’re onto a winner.

The Impending Accident Award for Best Road has to go to the Llanberis Pass, which I discovered while popping out for a coffee one morning in North Wales. My brakes probably didn’t appreciate its climbs, dips and bends, but I’m still waiting for my next fix.

The utterly alive sensation from the Morgan 4/4 means it wins the award for Best Drive of 2009, although the sheer speed of BMW’s Z4 and the sprightly handling of Volkswagen’s Scirocco earn them honourable mentions.

The Lady Gaga Award for Questionable Style goes jointly to the Australian-built Skelta, which has looks to scare small children, and the Toyota IQ For Sports, which takes one of my favourite cars and ruins it. Luckily, neither are on sale over here yet.

Best Motoring Event of 2009, for me at least, was the banger race which saw teams from across the North West crucify caravans in the silliest motorsport spectacle in ages. The Woodvale Rally was fun, but it didn’t make me laugh as much.

I could have plumped for the scintillating Ferrari 458 as the Car I’m Most Looking Forward To, but for all its stunning styling it isn’t gracing my computer screen. That honour goes to Jaguar’s upcoming XJ, pictured above, which I reckon I’m alone in thinking looks great.

And last but not least, the not-at-all stunning Life On Cars Car Of The Year Award, which goes not to 2009’s best car but the one I liked the most. It’s a toss-up between the IQ and Ford’s Fiesta, and on the basis that I might have to carry things as well as people, the Ford, pictured below, just snatches it.

Normal service will resume next week, I promise. You can go back to sorting out your New Year’s resolutions now.

The ultimate Christmas movie

A NIGHT spent watching Liam Neeson shooting his way through the Parisian underworld has just proved one of my favourite pet theories.

All good car chases follow a formula.

It’s like knowing that Nicholas Cage has starred in lots of good movies but never a truly great one, or that the best Bond was actually Timothy Dalton (but you’re not prepared to admit it). All the best car chases are in continental thrillers.

Take, er, Taken. It’s a gritty movie which sees Neeson play a quietly-spoken American who spends most of his time shooting criminals, cheesing off the Gendarmes and generally destroying Paris at the helm of an Audi A8. Just like Robert de Niro did ten years earlier in Ronin, arguably the best car chase film of all time.



Almost any film I can think with a truly brilliant car chase involves egging some executive express through the narrow streets of a continental city, preferably Paris in an Audi. I’m beginning to think A8 sales in France are almost exclusively led by film directors.

The legendary C'était un rendez-vous puts you behind the wheel of a Ferrari charging its way through – you guessed it – Paris, but the actual car doing the driving is the director’s Mercedes. It goes with the theory perfectly.



British car chases have the action but not the exotic locations, as the A59 towards Preston is hardly the prowling ground of quietly spoken assassins with names like Jean-Claude or Jacques. Cold War thriller The Fourth Protocol looked promising with several good chases, including this great sequence with St Pancras station and a Rover Vitesse, but unfortunately using a Ford Transit as the main motorised star lets it down.



Bullitt and The French Connection fly the flag for Hollywood, but it doesn’t detract from the movies themselves never quite matching up to the hype. And having a car chase as the entire movie (that’s you, Vanishing Point and the original Gone In Sixty Seconds) doesn’t make up for it.

Nope, the best car movies are still the gritty ones placed in Paris, as long as you forget Roger Moore, Renault and Grace May in A View To A Kill.

Forget It’s a Wonderful Life. Forget Miracle on 34th Street, and even forget The Great Escape.

Rent Ronin instead and bore your loved ones this Christmas with the greatest car chase movie ever made. You won’t regret it. Much.

Not your usual Christmas gift

DON'T worry if you're struggling to find a present for the family petrolhead, because a Lancashire council has got into gear to create a gift with a difference.

Lancashire County Council's road safety team reckons its driving courses will make a great Christmas gift with a difference, and is calling on anyone keen to sharpen up their motoring skills to get in touch."

"Christmas shopping can be hard, especially when you are searching for a gift for the family member who has everything. If you would like to give them a unique gift, Lancashire County Council's Road Safety Group may have the answer," said a spokesperson for the county council.

"So whether you know someone who is not comfortable driving on the motorway, have a friend who has lost confidence on the road or just know somebody who would like to learn some new driving tips, the voucher will make an ideal Christmas gift."

The driving assessments, which last two hours, cost £65, and the voucher can be redeemed at any time, meaning they can be used as Christmas presents for motorists hoping to improve their techniques in 2010. Lancashire County Council believe the courses make an ideal gift for anyone with an interest in driving, or those who may feel uncomfortable with situations such as motorway driving.

The council is also offering a course to motorcyclists, which in an effort to reduce the number of bikers killed on the county's roads it is offering free of charge to anyone interested in getting involved.

If you'd like to take part in either of the courses or know someone who does, contact the Road Safety Group on 0800 328 1635 or email roadsafety@lancashire.gov.uk.

I actually think the course sounds like a great idea, so I've asked Lancashire County Council if they're prepared to let me have a go, purely in the interests of journalistic research of course.

I'll keep you posted...

I am a good driver, oh yes I am

AMAZINGLY, that’s not an arrogant thing to admit.

In my first full year of motoring I’ve taken to the wheel for my Pass Plus, an afternoon with the Institute of Advanced Motorists, shopping trips, weekends away and blasts over the deserted backdrops just for the hell of it. I’ve survived breakdowns, locking up and slides on slippy roundabouts. I’ve driven everywhere from Carlisle to Caernarfon, in everything from the Ford Ka to the Morgan 4/4, and still I haven’t crashed.

Once my head had shrunk from the gravity of this achievement, I started thinking about my hard-earned, newly-won No Claims Bonus. And discovered to my horror the nice people in the world of insurance want to charge me more.

What? At no point in this article will I pretend to be the next Button (well, not much anyway), but I’m still struggling to see the sanity of charging a driver with No Claims Bonus – even one single, measly year of it – more than a newly qualified one. It’s madness. It’s the product of a damaged mind.

I like to think I'm au fait with most things motoring but car insurance – a legal requirement, don’t forget – just seems to have disintegrated into a world of meerkats and opera singers and talking telephones which sound suspiciously like Stephen Fry. You might not have to be posh to be privileged, but you do need an evening on the strong cheese to make sense of it all.

Tax is a trip to the post office. The MOT is a trek to the garage. Yet insurance, probably the most important part of staying safe and legal, is a minefield of stupid advertising jingles, call centres thousands of miles away and wacky websites insisting you compare them all. Someone really ought to invent a comparison site to compare all the comparison sites, and then see how that compares.

Naturally, my crime in all this is being male and under 25, so I accept that no matter how carefully I drive it’s going to be expensive. But I still don’t understand quite how a driver with a year’s dint-free experience is considered riskier than a brand new one.

With all the weirdness, the endless quotes, comparisons and follow-up emails, the only thing that’s likely to crash is my computer.

The full Monte

THIS week I've come to a depressing conclusion. The great rallying legends that were Paddy Hopkirk, Timo Makinen and Rauno Aaltonen were all economical with the truth.

Anyone with a nerdier disposition and innate knowledge of how camshafts work will already know what these three chaps have in common; they all won the Monte Carlo Rally, and they all did it in a Mini. Unfortunately this fine pedigree in Europe's most famous rally might give you the impression that Minis are made for winter motoring. This is wrong.

Regular readers will already be bored with my ongoing infatuation with Britain's best-selling small car, and how I'm happy to forgive it no matter how many times its distributor/brake cylinder/steering (delete as appropriate) stops working.

I've also explained to my other half, who is German and therefore doesn't understand the point of owning something if it doesn't work, that inventing things but making it badly is somehow the British way, like eating fish fingers or secretly wondering why Brookside got cancelled.

It's a fantastic car, but it still seems impossibly far removed from the idea it could win a rally on the icy roads of Monte Carlo not once, but three times. I've no doubt it could handle the Col de Turini, but what good is that when you can't get the windows demisted?

Every morning I squint through the windows and see the Mini's been given the white roof treatment, but it's always layers of icy frost rather than the Mini Cooper upgrades I actually wanted. And even though I've invested in a new heating system, it's still no better than getting an asthmatic to blow through a straw.

By the time the windscreen's cleared up again, your times on a rally stage would be so bad you'd have been better off walking it, so I can only guess that the 60s stars did it using a blend of pace notes and balls.

I did want to borrow one of the original Mini Cooper S rally cars to prove this point, but as they're now worth around £100,000 I don't think I'll be finding out any time soon.

Paddy, Timo, and Ruano weren't liars then. They're legends because they probably couldn't see anything.

Check out classic cars for charity

A NORTH WEST charity is calling on classic car fans from across the region to get geared up for a motoring extravaganza set to take place in Formby in May 2010.

Jospice, which raises funds for St Joseph's Hospice, based in Thornton, Merseyside, said last Friday (December 11) that it is gearing up to hold a motoring show at St Duke's Park, and is calling on petrolheads old and young to get involved and help create cash for the charity.

"It's early days yet, but I've been encouraged by the positive response of local classic car and bike clubs in the Liverpool and West Lancashire area so far," said Roger Blaxall, Jospice community fundraiser.

"I hope the event, with its 'Best of British' theme, will prove a popular addition to the local classics calendar."

The show, titled Wheels4Jospice, is scheduled to take place in the town on May 3 and according to Jospice has already caught the imagination of car and motorcycle enthusiasts from across the North West.

Mr Blaxall said that among the supporters of the event so far was a club catering for MG owners from across the North West, a collection of owners of Swallow sports cars, which ceased production in the 1950s, and a group of owners of the BSA Bantam motorcycle, produced in Birmingham in the 1950s and 1960s.

However he is hoping to make the show a big success in order to generate as much funding for the charity as possible, and welcomed involvement from any clubs who were keen to display their own cars, motorbikes, or other vehicles.

The event has also gained support from a number of the town's residents, including Sean Brady, Formby parish councillor.

"Jospice is so close to Formby that a lot of people here feel a sense of ownership, and I have to declare my own personal interest in the charity's work, as my daughter works as a doctor in palliative care," he said.

"I fully support charities in organising events like this, and welcome anything that can increase support and raise funds for Jospice."

For more information on the show, or to get involved yourself, contact Jospice fundraising on 0151 932 6026, or e mail roger.blaxall@jospice.org.uk.

Fire up the...Ford Fiesta

A version of this review appeared in the Daily Post in June 2009



FORD’S big seller has gone from chunky to funky in its latest iteration, which sees the sixth model in the Fiesta family opt for swoopy curves.

The car it replaces did a job in a sensible but stodgy way, being fun to drive but boring to behold, giving the prettier Punto and Corsa the edge in the style stakes. This new model comes not a moment too soon.

What it does take on from the last few Fiestas is the same reassuringly brilliant driving feel, which encourages you to push on without getting things wrong. It’s a great base for creating a hot hatch along the lines of the outgoing ST150 or the old XR2s of Fiestas gone by. It’s a shame that Ford currently has no plans for a go-faster version.

Yet it'll also impress go-slower drivers with its ample improvements to the space and quality in the cabin. The cowled dashboard is a big improvement, although it could prove a pain for driving instructors hoping to check their pupils' pace. The zany control system for most of the car's features are also bound to annoy more than impress.

The Fiesta’s a car that not only improves dramatically on its dull predecessor, but also has the measure of its rivals in the supermini market.

Can we have a faster version now, please?

Top Gear, this one's for you

ANYONE who saw James May violating an airport in an airship probably knows by now it never happened for real.

The latest in a series of Top Gear stunts was outed by the nationals this week as being a complete set up, with everyone at Norwich International completely clued up on why a caravan was drifting over their heads. But did it make it any less of a laugh to watch?

If anything, I think it’s an opportunity for Jezza, Hamster and Captain Slow; why not use the media attention to massage the Top Gear brand a bit more? We’ve already had Top Gear of the Pops and Top Ground Gear Force, plus umpteen books, DVDs and CDs covering their adventures, and I’ve a few more ideas for Auntie’s Great Top Gear Expansion.

Tap Gear could be used to replace the truly dreadful Strictly Come Dancing (surely no one watches that) with sprightly Stigs doing most of the dancing. There’s also scope for Top, Gear, Action, a police car chase show with Jeremy bestowing the benefits of safer driving, before blowing up another caravan. And James May's partnership with wine bore Oz Clarke could easily become Top Beer.

Stig Brother is another great show in the making – I’ll leave you to dream up your own format – but my ultimate favourite would be Have I Got Top Gear For You, a topical quiz where comedians and politicians can crack jokes about all the week’s breaking Top Gear stories.

You’d have to be a complete tool to think Top Gear isn’t at least partly staged, and once you get that and your longing to see a road test of the Renault Scenic out of the way the show’s still a thundering hour of Sunday night telly. I just wish the tabloids would stop ruining it for everyone else.

I’m such a dedicated Top Gearist that I even defended Jeremy Clarkson live on air once, but part of me still yearns for simpler times when balding men called Quentin would make driving a Daewoo through Dewsbury on a damp Thursday seem entertaining.

However I am quite sad, which probably explains it.

Image copyright of the BBC

If you voted for this car, you're wrong

IT’S like seeing Jedward winning The X Factor.

That’s how I felt this morning when I found out that Volkswagen’s Polo, the imaginatively named replacement for the Polo, had won the coveted title of European Car of the Year 2010.

Naturally – and in keeping with the contest’s fine tradition – the wrong car won.

European Car of the Year is a stupid idea because what works in Germany or Norway doesn’t necessarily work on our roads, and because all too often the winner is granted to something which is boring and unworthy and usually French.

For every Ford Focus or Alfa Romeo 156 there’s a Talbot Horizon or Peugeot 307 that’s somehow wafted its way into the top spot, and the last time its 59-strong panel of judges let themselves go and voted for something soul-stirring was in 1977 (Porsche 928, in case you’re wondering).

Usually I don’t care but this year, the car that should have won lost by just a few points.

Autocar’s Steve Cropley, who led the UK’s judges this year, said:

“The Polo is a very complete, very refined car which delivers all the consistent qualities VW has become so well known for. However, given its unusual layout, controversial looks and premium price, the iQ did amazingly well.”

The IQ didn’t just do amazingly well, it should have won full stop, and taken its place alongside the Rover P6, NSU Ro80 and, er, Fiat Punto as an innovative piece of engineering that genuinely moves motoring forward.

Given that I’m right and 59 of Europe’s top motoring writers are wrong, I’ll be featuring my own Car of the Year award on this very site later this month.

And I promise John and Edward won’t win it.