Audi confirms new TT

THE first new Audi TT in almost a decade will be unveiled at next month’s Geneva Motor Show, it has been confirmed.

While Audi is remaining tight-lipped until the show about the prices and specification of the new car, a teaser sketch released by the German firm reveals elements of the car hark back to the original TT of 1998.

The new car will replace the current version of the TT, originally introduced back in 2005.

DVLA red tape leaves Life On Cars at the mercy of the French police

IS IT possible to break the law in order to avoid not breaking it?

That’s the rather perplexing scenario I’ve spent the past week pondering, after it transpired that in order to not flout this country’s laws I run the risk of simultaneously falling foul of another’s.

All this thanks to the DVLA, some red tape, a J-registered Saab and the Belgians. 

It all started a week or so ago when the state agency responsible for driving licences sent me a polite letter to remind me that the photo on mine was looking a little out of date, having been taken in a branch of Woolworths at a time when Britain’s two main talking points were the Iraq War and The Cheeky Girls. 

For the sake of £20, a new and equally embarrassing photo and filling out a form, I’d avoid getting a £1,000 fine. There was only one snag; it was a legal requirement to send off both parts of my driving licence with it. 

After a few minutes of moaning to anyone who’d care to listen, I duly obliged.

It’s an inconvenience, but the not the end of the world. Or at least it wasn’t until two days after posting the form off, when I got asked, for a business trip, to go to Belgium.

A business trip which is not only in the very near future but will involve co-driving a friend’s Saab 9000 across France on the long trip to Antwerp. Places which, should I get stopped by les Gendarmes, I’ll almost certainly get asked to produce the driving licence I no longer possess.

It’s an absurd state of affairs. In order to avoid breaking the laws of this country, I’ve been forced into a position where I’ll have to break the laws of at least one other country should I dare to do what I’m legally entitled to on the other side of the Channel.

A quick call to the DVLA didn’t help. Partly because it wasn’t an especially quick call and led me to believe that humankind has actually abandoned Swansea and left the agency’s phone-manning robots to fend for themselves, but because once I actually got past the computerized phone switchboard it turned out the poor girl at the other end of the line didn’t actually know how to help me.

Having explained that “Have you asked the authorities in France and Belgium?” wasn’t the answer I was looking for, she was happy to sell me a Certificate of Entitlement, which for a fiver will prove to the police you really are entitled to drive. Unfortunately, it also comes with a whopping great disclaimer which states it isn’t valid in other EU states.

It is ridiculous that, in the event of the DVLA requiring your licence back at renewal time, it has absolutely no procedure in place should you need to pop over to the continent.

I look forward to writing my next column from my cell in La Bastille.

Mid-life facelift for BMW X3 confirmed

A NEW version of BMW’s X3 will go on sale across the UK later this summer, it has been announced.

The off-roader has been treated to an extensive facelift and will go on sale in July, with customers able to choose from four different variants, with all the engines on offer being diesel-powered.

Prices for the entry-level model, the X3 sDrive18d SE, start at £30,990.

The MGB GT is back

Click on the image to enlarge

Originally published in the 5 February edition of Classic Car Weekly. All rights reserved

How Citroen came up with the C4 Cactus

THE Parisian schoolboy put down his Crayola and hit the pause button on his Magic Roundabout DVD.

“Daddy”, he shouted excitedly in French which I’ve had to translate into Layman’s English. “I’ve managed to sort out that new hatchback you’ve been struggling with.”

The young designer’s dad, the boss of one of the biggest car companies in the whole of France, was astounded.

“That’s impossible”, he explained with an anguished tone of surprise in his voice. “My team have been working for months on this car, because it’s absolutely crucial that we come up with a rival for the Nissan Juke. You’re only seven years old. How have you managed to design it in twenty minutes?

"More to the point, what exactly are those things on the side supposed to be?”

The French firm’s brilliant new design guru paused reflectively and considered putting The Magic Roundabout back on again, but then he remembered how important this bit of extra homework was. This wasn’t just any old car doodle. This had to take on not just the Nissan Juke, but all the other jacked-up, supermini-sized hatchbacks that had already been launched to take it on.

“This is a lot more sensible than all the other cars I design when I’m at school – it’s only got four wheels, and there aren’t any machine guns or rockets on it. It’s just a normal car, like the one you and Mummy take me to school in.”

The boy’s father repeated the question. “But what is that thing on the side of it?”

“Oh sorry, dad, I forgot about that,” the youngster said. “I dropped a Dairy Milk on the paper and it melted, and now it’s stuck there.”

Dad was impressed. “Brilliant! I love it. It’s so avantgarde – no one but Citroen would think to launch a hatchback with a giant chocolate stuck to the side of it. Love the wheels too. I’ll get it signed off for production tomorrow.

“The only problem”, he explained to his pre-pubescent protégé, “is I’ve no idea what to call it. People love the Juke because it not only looks like it’s got landed from another planet, but it’s got a mad name too. So has the Vauxhall Mokka, and so has the Renault Captur”.

Citroen’s new chief designer smiled and instantly turned to his dad with a suggestion for this new, taller version of the company’s C4 hatchback, which goes on sale across the UK later this year.

“Let’s call it the Cactus, daddy”.

Life On Cars shortlisted for national award

LIFE ON CARS has been shortlisted for a national award celebrating blogging, it has been confirmed this week.

Originally created by motoring journalist David Simister in July 2009, the blog is one of just eight from across the UK which have been shortlisted for the Automotive category of the UK Blog Awards 2014, with the winner due to be announced at a ceremony in London on 25 April.

The blog, which is accompanied by a sister column in The Champion newspaper in Southport, focuses on a wide range of motoring topics with more than 750 articles since its launch, including many of the misadventures David has encountered in his own cars!

David is the news editor of Classic Car Weekly, and regularly contributes to The Champion as the motoring correspondent for the series of weekly newspapers.

In a weird sort of way, I miss the Renault Espace

A CAR you’d long forgotten existed is celebrating its 30^th year of production this week. Many happy returns, Renault Espace!

Admit it, you’d forgotten all about the Espace, hadn’t you? In fact, it’s so synonymous with big people carriers that I bet it’s just blended into the motoring background, quietly offering overproductive couples everywhere a spacious and well-equipped means of ferrying their children to school. Only – in this country at least – it hasn’t.

Even though the Espace is still very much in production, you haven’t been able to buy a brand new one in Britain for at least three years. It is proof positive that most Nineties of motoring institutions, the big people carrier, is on life support. 

Once upon a time everyone would offer you a roadgoing ocean liner with more seats than wheels, enough window glass to front a small office block and the ability to buckle up your youngest children in what might as well have been a different time zone. If you didn’t want a Renault Espace, you could have a Vauxhall Sintra, a Toyota Previa, a Fiat Ulysse, a Peugeot 806, or a seven-seater from just about any other manufacturer you can think of.  

The old ones are easy enough to find – just check your nearest minicab firm, and once you’ve overcome the distant whiff of stale vomit and kebabs you find examples with snooker ball smooth steering wheels with roughly three million miles on the clock. New ones, however, are all but extinct. With the notable exceptions of Ford’s Galaxy, Chrysler’s Grand Voyager and VW’s twin offerings of the Sharan and SEAT Alhambra, the truly gargantuan people mover is all but dead.

Renault, ironically, is partly to blame, because with the original Megane Scenic it sparked the idea that people carriers no longer had to be absolutely enormous to succeed. As soon as Vauxhall’s Zafira managed to offer up a normal sized car with seven seats – and this was 15 years ago, remember – the Espace and its ilk were finished.  

Which, in a small way, is a bit of a shame, because for every Espace that’s disappeared from our roads a BMW X3 or an Audi Q3 seems to have taken its place, with their aggressive – sorry, “sporty” – aesthetics and their tendency to sit three inches of your back bumper on the M62. Big people carriers might have been utterly unromantic, but at least you knew where you were with them. 

The Espace might be all but a distant memory on this side of the Channel, but in a weird sort of way I miss seeing it clogging up the nation’s school runs.  

Mazda Eunos Roadster - a return to form for Life On Cars

After very reluctantly getting rid of a 1990 Mazda MX-5 last April, Life On Cars writer and Classic Car Weekly news editor David Simister has done the sensible thing - and bought another one.

Click to enlarge...

Originally published in the 29 January edition of Classic Car Weekly. All rights reserved

Nissan spices up the Micra with new limited edition

NISSAN is now offering the Micra with a choice of two-tone paintjobs in order to give the supermini a more youthful vibe.

The limited edition Micra, imaginatively called the Micra Limited Edition, costs £12,300 and is available with three different colour combinations – white and red, blue and white, and red and black.

Based on the existing Acenta trim level, which comes mid-way through the Micra in terms of gadgets and equipment, the Limited Edition follows a number of its supermini rivals in offering contrasting roof and mirror colours, notably the MINI One, Vauxhall Adam and Citroen DS3.

The new model, which comes with 15-inch alloy wheels, air-conditioning, cruise control, and a roof spoiler among other niceties, is available to order now.