Top ten: Life On Cars motoring moments of 2014

IT’S NOT often you get to compare a Ferrari F355 with a Peugeot 306 diesel snapped up for less than the price of a shirt.

Yet both managed the same trick – leaving a big impression on me in a year packed with great motoring moments.The tricky bit hasn’t been picking out the highlights, but working out which ones to leave out. Here are the ten I remember most fondly:

Discovering driving heaven is an MG TD…

 …or a 1954 MG TD Midget MkII, if we’re being precise about the draughty, exposed two-seater I drove on that bitterly cold day back in February for a Classic Car Weekly road test.

I remember spending most of that morning with a runny nose, numb fingers and shivering limbs but I was stunned by how sublime the steering and handling was this 60-year-old car.

It was not only more enjoyable to drive than my own old MG, a 1972 MGB GT, but it made me smile more than a Ferrari F355 did. That’s how big an impression it left on me.

Doing a lap of Fiat's rooftop test track (even if it was only on foot)

 The banking on top of the former Lingotto factory in Turin isn’t just where Fiat used to shake down its newly-built cars; anyone who knows their car films will instantly recognise it from the chase sequence in The Italian Job.

Normally, it’s off-limits to the public, but because I ended up staying in a hotel on the same complex I had the huge privilege of being allowed to go up and have a wander around this wonderful slice of automotive folklore.

Even if I didn’t have a Mini Cooper S to pound around the circuit, being able to walk around Fiat’s rooftop test track was an experience I’ll never forget.

Winning a national award for Life On Cars

Being named as one of the winners in the inaugural UK Blog Awards was a huge honour, and helped Life On Cars get – as I remember telling The Champion back in April – “national recognition as being one of the best motoring blogs out there”.

In true Life On Cars style, though, a motoring misadventure meant I never actually made it to the glittering awards ceremony in St Pancras. Classic Car Weekly had me exploring Rutland on the same day for its annual spring tour – highlights of which included pushing a broken-down Austin Montego out of harm’s way at Rutland Water!

Discovering what would happen if Carlsberg did classic car shows

Regular readers will already know I’m a car show junkie – at the last count, I’d gone to more than 50 in 2014, ranging from cosy charity events like the Lydiate Classic Car Show to European giants like Techno Classica Essen.

So you’d think my favourite would be the sun-kissed Auto Retro Barcelona or watching 20 D-types going head to head at the Goodwood Revival, right? Erm, not quite; it was the Lakes Charity Classic Car Show, which has about 200 cars and is held in a field just outside Grasmere.

There wasn’t a D-type or a celeb in sight but it had everything I look for in a show in spades; a great mix of cars, a stunning location, sensible prices and – best of all – a friendly atmosphere. Count me in for the 2015 show!

Applying the word ‘stagulent’ to just about everything

Spending quite a few occasions in 2014 driving a borrowed Triumph Stag inspired me to come up with the idea of stagulence – applying the slightly kitsch, retro qualities of this V8-hauled convertible and applying them to other objects.

So far reruns of The Persuaders!, Directors Bitter, Joanna Lumley and the entire town of Harrogate are among the things I’ve managed to describe as stagulent. Which is a shame, because I’ve always quite liked the Triumph in question.

Watching the car that started it all (briefly) resurface

I began 2014 by pondering what had actually happened to the old Life On Cars Mini. Sure enough, it reappeared a couple of months later on eBay – in worse condition than I’d originally sold it back in 2010.

Despite being flooded with nostalgic thoughts and suggestions from chums that I should buy it back, I resisted the urge to throw in a bid and let it go. Hopefully its new owner will be able to restore with the sort of money I didn’t have when I ran around in it!

Driving to the Nürburgring in my own car

This is a petrolhead pilgrimage everyone who really loves cars should do at least once, and I even though I was a bit apprehensive I even did the compulsory blast around The Green Hell in my MX-5 at the end (and no, I didn’t buy one of those sad stickers to put on my car afterwards).

Despite suffering a fairly dramatic air conditioning leak on the way – and being forced to mend it with a condom of all things – CCW colleague Murray Scullion and I had a great weekend on our assignment at the AvD Oldtimer Grand Prix. If you’re going to venture over to the continent for a show in your own car, I’d seriously consider this one.

Being in two places at the Ormskirk MotorFest at once

It was a tricky call – while I knew the job in hand was photographing the classics parading around Ormskirk for the annual MotorFest, I’d also got an invite to do a lap in the MGB. How, I’d spent the entire morning wondering, was I going to do both?

In the end, I finishing snapping my first set of cars, set the camera up, handed it to my girlfriend, and ran for it. I made it through the thousands of spectators in the nick of time, and managed to fire up the ‘B with seconds to spare before my designated slot.

It was worth it for this shot. Good times!

Rediscovering bargain basement motoring

2014 hadn’t begun on a great note when it comes to Life On Cars workhorses – looming transmission trouble had led me to sell the old Rover 214SEi and its Ford Mondeo replacement was destroyed when an errant BMW ran into the back of it.

This Peugeot 306 was the belated hero of the year, not only acting as a £750 stopgap for my girlfriend’s mother before she bought another car, but then being passed onto me as an everyday chugger for just £150.

It hasn’t been perfect but – as the first Life On Cars diesel car – I’m enjoying regularly getting upwards of 50 to the gallon. Like the £100 Renault 5 I ran years ago, I’m forgiving the 306’s imperfections because I love its bargain basement Frenchness.

Putting my foot down – in a Ferrari

I ended 2013 – having driven my first Aston Martin – wondering whether I’d get to pop my Ferrari cherry this year.

Sure enough, Classic Car Weekly needed someone to test a Ferrari F355, so my hand shot up quicker than the car itself can get to sixty! Truth be told, I barely got to scratch beneath the surface on real world roads, but on this few occasions when I really got to nail it this mid-engined supercar really was as good as everyone said it should be.

It really was utterly, utterly wonderful. New Year’s resolution for 2015 – get a go in a TVR Griffith. Here’s hoping!

Life On Cars wishes both of its readers a happy New Year

Car makers should resist the urge to do cover versions of their classic hits

A MATE of mine put it to me the other week that the Volkswagen Type 2 – known to surfers, hippies and holidaymakers everywhere as simply the Campervan – is the most depicted car of all time.

Just about every bit of tourist tat imaginable, from teatowels and tee-shirts to pint glasses and USB sticks has featured the rear-engined workhorse at some point in order to lend said souvenir a groovy air of free love. Everybody knows what a Type 2 looks like – even if they insist (normally incorrectly) on calling it a Volkswagen Campervan. 

It’s one of a handful of old cars that still have that cult currency no matter where you are – and one of only two, I reckon, that haven’t been shamelessly reinvented. The Mini, the Fiat 500 and the Volkswagen Beetle have all been done. There are only a couple of names which people really remember left – so why are the car makers still at it?

Take the Maserati Ghibli, for instance. If you’re a Champion reader who’s ended up on the motoring pages because you’re looking for the Sports section but got a bit lost then chances are you won’t be able to picture a Maserati Ghibli without consulting Google – so it’s got no resonance. If, on the other hand, you pride yourself on being a petrolhead, you’ll know it’s an old Italian supercar. So you’ll feel a bit fobbed off to discover the revived version isn’t a ground-hugging missile, but a diesel-engined four-door saloon. 

The other trip down Memory Lane which I’m still yet to understand is the new Vauxhall Viva. There is, of course, much to commend about the old Viva, but do you see it on teatowels and mugs at souvenir shops in holiday resorts? Nope. I understand why it’s a revival in a name only, but unless you owned one back in the Seventies or read Practical Classics, it’s just not a name that’ll ring a bell with your mates.

Redoing your old offerings as new models is duller than hearing those breathy-voiced Eighties cover versions that always seem to pop up in John Lewis’ festive ads, or seeing the best the cinema has to offer are yet more comic character reboots. I don’t want a new Ford Cortina or a revived Vauxhall Chevette in the same way I’d dread a TV remake of Only Fools and Horses or yet another outing for Do They Know It’s Christmas.

Why hasn’t there been a new Type 2, or a new Citroёn 2CV or Ford Capri? It’s simple; the manufacturers have resisted the urge to do cover versions of their classics because they’ve got more exciting and innovative things to show you. The makers of these great cars from the past were doing them as ‘new’ to their best of their abilities – and that’s why we cherish the good ‘uns as classics decades later. I applaud the people still doing that today, resisting the urge to do cover versions of their old cars and using their imagination to come up with genuinely modern – and usually brilliant – new cars.

More of that in 2015 please!

You'll love these 1980s off roader pictures

A BIT of snow didn't bother the owners of these old school off-roaders back in the 1980s. Nor did mud, rivers, dirt tracks up the side of Cumbrian hills or disused quarries, looking at these great shots.

I've spent most of this afternoon trawling through this treasure trove of photographs showing Britain's off-roader fraternity in action throughout the 1980s. There are more than 75 pictures in the collection, taken by my father when he was the greenlaning officer for the Red Rose Land Rover Club. Two of the vehicles shown are his - the modified Land Rover Series IIa (710 GDM, where are you now?) and the FLM Panelcraft-converted four-door Range Rover, now believed to be the only surviving example in Britain.

Most of the mudpluggers, shown at greenlaning and trials events throughout Lancashire and Cumbria, are Land Rovers, ranging from Series Is to two-door Range Rovers, but the likes of the Suzuki SJ and Lada Niva make appearances too.

In fact it's hugely refreshing seeing these early 4x4s - particularly the Series I and II Land Rovers - being used as their creators intended, without anyone worrying about what they're worth these days. Here are ten of the best from a great collection of images, some of which were taken more than 30 years ago...

Spare a thought for the nation's breakdown recovery crews this Christmas

THE BIGGEST hazard of driving home for Christmas – at least according to Chris Rea’s 1988 hit – is being top to toe in tailbacks. Yet if it wasn’t for a trusty AA man the other day, I wouldn’t have even made it that far.

It’s typical Simister luck. After months of managing to avoid a visit from the breakdown fairy, she would have to strike on the Friday before Christmas, just as I was preparing to pack the boot with freshly-wrapped presents and head home for the festive season.

Naturally, being the sort of chap who’d rather run a42-year-old car built by British Leyland and a 15-year-old French hatchback acquired for less than most of my mates would pay for a decent shirt, I’m used to the occasional thing going wrong. It’s just not the sort of thing you want to happen on the day you’re driving home for Christmas!

In this case, the Peugeot 306 I’d bought a few weeks earlier decided it only wanted to use three of its wheels for the long trip north – the offside rear wheel had completely seized up, and nothing I did was freeing the brakes off. Defeated, I dialled the fourth emergency service – and resigned myself to being in for a long wait.

In all my time peddling automotive tat in lieu of a shiny new car, I’ve had a distinctly mixed experience of all of Britain’s big breakdown recovery firms, including one instance when it took a staggering ten hours to recover my oldMini from Carlisle. So – on the day when most of the nation’s motorists were bound to be having the same festive intentions I was – I was hardly expecting miracles.

Yet within half an hour the stricken 306 had been jacked up and a chap in a hi-vis jacket had given me a diagnosis – the rear brake cylinder had given up the ghost and needed replacing before it was going to be safe for any pre-Christmas cruises up the A1. All of which meant finding a garage who’d be prepared to do the job inside of a day.

My usual menders of choice were too busy mending an equally problem-prone old hack – my colleague’s Saab 9000, no less – but Mr Hi-Vis had a mate at another place, and after a quick phone call and a bit of arm-twisting said garage agreed to getting the job done the same day. Sure enough, a couple of hours later I was reunited with a Peugeot ready for the important job of running the Simister family’s Christmas presents home. While I’ve had some distinctly ropey breakdown recovery jobs in the past, this time my knight in hi-vis armour genuinely was the difference between getting home and being stranded at the office, 200 miles away.

So spare a thought for the chaps in their brightly-coloured vans as they chug across the North West this Christmas. Every driver they get back on the move over the festive break is another Christmas that hasn’t been ruined by the breakdown fairy.

Here’s to them – and Merry Christmas to you too, obviously!

A 50mph limit on an empty motorway is hardly a 'smart' move

THE roads were eerily empty when I plodded over the Pennines last Friday night.

Perhaps the four-minute warning had been issued and – totally oblivious, given the radio on my Peugeot 306 doesn’t work – I was about to be wiped out in a Russian nuclear missile strike. Maybe there was a particularly riveting repeat of I’m A Celebrity keeping everyone off the roads. Either way, on a Friday night commute which cris-crosses eight counties over 200 miles the traffic jams I normally encounter were nowhere to be seen.

So you’d think I’d have storming progress, then? Erm, no. Even though the roads were so sparsely populated I was overtaking a lorry every other ten minutes, there were still long stretches where I couldn’t go one measly mile an over 50. The culprit, the average speed limit preceding the new ‘smart’ motorway sections, is one of my real pet hates of motoring.

I love the idea; rather than have every Audi or BMW fly into the fog at 75mph and wreaking havoc on your morning commute, someone flicks a switch and lowers the limit to 50mph in an instant, massively reducing the odds of a pile-up. The powers-that-be spent ages calling them ‘managed motorways’ – largely because they always managed to make you do less than 70mph, but nowadays the idea is they’re ‘smart’ because they’re brimming with technology to make life safer.

All of which would be great apart from the one thing even the greatest gizmos can’t control – the highly evolved monkeys controlling the machines.

Why, when the limit is 50mph and clever cameras control all three lanes, is there still a prat in an Audi A5 doing 70mph (who, incidentally, never seems to get flashed)? Why do the lorry drivers, who seem to be on autopilot at 55-60mph, do everything in their power to get past?  It’s not just the motorists either – why, at stupid ‘o’ clock in the morning on an empty motorway with nobody working, is the speed limit still switched to the lowest possible setting? All that does is encourage drivers to switch off and listen to The Archers. 

Last month the Department for Transport announced the M62 and the M53 will be smartened up in their entirety, and chances are once they’re finished they’ll have a crack at the other ones too. While I’m all for clever roads that can alter their speed limit according to the conditions, I’m genuinely dreading having to spend years on end crawling along empty motorways while they’re doing the work.

Saving lives with adjustable speed limits? That’s a clever idea. Forcing motorists to spend years doing 50mph along an empty motorway because everyone in a position to change it back to 70mph has turned in for the night?

That’s not very ‘smart’ at all.

How much of a classic car pop picker are you?

Life On Cars has been facelifted!

EAGLE-EYED readers - yes, both of them - will have already spotted that Life On Cars has been treated to a bit of a facelift.

The blog's had a great year, including being honoured as one of only two motoring blogs to win in the Automotive category of the inaugural UK Blog Awards back in April.

In the aftermath of the awards I got a lot of great feedback about Life On Cars and how to tweak the blog. In particular, the authors of Creditplus - another nominee in the UK Blog Awards - made quite a few useful observations.

Creditplus writer James Dwyer wrote back in September: "Two things immediately stand out. One, David is an authority on his chosen subject (classic cars), and two, the blogpost is written in a personal and friendly style that gives the reader an insight into David’s character.

"The posts are long and detailed, covering a variety of topics within David’s area of expertise. The website isn’t that flashy, but it's the high quality content that appeals."

I couldn't agree more - a motoring hack I might be, but a web design guru I'm emphatically not. That's why I've entrusted fellow blogger Natalie Bassling to give the site a complete refresh, meaning I can concentrate on bringing you more motoring tales - even ones which involve looking a bit silly while standing next to a Corvette - without getting bogged down in how Life On Cars looks and works.

Personally, I think it looks great, but I'd be keen to know what you think. Feel free to get in touch with your motoring stories and details of shows!

Why I dread my rubbish parking being exposed on Facebook

“MATE!” one of my fellow petrolheads sometimes shouts when I’ve parallel parked. “Did you get your licence in a LUCKY BAG?”

You’d think for someone who’s driven everything from the Smart ForTwo to a Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow that I’d be able to park anything perfectly, perhaps with my eyes shut. Not so. I might as well ‘fess up there are occasions when, dear reader, I can still fluff up a bit of parking in finest Maureen-from-Driving-School style.

There were, for instance, the handful of occasions when my Renault 5 would make me come over all French and adopt a distinctly laissez faire – and not entirely parallel – approach to slotting a small hatchback alongside a kerb. Then there was the time I spent ten minutes circling Tesco’s car park looking for one of those elusive double spaces, largely because I didn’t want the shame of pranging a very pricey Lotus Evora that wasn’t mine in a bodged bit of easing backwards into a tight space.

My worst – and simultaneously best - spot of parking, however, was making the most of owning a Mini by successfully squeezing it into the smallest space possible. It was a brilliant endorsement of everything Alec Issigonis stood for, but it might have made life a bit difficult for the chap parked in front. 

Handful of confessions aside, however, I normally pride myself on not parking like a berk. This is a mighty good thing, because now there’s a Facebook group whose sole purpose is to expose when you do in Southport.

Ever since it’s entered my Likes list it’s amused and alarmed me in equal measure. On the one hand, there’s a childish delight at seeing all the dented hatchbacks dumped diagonally across a set of double yellow lines and wondering how anyone – especially anyone who’s mastered the theory test – can park THAT badly. There’s also the tense thrill of knowing my mate - who regularly parks his pride and joy across three spaces to prevent anyone else accidentally scratching it with a clumsily-opened door – is going to end up appearing on it.

Yet there is something unnerving about knowing there’s a band of cameraphone vigilantes deciding, using the powers vested in them by the internet, what does and doesn’t construe a decent parking job. Yes, there are plenty of bits of parking which can’t be anything other than just plain rude, but there are always shades of grey in what is, after all, a skill which we all have to some degree or other.

If you’re arrogant enough to dump an Audi Q7 in Asda’s only disabled parking space then you deserve everything you get, but I’ve seen plenty of pictures of what are just normal parking manouveres that – for whatever reason – aren’t quite bob on. Given I’m sure it’s happened to all of us, I’m not entirely sure I’d want smartphone addicts laughing at them between stints on Candy Crush.

Still, at least the Facebook group’s achieved its intended effect – I’ll be triple-checking all my parking jobs this Christmas.

Why I want a Ferrari F355 for Christmas

THE NATION’S best pub, I’ve long maintained, is hidden in a hamlet in a remote Cumbrian valley.

It’s 15 miles from the nearest train station and the bus service is next to non-existent, so the only way you can realistically reach it is by bringing a designated driver who’ll happily ferry you home afterwards. The ales on offer are also a bit limited – there are six of them, and they’re all brewed in the building next door.

As a practical proposition it’s pretty much useless, but the tipple is so tasty the pub counts Prince Charles and Sir Chris Bonington among its fans. The location alone means it’ll only ever be an occasional indulgence, which makes the few occasions I do manage to enjoy it that little bit more special.

In other words, it’s a bit like the first Ferrari I’ve been fortunate to get a go in. Even for someone who writes about and drives all sorts of cars, taking the helm of Maranello’s finest is something I’ve spent years longing to do. So far I’ve managed to bag the keys to a Lotus, a Jaguar, an Aston Martin and a Rolls-Royce, but until now people have always been too sensible to allow me access to a Ferrari.
 

Better still, it wasn’t some tired old Mondial that’s overdue its next service or a 400 that’s missed a decade’s worth of TLC; the Ferrari in question was the F355, which the motoring mags in period always praised as being as being the company’s return to form after the dud that was the old 348. A 1997 F355 GTS which had been meticulously maintained 360 days of the year, just those five days when it’s deemed sensible to take it out for a blast.

The weird thing was that, even as a hugely expensive mid-engined supercar, it was no harder to drive in the real world than the Nissan Note I’d been piloting a few hours earlier. I didn’t know whether to be delighted or dismayed; on the one hand, you really can take a Ferrari F355 to Tesco, but on the other it’ll feel strangely anodyne when you do. The steering’s too over-assisted and the V8, at real world speeds, is barely awake.

Nope, the only way to treat a F355 is the way Ferrari intended. Plonk your right foot into the carpet on the wrong day (which in Cameron’s Britain, is pretty much every day) and you’ll either end up heading backwards into the nearest hedge at high speed or looking at your shoes in the nearest police station.

But on the right day, with great weather and a road where you can safely exploit it, the Ferrari sings. The perfectly-weighted steering, the howling 3.5 litre V8 and the electronic dampers join forces, doing magical things you previously didn’t think were possible in a car.

It is, like my favourite pub, something best enjoyed on a handful of occasions. To answer all those questions your inner eight-year-old is asking – yes, the Ferrari F355 really is as good as everyone says it is.

You just have to choose your moment carefully.