Volkswagen pays homage to the 1980s

A SPORTY new version of Volkswagen’s Scirocco will land in the manufacturer’s showroom’s next month.

The Scirocco GTS, might not be as quick as the range-topping Scirocco R, but shares its engine with the Golf GTI and has 18-inch windows and – in a nod to the original Scirocco GTS of 1982 – black door mirrors and the options of additional go-faster stripes.

Go to Volkswagen's website to find out more about the new Scirocco GTS.

Why Britain needs a scrappage scheme rethink

SO THERE’S an election coming up. Among the things I’ll be asking candidates who come a-knocking to pledge their support for is turning the M6 into Britain’s first derestricted, German autobahn-style stretch of motorway and minimum speed limits for Nissan Micra owners.

Joking aside, there is a potentially hot potato anyone with even the vaguest interest in cars should be smearing with butter and getting their teeth into – the prospect of a scrappage scheme being reintroduced.

I’ve spoken to all the political parties about the idea of a cash-for-clunkers programme being reintroduced – essentially, a rerun of the controversial 2009 scheme aimed at boosting new car sales by sending older motors to the crusher. While none of them have openly advocated it, some fairly influential figures, including Boris Johnson and the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, have. Nissan has already been piloting its own scheme in Ireland. With the last one sending a third of a million cars to the scrapheap for good, a new one would represent a fairly seismic shift in the nation’s motoring landscape.

I’ve spent plenty of time asking what the implications would be for classic cars caught up in the scheme. Last time around 572 MGs and 45 Jaguar XJSs were taken off the roads, found guilty without trial of being unwanted old bangers.

However, there’s a more practical problem with scrappage. The real villains – at least if you believe Boris Johnson’s rhetoric – are diesel cars more than a decade old, because every time one clackers into life on a cold morning there’s a butterfly effect that eventually leads to a polar bear keeling over. But scrappage doesn’t do nearly enough about these cars.

My Peugeot 306 diesel would have been eligible for the last scrappage scheme, but it survived because the prospect of a £2000 discount on a new car either wasn’t tempting or affordable enough. If I wanted to do a like-for-like upgrade and help the environment by canning the old warhorse and plonking my posterior in an entry-level 308 diesel, even with the two grand knocked it’d still be £14,495 I don’t have.

It’s a nice idea, but the people who drive all those 15-year-old Merc E300Ds and battered old Land Rover Discovery TDis tend not be interested in shelling out thousands of pounds on a new car, so they’ll carry on chugging about and suffocating nearby squirrels.

What whoever introduces at the next scrappage scheme needs is a dose of old fashioned, hang-on-a-minute common sense. There needs to be some Treasury magic to make scrapping a Rover 25 diesel in favour of a brand new car make monetary sense.

More importantly, there needs to be way we can all say scrapping a perfectly good Austin A35 or Jaguar XJ-S in favour of a discounted Kio Rio is absolute madness.

Vignale takes the Ford Mondeo upmarket

A MORE upmarket twist on the Ford Mondeo will available to order in the UK from next month.

The Ford Vignale Mondeo, which is more luxurious than the car it’s based on and finished by hand at a separate factory in Spain, will be available more powerful versions of the Mondeo’s existing engines, including a 240bhp 2.0-litre petrol engine.

It costs £29,045, and will be followed by a Vignale version of the S-Max later this year.

Ford's clever gadget definitely deserves the boot

TYPICAL. Only a week after one manufacturer teases us with a reason to get rid of all the gimmicks in the nation’s new cars, another gives you something entirely sensible I’m surprised wasn’t invented decades ago.

Ford has clearly been listening to people like my sister – parents who happen to use the C-Max in their tireless quest to ferry their offspring and all the associated clobber to school and back.

A trick Ford has already tried on its Kuga off-roader is now being applied to a small MPV clearly aimed at young families – a boot release you can operate with your foot!

I genuinely don’t know why more manufacturers aren’t offering this sort of thing, seeing as you don’t need to be someone raising a brace of snotty toddlers to appreciate it. While cars with boots that open electrically aren’t anything new, they tend to be pricey optional extras and they’re only as good as the wires behind them. This is a much simpler premise – using your foot to do a job your hand can’t.

Anyone who’s ever made the mistake of manhandling a flat pack shelf through IKEA’s car park on a busy Saturday afternoon and then wished they could sprout a third arm to operate the boot release will know exactly what I mean.

You’re able to somehow operate the remote central locking, but using either of your hands to physically open the boot is going to risk dropping the entire shelf and damaging it.

In the past elbows, knees or even noses have been forced to act as impromptu substitute hands to end the misery and get the boot of whichever MPV or estate car I’m using open, but while it’s only an occasional bit of IKEA-based suffering for me I feel for the thousands of mums and dads who have to put up with this inherent car design weakness every time they go on a family outing.

That’s why Ford – and indeed – any other manufacturer who’s got a similar system on the cards – should be applauded for reasons their customers do not have three arms.

Without wanting to sound like a political party broadcast, no family in this country should have to put up with fumbling around on a rainy Thursday night with an armful of shopping and Fisher Price toys and an audience of two screaming toddlers while they fumble around attempting to get the boot of their brand new car open.

I know most car gadgets solve problems that don’t really exist – that’s you, power steering and lane departure warning systems – but once in a while someone comes up with something genuinely clever.

Foot-operated boots are in the latter category. I’m sure the nation’s mums and dads will agree.

The Nissan GYM joke raises a serious point about overweight motorists

NISSAN – via the best April Fool’s gag I’ve fallen for in ages – have raised a serious point about the threat today’s pose to your health and wellbeing. The X-Trail and Qashqai have declared war on your waistline!

In the best motoring joke since BMW announced it was making an M3 pick-up truck a couple of years ago, the manufacturer announced its own automotive battle of the bulge. It’s a shame its new system will never be a reality, because it promises to burn off 1,415 calories on your next commute. Press a button on the dashboard marked ‘GYM’ and you’ll get thinner, pretty girls will flock to you and Jamie Oliver will hail you as some sort of 21st century saint. Brilliant!

It’s a shame it’s only an April Fool’s joke, because if it weren’t I’d have to applaud Nissan for recognising the nation’s motorists are an increasingly bloated bunch and that something had to be done, presumably before the entire road network started to groan beneath their collective weight and slowly sink further into the ground.

In essence, what the fictional GYM button would’ve done was take all the driver aids you’ve paid through the nose for – and then switches them off altogether. In other words, transform your brand new Nissan X-Trail into a bottom-of-the-range 1985 Ford Orion in an instant.

Yet the joke does raise a serious point. As someone who grew up driving Minis and still regularly drives a 43-year-old MGB, I look at all of Nissan’s driver assistance gizmos and conclude they – ironically – do little other than add weight. Yes, the car of 2015 is unbelievably easy to drive, but are the gadgets actually being counter-productive for our waistlines?

The new Ford Galaxy, for instance, can be ordered with a device that does your parallel parking for you. Why? Anyone on a British road should have mastered the manoeuvre by now, so I can only assume anyone who uses it is too fat and lazy to do it themselves.

It’s the same with power steering. Parking a MG or a Morris Minor that’s a bit heavy at 3mph is not the workout you might expect – it’s the entirely normal driving that your granddad would have just got on with, rather than moaning about how difficult it is. Safety devices like ABS are worth every penny, but things like power steering or parking assist are just encouraging us to take the easy option.

It’s nice that Nissan has taken the first step in giving us the option to switch these things off, but really it – and indeed, every car maker – should be selling us cars light and efficient enough not to need them in the first place.

The Lotus Elise – the antithesis of everything the GYM button stands for - doesn’t have any of these devices and it’s all the better for it. Really, it should be prescribed through the NHS to anyone struggling with obesity. It’s the healthiest new car you can buy today, and that’s no joke.

At no point did David Simister fall for Nissan's brilliantly worded April Fool press release during the making of this column. Honest...