The Twingo is the modern day Renault 5

SOMETIMES you can have too much technology for your own good.

Take my mobile, for instance, which for the past few days has been at the menders, looking sorry for itself. The smartypants smartphone in question has more computing power than an Apollo Moon mission, the ability to upload any of the thousands of photographs it’s taken to Facebook in an instant AND the ability to phone home. Yet all it took to render its armada of tech completely useless was a hairline crack in the screen.

That’s why I’ve done the mobile phone equivalent of getting a courtesy car while the Lexus is being repaired – and entrusted the job to a phone I bought brand new for a tenner. I might have gone back 15 years but there’s something hugely fun about having a bargain basement phone whose luxuries stop at an FM-only radio, a torch, and the ability to go three days – not a couple of hours – without running out of juice. Imagine if you could have that frills-free fun factor in a car!

Happily, the automotive answer to the £10 mobile is alive and well – and no, it’s not the Dacia Sandero I was hoping – but didn’t – to discover it in last year. I’d suggest looking to Renault – Dacia’s parent company, don’t forget – and its new Twingo.

It couldn’t be more different from its predecessor if it tried – while that car was front-engined, front-wheel-drive and not all that exciting to look at, the new one’s shoved a tiny little three cylinder engine in the boot and has the rounded cuteness of a newly-born Pug.

Inside, it’s all big dials, bright colours and not much else. You can spec it up with a tablet-style multimedia system with voice control and DAB radio but that’s missing the point – if it’s big car luxuries in a little package, you might as well as go for the downsized Golf ambience you get in a Volkswagen Up. The Twingo’s fun comes from its flyweight feel – it’ll feel a bit thrashier on the motorway, but around town and on tight, twisty roads it’s big fun.

Anyone who loved the old Renault 5 – and I should know, I used to run around in one – will appreciate the old car’s focus on fun and function lives on in the new Twingo. It is that rare thing – a small car that isn’t pretending to be an executive express in half the length.

I’d happily have a Twingo for the same reason I’m quite attached to my £10 phone. It’s got all the fun you need, and all the clutter you don’t.

Why it isn't hard to get a go in your favourite car

FORGET swimming with dolphins or selfies in front of the Taj Mahal. Surely the ultimate red letter day has to be driving your favourite car.

That’s why I switched my excitement level to giddy schoolboy setting when I was finally told I’d be getting a go in my ultimate ‘bedroom wall’ car. Over the years I’ve been lucky enough to drive Ferraris and Lotuses to Rolls-Royces and Jaguars, but with the notable exception of the E-type none of those were Blu-tacked proudly above my desk when I was eight years old.

That particular honour, in fact, went to something built just over the water in Blackpool using some Rover V8s and a never-ending supply of glassfibre. That’s why I’ve spent the last 20 years just itching to get a go in a TVR Griffith.

I love this car because it had that wonderfully British underdog quality. It was a sinuously styled two-seater which in the early Nineties had the ability to embarrass the Ferrari 348 and the Porsche 911, despite costing about half the price. It had a tuned version of my favourite engine – if you can’t imagine what a bored out Rover V8 sounds like, just imagine a thunderstorm with the volume doubled. It was the car that put a tiny Lancashire manufacturer on the map.

Naturally, being given the keys to one was like being told your complimentary first class British Airways tickets to New York have landed through the letterbox or that Michelle Keegan’s waiting in the bar for you. The moment the V8’s rumble turned into an almighty bellow and lunged towards the horizon is a motoring highlight I’ll never forget.

The good news is that in this day and age your automotive fantasies can quite easily become realities. As long as it isn’t anything ultra rare or hand-crafted from unobtainium – if it’s a Ferrari 250 GTO or a Porsche 959, for instance – there are companies more than happy to lend you your object of motoring desire.

Getting a go in a Gallardo or a 458 Italia is as easy as popping into WH Smith and buying one of those supercar trackday experience packages. If, like me, it’s the older treasures you’re into, there are plenty of firms out there who’ll happily lend you a classic – I am, for instance, looking into one at the moment who’ll lend my dad a Triumph TR6.

Whatever you do, if you do have a car that was on your bedroom wall when you were a kid, don’t leave it gathering your dust on that bucket list you haven’t started yet. Go out, do it, and enjoy it.

Sadly, if it was Farrah Fawcett or Diana Rigg on your bedroom wall, I can’t help you – that’s a very different column for a very different publication!

The best BMW for BMWness is the...

ENJOYED a brief but brilliant bit of petrolhead bonding the other day.

Heading home over the M62 I got overtaken by a chap in an E30 BMW M3 and – as a sort of way of doffing my automotive cap – I gave him the thumbs up. He looked back, gave me a knowing glance, and gave me the thumbs up in return. It was a fleeting moment of automotive anorakness between two guys who’ve never met – we both know the E30 M3 is a truly brilliant bit of kit.

My M3-driving mate will doubtless know something else - that all BMWs worth their salt have an inherent goodness. It’s an emphasis on driving enjoyment, build quality and somehow feeling very firm and focused, even though it costs a little more than normal to achieve it – let’s call it BMWness. His massively expensive Eighties touring car for the road might represent BMWness in its most concentrated form, but everything from a brand new 760Li to a tatty secondhand Z3 has it to some degree or other.

I went looking for it on the couple of occasions I’ve borrowed an X1 – the smallest of the German giant’s quartet of sporty off-roaders – and found it weirdly wanting on the BMWness front. It’s roomy, quiet and relaxing to drive on a long run, but this X-badged car just didn’t seem to have the BMW X factor, and always seemed to feel a bit dimwitted in the situations other BMWs – including its bigger brother, the X3 – revel in. M3 Man would have hated it.

Happily, you don’t have to go far if you’re hunting for BMWness – in fact, you’ll only have to wander a couple of feet across the varnished glimmer of your nearest BMW showroom. For roughly the same sort of money as the X1, you can have a 3-series with the same 2.0-litre diesel engine as the one I’ve been trying. Yes, I know that BMW isn’t importing the four-wheel-drive 3-series you can get on the continent and that the X1’s a tad more practical, but unless you live up a farm track I’d honestly go for the smaller saloon (or its Touring-badged estate sibling).

The 3-series is a proper BMW, and whether you go for the powdered milk world of the entry-level 316 or the full fat Cravendale world of the modern day M3 you’ll still get that inherent BMWness every time you go for a drive. It does all the things you’d expect a modern day family saloon to do, but there’s something about its informative steering, the attention to detail with the build quality and the way the tyres, the suspension and the traction control team up in every corner that lets you know someone in Munich has given this car some real thought. It even looks good too, in a snouty, aggressive sort of way.

The 3-series is really very good indeed. No wonder it’s the company’s biggest-selling model.

Happy birthday, Classic Car Weekly

THIS week marks 25 years since Classic Car Weekly was launched - and I've been involved in helping to create the 104-page anniversary issue, which hits the shops today.

It's weird to think that I hadn't even started at primary school when the first issue - the one you see above - went on sale, so it's very much a newspaper which I've grown up with. As part of the issue I've finally been chucked the keys to my favourite car of all time - but that's another story for another day - along with taking my MGB GT on an adventure in North Wales and dissecting why the Mazda MX-5 is such a great small sports car. I should know - I've owned two!

It's been a couple of weeks since the 100th issue of Classic Car Weekly I've worked on went to press, and more than two years after I joined it's still a huge privilege to be working on it, despite some of the anecdotes I've picked up along the way. Anecdotes that include mending a leaking MX-5 with condoms, breaking down during rush hour in an E-type, accidentally attempting to mow down a Belgian motorcyclist with an Austin Allegro and upsetting the makers of Hollyoaks.

Not all at the same time, you'll be pleased to note!

The 25th anniversary issue of Classic Car Weekly is in the shops now

In praise of proper, traditional car shows

WE LIVE in troubled times, if the seemingly constant threats of Greek financial meltdown, terrorist attacks and Katie Hopkins turning to Twitter are anything to go by. That’s why I’m glad there’s usually a car show somewhere nearby to escape the mayhem!

Regular readers will already know I’m a bit of a car show junkie – whether it’s a breakfast meet at a pub down the road or a continental juggernaut of a show like the huge indoor shows at Paris or Essen, I’ll happily wear my shoes out wandering around. Car shows are a petrolhead staple and they come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, but the ones I enjoy most of all are the ones are the quintessentially British ones where sea of Triumph Spitfires and MG Midgets is broken only by the burger bars and the fairground rides.

That’s probably why I thoroughly enjoyed wandering around the Riverside Steam and Vintage Rally, a stone’s throw from Tarleton, the other day.

Not only is it all for a good cause – since the event’s inception in 2009, it’s raised more than £200,000 for charities right here in the North West – but it’s also refreshing to look around a show that’s down-to-Earth, free of gimmicks and affordable to enter.

The cars, with the notable exception of a Land Rover Series III formerly owned by Fred Dibnah, aren’t the real stars of the show - that honour goes to all the lovingly maintained steam traction engines and William Hunter’s hugely impressive collection of classic trucks.

However, once you’ve finished looking at all the trucks, buses, tractors and motorcycles the show there are more than enough old cars to keep anyone entertained, and I actually enjoyed the fact there wasn’t a single Lamborghini Miura or Aston Martin DB4 within a ten-mile radius. Nope, it was just yard after yard of nostalgia for the sort of cars you’d have actually seen on the nation’s roads a couple of generations ago – Cortinas, Cambridges, Heralds, and so on. Wonderful!

It’s this sort of thoroughly old school approach to car shows I never get bored of, and why I hope Riverside keeps on raising the charity cash like this for years to come. The good news if you love these old cars is that the show season’s just kicking off and there’s plenty more of this sort of thing on the way – keep an eye out for the Hundred End, Lydiate, and Tatton Park shows for more of this unashamed nostalgia.

See you there!

Read a full review of the Riverside Steam and Vintage Rally in tomorrow's issue of Classic Car Weekly