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Feeling the noise at the Goodwood Festival of Speed
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At some point in the mid-90s, my parents replaced an Electrolux washing machine that was as old as me with a posh new Hoover one. When it was first plugged in and powered on, I couldn’t get over how awesome it sounded. It had a gas turbine whistly whoosh to it, and I was mesmerized.…
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Hyundai Grandeur Concept: Yesterday’s future, today.
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Every website from Attic Insulation Digest to Yak Fondler Weekly has covered the Hyundai Grandeur; the internet is awash with facts and figures about the Korean brand’s latest concept car, so I’m not going to put any here. Frankly, none of that minutiae matters – it’s never going to be series-produced anyway. More important, from…
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Bettering the Rolls: My phantasy Phantom
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Having recently crested the wave of my 39th year on Earth, and having well and truly made it in the sphere of automotive journalism*, I figured that it was time to do the inevitable. Yes, it was time to decide on the right specification for my Rolls Royce Phantom. Press releases from Rolls Royce Motor…
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Car-free road trip: Of Bikes, Books and Beaches
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The flames that Semelovsky ignited to provide a distraction had consumed him, and Baranovitch was laying in a pool of blood, having been shot by a Russian guard. Both had given their lives so that Mitchell Gant, fuelled by equal parts fear and ego, could perform the task that his infiltration of the Bilyarsk compound…
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Volvo: The Font of all knowledge
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You know when you notice something and then suddenly can’t un-see it, and you’ll not rest until you’ve got the answer as to exactly what it was that you thought you saw? No? I have, and it happened when I was sitting at the wheel of a Volvo S60. I’ve driven most of the current…
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The tricky question of adequacy
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On Wednesday, A lapse of journalistic integrity on the part of a prestigious broadsheet newspaper led to a Tweet from the esteemed @TimDavies_UK: Yeah, that’s right. The humble Casio F-91W. Quoth the Wiki: “Introduced in 1989, it is popular for its simplicity, reliability, and unpretentious clean design. As a result, it is still in production…
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UK Scrappage: Save ’em while you can
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A close relative, whose name will be concealed to protect the innocent, was recently the proud owner of a Ford Focus ST170. This was the ‘quite warm’ version of the first-generation Focus, and understudy to the scalding Focus RS. Without the spicy price tag and ‘deep breath’ running costs of the RS, and somewhat more…
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On quacking, swimming and actually being a duck
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I conducted what turned into a bit of a social experiment the other day, using “Twitter”, which is a means of giving those who don’t deserve an opinion a means to broadcast obnoxious viewpoints far and wide. With the world gripped by Mustang fever and people clamouring to praise or condemn the idea of Ford…
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Train of thought: Why Motorail is due a revival
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I quite like cars. Also, despite them being inextricably linked with my daily five-hour round trip to work and back, I quite like trains. The two have never really been happy bedfellows, though. It’s always been trains versus cars, the latter very much gaining the upper hand since the middle of the 20th century, at…
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Ten Years Later: A Longing for Belonging
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What was I doing at this precise moment ten years ago? Well, there’s a strong possibility that I had just finished a very awkward phone call explaining why a customer’s car still isn’t fixed, why we haven’t ordered any parts and why, exactly, we haven’t got a clue what’s wrong with it. It was an…
