To all the cars we’ve loved before…

During a drive back from Cambridge a few days ago I had an idea.

There seemed to be a disproportionate amount of broken down cars strewn along the A14, leading me to do that mental ‘there but for the grace of Bosch go I’ thing in the hope that it’d prevent me from joining them. Not all of these were the usual 15 year old econoboxes either – a new Jaguar XF seemed to have succumbed to an attack of the vapours in solidarity with its cheaper four wheeled brethren. This situation connected with the knowledge that I had a fresh copy of Octane magazine sitting at home waiting to be read, and left me with the sense of a gap when it comes to life experiences with everyday cars.

It’s easy to find beautifully penned missives about the latest metal on the market, coming from the perspective of a factory fresh loan for the week. We’re also well catered for when it comes to the classics, with plenty of lovingly detailed roadtrips in prime examples of top-flight auction candidates. What about the rest of us though? Where’s our voice? Who speaks out for the bangers, the stopgaps, and the ‘cherished but crap’ cohort?

What if we were to collaborate on a blog that trod the middle ground? I’m thinking in terms of a series of contributions that treat our beloved old nails with the reverence usually reserved for heavenly chariots made of unobtanium and unicorn hooves.  The best they could normally hope for is a point by point lowdown buried twelve pages deep in the dusty archives of a consumer site, and I think they deserve better. What about a few hundred words at a time talking about how it felt to live with a car that, by most measures, most people wouldn’t look twice at? That old Citroen might have been a nail, but it was your nail and you cared for it even though it didn’t show you any loyalty in return.

Stories of real cars in the real world, told lovingly by real people? How about it?

Labouring in overdrive

This post is going to be about Top Gear, just to warn you in advance. If you’re one of the many people offended by anything the lads have said recently then don’t expect more ammo from my direction; you’ll have to scour the headlines for something else to upset you… preferably something you had no prior knowledge of, and therefore emotional investment in. That’ll let you get good and angry with no consequences, you’ll like that.

Pub Wisdom

I’d like to talk about suspension.

…..

Ok, so everyone still here has some interest in engineering, good. I suspect the people who just ran for it might well end up as the subject of this post. We’ll see.

Green grow the rushes…. oh…

I usually stay clear of environmental discussions because I tend to find evangelism irritating. I’ve come to the conclusion that even though the environment and environmentalists differ because the environment is frequently attractive, exciting and smells earthy by nature, you still wouldn’t really want to get either on your hands. Keeping some distance is best.

‘Music hath charms to soothe a savage boost..’

One of the old chestnuts of motoring journalism is the ‘best driving song’ debate, which usually ends up being a hoary old rock ‘classic’ from an album that probably has a skull and/or a rose on the cover. I always avoid this discussion, partly because I find it impossible to pick a favourite song from the realms of recorded music, but also because I’m more interested in types of driving music and the effect they have.

I’m a multi-instrumentalist,  and have always believed that musicians should have very diverse musical tastes in order to avoid falling into predictable ruts. You don’t have to necessarily like everything, but just be prepared to listen and see what you can learn. Consequently I have a large and varied collection of music and so I’m able to switch between hugely differing soundtracks on my daily commute. The typical process involves grabbing the autochanger caddy and then spending 15 minutes umm-ing and ahh-ing over the CD racks until I have six discs ready to go. These will typically fall into compatible genres unless I’m trying out new albums, so are a perfect basis for an experiment.

The delicate sound of inefficiency.

I realised yesterday that my car doesn’t sound particularly great.

That’s not to say it doesn’t sound good, because it does – it’s not particularly characterful but it does have a rough edged rumbly charm, coupled with a pleasant turbocharged descant when you give it the beans. It’s just that you wouldn’t be able to pick it blindfolded from a lineup, which is perhaps to be expected with the proliferation of shared platform engineering from which this particular car sprang. It’s basically a functional four-pot with a party trick, and that’s fine.  This set me thinking about the truly great engine sounds from history, and it occurred to me that they were all flawed in a very specific way.

Bashing the boondocks

I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with off-road vehicles.

Mud plugging monsters such as the Unimog, the Viking and anything by Oshkosh are cool because they’re so brutal and single minded, but the more road going variety seem to be conspicuously out-of-place – more so as they adopt a widening range of shiny trinkets. There’s one vehicle that until recently seemed to buck this trend, and that’s the humble Land Rover Defender. It may be ugly and extremely spartan inside but it has character and grit and that’s something I always appreciate.

As as result I was extremely happy to be given the chance to take one of these beasties off road at All Terrain Services‘ training centre in Rutland. This is a custom made facility sharing land with a golf club in this tiny county to the east of Leicestershire, catering for fun stuff as well as more serious driver training. Even the approach along a very broken driveway suggests that one is not in for a gentle ride – something the assorted golfists would doubtless find amusing, although their choice of apparel always led me to question their sense of humour anyway, but I digress.

A directionless waffle on the topic of automotive sustainability

Following a few pieces of work I’ve had done on my car recently, I’ve been thinking a bit about the subject of the ease of maintenance of modern cars.. and not just in the ‘everything’s covered in plastic and computerised’ sense.

I remember a couple of years ago, helping a friend to change a blown main beam bulb in his car and having an absolute pig of a time. You couldn’t possibly get your hand in there because of a series of important hoses, so the only answer seemed to be to take the entire light unit out.. only you couldn’t easily do that either because the lower screws were obcured by the aforementioned hoses and part of the wiring loom. If you did manage to get the light out you’d realise it would be completely out of alignment when you put it back in because it used the mounting screws to adjust the aim. I remember a similar feature on a TV show where an AA man was called in to change the bulb on a particular Megane and took almost three quarters of an hour to do it. You could take it back to the garage, but then you’d be paying the garage labour rate and that’ll turn out to be a very expensive bulb change.

Tyres – a cautionary tale

Seems like a while since I’ve been here, so it’s unfortunate that on my return I have to be the bearer of grumpy tidings. This time, it’s all about tyres.. or specifically about tyres you should avoid.

When I picked up the Octavia RS at the top of the page I was pleased to see that the back tyres were nearly new, the spare was just as good and the front tyres only had a couple of hundred miles on them. Decent tyres for this thing run at about a hundred quid per corner so it’s not an expense you want on top of the purchase. The tyres fitted to the front were a brand and model I hadn’t heard of before – Nankang NS-2 – although I was informed that they’re made by Yokohama. They certainly appeared to have a performance oriented tread pattern and seemed impressively grippy on the trip home.

Rat, or Rubbish?

Just a very brief post based on something I saw on the road earlier today.

This is a rat rod..

This is NOT a rat rod..

You can’t pick ‘n’ mix cool. Now stop being silly.