Category Archives: Opinion

Opinion

Could retro French headlights remedy a evident subject?

Leave a comment

I’m happy to see the government is to look into the issue of headlight brightness and glare – let’s hope they squint a bit – following a current RAC survey that discovered a lot of drivers thought dazzling was an issue.

There could, although, not be a fast legislative repair. The Department for Transport has already been speaking to a United Nations professional group on car lighting – who knew? – however proposals to introduce automated beam alignment, which might decrease beams as vehicles go over hills and the like, gained’t come into play till 2027.

And even then? Well, I’ve pushed quite a lot of vehicles with probably the most superior ‘intelligent’ lighting on sale, which robotically aligns the beam or limits the areas lit by excessive beam, and nonetheless discovered oncoming drivers flashed me as a result of they have been being dazzled. As in lots of circumstances of legislated know-how, a few of it isn’t as much as the job.

No, what we may do with is an answer, and sharpish. Some vehicles retain a change to decrease the beams in case you’re carrying a load within the again, however it’s an more and more small variety of them. In the overwhelming majority of latest vehicles, there’s not lots you are able to do about your personal glare.

It’s not like you possibly can take aside a £1500 unit with 1200 LEDs, every with the ability of the solar, to exchange the bulbs both.

Fortunately, the French used to have the right resolution, which you’ll bear in mind in the event you took a vacation there earlier than the Nineties since you’ll have needed to decide up a bit pot of yellow paint to daub in your headlights to provide them an acceptable glow.

An article I discovered means that transferring from white gentle onto a extra yellowy a part of the spectrum has an extended wavelength, which is sort of good for seeing it, and it displays much less off of water.

But additionally, conveniently, that daubing your headlights with a bit yellow pot of paint would, naturally, scale back the brightness as certain as letting them grow to be ever extra filthy. Limited analysis means that as long as each side of the automobile have an identical hue, MOT testers would give it a nod.

Now, I haven’t absolutely investigated the scientific rigour of this characteristic and given it may imply new Alpine A110s operating round in French blue and with yellow headlights, and that after each third automobile wash we’ll be refreshing the yellow tint to make it really feel like setting off on a Eighties driving vacation, I’m not about to. But past the jokes, may there not be one thing in it?

Opinion

Editor’s letter: Lotus is eventually being given the possibility to thrive

Leave a comment

Trips to go to Lotus in Hethel, Norfolk for a lot of the 2010s adopted a really comparable format.

There’d be an opportunity to drive the most recent variant of the Elise or Exige with just a few additional kilograms taken out of them, adopted by a chat with the administration of how higher occasions have been forward.

It was admirable the corporate saved going for thus lengthy in that interval after the chaos left behind by Dany Bahar who, no matter you consider his plans to develop the model and launch new mannequin strains, made the essential mistake of trashing the automobiles that wanted to be bought within the meantime. 

Opinion

How to clamp down on roadside garbage

Leave a comment

There was a superb column in The Times just lately in regards to the state of Britain’s roadsides, which ceaselessly are liberally strewn with litter.

It recommended that we get critical about cleansing it up. Any marketing campaign to get that performed would obtain my assist, too. But I do not know that we must always really feel fairly a lot disgrace about litter’s existence as we typically do. I wager that, fly-tipping apart, most of it will get there by chance.

I am unable to place a bin bag exterior my entrance door late at night time to hold it to the wheelie bin on the finish of the lane within the morning as a result of by then a rat or a crow may have taken just a few chunks out of the bag and the whole lot inside may have began blowing across the backyard.

And there is a lay-by down the highway from me the place I usually see black luggage left poking from the highest of the wheelie bins. I’m positive the intent is sweet, however it’s not more likely to finish effectively, provided that Britain is a windy island within the North Atlantic with loads of scavenging wildlife.

Similar bin-cramming occurs on the town centres; stuff is positioned close to the highest of these bins which have a gap on each side, creating the proper wind tunnel for sucking light-weight garbage precariously positioned in them.

So by all means let’s get Britain’s roads tidy once more, however on the similar time let’s make a plan to stop it going flawed once more.

Often it is thoughtlessness over malice. So let’s have extra bins, higher designed, extra ceaselessly emptied and with large indicators about not overfilling them. And make native amenity suggestions free once more, too.

Opinion

Why Chapman Bespoke is true for the occasions

Leave a comment

Last week, Lotus introduced a brand new programme known as Chapman Bespoke. It guarantees to supply higher personalisation and distinctive choices, proper as much as the manufacturing of one-off automobiles, in your Lotus.

What would Colin Chapman, Lotus’s founder, after whom the scheme is called and whose signature adorns its badge, have thought?

No thought. Never met the bloke. One of my least favorite phrases in motoring hackery is “so and so (company founder] would have approved”.

It’s often proclaimed definitively on the finish of an article to point out {that a} automotive is a real thoroughbred and that it is match to put on the title.

But truthfully, how are we to know what WO Bentley or Charles Rolls of Rolls-Royce would significantly have thought concerning the automobiles that come out of their firm’s respective factories right now?

Big cliché. Silly phrase. I’ve vowed by no means to make use of it so, apart from the events the place I most likely have already got, by no means will.

Anyway, famously, Chapman stated issues about simplifying automobiles and including lightness, which is definitely one thing he did on automobiles made for and derived from racing, just like the Lotus (now Caterham) 7, which was a path adopted by the Lotus Elise after his dying.

And on condition that he sketched out his first automobiles by hand and constructed them a lot the identical method, Lotus thinks he would have been into this Bespoke thought. Chapman was additionally partial, like most entrepreneurs, to creating a couple of quid.

Allowing any individual to color their Lotus the identical color as their favorite nail polish and ending the inside with gazelle disguise in the event that they’re ready to pay handsomely for the privilege (Bentley makes a median of £34,000 per automotive from its Mulliner programme) sounds just like the kind of factor that he may need been completely high-quality with too.

Opinion

Why UK velocity limits are complicated for pick-up drivers

Well, it is a little embarrassing. 

When I beforehand urged that each one drivers needs to be frequently reminded of their duties on the street, reader Phil Townsend wrote to recommend that I ought to not be overtaking vehicles doing 60mph on twin carriageways in my Ford Ranger Raptor as a result of its velocity restrict can be 60mph on such roads, owing to it being a light-weight business automobile.

Light business automobiles – vans and so forth – have totally different velocity limits to vehicles, as it’s possible you’ll know, and certainly as I knew. They’re the identical as vehicles for velocity limits as much as 50mph, however as for nationwide velocity restrict roads, they’re restricted to 50mph on single carriageways (not 60mph), 60mph on twin carriageways (not 70mph) after which revert to 70mph on motorways.

There are exceptions to this rule. Car-derived vans, such because the Toyota Corolla Commercial that can be at the moment on the Autocar fleet, have the identical velocity limits as vehicles. So do double-cab pick-up vans, that are classed as dual-purpose automobiles.

I don’t have the Raptor’s V5C doc, however I knew that’s what it was. Except it wasn’t. Because right here’s the factor: dual-purpose automobiles are solely such if their unladen weight is lower than 2040kg, and the Raptor’s weight of 2454kg is considerably over that.

I have to undergo the spec sheets for all the UK’s present double-cab pick-ups, as a result of I believe that not many are beneath that restrict.

On this level, it doesn’t matter that HMRC doesn’t deal with the Raptor as a van, owing to its sub-1000kg payload.

To qualify as a car-derived van, a automobile should weigh lower than 2000kg when totally loaded. So whereas the Corolla Commercial complies, the Land Rover Defender Commercial doesn’t.

Also, the velocity restrict rule for car-derived vans works just for vans spawned from vehicles, moderately than vans which have spawned passenger variations.

So the Corolla Commercial has automotive velocity limits however the Citroën Berlingo continues to be outlined as a van and due to this fact topic to decrease velocity limits (though I learn that later variants may need ‘car-derived van’ on their V5Cs, and this isn’t one thing that applies to the passenger variants anyway, so don’t fret concerning the 10mph you probably have a kind of).

This can all be fairly complicated, I believe, and is actually model-specific: Isuzu D-Maxes can qualify as dual-purpose automobiles, extra road-focused pick-ups won’t and no single-cab pick-up is allowed to.

Opinion

Finally: new security guidelines recognise that buttons beat touchscreens

To my aid, it appears like the reply to the query “is it just me?” isn’t any.

Too many automobiles in current instances have had me despairing on the variety of controls which have migrated away from bodily buttons and onto touchscreens.

In some circumstances that is barely annoying; in others I imagine it’s borderline harmful. Now the influential automotive security ranking organisation Euro NCAP has determined that, from 2026, it’ll award five-star rankings solely to automobiles that retain bodily controls for key options.

To qualify, a automotive will need to have buttons, stalks or dials for its indicators, windscreen wipers, hazard warning lights, horn and SOS perform. This record of things is welcome however not as exhaustive as I would really like.

You must be some form of psychopath to not need these controls instantly accessible the place they all the time are, wouldn’t you?

Given that only some automotive makers have moved any wiper exercise from bodily controls and, to my data, solely Tesla has made the baffling and idiotic resolution to place indicators on clean, unfeelable and shifting buttons (on a steering-wheel spoke within the newest Tesla Model 3), this resolution ought to forestall extra mission creep however largely units the bounds at the place we are actually.

I would like Euro NCAP to ask that issues which can be changing into widespread be undone.

The Volvo EX30, for instance, which final 12 months drove me to distraction by having no bodily controls for its door mirrors, wiper sensitivity, local weather management (excluding a roof-mounted and never feelably delineated demister button), lights (together with the foglight) or driver help techniques, nor a rapidly turnable/pushable quantity management, may nonetheless qualify for 5 Euro NCAP stars. I needed to burn it.

Opinion

The authorities is making its personal EV goal unattainable to hit

As anticipated, there was no monetary assist to incentivise the uptake of electric cars within the chancellor’s budget this week. And with a basic election now being tipped for as early as May, it’s extraordinarily unlikely that any assist will likely be forthcoming this facet of autumn – if ever. 

Several automotive makers have reacted furiously, the underlying sentiment being that EVs have been pushed to patrons at a set share whether or not they need them or not and automotive makers are those on the hook in the event that they don’t attain that threshold.

As a reminder, the UK must get EVs to 22% of automotive gross sales this 12 months however has been stalled at 16% for a number of months now.

Opinion

Should UK motorists must take driving licence refresher programs?

On the entire, I don’t like telling folks what to do. Where governments have a transparent selection about whether or not to intervene in folks’s lives or not, I often assume they shouldn’t.

Overreach is tiresome and we’ll most likely get alongside simply high-quality with out it, so until it’s actually apparent that one thing wants intervention, governments ought to simply facilitate what we moderately wish to do and in any other case go away us alone. I suppose I don’t belief ‘them’ to not mess issues up.

I’ve at all times felt this fashion about driving. Yes, maybe it’s daft that you would be able to go a driving take a look at at 17 and barely take into consideration your licence once more till your grandchildren discover that you simply hold nerfing the storage door and within the meantime you’ll be able to choose a automobile off the shelf that weighs 2.2 tonnes and goes from 0-60mph in 2.0sec with none further coaching.

But regardless of that, the UK nonetheless has the fifth-safest roads on the planet, narrowly behind Japan and solely marginally bettered by Norway, Sweden and Iceland, so we have to be doing all proper. Leave it alone.

Then I took three lengthy and completely depressing drives final week. It was half-term, which by no means helps requirements, however nonetheless, on a Friday night and over a weekend, I’ve by no means been so irritated by the quantity of dismal lane decisions, poor pace decisions, hopeless signalling and clear distraction.

After that, I used to be pushed round by, effectively, let’s name him a household pal to maintain him nameless. He drives quite a bit, but it surely has been a long time since his final instruction. At six roundabouts, he didn’t handle to as soon as sign accurately, and he usually drove on the similar pace whether or not on an A-road or on the town – too sluggish on one, too quick within the different.

And the extra I take note of it, the more severe I feel our driving requirements are getting.

Bad driving, notably in the case of selecting lanes on motorways, is an epidemic. We’re a nation of ditherers and dimwits who assume that as long as we don’t get nabbed by pace cameras, we have to be doing issues proper. We’re not.

In a automobile, negotiating traces of vehicles steadfastly refusing to depart the center lane and signalling appallingly at roundabouts is irritating. If you’re making an attempt to drive a lorry amongst these folks, it have to be infuriating to the purpose of self-combustion.

And so, with a heavy coronary heart, I feel life could be improved by… ugh… intervention. A scheme. A coverage. Interference. I’m not suggesting that we should always all must take one other full driving take a look at, however I do assume some sort of necessary replace or refresher coaching to remind drivers of their obligations could be useful.

Opinion

Will cellphone funds make automotive park machines out of date?

Autocar analysis has discovered that 83% of motorists would like to make use of money or contactless fee machines in automotive parks over smartphone apps.

Feedback revealed that individuals don’t love having to obtain so many apps (there are greater than 30 throughout the UK), fear about on-line fraud and fear that the apps are too advanced.

Dennis Reed, director of marketing campaign group Silver Voices, known as the abandonment of pay-and-display machines “blatant ageism”. I’m with him.

I reckon there’s extra to individuals’s dissatisfaction with on-line fee than complexity or fraud, too. It’s not that we won’t use these items – it is that we do not need to. I feel that individuals have had sufficient of the mission creep of surveillance and knowledge gathering and that there is a concern not of fraud however of poor ways from parking suppliers.

Last yr, I wrote twice about my household’s parking travails. One relative drove into a carpark, tried to get the net fee to work, could not and acquired hit with a £100 high-quality for spending 5 minutes making an attempt to take action. Another paid for the unsuitable automotive park in his city on an app (there are two) so was fined. Both appealed efficiently.

All of that is administrated by numberplate-recognition cameras and a pc that prints and sends nasty letters to unsuspecting drivers, who then should undergo a worrying, time-consuming and unsure system of attraction. If both of these automotive parks had a fee machine, neither of those dramas would have occurred.

I’m not one for reminiscences. But within the outdated days, you paid your money, you bought a coupon to point out you’d rented your area and that was the top of it. The authorities is promising to ‘streamline’ the app system. It needs to be insisting there is a fee machine at each automotive park.

Opinion

Matt Prior: Not all vehicles have been higher “back in the day”

There’s an pleasant story which our sibling title Classic & Sports Car coated a couple of TVR Griffith, an MG RV8 and a Marcos Mantara.

Or not less than it’s a narrative that I used to be having fun with, proper as much as the purpose once I remembered that I had learn a bunch take a look at of these three vehicles (together with a Morgan Plus 8 and a Ginetta G33) once they have been new, which was 1993 however looks like about three weeks in the past. And sure, in fact I’ve bored a number of workplace colleagues about this.

Perhaps this will probably be no shock to you, however more and more I perceive what individuals older than me say about nonetheless feeling younger: there’s no considerable distinction between the nub of me now and the one from 30 years in the past, besides I rise up earlier, like extra cheeses and trim my nostril hair extra often. Otherwise, identical fool, totally different day. I nonetheless like Griffiths.

I point out this as a result of the automobile market of right now is kind of totally different from the one of many mid-Nineteen Nineties, and Autocar’s inbox is broadly evenly cut up between individuals who assume that trendy vehicles have gotten ever extra dismal and individuals who assume the world ever improves.

I suppose it has at all times been this fashion. I imply, these once-annoying millennials are actually bitching about having to handle zoomers. But electrification particularly has amplified the response and the noise round vehicles.

Largely, I’m of the considering that issues ever get higher. I feel there have been sure peaks within the mid-2010s that haven’t been equalled since; current misfiring driver help methods have made me need to burn extra vehicles than ever; and all the UK’s electrical energy salesmen mixed received’t persuade me that an electric car is the appropriate alternative for everyone.