Some car parts you just can't replace

IF you or I lost a car component, we'd simply pop down to Partco or Halfords and order another. But what if your car's more than 70 years old and one of just a few left in the world?

That's the conumdrum one classic car owner in West Lancashire is facing, and he's called for help in finding a petrol tank cap - because it's unlikely he'll ever come across another one like it.

Geoff Murray said that his 1936 Hillman Hawk is one of only seven known to exist worldwide and he lost its petrol cap after pulling in for fuel in Lathom.

Geoff, of Brooklands Grove, Lathom, said:

“With modern cars, the filler cap's usually fixed to the car so you can't leave it by mistake, but with older cars you often have to take them off to fill up. I left it by the petrol pump and drove off.”

“I went back and it wasn't there, so someone may have just picked it up. It's useless to anyone else but for me me it's virtually impossible to replace.”

Mr Murray's Hillman was one of just 300 made by the British company in 1936, and his Open Tourer version is the only one known to exist. He bought the car in August last year and finished off a restoration which its previous owner had begun more than 20 years earlier.

The cap was left at the BP petrol station, on Briars Lane in Lathom, shortly after the car had passed its MOT on Friday, April 1.

The car was still a star attraction at the Riverside Steam Rally, held in Holmeswood last weekend, where many West Lancashire residents visiting the show saw the 75-year-old car.

The classic chrome cap has been replaced with a plastic one, hopefully as a temporary measure. He is appealing for anyone who may have picked up the original cap to get in touch via The Champion.

Let us know by calling 01704 392400 or by sending an email to david.simister@champnews.com

Lost in Yorkshire: Part Two

TECHNICALLY speaking it was a weekend wasted. What I learned was something I already knew: that the best road in Britain is the Buttertubs Pass.

Not that it wasn't fun finding out on the latest in a series of adventures in the Great British Countryside, set this time largely to a soundtrack of squealing tyres and a walkie talkie Sello-taped to the steering wheel. I'm happy to report that none of us, despite my best efforts in the pretty Lancashire village of Dunsop Bridge, got lost. However, I did learn the following:

1) Never do a half-arsed job when checking your car before you leave. This was why I did the entire run in a Rover with one of its brake lights broken and a distinctly unglamorous steel wheel on one corner (I'd forgotten the tyre on the original alloy was knackered). We also had a Mini which permanently needed oil. We got them sorted, but they were still schoolboy errors.

2) Do not stop for lunch at The Anchor Inn, just outside Gargrave on the A65. After waiting more than 25 minutes for fairly simple pub grub, one of our party was served a ham and cheese sandwich which was stone cold on one side and incinerated on the other. He sent it back and was promptly served a second sandwich, which was full of hair. Not nice.

3) By all means do stop for lunch at The Bolton Arms, in the picturesque village of Leyburn. Not only does the beer garden offer a stunning view of the Yorkshire Dales, but the staff are lovely and accomodating and the food is top notch. Thoroughly recommended!

4) If you're taking a party of 12 petrolheads, plan everything with military precision. Otherwise you'll end up stuck in York city centre on a sticky Saturday evening surrounded by refugees from bad hen night parties, wondering why it seems to take an eternity to get a taxi. A particularly poignant lesson if, like me, you're a bit knackered after six hours of solid motoring and fancy a pint on your evening out.

5) The Travelodge in Tadcaster is not as bad as the reviews make it out. After not enjoying the idea of youth hostelling on our previous adventure to Wales, some of our group weren't excited by the idea of cheap-as-chips hotels. But it was nice. No, really, it was.

6) I know a worrying amount about trains, as I found out on our group outing to the National Railway Museum. I'll happily admit to knowing a lot about cars, but should I be able to tell you the High Speed Train is a Class 43 diesel loco hauling a rake of British Rail MK3 carriages? Probably not. I'm sorry.



7) Classic car shows which get organised in York city centre which you didn't know were taking place are well worth the visit, as some of the pictures here show.

Most importantly, it proves that weekends away with your mates are still really good fun. That's why I'm looking forward to the next one.

The clue for cool car names comes from an unexpected source

“SOME of these eco cars have got awful names, haven't they?”

That was what one our subeditors at The Champion asked me after reading a short piece in last week's edition on the Ford Focus Econetic, the greener, leaner version of the Blue Oval's new big hitter. To be honest, I couldn't agree more.

Check out the news pages of any car magazine these days and chances are you'll be washed away by a stream of BlueMotions, Ecoflexes and Econetics, and that's before you come to electric cars with wet, boring names like Leaf and Zoe.

I've said it before and I'll say it again; the names people come up with for eco-friendly cars - as worthy as the vehicles they end up on might be - are awful.

Don't get me wrong, I don't have it in for electric cars, but their slow sales so far show that most Brits have yet to be convinced, and part of the problem I reckon is the pub scenario of having to tell people what you drive. In the same way I couldn't ever see myself admitting to having a Wind - despite it being a great car, I'll let you make your own jokes up - the chances of me proudly proclaiming ownership of an electric car are slashed significantly if it comes with the wrong name.

So far I've only seen two that actually sound vaguely interesting, but despite having the same source of power in common are actually poles apart. The Chevy Volt sounds like something the star of a dystopian sci-fi film might drive, but my favourite by far is the new battery powered Rolls Royce. Whether you call it by its proper title - Rolls Royce Phantom Electric Experimental - or its 102EX codename, it seems to have a name nicked straight from the world of Cold War comic books and action hero fighter pilots. I couldn't care less what it runs on, because it sounds cool.

Yet it seems the idea of giving racy, evocative names to products more suited to the set of The Good Life isn't anything new, and something else in last week's Champion proves it. Flick back through the classified ads section and you'll see the brilliantly named Ace Rallyman and the Swift Corniche up for sale. Despite conjuring up connotations of power, performance and luxury they're not cars. Or motorbikes. Or speedboats. Nope, you're not even close.

They're caravans.

Lost in Yorkshire: Part One

IT WAS when Cheshire Constabulary's finest pulled up behind me that I realised walkie talkies would have been a good idea.

The idea was to head for the hills of North Wales, which you might have read about back in January, but what I hadn't mentioned was the massive cockup as we crossed the Runcorn Bridge. With our convoy split up in rush hour traffic, two of our team took the right lane and two the wrong one. This how I'd ended up parked on a bridge above the M56 with my hazards on, trying to explain to the local Plod how I was trying to spot a lost Mini Cooper on the motorway, which had only minutes earlier escaped the motoring Bermuda Triangle that is the Runcorn one way system.

Anyone who's ever organised a classic car run of any kind will already know what I learned that stressful day; that getting drivers to form a convoy and stick to it is like trying to herd cats. You can plan a route with military precision and offer up page upon page of pointers and directions, but if you're in a strange and unfamiliar corner of the country it's amazing how quickly a traffic jam, a set of roadworks or a confusing roadsign can right royally knacker things up.

So walkie talkies, at £20 a set plus the cost of some sticky tape, could be the best investment I've ever made.

Okay, so strictly speaking the Binatone Latitude 150 is actually a two-way radio rather than a walkie talkie, but more importantly it's as much a tool as it's a toy, as I'm hoping to find out this weekend on the way to the pretty city of York, on our latest adventure.

Some of my motoring mates are already hard at work, thinking of cheesy callsigns and pranks to play to break up the boredom of a three hour slog through the Dales, but what I'm really looking forward to is people having no excuse to get lost.

Will the entire trip disintegrate into a series of silly practical jokes? Will we end up completely lost in a small village somewhere near Settle? Will the sticky tape holding the walkie talkie last the drive out of Lancashire?

Tune in next week to find out...

When Life On Cars met John Pugh MP

Life On Cars has gone from gearbox to ballot box this week after John Pugh, MP for Southport, agreed to be the latest guest on the radio show.

The Liberal Democrat politician has a passion for classic cars, but where does he stand on today's motoring issues?

Cast your vote by clicking the video above...

The VW Beetle: it's time for another revival

STONEHENGE. The Royal Family. Patrick Moore. All things which, like Volkswagen's reinvented Beetle, have seemingly been around since the dawn of time.

You'd forgotten Volkswagen still makes the Beetle, hadn't you? It arrived, in 1998, amid a fanfare of nostalgia, brouhaha and people poised with their flower stickers, desperate to get a bit of the Sixties back, but this time without the acid trip.

With cute, retro looks melded to a modern Golf chassis, it was brilliant. For about five minutes. Then the new MINI came along and suddenly it was old hat. Yet Volkswagen carried on making it and - with technology that the Golf ditched two generations ago - it's now looking about as sophisticated as the Peoples' Car that inspired it.

The problem with the Beetle is that it's a retro car, which means that it'll only ever be fashionable when the era it's trying to evoke is also in fashion, which meant that it was only ever cool for that brief bit of the Nineties when it was first launched. Remember the Chrysler PT Cruiser? The one that looked like a hot rod? Of course you don't, because once the Fifties novelty wore off everyone realised they could buy a roomier and much more practical Renault Scenic for less. The UK just didn't get it.

The only retro cars which have actually pulled off the trick are the MINI and the Fiat 500, but they've managed by being brilliant beneath the skin, and cars that are cheap, well made and good fun to drive NEVER go out of fashion. That's the challenge Volkswagen have got with their long overdue replacement for the Beetle, because otherwise it'll end up having to wait for the Sixties to get groovy again.

Will Volkswagen get it right this time round? Well, you'll have to wait until April 18 to find out, although getting the Black Eyed Peas, best known for mashing old pop records up with the sound of car alarms going off, to promote it probably isn't the best start.

Although for the record I think the company's reviving the wrong hit from its back catalogue a second time round. Where's the reinvented Volkswagen campervan?

April fool!

HERE'S proof that even the most sensible car companies have a sense of humour - a BMW M3 that's been given the Australian outback treatment!

BMW unveiled this pickup version of the M3 earlier today, presumably as an elaborate April Fool's Joke, as the fourth variant of its V8-powered star, which has already proven a hit with keen drivers as a saloon, coupe and convertible. However, this new version, which is the first ever M3 to come with a tow hitch, looks strangely similar to the small pickups popular in Australia, where they are affectionately referred to as “utes”.

BMW has said that despite its “unquestionable stand-out qualities” it will remain a one-off destined to be used as a workhouse for BMW's M Division, which makes M versions of the 1 Series, 3 Series, and 5 Series.