A motoring idea you'll warm to in this winter weather

HERE'S an idea you'll warm to. Why don't we fit cars with proper boilers and thermostats?

T'was a cold and frosty morning when the thought struck me. Faced with needing to take a car rather than the bus into work, I unlocked the garage and started up a stone cold Mazda MX-5 which immediately fogged up the moment I dared to exhale breath while sat inside. I was one of the lucky ones; elsewhere, the good people of Southport were scraping the ice of their windscreens.

Here's the rub. Almost every car I've driven on a cold morning, even shiny brand new ones, still require the efforts of some cheap de-icer before you can set off, and then a good few minutes before the icy chill of winter leaves the interior. Nor can you do the old trick of warming the car up while you sit indoors with a cuppa - not only is it illegal, but you might as well stick a sign on your pride ‘n' joy with “STEAL ME” writ large all over it.

With the exception of a wonderful January weekend in Wales, when I donned gloves and a woolly hat so I could enjoy the crisp mountain air in the MX-5 with the roof down, driving first thing in the morning at this time of year is no fun. Unless of course, you run a recently-made Range Rover. A car which comes with a little gas heater and a time-adjustable thermostat, just like your house does.

In the same way I've always wondered why houses aren't fitted with electric windows, it perplexes me why proper thermostats which you can preset to come on when you want - which have been around for ages - don't come as standard on more cars. If you know you're going to setting off at eight every morning, wouldn't it be great to preset a proper heating system to come on fifteen minutes earlier, so your pride and joy is all toasty once you step inside and the engine isn't having to cough into life at minus four?

Don't get me wrong - there's all sorts of aftermarket preheating systems you can fit to your motor - but I'm just amazed the car industry at large didn't cotton onto the whole winter-is-cold thing years ago.

It's one motoring gadget you wouldn't give a frosty reception.

Fire up the... Kia Sportage

THIS is where the smart money in motoring goes. The hard-earned you used to blow on family hatchbacks now goes on trendy, pint-sized off roaders.

It's why the Nissan Qashqai's such a big seller and the Skoda Yeti earns its plaudits; they might not have the mountain climbing ability of a more hardcore 4x4 but they offer their rugged image with the load-lugging practicality of an estate car and friendly hatchback handling in the same package.

Kia's offering in this keenly-contested territory, the Sportage, has one thing immediately in its favour - that it's such a cleanly styled car. To my mind, the company's stylists have been little too liberal with the chrome detailing, meaning it looks more at home on Sunset Boulevard than Lord Street, but not one of the Sportage's onlookers thought it was anything other than a handsome bit of kit. Whip the badges off this thing and you'd swear it was an Audi or Mercedes off roader.

But what isn't at all Mercedes about is the price. True, the 2.0 CRDi 4X4 version I tested was a £22,000 car but this was the range-topper with all the bells and whistles; you can, if you're happy to settle for the 1.6 GDI version, get the Sportage's looks and faintly ridiculous amounts of head and legroom for nearer £17,000. More importantly, it doesn't feel like a cheap car, with the same attention to interior detail which impressed in the Hyundai i30 being used to good effect here. It's also a smooth, refined sort of drive, and while you're never going to get the fluidity of a lower, lighter Focus or Megane if you really thrash it into a corner, the torquey nature of the 2.0 litre diesel in particular makes it perfect for towing caravans in particular.

The Sportage is one of the best entries in a hard-fought corner of the car marketplace. To my mind, only the Skoda Yeti offers a more polished package, but then the Kia pulls out its trump card - a seven year warranty to the Skoda's three.

Your call...

Woodvale Rally organisers bid to bring 2013 event back to RAF base

By Natasha Young, The Southport Champion

ORGANISERS of the Woodvale Rally are hopeful that it can return to its RAF airfield home next year, amid fears that having to find a new location could spell the end for the event.

Earlier this year the annual two-day festival of aircraft and motoring displays and demonstrations, as well as camping and family attractions, was forced to make a last minute move to Southport’s Victoria Park after asbestos was discovered at the RAF Woodvale site.

The 2011 Woodvale Rally at its traditional home at RAF Woodvale

As the dates for the August event were moved back to July, and the new venue meant that some of the attractions such as flying displays could no longer take place or had to be scaled back, the team behind the rally remained determined to put on a good show.

However, the event brought a financial blow for organisers as it only took around a third of its usual takings on the gate, and the loss of some popular attractions is thought to have put some regular visitors off.
Rally manager Peter Wood has now confirmed to the Champion that they are waiting for a report to by the Ministry of Defence to arrive any day, which will determine whether or not asbestos-hit RAF Woodvale is now safe to be used for such an event.

If the report, which is being put together after Southport MP John Pugh raised the issue in parliament, confirms the airfield is safe, Mr Wood said they will aim to take the rally back to the site.

"The thing is the who event is built around RAF Woodvale, and we need a runway," said Mr Wood.

"We hope we can go back because if we can’t get back it could be the end of the Woodvale Rally."

The 2012 Woodvale Rally at Victoria Park in Southport 

Since this summer’s Victoria Park event, Mr Wood said other locations such as Leisure Lakes and the Riverside Caravan Park have been considered for 2013, when the rally will be in its 42nd year, however organisers are keen to maintain the character and all the popular features of the event.

He added: "The only other site we could use is Leisure Lakes , but it’s not the same and it wouldn’t be the Woodvale Rally.

"Victoria Park was a nice site but the problem was we couldn’t have the model aircraft so people didn’t go."

As the organisers continue to secure the future of the Woodvale Rally, they are still getting preparations underway for a 2013 show by booking stalls and attractions.

"We’ve got to keep the ball rolling in the hope we can get Woodvale," said Mr Wood.

"People have been coming to the event from all over for 40 years. They love it."

Protecting youngsters is just the start for Ford's MyKey system

A SAFETY feature fitted to Fords in the States will be arriving from across the Atlantic next month in a bid to prevent younger drivers being involved in accidents.

The MyKey system, which will be fitted as standard on most models in the Fiesta range from next month, allows parents to alter the car's settings to make it safer when their children borrow it, and includes the option to restrict the top speed, to limit how loud the stereo system is, or to disable the audio altogether if seatbelts aren't being used.

I reckon, however, that MyKey could be used for all sorts of things beyond merely protecting youngsters from themselves. Here’s some of my own suggestions for extending the system:

Parent Mode: As per the normal MyKey system, but with an additional, disabled set of pedals in the passenger footwell for those moments when you never know whether your loved one is going to brake or not.

Audi Mode: Uses a form of radar-guided cruise control to automatically reduce all motorway following gaps to three feet. Minimum speed set to 90mph.

Tiff Mode: Switches all traction control systems off.

Gangster Lean Mode: Automatically maximises driver’s seat recline and darkens the windows. Maximum speed reduced to 8mph. Stereo preset to loudest volume.

Alfa Mode: Redirects all electronics so as to be operable by the passenger window switch alone.

Hire Car Mode: Doubles maximum speed, rev limit and optimum cornering speed. Only available on fleet cars sold to Avis, Hertz, etc.

Bond Mode: Activates the machine guns and nail dispensers

Roger Moore Mode: As per the Bond Mode, but with added eyebrows.

IKEA mode: Quadruples boot space.

TVR Mode: Automatically blanks off every interior button and reorganises them in an order completely incomprehensible to all human beings. Except, perhaps, TVR owners.

Feel free to add your own suggestions…

It might be a van with windows, but I'm a convert

JUST call me Jean-Jaques and pass me a beret. This week, I've fallen for that most French of motoring institutions.

I know that the small-van-with-windows format is offered by all sorts of manufacturers these days - Ford with its Tourneo, Fiat with the Doblo and so on - but really it's the Gallic trio of Citroen, Renault and Peugeot who've made it a hit with motorists on this side of the Channel. Now, thanks to a week with a Partner as my partner, I can see why.

I've entrusted it with a several missions, including a trip to the tip to get rid of a few bits of household clutter simply too big for the Rover 214 to deal with, but the assignment on which it's impressed me most was conveying a carload of petrolheads to the NEC in Birmingham for last weekend's Footman James Classic Motor Show. Normally, this would be a job given to either my Rover or my mate's turbodiesel Saab 93, but it seemed almost rude not to use the big Pug instead.

Each and every one of us - a group of car enthusiasts who'd usually value the small, the sporty and the quick - left impressed by the Partner's almost ruthless approach to practical, family-friendly motoring. Up front, I loved the way it disguised its considerable bulk with its sweet handling, my turbo nutter, Saab-owning pal liked its mid range punch, and everyone else seemed slightly lost with the vast amounts of head and legroom.
In fact, the only real gripes were the popout windows in the sliding rear doors, which left them with a slightly stuffy feel on the long trip.

Admittedly, the boxy shape - especially in the delightfully Seventies shade of brown the car I've just tested came in - isn't going to keep you awake at night, and nor is it going to thrill you on the Buttertubs Pass, but I'm a small-vans-with-windows convert, because these things do the job they're designed to do brilliantly and unpretentiously.

Now, what's the going rate for a secondhand one?

What will happen to the Mini that time forgot?

IT'S like Indiana Jones meets The Italian Job. This story is so intruiging, I thought it needed bringing out of the classic car forums and onto these pages.

It begins deep underground, in a network of tunnels beneath one of Britain's biggest car factories, the former British Leyland plant at Longbridge. For years, a rather battered old Mini has sat down there, lonely and unloved, gathering dust for decades. It's been stripped of almost all of its useful bits and the roof's been bent in like a banana, but this Clubman version, not a million miles from the Seventies Minis you see above, is quite unlike any other. The Mini which nobody wanted is the last ever Mini to leave the factory.

How did it end up down there? Well, the story goes that when this Mini was being made, it fell off the production line at the factory, and rather than repair it the Longbridge workers ran it around the factory for a few miles and took whatever bits were useful off it to use on other cars.

When it was no longer deemed useful it was bundled off into the tunnel, which had been built in the 1940s to protect the factory workers - who were busy making ammunition rather than cars for a change - from the Luftwaffe. The Clubman that never was stayed in the tunnel right through the bitterest days of British Leyland, right through Austin Rover's tenure, remained unloved when BMW took over the reins and even remained ignored when MG Rover finally went bust in 2005. It's only now that a Mini enthusiast has had the tenacity to fish it out, and it's caused a bit of a fuore in the process.

Should the crumpled old heap, which had its roof stoved in after an unfortunate encounter with a shipping container, stay in that tunnel for posterity's sake? Should it be moved to a museum somewhere? Or should the car's saviour restore the old girl back to her former glory, even though for all sorts of boring legal reasons it can't actually be used on the road?

For what it's worth, I reckon it should come out, but I can't see many museums wanting to take on an exhibit that can't even be moved on its own wheels.

It'd take many of thousands of pounds to mend it properly and keep it original, but if someone's up for the exhaustion and expense then they've got my backing. It'd be great to see one last Mini - the Mini that time forgot - rev up its little A-Series engine in anger.

It's too good to be left abandoned in a tunnel forever.

Southport motoring quiz raises £126 for the National Autistic Society

From The Southport Champion, November 21, 2012

A full-throttle fundraiser organised by one of The Champion's reporters managed to rev up more than £100 for charity last weekend.

The Petrolhead Pub Quiz, organised by our motoring correspondent David Simister, managed to raise a total of £126 for he National Autistic Society when dozens of car and bike enthusiasts took part in a motoring-themed quiz at the Cheshire Lines Inn, in Southport, last Sunday night (November 18).

David told The Champion: “It really was a great night, and not only did we a raise a lot of money for a very good cause but a lot of people came up to me afterwards and told how much they'd enjoyed the event.

"With several members of my family living with autistic spectrum disorders, it's long been a cause that's close to my heart and so it only seemed natural to use my passion for all things automotive to help raise funds for the National Autistic Society."

Several teams took part in the quiz and answered questions on everything from motoring-related music to driving and motorsport, with a team from the Alfa Owners North West taking the top prize on the night.

Rebecca Bohling, Head of Supporter Fundraising at the National Autistic Society, said: "We're so grateful to all the people who came together to make the pub quiz such a success. Autism is a serious, lifelong and disabling condition that affects around one in one hundred people in the UK.

"Thanks to the fantastic support of fundraisers like David, the NAS is able to provide vital support and services to people with autism, their families and carers."

If you'd like to find out more about the quiz, and for an in-depth look at motoring news and events from across the region, check out David's blog at www.lifeoncars.blogspot.com

UPDATE: An earlier version of this article credited the winning team as "Alfa Romeo Owners Club" rather than Alfa Owners North West. This has since been amended.