How much do you want to sit in here?

LIFE, contrary to the cliché, doesn't begin at 40. It begins at 25.

I excitedly reckon this because as of tomorrow it will be exactly twenty five years since I made my first car journey (although whisper it quietly it was in a Volvo 340) on March 1, 1986. There's lots of things that make it, to my mind, an anniversary worth celebrating.

I can, for instance, take out cheaper car insurance. I can rent things that aren't vans. Best of all, it means I can afford to own an old sports car for the first time, which is about to go through its MOT.

Unfortunately, my other half isn't looking forward to March 1 because I'm having another British sports car delivered to the Champion offices. The 2010 Lotus Elise. And I didn't arrange it so I could use it as a birthday treat. Honest.

What you or I see when we see an Elise is the classic sports car of the future, the finely-fettled drivers' tool which saw Lotus reinvent itself as a master of all things lightweight following the flop that was the front-wheel-drive Elan. What my other half sees, on the other hand, is what you see above; two thin, rock hard seats perched low in a noisy car with next to no visibility at all, accessible only once you've scaled those ridiculously wide sills.

I keep trying to explain to her that sports cars like this - and the even less comfortable Caterham Seven, which I've also squeezed myself into on a couple of occasions - are supposed to be raw and cramped, which she's accepted on the strict proviso that I pay for the osteopath she visits afterwards. Perhaps the only answer is to persuade Lotus to launch a "passenger version" of the Elise, with the driver's side stripped out for thrills and performance and the passenger's retrimmed luxuriously for frills and pampering.

The prospect of an Elise, two conveniently-booked days off and some nice weather is enough to send me into a bout of childish excitement, which is why by the time this week's Champion drops though your letterbox I'll be blasting the Toyota-engined screamer along a mountain pass in the Lake District.

For me, it'll be seat-of-the-pants thrills. For my long-suffering other half, it'll be a pain in the backside.

Anything we can do, the Italians can do with more style

FASHION, food, fine art and prime ministerial sex scandals. Yup, the Italians do just about everything not only better, but more stylishly than we Brits can.

It's the same for cars, because they've had a hand in shaping more cars than you'd probably imagine. Ever owned an original Golf, a Peugeot 406 Coupe, a Lotus Esprit or a Daewoo Matiz and wondered why they're strangely good looking? It's because they've all been sculpted by the automotive artists of Italy, even though the manufacturers in most cases would rather you didn't know about it. All cars with a flair you can't get from any other country, and that's before I get onto the endless procession of Ferraris, Fiats and Alfas.

Take Turin-based Bertone, which last week launched a tantalisingly tempting glimpse of what the next Jaguar X-Type should look like. Anyone who read my article on the old E-Type last week will already know I like my Jags, but the stunning B99 concept car couldn't have been further from the Mondeo-in-drag X-Type if it tried. It's just a shame you'll never see one at your local dealer.

Some show cars, like the Audi TT, do make it from motorshow to motorway almost unchanged, but they're the exception rather than the rule. It's much more likely you'll get something like the Porsche Boxster, which looked a bit like an Art Deco spaceship when it was first shown off in 1993, but what we actually got three years later was completely watered down.

The B99, if anything, reminds me of the Series 3 XJ6 from the late Seventies, which is what happens when you give an already elegant executive saloon to the Italians to play with. It's like sticking James Bond in an Armani dinner jacket - English, obviously, but with a hint of delicate Italian flair.

It's just a shame I reckon Jaguar - a company with a long and proud history of not putting concept cars into production - probably won't make it. Pity really, because they've not really got an excuse not to.

We as as species have longed cracked the conumdrum of making cars work properly, which frees our talented engineers and designers up to stop so many of them looking so derivative. If we can get Italy, the most stylish nation on Earth, to help us out, then we should.

Life's too short to drive a boring car.

Prepare to fire up the... MG 6

AN ICONIC name from Britain's motoring past is making a comeback - and no, it's not the old sports car currently in the Life On Cars garage either.

The MG 6 is the first all new car from MG, now in Chinese ownership, since the MGF sports car of 1995, but the latest model's a five-door hatchback which the company's hoping will bring a bit of upmarket cachet to the small car sector.

“This is a milestone day for the iconic MG brand and for the UK automotive industry. MG has begun the international launch of an all new model that has been designed and engineered here in the UK, for the global automotive market.”

“Currently we only build and sell the mid-engined MG TF sports car here in the UK, but we can now look forward to expanding the range of MG products,” Guy Jones, Sales and Marketing Director for MG Motor UK said.

MG is a fondly remembered name with British car lovers, and is best remembered for its MGA and MGB sports cars of the Fifties and Sixties, the MG Metro and Maestro hot hatches of the 1980s and more recently for taking on Mazda's MX-5 with its mid-engined MGF.

But the company, as part of MG Rover Group, went into administration in 2005 and is now owned by the Shanghai Automotive Industry Cooperation, who revived the badge on the MG 7, a revised and sportier version of the Rover 75, and the the MG TF, the latest version of the longstanding sports car. The Rover name, which was passed onto Ford by previous licence holders BMW, is now owned by Tata as part of its Jaguar Land Rover group.

The new model, a distant relation to the old Rover 75, is currently built by MG's owners in China but will be made in the UK later this year, and is powered by heavily updated versions of Rover's K-Series engines. The 6 is also expected to be followed by a smaller supermini, the MG 3, later this year.

It's a brave move into a tough market for MG's owners, but with a prestigious badge and patriotic appeal on its side the company might just pull it off.

On its way soon...

THE Life On Cars magazine is back!

Regular readers might have been getting a bit bored with seeing adverts for Issue Three of Life On Cars which - despite being dated as a 2011 issue - was a bit of a festive special, celebrating the best cars of last year.

Well almost, with the most I can reveal at the moment of the forthcoming fourth issue being this preview of the front cover. The whole thing will be available to read on here by the end of the month. But with 2011 in full swing and months of warm, petrolhead-friendly weather on the way, it's the right time for the next issue.

If the magazine's anything as good as the gorgeous E-Type cover - which I reckon is my best design effort yet, beating even the jigsaw look of the Car of the Year edition - it should be as much of a cracker to read as it is for me to make it. Fingers crossed!

If you're not familiar with the original three issues, which were published last July, last October and last December, click here or visit the Magazine section.

Life On Cars now on ChampRadio

IT'S here! It's now! It's got jingles and an American chap doing voiceovers! The Life On Cars radio show is back!

Regular readers might remember the first two pieces I recorded for the radio spin-off of this blog, but they were unedited interviews to give a flavour rather than the finished product. That's why I'm pleased to present the polished final product, which thanks to some music and an American chap (who I've never met) doing the voiceovers sounds a lot better.

Click above to hear the latest special edition I promised earlier this week, focusing on the glorious Jaguar E-Type, and if you scroll down you'll hear the final versions of pieces I recorded with guests Gareth Jackson and Katie Massam.

So sit back, enjoy the show and let me know what you think....

Life On Cars episode one, featuring Katie Massam

Life On Cars episode two, featuring Gareth Jackson

Ten years older

IT'S a makeover challenge even Gok Wan couldn't master. How do you take an already evocative classic and make it mouthwateringly inviting?

What you see above is the interior of my MGB GT, which despite being in the middle of a restoration and in need of a good hoover and clean is still an appealing place to be, like the carriage of a steam-hauled train on a heritage railway. You just don't get touches like the fonts on the chrome-ringed dials or the Mota-Lita steering wheel on a modern motor, which is part of the reason why I love sitting in it.

But give the interior over to an automotive makeover expert and it'll end looking like the one you see below, which a mechanic mate mentioned after spotting it:



Believe it or not, these are both cabins of the same model, but the owner couldn't have made it more different if he'd tried. Every single panel and patch of trim is interchangeable with the interior of my own, humbler car, but unscrew the MG octagon badge from the steering wheel and you'd swear you were in a Jag or a Bentley. It's an inviting, sumptuous place to be, and all the owner's done is replace the carpets, dash panels and trimmings with something that wouldn't look out of place in a Riva Aquarama.

It actually transforms an already stylish, unapologetically Seventies cabin into something straight out of the Sixties, and I love it. The finished result is as beautiful as a blank cheque, but I wouldn't do it simply because my wallet won't stretch far enough.

Would you?

The key to really enjoying your next car

EVEN though it's unlikely I'll ever drive the Huayra, the latest unaffordable, unpronouncable supercar from automotive pornography purveyors Pagani, I'm fairly certain of its best feature.

The key, it seems, to this millionaire motor is the key itself. It's actually a carefully sculpted scale model of the Zonda supercar's replacement and the latest proof that a long-held theory of mine is actually true; that the keys for your car are so much more important than being just tools to start it up each morning.

Take the Suzuki Swift Sport I've just spent a week with. This cracking little car is one of the best hot hatches on sale today, as you'll read elsewhere on Life On Cars, and - being both a riot to drive and small, cheap and kind to the environment - the perfect car for Cameron's Britain.

It's just a shame that the apologetic slab of plastic that serves as a key, distinguished only by the company's ‘S' logo and two plipper buttons, gives you no clue to the character of the car itself.

My Rover's even worse, because while there's no car logo to give away what you drive, people would guess it's something cheap and plasticky because that's exactly how the keyfob is. A regal and refined old car, with distant allusions to the glorious P6 of the late Sixties, has been ruined by a rubbish key.

Aston Martin keys, on the other hand, are beautiful crystal affairs, which you place carefully into a crevace in the dashboard as though it's a plot device from an Indiana Jones film, but you don't have to own a supercar to get yourself a superkey. I have, for instance, never been a fan of the current Vauxhall Corsa, but it does at least have in its favour a beautifully made key that's strangely enjoyable to use. This is important consumer advice, honest!

Admittedly the key is just one of a mountain of parts used to make your motor, but I reckon more manufacturers should follow Pagani's lead and show a bit more flair with it.

Now, if only I could tell you whether the Huayra is as good as its key...