We’ve been waiting at least two years for this one ever since it’s concept design. It’s Peugeot’s attempt at putting themselves back on the map and if looks are anything to go by, this may well do the trick. The Peugeot RCZ.

Peugeot has a bit of a sob story to tell. Years ago Peugeots were respected, and their 205 GTi was the car that started it off, being one of the best (and first) ‘Hot Hatchbacks’ in the world, and even today you’ll find them mentioned in “top 10 best handling cars” on numerous sites on the internet. Then we had years of dreariness. The 206 was their next ‘good car’ (I should know - I had one!) and was so good that it was used in the World Rally Championships for many, many years. And actually, when it came to handling, nearly all of Peugeot’s hatchbacks were very good cars to drive, but that wasn’t enough to generate sales as people were still put off by the whole ‘cheapness’ of the brand. Nothing felt special, everything felt budget.

Peugeot realised that the only way to improve the brand’s reputation was to aim more up-market, but still be cheaper than the upmarket brands. Thus began the designing of the RCZ. Everything about it is batting way above Peugeot’s range. Even the performance, which is the one thing Peugeot’s normally very good at. So, to prove it, here’s a checklist of all the different aspects of any good car.

Looks? Well just look at it. And it’s not just aesthetics either. Everything is built from high quality materials. High quality leather interior. High quality bodywork. And look at those wheels. When have you ever seen anything like those on any factory-spec Peugeot? Shame it’s still got Peugeot’s mouthy front grille though. Looks like a botox injection gone horribly wrong.

Performance? Well no prizes for guessing the engines. A 1.6L turbo petrol engine for now, and a 2.0L turbo diesel on it’s way, as per usual. The petrol engine will produce 200bhp, giving a 0-60 time of 7.6 seconds. However, the front suspension is double-wishbone, which in layman’s terms is the same suspension setup you get on a Ferrari 360. So 60mph in 7 or 8 seconds may not be as quick as you thought, but at least it’ll do 60mph everywhere.

Fuel Economy? Yep. That torquey petrol engine’s party trick is that it’ll produce 200bhp and decent performance, but also return 39mpg. That’s a LOT for a performance car. Better still, if you’re not really after the performance and you opt for the diesel engine, that’ll use fuel at over 50 miles per gallon. Again, impressive stuff.

Interior? Well as said it’s all high quality leather interior. Or so we’re told. The concept designs showed a fantastic interior though. Let’s hope it stays. However, Peugeot have confirmed the rear seats will actually fold up, giving a very large boot. So it may be a two-door sports coupe, but with this you can have your cake and eat it.

No word on price yet, but expect it to be priced like a Peugeot. Their current lineup of cars range between £8000 to £15,000, so expect this to start around £18,000. Although given Peugeot have announced that they’ll be producing this car “in small numbers”, so it’s likely to be a bit more than that.

The RCZ will go on sale in the UK in spring next year.

The Mini. British? German? Either way the Mini is an iconic car that’s been with us since the original design 50 years ago, and it has always been the definitive ’small car’. The Mini has changed over the years, getting fatter (and uglier, perhaps), incorporated more doors and practicality (Mini Clubman), and there’s even a Mini Convertible. But in the 50 years of Mini, none of the three companies that made the Mini (Austin, BMW, and of course Mini themselves) have never ever built a ‘Mini Coupe’. A small sports car of some kind. All they’ve done so far is tuned up the Mini Cooper to combine its legendary handling capabilities with an impressive amount of power, and called it the JCW (John Cooper Works). So if you wanted a fast Mini, that was your only option.

Until now. Mini has just revealed its ‘Mini Coupe Concept’. As the name suggests, it’s a pre-production concept at the moment, designed to celebrate Mini’s 50th anniversary, but here’s hoping it makes it to production.

The first thing you’ll have noticed is the roof, which kind of looks like a baseball cap worn backwards. Well that’s because it’s supposed to look like that. Apparently the chief designer Gert Hildebrand claims he got the inspiration for the roof when he saw his teenage son wearing a cap backwards. There are some things you perhaps should keep to yourself, Gert. Doesn’t do you any favours!

Much of the familiar Mini design is featured here. The bug-eyed headlights, the air scoop in the bonnet, the rear lights, the front grille… quite a lot of it is very much ‘Mini Cooper’. However, remember how the Mini Cooper is widely regarded as one of the best ‘Driver’s Cars’ money can buy? Yeah, well this is set to be even better. It’s 5cm shorter and lower overall than the Cooper JCW, and will share the same 208bhp 1.6L turbo engine as the JCW. It’s also around 100kg lighter than the JCW thanks to only being a two-seater instead of four, and features a rear spoiler on the roof to help keep the arse pinned to the road at speed. The windscreen is also more slanted for more aerodynamic improvements.

So lower centre of gravity, lighter, better aerodynamics, and with the same surprising power as the JCW. No official performance figures yet, but it’s expected to hit 60mph in around six seconds, and a top speed of around 140mph, perhaps more.

Rivals? Well again, there’s no word on whether or not it’ll even reach production yet, let alone prices (though the Germans insist it will, and Mini usually are true to their word when it comes to concept designs), but you’re looking at anywhere between the Peugeot RCZ (more on that later) and the Audi TT.

Good news is if they build it, you have about two years to save up for it. It won’t reach Britain until at least 2011.

It’s a glorious summer. Record temperatures, months of blue skies, England thrashing the Aussies at cricket, and inevitably in the UK - swarms of drop-top convertibles.

Britain buys more convertibles than France, Spain and Italy COMBINED, and the vast majority of convertible sales are done during the summer. So Italy’s latest offering couldn’t come at a better time - The Maserati GranCabrio.

Headline figures? Basically it’s a Maserati GT with a soft top roof. That means it gets the same 4.7L V8 with the same 433bhp. However, it’ll also come with far more charm than the GT. Rumours of supermodels in the back seats being sold as optional extras are entirely unfounded.

The car will be quick - 0-60mph in 5.5 seconds, top speed around 180mph. Which is all pointless really, because this isn’t some drop-top supercar trying to rival the Ferrari Scuderia convertible, or a Murcielago LP640. Which is just as well, because despite having a delicately exquisite soft top roof, the car still needs structural reinforcements, so it weighs the best part of two tonnes. This is for the middle-aged sugar daddy that goes to a West End Theatre with two trophy girlfriends at either side. A boulevard cruiser. Something that’ll rarely exceed 30mph.

Which begs the question: Why give it a racy, Italian V8? Alfa Romeo had the right idea with their 8C Competizione. Not particularly brilliant to drive, but an absolutely gorgeous thing to behold.

Prices are expected to start around £90,000. Or if you wait about 5 years you’ll find one on Autotrader for at least half that, given you can get second hand Maserati GTs for £15,000 now.

I haven’t updated this site for a while. I apologise profusely for any avid reader (if this site has any? Maybe? Maybe not…) for the lack of updates.

As I mentioned in my previous blog, I bought a new (ish) car. A very rare 1987 Mazda RX-7 FC. It’s quite fast and handles brilliantly. Being an older car, the handling has a lot of feel. There’s no traction control or any electronic moderation from the ECU. The car does what you tell it to do, end of story. And being rear wheel drive, lightweight, low slung and with a fair amount of power, you can ask quite a lot from it and it’ll happily respond.

However, as with all classic sports cars, there are one or two issues. Firstly, it’s 22 years old. It’s more than capable of delivering the goods it has always been capable of, but at the cost of some TLC and maintenance. Something will break every now and then. It drinks quite a lot of oil. You have to keep it in top condition, else it’s age will catch up with it. A bit like humans really. You can either age like Mr Miyagi or Hulk Hogan, or you can age by going senile and unable to move without a zimmer frame.

The second problem is the lack of creature comforts, and this is where my blog’s topic comes in. Modern VS Classic. Modern sports cars have had to respond to ever-increasing consumer demands. In the past if a car had full leather interior, or a CD player, it was something special. Now we want those as standard, and will happily pay extra for things like Climate Control, a premium sound system with a 6 disk CD changer, Sat Nav, Cruise Control, automatic headlights, automatic wipers, and even heated sports seats for the winter. Porsche’s 911 sports car for example went from having sports car essentials only to becoming something of a Gin Palace. In fact, modern day Porsche has a reputation for quality built mostly by all the things their cars come with these days, more so than for their exceptional performance.

My car on the other hand is a typical 1980’s sports car. The seats are somewhere between cloth and suede. There’s no air con, let alone climate control. There’s not even power steering. It does have a CD player and sat nav, but only because the previous owner and I had them installed as aftermarket premium products. As a result this car ONLY does fast.

However, both generations are a compromise. My car will hit 60mph in 6 seconds (albeit thanks to some minor enhancements). That’s quick by today’s standards, let alone for the 1980’s. In fact in the 70’s that was what you’d expect from cars like the Lamborghini Miura, and today any car faster than that is considered to be a high performance car. Even some powerful Mercs fail to reach that. And it’s all because of weight. In the 1980’s 200bhp was quite a lot of power. You had a fast car if you had 200bhp. Nowadays you’ll see that in a decent car like a BMW. In fact there are Mercs that have more power than that but are slower cars than my RX-7 thanks to being built like a portable lounge.

So which is best? Well if it’s performance you want, buy classic. Even the mid-range cars back then (Porsche 944, Mazda RX-7, Nissan 300zx etc) are fast cars, let alone if you pick up an old 911, BMW M5, Jaguar XJS etc. However the best all-rounders are the new ones. New technology means that cars are better off with the same amount of power. They have better fuel economy for starters. You usually get six gears instead of a maximum of five. You get more luxuries as standard. But as for performance, you either have the same as a 1980’s sports car, or you pay a lot more money for something a bit quicker.

And when you consider you can get a good 1980’s sports car for no more than a few grand these days, it really is swings and roundabouts.