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.

I don’t normally do personal blogs on this site, mainly because I fancy myself as being some sort of small-time motoring journalist than just a petrolhead with a blog. But I thought i’d talk about this to see if I can’t encourage like-minded petrolheads to do what i’ve just done.

I’m 21 years old and I love cars. LOVE them. But I don’t work on them. I don’t have a shed, and my mechanical knowledge only stretches to as far as knowing how to do basic maintenance and service on cars. I’ve always had an interest in how cars work though, but never had the opportunity to learn until now.

I’ve just bought myself a very rare, classic car. A dusky blue 1987 Mazda RX-7 FC. Absolutely gorgeous little beauty. It was designed to compete with Porsche’s 924-S in the ’80s, and whilst it was ‘only’ equal to it in the performance stakes, it was sexier, being longer, lower, and wider. Anyway, mine came with an aftermarket twin sports exhaust, which sounds aggressive and chavvy, but there are times when you just fall in love with it. Especially when a chav in a kitted-up Saxo pulls up next to you and revs up the kitchen blender he calls an engine. Anyway, 0-60mph in under 8 seconds, top speed around 140mph, and despite the engine only being a 1.3L, it’s a rotary engine, which produces the same sort of power you’d get from a 2.4L piston engine. The fact that it’s a 1.3L and has no cylinders or pistons, and is mounted right back in the chassis just in front of the dashboard, means it’s also a very light car. It’s bloody quick and corners like a mosquito.

All for £1000 including tax and MOT. Not bad for something in immaculate condition AND is as rare as it is. There’s not many left in the UK.

My point is this: after getting the car and using it for every day use, it’s 22 years of age has caught up with it. The passenger side window won’t open, for example. So i’ve bought myself a Haynes manual. These are fully comprehensive manuals that you can buy for almost any car nowadays, and they teach you how to maintain, repair, or even tune up pretty much anything and everything in your car. All the manuals are based on a complete strip-down and rebuild of the car. It even teaches you how to repair things that most mechanics wouldn’t even consider ‘repairing’, such as a dodgy gearbox. So I’ve been reading through that and just doing that has given me a fair amount of mechanical knowledge. All I need is a decent tool kit. And given the one or two niggly faults occuring in the car at the moment, it’ll help me repair things that would otherwise be an expensive trip to the local mechanic.

That, and I found out I can up the power from 150bhp to a massive 300bhp just by poking around in the engine, and there’s much, much more to be had out of it than that if I was willing to add a turbo kit and strengthen the gearbox. No wonder RX-7s are seen as Gods in the tuning world.

It’s a big deal for me because i’m not one of those guys that lives in a shed. I’m not one to get my hands dirty. And yet armed with this book and a decent toolkit I can repair pretty much anything in the car if (or rather, when) it goes wrong. And you don’t need lots of prior mechanical knowledge, or be able to understand long, complicated words. The manual is very easy to follow and everything is indexed. All you need is the confidence to get your hands dirty and to not be scared of taking your car apart.

I’d encourage others to do the same to be honest, because it made me realise that anyone can fix stuff in their car if they had some guidance (i.e. a Haynes manual) and the guts to take their car apart. You can learn so much from just one book, and ultimately you’ll begin to love your car more than you already do, because it’ll become very much ‘yours’, not just some car you drove off a forecourt.

Although i’ve got the added bonus of having a rare, desirable classic. You probably won’t get the same satisfaction with an old Peugeot!

I’ve been following this feud since it began at the Nurburgring last year. Nissan’s new GTR beat Porsche’s 911 Turbo’s lap time, which is hugely impressive for any car to do, let alone a Nissan. Porsche acted like brats, frankly. They accused Nissan of running the GTR on race-spec tyres, and even went as far as buying a GTR themselves and trying to achieve a similar lap time. They claimed to be 50 seconds off, and basically accused Nissan of lying. Nissan responded with photographs, video evidence and so on supporting their case, as well as offering Porsche special driving lessons for the GTR. That last one couldn’t have gone down well!

Anyway, as you can imagine the two companies haven’t exactly seen eye-to-eye since, and Nissan has since gone as far as to declare Porsche their main rival. This became apparent when Nissan unveiled their successor to the 350Z, the 370Z. At the press launch, Nissan also put a Porsche Cayman on the stand and said “This is the car we set out to beat when we designed and built the 370Z”.

As an aside, this rivalry is dangerous for both manufacturers. It’s dangerous for Porsche because they’re a very up-market brand that is comparitively quite small. Nissan on the other hand is one of the biggest car firms in the world, producing what we’d consider to be common, everyday vehicles. Furthermore Nissan’s home country (Japan) is the spiritual home of car modifications, tune-ups and generally making a normal car eat supercars for breakfast. Porsche could be biting off more than they can chew, against a company with a far bigger budget and more tuning experience.

Conversely, Porsche’s cars are famous for their performance. A Porsche’s balance of handling and power is deemed by many to be unmatched by any other car. Add to the fact that none of their cars are built on a budget, and you’ve got cars that will not only thrash anything cheaper than them, but will all too often eat cars with much higher retail prices. Nissan could appear to be a bit like that short, cocky little bugger you find in a pub; always trying to pick fights with the bigger lads because he feels he has something to prove.

However Nissan has been trying to go more up-market ever since they made their new line of 4×4s, and would inevitably end up trespassing on Porsche territory. This fight was therefore inevitable. So round 2: 370Z VS Cayman

The first thing you notice with the new 370Z is that they’re really trying hard and have paid a lot of attention to detail. The roof line and other styling cues are based on their GTR, which is a good thing since that car was aerodynamically designed for maximum stability. Also, gone are the swathes of cheap plastic interiors. The 370Z sports hand-stitched leather, alcantara door trim, aluminium trim here and there and supportive leather sport seats, all in a bid to match Porsche in more than just the performance stakes.You could be forgiven for forgetting you’re in a Japanese car.

As for performance? Well I personally can’t talk about it as i’ve yet to drive either cars, yet many sources say that whilst the base-model Cayman is £10k more, it’s worth that much more if not more still when you take both cars out onto a winding backroad. The Cayman gives you the signature Porsche handling, sticking to the road on corners you wouldn’t expect it to. Meanwhile the Nissan’s more aggressive. The handling is impressive, but not in Porsche territory just yet. It’s a successor to the 350Z in the sense that it handles very similar, only without sticking the tail out quite as much. It grips more and drifts less, but it’s not perfect and it doesn’t beat the Porsche. It’s got a ways to go.

Also there’s the issue of badging. A Porsche badge brings with it a sense of respect from all petrolheads. Love them or hate them, all petrolheads acknowledge Porsches to be good, fast, up-market cars. The same can’t be said for Nissan. So in order for Nissan to erase the appeal of the badge, they can’t price their car at just £10k lower than the Cayman. Many people will happily pay the extra £10k for the reassurance of a brilliant, widely respected car with a quality and feel that’s rarely matched, rather than risk going for a Nissan just because a few journalists and Nissan bosses say it’s just as good. They need to come in at about £15k less. If the Cayman is £40,000, sell the 370Z for £25k.

The problem is this: In terms of performance, Nissan has already made some iconic cars. The Nissan Skyline GTR for example. Being upmarket therefore isn’t a case of putting your prices up, it’s about putting the quality up. If Nissan wants to beat Porsche, they need to keep their prices at Nissan prices, but raise their overall quality to Porsche standards. You beat a famous and respected brand by beating better than them, not by being equal, or aiming to be.

Give it a few years. Nissan’s prices tend to drop much faster than Porsche’s. Come back in two, maybe three years time and we’ll have this fight again.

So the Government today has announced that they’re looking at a new set of ‘Road Safety Proposals’ in a bid to reduce the number of deaths on British roads every year. That sounds all well and good. I’m all for it, as long as it reduces road deaths. Good work.

Except they’re making a bloody hash of it already by starting in the wrong direction. Their main focus is a complete review of speed limits on the roads. 30mph limits could become 20mph, rural roads would be capped to 50mph, and so on.

To understand this, we need to clarify one thing: only a minority of road accidents (let alone road deaths) are caused by excessive speed. The majority of british drivers know that you cannot drive fast everywhere; there is a time and a place, and so the majority of us only drive fast when the risks are low, and only to speeds that are manageable should something unexpected occur.

So if it’s not speed that are causing these accidents, what is it? Well there’s a few. Those driving under the influence of drink or drugs (or both) is a serious factor. Other than that, it’s nothing more than good ol’ fashioned carelessness.

I’m a classic case in point. I’ll admit that i’m no angel. I’ll drive fast when and where the mood takes me, providing the conditions are right. I’ve done this since the day I got my licence. And yet i’ve only been in one accident. How fast was I going? I’d guess about 3mph maximum. It was at a roundabout, I saw a car in front move forward. I was checking right for traffic using the roundabout and had assumed that the driver in front moved forward to join the roundabout. So i let the car creep forward more and more until bang - right into the back of the Vectra in front.

I’ll put my hands up and admit I was a careless, blithering idiot. And I feel bad about it to this day. But it was ironic that out of all the times i’ve driven fast over the years, the time I actually have an accident was at a time when i’m concentrating the least.

And that’s a key point: When you drive at excessive speeds, you’re aware of the dangers and you concentrate more than you would at fairly low speeds. You look for hazards earlier. You’re focused entirely on the road ahead as well as the surrounding area. If you’re dithering about at, say, 40mph in a 60 zone (and there’s quite a few of you who do this), you’re almost bored. The risks are low, the journey is long, and your concentration begins to wander. And then one day a car pulls out from a junction in front of you and you ram into the side of it at 40mph, all because you just weren’t paying enough attention. And a side impact at 40mph is a lethal force; especially if the car that got hit was a small french hatchback that’s not really built for strength.

Of course, the government rarely speak officially of what causes accidents because they might upset the angry mothers and environmentalists who would have us believe that 90% of accidents are caused by excessive and dangerous speed. All the while traffic statistics are quietly released each year showing fewer and fewer accidents are caused by excessive speed.

I wouldn’t be very good at debating if I didn’t offer up an alternative solution for the government to use, would I? Then here goes:

Since we’ve already established that the main factors are carelessness and those unfit to drive, I have considered a few options that would directly tackle these issues. There’s no real way of tackling carelessness because nobody can be 100% focused 100% of the time. It’s just not realistic. However, you can test and retest things such as reaction speeds and general ability to drive. In countries such as Malaysia, drivers have to apply for a re-test in order to renew their driving licences periodically (in Malaysia’s case, it’s every five years). This makes sense, because your reaction speed and concentration levels when you’re 18 years old are going to be much better than when you’re 50 years old. it’s important that your ability to drive is still up to the legal standard, and yet those who are unfit to drive are never discovered until they either complain to a GP of a severe ailment (such as very poor eyesight) or when it’s too late and they cause a bad accident.

It’s also a good way of making sure drivers drive properly and don’t let bad habits get worse. ‘Coasting’ to junctions instead of actually driving to them, incorrect use of brakes, poor use of engine, poor use of signals and mirrors etc. If I had a penny for every time i’ve had a scare from a blithering idiot who couldn’t be bothered to use his indicators or mirrors, i’d make Donald Trump look like Donald Tramp.

Also despite being no angel myself, i’d be very much in favour of the government halving the number of points you’re allowed on your licence before you have to retake your test, providing they reduce the number of years the points stay on your licence from five years to three years. This not only punishes those who shows scant disregard for the law, but it also acts as a deterrant. The Police has already said many times that many drivers who acquire their first 3 points on their licence tend to receive a bit of a wake-up call and behave after that (myself included, I must admit), for fear of eventually losing their licence. If the point limit is reduced to six, that wake-up call will theoretically have twice the punch and more drivers will smarten up a bit.

As for those driving under influence: drugs is a difficult one because most drug-related issues are of the less-than-legal kind which no official authority has any apparent control over whatsoever. However, we can easily get many drink-drivers off the roads by having all pubs and other similar drinking venues operate a system that some nightclubs use - that is, you hand your car keys over to the cloakroom/front desk, and in return you get a voucher card of some kind, entitling you to hefty discounts on non-alcoholic beverages (which serves as the incentive to hand your keys over in the first place). Then when you go to collect your keys at the end of the night, the person in charge will assess if you’re fit to drive. Currently this assessment is based on appearance only, but they should really just breathalise everybody. If you’re unfit to drive, the venue keeps your keys for 24 hours until you’re in a fit enough state to drive, and in the meantime you’ll have to walk home. This means you’ll get fewer deaths by drink-driving because there’ll be fewer of them on the roads to begin with.

If this came into effect in every pub and club in Britain, the only drink-drivers left will be those who get drunk in their own home. It won’t remove the issue completely, but it’ll reduce the numbers significantly.

So let’s keep our speed limits at reasonable limits and focus more on actually dealing with the issues rather than using road deaths as a scapegoat to build more speed cameras to generate more revenue, thank you very much.

It all started with my stepdad Adrian, proclaiming that he has found a really nice Porsche 911 Carrera S complete with the Tiptronic semi-auto gearbox, for £10,000. I was really impressed and began a hunt for bargains for myself. Nowadays i’m actually addicted to doing so because i’ve found a number of highly desirable cars for not much money at all.

For example, want an expensive, top-end sports coupe? Then you can get a Jaguar XKR for around £8k onwards. High mileage being the only issues, which isn’t really an issue so long as you maintain the car regularly and look after it. Another example - one for the fans of the winding backroads - is the Mitsubishi Evo. On winding welsh B roads there’s simply nothing faster than an Evo. With the Evo X being £30,000 and the IX model still relatively new, the trick is to go for the Evo VIII. It’s better looking than the IX and has the same horsepower. Want one? Pick one up for £8k. In black too, if you fancy.

If the Evo’s not quite your thing but still want to blitz the backroads, there’s always the legendary Skyline R34 GTR. I found one in black with only 60k miles on the clock for £6000. And you can pick up an R33 model for half that.

Still want something with a bit of class and not something very Boy Racer-ish? How about a 2002 BMW M5 for around £8k-£9k, complete with that lovely 5.0L V8 and all that high tech luxury equipment? With speed that will tear your face off and yet a comfortable GT cruising mode that will soothe your fevered brow, you’re going to struggle to find a nicer car for the same money.

I’m probably shooting myself in the foot by telling you all about this because if you’re anything like me you’ll be phoning your bank manager tomorrow morning and will probably beat me to the best deals, but it really does show why the bottom is falling out of the car trade in dealerships. The case in the UK used to be that for a cheap deal you usually looked at old cars that were usually rusty old bangers. The best deals were usually nice cars that needed a bit of work on them. Nowadays though the cars aren’t that old and some of them are really nice cars, whilst dealerships are selling new cars for - lets be honest - a hell of a lot of money. A decent hatchback will cost more than £18,000. And a sports car for less than £20,000? Forget it. But the biggest problem is their roster of used cars. Because each car is checked, valeted and serviced by their in-house service teams they feel it warrants the ability to charge around twice as much for a used car compared to the price you’d pay if you bought one from a bloke in a private trade.

The problem with buying these bargains is you have to be really careful and know your stuff. You have to know what to look for when you go to visit the car. The big secret is this - it’s not hard to do so, even if you don’t know much about cars. You can usually find guides on the internet that will tell you exactly what to look for on specific models of cars, and more commonly a list of general things you should check on any used car you buy. If necessary bring a print-out of the guide with you, and if the owner refuses to give you permission to carry out said checks, walk away. Even if you really want the car, it’s not worth any amount of money if it’s just going to die on you.

Also, the best thing about private trades? It’s really easy to barter and haggle on the price, especially now the country is in a recession and every penny counts.

I’ve glanced at my traffic figures for the first time today. It’s the first time since the site launch because the site is still new and - if we’re honest - sorely underdeveloped. However, this didn’t stop quite a lot of you from visiting, did it? I mean, 31 RSS feeds? Why do you like me so much?

Either way, i’m overjoyed about this surprising good news, and it’s inspired confidence in me to do a lot more and become a lot more dedicated with this site. I’d like to thank you all for your attention to this website as it means quite a lot to me, perhaps more than it should. To show my appreciation i’ve decided to go ahead and fully develop the site into something that will truly merit a lot of attention, and have already drafted a list of changes that you can expect to see in place very soon. In fact, i’ll set a deadline. Let’s call it February 25th. It gives me a month or so.

The changes themselves? Well here’s what i’ve got in mind so far:

• First issue with the site is the appearance. I’m scouting for talented designers to design an original and visually pleasing website design. This means that the crappy red and black corvette design will be ditched. Any offers to help with this will be welcomed.
• A ‘classifieds’ section will be implemented so that users can advertise their cars on this site for a small fee. I already have a decent number of people interested in advertising here so this will be up very soon. Not only will the small fee get you your advertising space but I can help design and structure your advert, providing you give me at least one photo of your car and some information about it.
• Road tests. Oh yes. See, many of you are coming here after searching for cars like the VW Scirocco and the Jaguar XFR, and whilst I can talk to you about them all day long, I can’t yet tell you what they’re like to drive. Incidentally, i’ve had some suggestions about videoing the road tests and presenting them like you would a TV motoring show. I really want to do that but doing so requires at least two people, and if the result is going to look like the work of a blair-witch handicam then there’s no point. I can’t be proud of third-rate work. Again, any camera buffs willing to help will be greatly appreciated.
• Message boards. I’ve already got a couple of people interested in helping me develop one. This will allow us to sign up and air our thoughts and opinions about cars, motoring life and this website. Once it’s up i’ll also make it a base for which suggestions for the website can be offered.

Speaking of which, at this stage i’m still brainstorming. Got a helpful suggestion or want to volunteer or even become a part of the team? Leave a comment below and we’ll talk.

Again, many thanks for your interest. It’s inspiring.

Where I live the surrounding carpark area is full of beautiful modern cars - new-style black Audi TT, BMW Z4, Golf R32, Mini Cooper S, and even a Vauxhall Monaro. There’s no getting away from the fact that they’re very good, nice cars. But by far the most beautiful car here, by miles and miles, and the one that stands out from the crowd the most? A black 1988 MkII Ford Fiesta 1.1L. It’s a classic - cream leather interior, metal wingmirrors, and the classic body shell and chassis similar to that of the classic Austin Metro. Furthermore the owner appears to have kept it in absolute pristine condition - no imperfection whatsoever. No rust, no paint fade, no flaking, not even a spot of bird shit. Even the paint finish is like glass - waxed and polished to a shine. It’s a nice car by itself, but made better by the obvious fact that the owner really has looked after it. I bet it drives as good today as it did when it was new too.

And look at me talk - I quickly brush over the nice, new cars mentioned in the beginning, whilst fawning over what should be an old banger. It’s made me think - are newer cars getting uglier? Why don’t we have any beautiful cars anymore? Think about it. Case in point can be the Ford Mustang. 1967 and 1968 saw the legendary ‘Fastback’ GT390 and GT500 models. What do we have now? A huge slab with wheels and headlights. Next case in point? Porsche. My family are classic Porsche enthusiasts and we’ve got a 924 Turbo and a 928-S, both in blue. We even had a white 944 Turbo at one point. But if you went to a dealership now, what can you get? A 911, a Cayman and a Boxster - all of which just look like variants of the 911 design (which is a great design - for a 911. Come on Porsche! Show some variety!) So why this change? Why aren’t cars built to look beautiful anymore?

My guess is this: Cost. Cars are far more expensive than they used to be, as manufacturers are abusing the general belief that buying a car is the second most expensive investment next to buying a house. This means fewer people are willing to buy new cars. In fact most car sales nowadays are second-hand cars, private trades being especially popular since the best bargains are found on sites like autotrader. This means that in order to cut their losses, manufacturers are trying to find cheaper ways of making good cars, and the easiest way to do that is to keep their designs low-budget and simple. Up-market brands such as Audis, BMWs and even some VW cars like the Phaeton and Scirocco do still use high quality paint and appear to have an expensive finish and look about them. But Peugeots? Citroens? Fords? Renaults? The paint is lighter and thinner, and that makes them look cheap. Or ‘affordable’ as manufacturers prefer to call it.

In terms of business, its the angel and the devil. The fastest selling car of all time was the 1960’s Ford Mustang - a very beautiful car and very well priced back in the day. But the best-selling car of all time - the car that sold the most units - was the Toyota Corolla. A simple car that had nothing particular about it other than it was cheap to buy. Unfortunately instead of looking at the fastest selling car and taking leaves out of the mustang’s book, manufacturers have opted for the best selling car simply because it’s a lot cheaper to make. So now we have millions of cars that aren’t too beautiful, and the prices of each car only really correlates to the brand name and how fast said car is.

My advice? Buy a beautiful classic and take good care of it, before there’s none left in the world.

I was thinking more about that VW Scirocco and it inevitably made me think about the car industry in general. I think manufacturers have got their ideas confused. Instead of going with the ‘green’ and ‘eco’ trend, making cheap cars with only 3-cylinder engines that do 0-60 but only just, they should do something that would appeal to every single person with a driving license and even a modicum of pride: They should make cars with a luxurious, expensive and special feel, and sell them fairly cheaply.

Think about it - That VW Scirocco meets the criteria. The top-range GT model is pretty fast and just sitting in it is a nice treat, let alone driving it and owning it. And with the basic model at £18k and the GT model at £20k, it’s actually not that expensive as far as new cars go. A Golf GTi is slightly more expensive at £21k, and that’s considered to be an affordable hot hatch. Also it’s fairly economical - the diesel variants will manage an average of 40mpg (unless you rev the nuts off it of course) and the petrol ones will average around 30-35mpg too. It’s not going to save the planet, but it’s not going to lay waste to your wallet either. So really, it’s got something for everyone, and that’s exactly what car makers should be aiming for.

Let’s put it this way - in the past I would have never, ever considered getting a brand new car from a dealership. I’m easily the type of person who would get a second hand car in a private trade and save tons and tons and tons of cash in doing so. For example, you can pick up a good Mazda RX8 for about £8k onwards in a private trade, whereas a new one at a dealership will set you back about £22k. However, here I am, playing around with the ‘build your own Scirocco‘ part of Volkswagon’s website and generally planning a realistic time when i’ll be able to afford a new one with all the toys I want with it on finance (and with an estimated finance quote of £240 a month, it’s not like i’ll need to win the lottery either!). And it’s not just me - this car is quite a hit. Sales aren’t doing badly considering the economic recession, and general interest in this car is staggeringly high.

So why don’t other manufacturers pick up on this and do the same? Well the problem is, manufacturers have tried doing this for a while now and have failed. Peugeot for example made a terrible ‘GT’ model of their Peugeot 307. The main problem here is that it wasn’t very luxurious, wasn’t fast, and definitely, definitely didn’t have an expensive feel to it. As a result, not many people have bought it. You might think that’s because of the stigma attached to the ‘Peugeot’ name; a reputation for generally being a cheap and cheerful brand. But VW makes semi-expensive cars and they failed miserably with the Golf GT. It was better than the basic Golf, but inferior to the GTi model in every way. And the GTi model is only bought by petrolheads and boy racers (yes, there is a difference between the two groups) because, well, everyone knows that it’s a bit of a boy racer’s dream hatchback. Anything with ‘GTi’ in the name tends to be driven by chavs.

But this time, VW has cracked it. The new Scirocco drives really well, it’s not hugely expensive but feels like it is, and the GT model in particular is very comfortable and luxurious. My stepdad is very fussy when it comes to cars - you could only show off rare or expensive cars to him. His mate Cozzie has an Impreza and my stepdad scoffs at it, calling it a plastic toy. But i’m pretty sure if I showed him the Scirocco, he wouldn’t just like it - he’d want one too. Then i’d have to hate him for eventually buying a car I want!

Probably wouldn’t part-ex his Porsche for one though. Definitely not. =P

I doubt many of you will have noticed (because you’re not all obsessive freaks like me) but i’ve noticed that whenever a car company make a new car, and you go to their main website to look it up and read up on it, their website gives you lots of wishy-washy poetry which if nothing else serves only to describe how the car was made, in a philosophical kind of way.

Take the new Porsche Panamera. I’m very excited about this car because not only is it Porsche’s first properly new car (and not just another 911 or Boxster variant) but it’s also the best of pretty much every world you could want. I’m serious - it’s a roomy four-seater with a big GT-sized boot, it’s got very high quality (and very nice) interior for those of you who drive an S-Class Mercedes or something, and then you have a choice - you can have a basic engine with 350bhp, a 500bhp ‘Turbo’ version that delivers face-bending acceleration, or you can have a nice, eco-friendly hybrid engine that Greenpeace wants everyone to have. No word on performance for the hybrid yet, but I’m guessing it’s still going to be stupidly fast though - Porsche say they’ve opted for a hybrid engine rather than a diesel engine because the extra weight of a diesel engine would ruin the performance of the car. If they’re putting an engine normally seen in a feeble Toyota Prius in and they’re still worrying about how fast it is, that means that chances are, it’s still going to drive like a Porsche.

And what does it look like? Well it’s not ugly but not pretty, but here it is:

The Panamera Turbo

I’ve deliberately given a frontal view of the car because the back end and the roof line is somewhat er… controversial. Many people hate the look. I quite like it though, because unlike every other car Porsche builds, it doesn’t look like a 911 or a Boxster. In fact the back end takes styling cues from the old 928-S of yesteryear. And I should know - my dad owns one of those. And the roofline may look a bit mishapen but you have to remember that Porsche is trying to combine a roomy, comfortable luxury car with a low, wide, taut supercar that’ll leave everything standing. No car in current existence has been able to do that - the closest you get is an S-Class Mercedes, which despite having a huge, shouty engine is more thunder than lightning. And even though the Panamera’s interior isn’t quite S-Class standard, it’s not far off - it’s the right colour, it has all the luxuries you might want, it’s roomy and it looks very comfortable.

I’ve managed to give you the details of the car (no word on cost yet, as far as I know) in this blog thus far. But what about Porsche themselves? What do they tell you when you visit their site? Well, you get this: Click Here.

And it’s not Porsche being particularly annoying either - all manufacturers do this, whether it’s to promote the new Lamborghini Estoque or the new Volkswagon Scirocco. All of them tend to shove fancy design philosophy in people’s faces and then make it difficult for you to find out anything of interest about the car. Yes, Porsche do tell you the details about the car - tucked away in fancy online magazines for which you have to subscribe to. This says to people ‘yes, we can tell you about our new car, but we want you to work for that privilege. Subscribe to us and show you are genuinely interested, and we’ll give you some figures.’

Whilst that might sound fair to the discerning enthusiast, what about the rest of the world? I’m sort of interested in, say, the VW Scirocco - it’s a gorgeous car, economical and apparently quite fast too. But i’m not going to subscribe to their mailing lists just to find out whether it’s front wheel drive, four wheel drive or rear wheel drive. This means journalists who want to pass on this information to petrolheads (and basically give free advertisment for said car companies) are personally hindered by agreeing to have their inboxes spammed with newsletters. And given the publicity they’re providing, you’d think that there’d be some sort of special bonus or reward for journalists. But nope - you’d be lucky if you even get a free test-drive for a day unless you’re a big name like Top Gear.

That said, I’m personally a Porsche enthusiast, I’m very excited about this Panamera, I want one already, so I don’t mind subscribing. But only Porsche would get away with this in my book. The rest are just annoying. Also not everyone loves Porsches, and none more so than I do, so this really doesn’t work for everyone. Just the select few.