That Petrol Emotion

Hybrid Hondas are set to go sporty with the news that the Japanese giant’s new chief executive, Takanobu Ito, has given the green light to the CR-Z.
It will go on sale in Japan in February next year and there will be an announcement about UK sales by the end of 2009.
“By combining this new model with the current Insight and Civic Hybrid, Honda will further enhance its line-up of compact hybrid models, powered by Honda’s compact, lightweight, and efficient Integrated Motor Assist (IMA) system.
“The IMA system will also be introduced into the award-winning Honda Jazz within the next few years. In addition, Honda is currently developing a new hybrid system which is intended to be suitable for installation in mid-to-large vehicles,” Honda said.
“The CR-Z sporty hybrid will feature advanced technologies that deliver enjoyable driving for all, while reducing the car‘s environmental footprint.
“The CR-Z concept car made its world debut at the 40th Tokyo Motor Show in 2007.”

THE fabulous Fiat 500 has won the hearts of 360,000 owners since it went on sale only 20 months ago – and now it’s even more desirable.
An additional spend of £3,000 over the price of the standard hatch’ buys the must-have motor of the moment with a canvas roof which rolls backwards through three positions at the touch of a button.
While that sounds like a lot of additional Lira for wind through your hair, the C version of the 500 still starts at a “bella” £11,300 on-the-road!
People familiar with the fit and finish of the Fiat 500 will vouch for its feel of having been well bolted together and stylishly designed.
If every Fiat car made was so rock solid and stylish as the 500, then they’d sell faster than hot panettone.
The “C” cabriolet version has been built without compromising any of the features which have made “Cinquecento” so popular.
The electric hood mechanism is stored in a false ceiling in the boot and shaves only three litres of stowage space off the spec’ sheet. Leaving a couple of bottles of fizzy pop on the supermarket shelf seems a small price to pay.
Installing a drop-top does nothing to spoil the 500 C’s profile, which is faithful to the standard car apart from an adjustment to the rake at which the windscreen meets the roof.
The roof overlaps the boot opening when down but moves out of its way if you hold on to the latch, then release, for a few seconds.

Behind the scenes, there’s an anti-roll bar stolen from the Abarth version of the Fiat 500 in order to keep the car from flexing on the move, which can be the case with a top is lopped off!
One slight niggle is the limited rear visibility available when the roof is completely lowered, the glass rear screen obscured by a load of folded canvas.
There’s an inclination to strain your chin upwards in order to see through the rear view mirror and over the canvas.
But there’s not an awful of intrusive wind noise and buffeting in the car when the roof is down and the car’s ride and handling seems only slightly different to the standard model.
Having been fortunate enough to get behind the wheel of the 500 C, I can report that there’s hardly any discernible difference between the feel of the standard 500 and the C.
All you need to worry about then is deciding which C is the one for you.
There are canvas folding roofs in red, ivory and black and they whirr through three positions at the touch of button just above the driver’s head.
You’ll also need to decide between the entry level Pop trim and the slightly more luxurious Lounge. Both come with a decent level of standard equipment.
There are three engines available – 1.2 and 1.4litre petrol and the 1.3litre MultiJet diesel – and your decision there is whether you’re prepared to forgo power in favour of frugality.
My choice, as with the standard 500, would be the 1.2litre petrol 500 C in Pop trim, which hits the road at £11,300.
The Fiat 500 C is so charming in its standard form, there’s really no need to pay more.
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TECH SPEC
Model: Fiat 500C is on sale now for between £11,300 (1.2litre petrol with Pop trim) and £14,100 (1.3litre MultiJet diesel with Lounge trim).
….
Which model is the one for you? Check out the running costs of the Fiat 500C range
1.2litre petrol has 69bhp, 0 to 60mph in 13.4 secs, 55.4mpg, 119 g/km C02, insurance group 4, car tax: £35 this year/£30 next
1.4litre petrol has 100bhp, 0 to 60mph in 11 secs, 44.8mpg, 149 g/km C02, insurance group 6, £120 this year/£110 next
1.3litre diesel has 75 bhp, 0 to 60mph in 13 secs, 67.3mpg, 110 g/km C02, insurance group 5, £35 this year/£20 next
*You’ll pay £1,205 more than the 1.2litre Pop for 1.4litre Pop and an additional £195 for the 1.3 litre diesel.
TECH SPEC
Model: Fiat 500C is on sale now for between £11,300 (1.2litre petrol with Pop trim) and £14,100 (1.3litre MultiJet diesel with Lounge trim).

Follow this link for a story explaining the latest at GM.

You’ll see here that Ford is to put its UK prices up by four per cent.
That hike, added to others earlier in the year, means that the savings made on the scrappage deal will be virtually worthless.
I know times are tough and exhange rates are causing real difficultues for UK car importers, but the people behind the blue oval badge shouldn’t be at all surprised if the showrooms fall silent once again.

Look here for all my video stuff to date.

I think the Environmental Transport Association has something of a point when it whinges about Porsche, Bentley and Rolls Royce signing up for the Scrappage scheme, but not necessarily for the reasons they give.
The ETA describes the three as “manufacturers of some of the most-polluting cars on British roads,” and point out that “in theory, it means that someone who scraps a 1999 Volkswagen Lupo TDi 3L, (81g CO2/km) and buys a 2009 Bentley Arnage 465g CO2/km) would receive a £1,000 taxpayer-funded payment.”
“The Bentley produces over 5 times as much CO2 as the smaller car,” they add.
Director at the Environmental Transport Association (ETA), Andrew Davis, says: “Buying a green Bentley does not make this scrappage scheme environmentally-friendly.”
Their view and they’re welcome to it.
But isn’t the most ridiculous part of this the idea that someone with something qualifying for scrappage is going to be in the market for something so upper crust?

The closest I’ve ever come to doing something like the German driver who lost thousands of euros when he let the roof down on his car was when I owned an old Mini.
The roof was so low that I twice placed stuff on it, climbed in to the driver’s seat, forgot all about it, and set off!
Setting off from the Trafford Centre car park, I was alerted to what I’d done by the avalanche of papers in my rear view mirror.
Then there was the time I got to my destination and wondered where my shoes were.
Incredibly, I found them lying about a mile from home on a stretch of dual carriageway. They must have had good grip!
Have you ever done anything similar?

IF you know anything about the HiQ MSA British Touring Car Championship, you’ll know that Team VXR driver Matt Neal is leading the drivers’ standings ahead of this weekend’s meeting atDonington Park.
On the last weekend of the month, he’ll be back in competition at Oulton Park, Cheshire.
And by way of getting in some last minute, ahem, training, he spent a few hours at our local circuit this week, providing me with a masterclass in how to have a really good laugh throwing a hot hatch around a race track. Tough job, I know.
That’s where the VXR 888 comes in.
You can drive it sensibly and responsibly past schools in the knowledge that when the time comes, say you have a pal who owns a race circuit and just happens to know a friendly racing driver, albeit one with a reputation for being ruthless on the track, it will put a really big smile on your face.
Neal wasn’t going to let me anywhere near the £150,000-plus stripped out Vectra which he normally pilots, but seemed only too happy to put me through my paces in a road-going Astra built to satisfy the demands of BTCC fans.
An additional spend of £4,745 over the price tag for the standard Astra VXR buys numerous Triple 8 extras, including VXRacing ECU software, taking power up to 280bhp (£550), the VXRacing brake kit, incorporating 343mm by 26mm ventilated discs (£1,600), VXRacing lowering springs (£220); a VXR Remus sports exhaust, good for an additional 20bhp (£995) and the VXRacing 18in wheel and tyre package (£1,380).
All told, that takes the car’s on-the-road price up to £28,555. That’s a lot of dough for an A to B mobile, but it made sense as soon those Toyo Proxes T1-R tyres start to squeal their way around the Oulton Tarmac.
Neal, 42, takes the wheel for the first familiarisation lap, giving me a running commentary of its notorious slopes and curves.

“It’s a fast circuit and a favourite for the drivers,” he says. “You’ll see that the barriers are quite close to the track and that there isn’t a lot of room for error. That makes it quite an intimidating place to race.”
It’s my turn and Neal does his best to coax a decent lap out of the novice who has taken his place at the wheel.
This might be a “race car”, but Vauxhall haven’t scrimped on its interior.
I take my place on the leather seat, adjust my position, and grab the wheel in the time-honoured 10 to 2 fashion.
We exit the pit lane steadily and then start to build speed towards the first left hander, all the time aiming to clip a kerb which you can’t see until you’re right on top of it.
Neal tells me to imagine that I have an egg balancing on the centre of the bonnet and I do my best to follow his instructions to keep the front end of the car neatly up against the apex. The “egg” drifts somewhere to the right and splats in a marshal’s face.
Immediately I get to know just how aggressive the VXR’s turbocharger is – delivering a whump of power at just the moment when I’m trying to smoothly negotiate the corner.
Then it’s foot down for the straight, into fourth, then brake – testing those 4-pot brake callipers to the limit – before taking the next left hander and heading into a hairpin right.
Next we’re through the first and then the second chicane, along the undulating straight, flat-out over a blind hill and back to the pit-lane straight.
It has been fun and surprisingly good – particularly as this is very much a road car.
Neal says that this doesn’t feel very much like his racing Vectra VXR. His Vectra’s suspension is so stiff that it irons out the apex kerbs, whereas the road-going Astra bounces over them.
But it’s been a whole lot better than the usual A to B and, thankfully, there wasn’t a pedestrian in sight.
Rounds 10 and 12 of the British Touring Car Championships reaches Oulton Park, Cheshire, on May 30 and 31.
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TECH SPEC
Model: Astra 2.0i 16v Turbo VXR 888
Price: £28,555
0 to 60mph: 6.2 seconds
Top speed: 152mph
Combined economy: 30.7mpg
Insurance Group: 17E/34E
Emissions: 221 g/km

TWO of Britain’s foremost Olympic cyclists swapped pedal power for horspepower, when British Touring Car racer Matt Neal challenged them to a driving masterclass at Oulton Park.
Manchester-based athletes Ed Clancy and Rob Hayles received one-to-one tuition from Neal – who currently leads the 2009 HiQ MSA British Touring Car Championship with VX Racing – in an Astra VXR Triple Eight Edition, prepared by Triple Eight Engineering, the team behind VX Racing.
Both cyclists are used to two-wheeled track success, as Clancy was part of the gold medal winning team pursuit squad at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, whilst Hayles is a triple Olympic medallist and double World champion.

Their four-wheeled lesson began with some sighting laps from Matt Neal to familiarise each cyclist with the track, before they took hold of the wheel for a masterclass in circuit driving techniques. Finally, Neal took the reigns again for a professional demonstration of the Astra VXR’s capabilities.

Neal will return to Oulton Park at the end of this month (30/31 May) in his Vauxhall Vectra race car for round four of the 2009 HiQ MSA British Touring Car Championship.
Matt Neal, VX Racing: “Cycling and motorsport are really similar in terms of preparation, dedication and analysis. Ed and Rob were both naturally very able and competitive people, but they were very willing to listen and learn. They had two quite contrasting styles behind the wheel, but we got to the end in one piece, which is the main thing!”
Rob Hayles: “It was fantastic to experience Oulton Park, I really enjoyed the feeling of driving fast on the track without the danger of seeing blue lights in my mirrors or a speed camera round the corner! The technical side of cycling is quite similar to motor racing, as when we’re doing the team pursuit we are trying to hold the correct line and not scrub off speed.”

Ed Clancy: “I enjoyed driving the car and I picked up some great tips, but being a passenger with Matt at the wheel really showed what the car can do in capable hands. The car wasn’t quite as tame as the one I normally drive, so to be honest I think I’d have been pretty lost if he hadn’t been showing me the ropes!”
Oulton Park will host the HiQ MSA British Touring Car Championship on 30/31 May. Tickets cost from £23 for adults, with free entry for children aged 12 and under. For more information call 0870 950 9000 or visit www.oultonpark.co.uk.