Some of us are car enthusiasts and some of us aren’t.

One of the United Kingdom’s top annual events for car enthusiasts – and has been since 1993 – is the Goodwood Festival of Speed, held in the grounds of Goodwood House, in West Sussex.

Many Welsh people make the pilgrimage, and in 2010 its status as one of the big events where the public can see cars for the first time generated renewed interest.

Before the serious time trials where some illustrious professional racing drivers blast up a 1.16-mile hillclimb driving or riding some hugely valuable and often historically significant machinery, for this year’s event, the public were invited behind the wheel of a new car at the Moving Motor Show.

On Thursday, July 2, the day before the main event, many car manufacturers offered people the chance to try before they buy. Or not as the case may have been.

Having been to the Festival of Speed pretty much every year since 2002 – usually as a paying car enthusiast customer – I was planning a visit at the weekend.

But a couple of days before, I was offered an opportunity that was too good to pass up. I was asked if I “fancied a run up the hill”.

In previous years looking on as motor racing legends tore up the hill in legendary machinery, I never imagined I would join them, even though I knew some places in cars were taken by us ‘civilian’ journalists.

My job would be to take a car based on one of the lowest emitting models on sale in the UK, and the smallest conventionally powered car due to be driven up the hill.

It would be a Toyota iQ. Perhaps not directly associated with Wales, but the iQ’s larger siblings in the range are powered by Welsh engines. The Auris, Verso and Avensis use 1.6-litre and 1.8-litre petrol engines built at the manufacturer’s Deeside factory.

But this was not an ordinary IQ. It was a supercharged version of the 1.33-litre model, stripped out with a roll cage and racing seats. It was part of a project looking at how Toyota might engineer high-performance versions in the future as well as a feasibility study into running a one-make series.

It could also lead to aftermarket packs for customers inspired by the hot version.
Anyway, back to Goodwood, and I discovered from my Twitter feed that Formula One World Champion Jenson Button would be leading the run I would be participating in driving a vivid orange McLaren 12C road car.

And five-time Le Mans winner Derek Bell. And former British Touring Car Champion Tim Harvey, as well as a few other illustrious names would also be joining us.

Described by Goodwood as a “challenging, white-knuckled 1.16-mile course” and while there’s the relatively open drive past Goodwood House passing thousands of spectators, about halfway up the view to the left is dominated by a large and potentially painful looking wall just a couple of metres from the track.

But most pressing on my mind at the start-line was hoping I didn’t stall it in front of thousands of people and hold up proceedings.

Luckily, with enough wheelspin to draw attention to the little iQ to anyone that might have been distracted, I set off up the hill.

Although it’s supercharged, it was difficult to detect any mechanical whine from it over the rasp from the exhaust. Although the car was tiny, it made a big noise and felt every inch a race car, with razor-sharp responses and amazing levels of grip.

What was my time? With far less horsepower than the rest of the petrol powered cars on the run (almost 900bhp less than one of the cars) I had no aspiration to record a time.

But although this was technically called the Supercar Run and the iQ isn’t really a supercar, but it was perhaps appropriate for a Welshman that my first Festival of Speed hillclimb was in a car with an albeit tenuous Welsh connection.

By Simon Harris

For the last few days I’ve been driving to and from the office in an electric car.

They’ve been in the news a lot recently, especially since Nissan announced prices in May of its Leaf electric car due on sale in 2011.

I’ve been driving the Mitsubishi i-MiEV – an electric car based on the Mitsubishi i city car.

It uses a 63bhp electric motor driving the rear wheels, and has a maximum torque output of 133lb-ft – perhaps similar to a small turbodiesel engine.

Maximum speed is stated as 81mph and 0-62mph is covered in 13 seconds. Those figures sound pretty normal, but there are currently two hurdles to overcome for anyone considering an electric car.

One is limited range; the other is the cost of purchase.

No one is forcing electric vehicles on people who expect to cover more than 100 miles a day. Most car manufacturers accept that electric vehicles will be one method of powering vehicles alongside petrol, diesel, hybrids and plug-in hybrids.

However, my first experience with the i-MiEV made me think the 100 miles claim was rather far fetched.

The car was delivered to our office with the battery only three-quarters charged. Well, with a potential 75 miles range this would be more than enough for my 23-mile journey home.

The charge meter in the i-MiEV has 16 blocks when full and I set off from the office with 12 intact. I used seven on my route home which was made up of six miles of the A1 with the remainder mainly fast rural roads.

I live in a remote village with no shops so the next job was to go to the supermarket five miles away with the remaining range.

But three miles down the road I was down to three blocks on the energy display and a battery warning light appeared.

I went home and plugged the i-MiEV into the mains in the garage.

I discovered the i-MiEV has an ‘eco’ mode that restricts power delivery and helps stretch the range further. It left me slightly disappointed because I was enjoying the i-MiEV’s strong response on the move. It felt a bit like an escaped dodgem car.

The drive to the office the following day left plenty of energy for the journey home.

I posted my experiences on my Twitter account and referred to ‘range anxiety’ – often used in EV circles.

We live in an electronic age, and my tweets were spotted by Tomoki Yanagawa, vice-president for sales, marketing and corporate planning at Mitsubishi Canada.

He contacted me and offered advice on maximising the range, which was welcome.

On day three I chose a route to work that took in driving through Peterborough city centre, and the journey used just four blocks on the charge meter.

This is much more acceptable and equates to about five miles per block on the gauge, and I’m sure with regular urban use 80 miles or more could be possible from a full charge.

The other potential issue is cost of purchase. The official on-the-road price of the Mitsubishi i-MiEV is £38,699, and although the previous government promised a subsidy of up to £5,000 on electric vehicles from 2011, the present government is reviewing whether this commitment should go ahead.

This seems a little steep, for a small car, even with a running cost advantage over conventional fuel cars of about £2 for a full charge and possible 100-mile range compared with about £7 for a similar distance in a good diesel or petrol-electric hybrid.

However, the price of the Nissan Leaf due in 2011 is set at £28,350 or £23,350 if the subsidy remains in place, and don’t be surprised if Mitsubishi is able to bring the price of the i-MiEV down in future to take account of the more competitive market.

It’s a significant outlay and there are still many unresolved issues over whether the manufacturer will provide a leasing scheme for the battery or if – as Mitsubishi and Nissan have already confirmed – it will be sold as part of the car.

And there's the old chestnut of how ‘green’ the energy it uses is, when the national grid is still powered by such a large proportion of fossil fuel power stations.

That’s another discussion, but as a first step towards mainstream electric vehicles in the UK, the i-MiEV may be a compromise, but some of its shortcomings are plain to see.

Assuming these are also obvious to the manufacturers, and they will invest in addressing them, it’s a good indicator of how these vehicles could develop over the next few years.


By Simon Harris

At some point during the 1990s, although I don’t exactly remember the precise moment, wood ceased to be fashionable as part of a car’s interior.

The premium German brands (BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Audi) were never very good at doing wood in a tasteful way back then, but perhaps it was their diversification into alternative finishes such as aluminium or lacquered carbon fibre that made wood seem firmly rooted in the 20th century.

Then perhaps Rover’s dogged persistence in having slices of tree adorning the dashboard and doors, when as a brand it was seen as past its sell-by date, that finally seemed to consign wood trim to the scrapyard.

Since then the Germans haven’t got much better at it – the matt finish wood offered in the Mercedes-Benz CLS horrified me – and others like Volvo have tried to provide a more modern take with unique varieties and unusual finishes, although these haven’t always looked like genuine wood should.

Jaguar has a great tradition in this area, but in recent years, it also has gone down the route of aluminium and carbon fibre. Yes, customers could still select wood, but the talking point was that it offered them 21st century alternatives.

The Jaguar XF, launched to great acclaim in 2008, perhaps represented too much of a break with the company’s traditionalist past to seem right with the ambience of an old library.

Yet with the new XJ Jaguar has made wood appear ‘cool’ again.

The XJ is more indulgent inside than other Jaguar models and the combination of modern design, a bold, sweeping line around the top of the dashboard and enough chrome to make the interior feel special without appearing garish, this must now be the most pleasant car to sit in for less than £100,000.

Wood in the new XJ is without a doubt the most appropriate finish, but Jaguar has also managed to make is modern and in keeping with the forward-looking philosophy of the rejuvenated brand.

* Jaguar XJ available to order now sale now with prices ranging from £52,500 to £88,000. Deliveries begin early in 2010.

On Budget Day 2009 the Chancellor of the Exchequer is expected to outline a 'scrappage' incentive to help boost new car sales.

As people stay away from new car showrooms, the Treasury misses out on the 15 per cent VAT from every lost purchase.

New car registrations in 2009 are expected to be perhaps 600,000 lower than in 2008. That amounts to a lot of VAT missing from Government coffers.

So the Chancellor might as well write this off as a handout to tempt people back into showrooms.

A similar scheme has been operating in Germany for a few months and new car registrations are significantly higher than in 2008.

Customers are offered €2500 (£2000) for trading in a car at least nine years old. It has boosted sales of smaller cars in Germany.

But with Sterling's weakness against the Euro, car prices have been increasing in the UK. Ford has implemented two price increases already this year, and many other car manufacturers have
followed suit at least once.

A medium specification Ford Focus is now about £1500 more than it was in December 2008.

Many customers will be no better off than they were several months ago, and with pre-registered vehicles around in significant numbers they could make bigger savings choosing one of these.

The Government has dithered for so long over introducing this incentive that its value, if brought in later this month, will be much lower than it seemed when it was mooted a few months ago.