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New Jaguar XE tackles the Mille Miglia on one tank of diesel

5/22/2015

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The Mille Miglia is one of the world’s classic road races.

Travelling 1,000 miles around Italy over four days, we thought this would be an ideal opportunity to check out some of the fuel economy credentials of the new Jaguar XE. 

Could we follow the race on one tank of diesel? Well, we like a challenge . . .




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Range Rover Sport tackles 4,000-mile drive

1/11/2015

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It was late September in Spain. The grape harvest was upon us, people were out collecting mushrooms in the morning and olives in the evening.

Lemon and orange groves were heavy with fruit, fields being put to the plough. Birds of prey, silhouetted as they circled by a blood-red sun sinking slowly westward behind a vast range of mountains, called an end to the working day. You don’t see that from an aeroplane.

When I visited Spain in a Range Rover the previous year, it deployed the top 4.4 litre SDV8 diesel and 339ps.This time the Range Rover Sport’s unit (diesel again) was the six-cylinder 3.0 litre SDV6 producing 292ps. Slightly shorter and lower than the Range Rover, RRS nonetheless has a similarly high driving position – now too a ‘5+2’ with seats for 7 thanks to a longer wheelbase (but the back “+2s” best regarded as ‘occasional’).



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New look for Nissan Navara

10/11/2014

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The latest Nissan Pick-Up, ‘NP300 Navara’, was unveiled in Bangkok this summer. Thailand is the largest market for pick-ups after the USA despite a population a fraction of its size. It's probably number one for medium-sized one-tonne models, and more than 40 per cent of the market is pick-up. It also accounts for 60 per cent of total Thai vehicle production which itself is greater than 2 million.

No wonder then that the country is a global centre for pick-up production. Apart from Nissan, Toyota, Mitsubishi, Ford/Mazda and Isuzu/GM have 'home' plants there. EU Nissan pick-ups, of course, are built currently in Barcelona and if production of the exisiting Navara there was to stop, it would mean an end almost certainly too for the Pathfinder.

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Consummate 4x4 cars - A Rolls-Royce SUV too?

12/11/2013

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Land Rover can lay claim to inventing the luxury off-road 4x4 with the Range Rover in 1970 (at £1,800). Discovery came in 1989 and soon made the Land Rover badged vehicle a ‘must have’ motor car for the more comfortably off middle class.

Built on a separate chassis, they offered manual transmission and centre differential lock, permanent 4x4 with a transfer box for high/low ratios.  Although far from “utility” vehicles, these were dual-use 4x4s still capable of a proper job of work.

Mercedes-Benz evolved a more ‘soft-roader’ approach with the M-class of 1998 - aimed initially at and built in the USA.  But the ‘Sport’ in SUV came – unequivocally – with the BMW X5 of 1999. It abandoned the transfer box but concentrated instead on a competent permanent 4x4 system which was as much of an asset on-road as off it.


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Range Rover's Spanish work-out

10/17/2013

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Most new cars do well at launch but the shine can come off the paintwork with longer at the wheel.  Earlier this year the Range Rover impressed - a towering achievement. Now came an opportunity to put it to the test: Spain and back in five days; 2,500 miles with everything from motorways to rural upland tracks in between.


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Ford's big push on the SUV front

12/23/2012

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Ford of Europe has a problem on its hands. Despite class-leading products across a range of key car market sectors (Fiesta, Focus, Mondeo for example) - and top spot in the UK - it is in the red and sales heading south. Last year’s loss was $1bn apparently. The answer? SUVs – a whole new line-up of them.

Not the whole answer, it should be noted – a heavily renewed Fiesta range arrives at the beginning of 2013 and the next Mondeo is on the horizon (although the company recently announced it would not appear until 2014 because of the closure of its plant in Genk, Belgium). These follow the recently launched Fiesta-based, baby MPV-like B-Max with clever sliding doors.


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Following the downsizing and turbo trend

8/7/2012

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It was five years ago that I mistakenly went to a classic car auction and raised my hand at the wrong time, burdening myself with a slice of British automotive history powered by a lump of iron Detroit muscle.

Come to think of it, 7.2 litres is probably as big as engines got in postwar British production cars.

The fuel bills were eye-watering, and although it had never let me down (I had called out the AA once in five years of ownership), the Jensen SP was now in its 40th year and would probably become more difficult to maintain.

I never expected to keep it five years so it was perhaps more surprising that I hadn't put it up for sale before now. Within a week of advertising it was gone. A gentleman who already owned two royal blue Jensen SPs and decided he needed a third, giving him a 1.3% share of all the SPs ever built.

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Historic Land Rover Defender

7/30/2012

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“Mon Mam Cymru” – “Mon the Mother of Wales”, is how Anglesey is described in Welsh.

Its better known 20th century offspring however is the Land Rover.

When Rover Managing Director Spencer Wilks visited Chief Engineer brother Maurice at their estate there in 1947, he asked what he would do when the ex-Army Jeep he had wore out.  “Try to find another one” he said, “there’s just nothing like it …"


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The Haldex clutch: turning front-wheel drive into four-wheel drive

1/20/2012

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_One of Volkswagen’s star cars at the recent Tokyo Motor Show was the 2012 Passat Alltrack.  More than an all-wheel-drive Passat Estate, this, it says, has real off-road ability.  Open to order in April, it arrives in July.  At its heart is the Haldex 4x4 system – now much more sophisticated than a part-time 4x4 device.

The motor vehicle’s classic drivetrain evolved before the First World War.  A front-mounted engine “face forward” (radiator ahead) and drive out of the back to a gearbox which transmitted power by way of a propeller shaft to the rear axle.


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80mph is never good for the economy

12/10/2011

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_"Increasing the speed limit on motorways from 70 to 80 miles per hour for cars, light vans and motorcycles could provide hundreds of millions of pounds of benefits for the economy," so said then Transport Secretary Philip Hammond on the plan to increase the national speed limit.

In saying so, he is either being naive or disingenuous, although to be fair, selling the plan at a Tory Party conference as 'greater harmonisation with our European neighbours' would have been rather more difficult.

Polls show that many of us admit to breaking the speed limit on the motorway, and regard 80mph as a 'safe' and comfortable speed in the UK. Some other European countries have their speed limits set at around that limit.

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