Your views
At last: an electric car that isn’t weird
An inside job
The Mclaren 720S (First drives, 3 May) is a nice car: a bit of Porsche something, a bit of Lotus something and a chunk of Ferrari something.
The interior? It looks like it was designed by four different people and put together by a fifth who wasn’t sure what went where. The ‘pod’ on top of the dashboard looks like a remnant from a Fisher Price toy.
Other finishes on the interiors of the car look like an eight year old was given a pot of orange paint and a brush, then instructed to make it look ‘cool’. Quick car though. Jon Lashford via email
Question of friction
Has anyone studied what percentage of automotive energy is wasted idling and braking by friction? Many drivers accelerate up to red lights and stationary traffic, then brake hard and throw away all that energy into the atmosphere as heat and also contaminate the air with friction material particles.
Official fuel consumption testing doesn’t emulate how the average motorist drives, so it is hardly a surprise that the unthinking driver will be disappointed with their failure to match official mpg figures.
Perhaps the rise of the ‘sporty’ road car with its aggressive styling and fabricated sporty noise is partly to blame. Driver education regarding looking further ahead than the car in front, observation and anticipation would reduce consumption markedly. Manufacturers could monetise this waste with an instrument on the dash to help achieve huge efficiency gains in a similar vein to domestic energy ‘smart meters’. Brendan Reilly via email Hybrids and electric vehicles often capture the brake energy and use it to recharge the drive batteries – MB
Grand prick
Just reading the Our Cars section in the 3 May issue and the article on the
Renault Scénic by John Bradshaw. Was it really a 9.0in nail that caused the puncture, as that’s a heck of a piece of ironmongery? Chris Garrett via email Snapper John spends his life looking through a zoom lens, Chris. Perhaps that was the case with the nail – MB
Not a local derby
Thanks to being on a gridlocked M25 on Easter Friday and for one brief moment managing to reach 49mph in a 40mph section, I have been given the option of going on a newly introduced National Motorway Speed Awareness Course (NMSAC) – which lasts two and a half hours and costs £75 – or face three points on my licence and a conviction.
The problem is that this course has to be taken within four months of the offence. According to the AA, which organises these events on behalf of the police, the only facility currently available for me to take the course within the time frame is in Derby.
Unfortunately, Derby happens to be a 240-mile round trip from where I live. When I asked if I could take any of the other three speed awareness courses at a closer venue, I was told by the AA that this is the course that Surrey Police have referred me to take and therefore no others are suitable for me.
Surprisingly, the AA confirmed that NMSAC courses are also available at Guildford, which is near where the camera snapped me, where I live and also the headquarters of Surrey Police. However, they are all fully booked-up until July, no new dates have been released and they don’t operate a waiting list.
As a result unless I drive to Derby to attend the course within the four month deadline I will end up collecting the three points. They explained that NMSAC is a new course and as yet not many police forces offer them.
Surely if a police force is going to introduce a new speed awareness course that is specifically designed to fit the culprit’s crime, it should ensure it is available to be taken within the legal time frame without having to trek halfway up the country and running the risk of being a repeat offender on our increasingly speed restricted motorways? Tim Sheppard via email
World’s best 4x4 tyre
Instead of naming the world’s best 4x4 vehicle in your off-road test in the 25 April issue, you actually named the world’s best 4x4 tyre: the BF Goodrich KM2, commonly known as Mud Terrain.
The Jeep Wrangler, which was shod with these, won your two-day test, despite the car having no locking differentials. However, I think your intention to have tests that nullified tyre difference went wrong when you agreed to let vehicles come to the test with optional tyres that could be fitted at point of sale.
As far as I know, no JLR products
can be fitted with ‘hooky’ tyres since the demise of the option to fit the Michelin XZL to the Defender.
I find it amazing that Range Rover and Discovery owners would be shocked and disappointed when their vehicles go off-road and come unstuck on road tyres. No wonder the supposedly capable Discovery only managed fourth place in your test.
The KM2 is a fine tyre that can be used on road as well and your article might have been a bit more plausible if everyone had used them. Alex Sinclair Maddocks
via email Disagree with your last point, Alex. It would have been less informative to fit a control tyre, however capable, that can’t be specified by prospective buyers of the car in question – MB
Muscle car beach
I have just returned from a two-week holiday in Florida, during which I discovered you can still hire muscle cars in the USA.
Having arrived at Orlando airport I was not looking forward to two weeks in a Nissan Altima. Chatting to the hire car representative, he offered me a Dodge Challenger R/T fitted with a 5.7 litre ‘hemi’ V8, saying that it had five seats and the boot was the same size as the Altima’s.
Five minutes later we were driving out in a red Challenger R/T with my two boys, aged 6 and 8, comfortable in the back, my wife in the passenger seat and the trunk/boot full with two large suitcases, two small suitcases and three backpacks.
Over two weeks it was great fun, practical and worth it just for the V8 soundtrack. At 70mph on the interstates the trip computer read just over 30mpg, in part due to the car’s cylinder deactivation technology. An unexpected benefit was that it was very easy to find in car parks that were a sea of metallic-coloured MPVS, SUVS and saloons.
The only disadvantage was that my wife loved driving the Challenger R/T so much that I was forced to share the driving 50/50! Hire one in the US before big V8s die out.