ALL HAIL HOT HATCHES + F40’S GROWING LEGEND + ISSUE 700
Coulda woulda shoulda
I was thumbing through some old
CAR mags the other day when I came across a piece on Lotus’s Project M300. They were working on a ‘self-charging’ petrol-electric hybrid supercar. It was aiming at such trickery as a sub-9.0sec electric-only 0-60mph performance, a seamless transition between the two power sources, four-wheel drive with an electronically variable torque split and active suspension. The story ends: ‘If it gets the approval of the bean counters, it is bound to be a success.’ The year? 1990. I suspect the bean counters didn’t have the vision to see what was coming! Nick Georgiadis
Story of Lotus’s life. BM
Play to your strengths
I love your magazine, and I love the cars you write about, even though I can never own or drive any of them. It’s all just a dream – most of them are only available to the mega-rich. Is your magazine relevant or objective? I think not. If I wanted to buy a car, your magazine would probably be the last one I would consult. Keep up the good work!
Colin Davies
Ha ha! Erm, thanks? BM
The future is a foreign country
Interesting that Tim Pollard, when discussing the specification of his
Honda E (Our Cars, November 2020), should use the phrase ‘keyless entry and ignition’. I guess a word is required to talk about the process of activating a car, but it certainly isn’t ignition.
The E sounds a nice piece of kit, though, and I wonder what a hit it would be with a decent range.
Mario Bortolozzo
Keyless starting? BM
True costs
Your October issue’s Our Cars review of your Jaguar EV was informative. Five out of nine chargers either in use or not available over just 684 miles must have made for a pretty stressful journey. The 7.3p-per-mile cost was even more enlightening. My Volvo V90 D4 delivers 9p per mile. In the 13,000 miles covered so far it hasn’t yet needed AdBlue, and the service plan ensures maintenance costs are minimal. Including the service cost my £40k car will cost me £13k over the 45,000 miles/three years I own it. And that nine-stop journey you refer to I could have done on one tank of diesel. Do we really want electric cars? Andrew Hudson
For certain scenarios, yes. I ran James Taylor’s Mini Electric for three weeks and it was perfect; quick, quiet, 4.8p per mile and I could ‘refuel’ at home, overnight. These days long-range drives are feeling like a distant memory… BM