Only the skilled survive
The March issue’s Giant Test showed again the Peak District’s sweeping vistas and technically tricky roads, this time around Burbage and Cam Heights, delights within minutes of where we live.
Driving instruction (I dare not grace it with the title ‘lessons’) with my lad inevitably feature daunting hill starts and road awareness, hazards including cambers, livestock, bird swerves and cyclists.
Sharing our elderly ’07 Subaru Outback Legacy, he pointed out during a break that he was learning in a four-wheel-drive, petrol, non-electric, five-speed-manual estate with hydraulic everything, a car that’s older than he is, with a sat-nav less responsive than a postcard and driving
anidsdconsisting of a windscreen and a steering wheel.
‘It’s like learning to drive in a traction engine.’
JJ Ross
Rishi Stalin, more like
Any society that forces consumers to buy third-rate products for political reasons runs into trouble. East Germany’s Trabant, Ceausescu’s Romanian Dacia (Renault 12 copy built with used parts) or Russia’s Lada were all examples.
No, excellent products which consumers want and fulfil their requirements drive a prosperous society. So how to assess the ZEV mandate forcing a minimum of 22 per cent of all car sales to be electric? Expensive, not even thinking about the horrifying costs of replacement batteries, poor range, poor infrastructure…
Why not generate the power, install the chargers, wait until battery tech catches up and have the buyer wanting EVs rather than being forced into a Sunak Trabant?
It’s not democratic, it’s not intelligent and it will saddle those few who can afford or are forced to purchase one of today’s early beta-version EVs into a very poor ownership experience at terrifying cost.
Richard Whitton
Hmm… except a lot of people are finding that the EV driving and owning experience is great. CO
After the Buzz has gone
VW knows how to make a cool bus. Quite frequently you’ll see a nicely preserved camper van or commercial that may well be 20, 30 or even 40 years old.
But who in their right mind would buy a secondhand ID. Buzz in a few years’ time? Who would buy a fiveyear-old Buzz with only three years left on the battery warranty? If you’re
a fan of VW buses keep hold of the old ones because you won’t see many 20-year-old Buzzes in 2044.
Mike Chandler
The weigh ahead
I am getting a little fed up when writers for CAR, such as Phil McNamara in his Range Rover ‘Goodbye’ (Our Cars, March), feel the need to apologise for running a diesel car.
Diesel engines are perfect for this and many other types of vehicles, nor do they take an age to recharge.
Electric vehicles are heavier, thus creating more potholes, small debris from tyre wear which is polluting rivers etc, not to mention the mining of rare-earth minerals.
Petrol and diesel cars still serve a purpose for those of us who do not live in large urban areas.
Edward Rook
Couldn’t agree more on the joy of a good diesel, Edward. The D350 is our favourite Range Rover, though Land Rover’s luxury icon may not be the best choice of car to illustrate your argument about the relative lightness of pistonengined cars. BM
Civil war
Sorry, David Jennings (Letters, March). To sme Audi just produces models that have designs suffering from ‘Russian doll’ syndrome and otherwise are just a Skoda in a posh suit. They are completely soulless. James Brock (also from Surrey)
Put the platform boot in
The Stellantis STLA Large platform is not the first from a major manufacturer to use both 400-volt and 800-volt electrical architectures (Tech, March issue). Geely’s SEA platform supports both, and the Galaxy E8 features both.
Tim |rons
He knows what he likes
Every month I’m bemused by your tales of woe: morning curses as zillions of beeping audio warnings are turned off, cars that take the steering out of your hands, cars that suddenly apply the brakes on slip roads, cars with appalling mpg figures, cars with controls that aren’t lit at night, self-opening doors that take forever, or stop opening at all, and the endless infotainment grumbles that rumble on and on and on...
I drive a 2016 Peugeot 208. Perhaps the last generation of ‘real’ cars. I bought it with 20,000 miles on it, and it’s up to 43k, having cost me only basic servicing and consumables.
There are many plus points, beyond the reliability. The screen is only for music and reversing – everything else is dials and switches and stalks. It has the optimum number of gears for a manual car (five), so reverse is usefully towards you rather than way over in the middle of next week. Sensible 15-inch rims mean sidewalls that provide comfort and ride quality.
It’s acceptably quiet on the motorway. With the rear seats down the luggage area is capacious. It’s fast enough, and handles well enough, to have fun if you want, but is also quite happy doing the shopping run. Road tax is zero. Insurance is cheap. And best of all, it averages 67.1mpg.
Okay, at 70 years old and with three motorcycles to build, maintain and race, I’m unlikely to buy a brand new car again. But as an avid cover-to-cover reader of CAR, I’m reasonably well versed in what’s available. I wouldn’t swap it for anything.
Odgie Danaan
The 208 sounds divine. Do you mind if we all buy one? BM
Drive properly, please
Interesting to read Alan Jennings’ comments on brake lights remaining on when stopped (Letters, March). The bane of my driving life, and now at epidemic levels, is the lack of signalling, especially when entering and exiting a roundabout.
Not only is it discourteous to other road users but it can cause tra¡c build-up. I wonder if all the driving aids fitted to vehicles nowadays have contributed to the high level of laziness. Surely it’s not too much to ask a driver to exercise their arm and hand to activate that left stalk when needed. A nationwide publicity campaign may improve matters.
Andrew Passmore
Get real
As someone who will have been reading CAR for 50 years this coming August, may I make the following observations?
1. Few of your long-term test cars have an ‘as tested’ price below £50,000. Some are more than double that. I find that staggering, even though I appreciate you can get carried away with options.
2. Why do you not have a category for small cars in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly? ‘Family cars’ barely
covers such a broad range. I have to say that this section is not as comprehensive as it was in times of old. 3. With all the talk about cars that drive themselves, I would just be happy if cars indicated where they were going. So many drivers today do not indicate, which can be very frustrating when you just do not know where they will go next. Perhaps they are just too busy fiddling with the so-called infotainment system to find the right sub-menu for something or other…
Je rey Smith
Polestar e ciency
Regarding your BYD/Polestar/Tesla test in the February issue, your arithmetic is a bit off.
Using the correct battery sizes, your tested range and eciency figures for the Polestar are in fact both slightly better than for the BYD. The Polestar 2, with its 82kWh battery, achieves 2.26 miles per kWh and a tested range of 179 miles, while the BYD Seal with its 82.5kWh battery manages 2.14 miles per kWh and a tested range of 177 miles.
Credit where it’s due.
Bob Wise
Nature’s limiter
I’m just reading in the 300-Mile Test on the Lamborghini Revuelto (December issue) about how easy it is to hit the rev limiter and remembering the old days when the rev limiter was your right foot and the mechanic would tell you how many bent valves that last 1000rpm is going to cost you!
Peter Egan
Stamp it out
I wonder if Ben Whitworth’s problems with left-foot braking in the VW ID. 5 may be self-inflicted (Our Cars, March).
He says he lifts off the accelerator or brake, but does he really 100 per cent lift o¡? EVs tend to have sensitive controls, and if he is actually braking and accelerating at the same time, the system’s regenerative braking and control systems are going to be confused.
Perhaps he should try right-foot braking so he is definitely clear of the accelerator, and see if that solves the problem.
Joe Oldaker
Credit where it’s due
Contrary to some of the anti-EV talk in recent letters page, I have had largely positive experiences with my car and the charging network.
My Hyundai Ioniq 5 replaced a similarly sized Volvo V60 and they both weigh around 2000kg. It has so far covered 45k miles on the original tyres and looks like they will cover at least 60k, and the brakes are only 10 per cent worn – so less wear than I have ever experienced and fewer particulates.
My own opinion is that driving a petrol or diesel now feels like last century’s technology and the thought of frequently visiting a petrol station does not appeal.
Richard Bond
Groats vs furlongs
Thank you, as ever, for my monthly ‘bubble’; giving me a quiet slice of the world that I can step into and lose myself in.
CAR provides a small, but increasingly essential, environment that ignores the drudgery of making every day – work or pleasure – productive. It lets me indulge in the assisted day-dreaming of driving things I’ll probably never even see, far less sit in. A pleasure that has endured for me for decades and one I see no reason to stop now.
Well, I say ‘no reason’, but as Robert Green notes in his letter (March issue), there is an increasing challenge to our ‘collective technical literacy’.
I like to think I could learn a whole new lexicon. I did once before, after all. Setright, Barker, Llewellin, Bulgin and Bremner peeled back the pith covering rear-wheel steering, torque curves, variable valve timing and wishbones to allow teenage me the juicy fruits within.
But teenage me had a far more plastic brain that sported knowledge-hungry empty chambers ripe for the filling. Late-middle-age me opens the doors of these cerebral chambers now, then promptly forgets what he went in there for in the first place.
So, not to put too much more on your keyboard-hunched shoulders, but how about an attempt to lead on this language horizon?
As each article necessarily jumps around the physics curriculum at the moment – mpg, kWh, g/km etc – could we start by adopting the metric system for measurements? I believe it might catch on with the engineers any day now.
Then quantifiable parameters with which to compare transitional offerings? What should they be? Power-to-weight ratios might help to clarify things. What might be a benchmark consumption figure? And we could add home/public charging times.
We have put our trust in your judgement for years. We continue to take our lead from you.
Mick Gallacher