Mazda Eunos Roadster - a return to form for Life On Cars

After very reluctantly getting rid of a 1990 Mazda MX-5 last April, Life On Cars writer and Classic Car Weekly news editor David Simister has done the sensible thing - and bought another one.

Click to enlarge...

Originally published in the 29 January edition of Classic Car Weekly. All rights reserved

David Brown will have a tough job developing a new sports car

IMAGINE the biggest number you can think of and then multiply it by ten. Nope, you’re still nowhere near how much it costs to develop a new car.

It’s such a fantastically enormous quantity of money that it hurts your head thinking about it. VW, for instance, threw £50bn at developing what it calls the MQB platform, which in layman’s English refers to the bits and bobs which hold the current Golf, Audi A3 and its family cousins together. Spend much less and you get the David Simisters of this world poking fun at the fact your latest sales rep special has a cheap-feeling dashboard.

My point is that because it costs such an extraordinary amount of cash to develop a new car properly, very few firms can actually afford to, which is why MG Rover went bust and why – despite the best efforts of the Chinese – you haven’t been able to buy a new Saab for nearly three years. It’s why Aston Martin’s ‘new’ models are always thinly-disguised rehashes of the decade-old DB9 and why Fiat ended up buying Chrysler outright the other week. Virtually no one can afford to develop a car.

Which is why I’m just a bit cynical about what’s roughly the 327^th attempt by a British businessmen to set up his own sports car company.

Last weekend I got word of David Brown’s efforts to set up his own firm, called David Brown Automotive. The name’s great – chiefly because it immediately conjures connotations of a (non-related) David Brown’s involvement in Aston Martin, which led to a string of beautiful GT cars – and the badge, a stylised Union Flag, pushes all the right patriotic buttons. He’s got talent on board too, in the form of Land Rover’s former design boss, and he’s confident he get a new car, as if from nowhere, ready to wow us this April.

It’s bold, it’s British, and it’s a new sports car. But haven’t we heard all this before?

For every Ariel Atom or Caterham there’s a Marcos or a Jensen, or an Invicta or a Lea-Francis, that has promised to take on Johnny Foreigner with a new sports car developed for about 50p – and subsequently vanished without trace. There are handful that crack this toughest of automotive nuts, but I’ve just got a horrible feeling that the David Brown will join all the other old sports cars you’d forgotten existed.

I would love, of course, to be proven wrong and for a plucky Brit to come good for a change. Sadly, I have my doubts.

Kia gets it right with the GT4 Stinger

THINGS are looking grim in America at the moment.

While you were busy worrying about high tides and gale force winds, people on the Eastern Seaboard have been enduring something which Michael Fish types call a polar vortex, nudging temperatures to so comically cold that the Niagra Falls actually froze. People haven’t been going to work. They’ve uploading footage of freshly boiled water turning instantly turning into snow onto YouTube instead. 

As a result I was surprised anyone actually braved the bitter conditions for a trip to this year’s Detroit Motor Show, but those who did have been rewarded with an historic moment in motoring. A Korean company unveiling a genuinely gorgeous and exciting car.

This, as far as I’m aware, has only happened twice before in the entire history of South Korea’s car industry, making it a sort of solar eclipse of motoring. The first was back in 1995, when Hyundai launched the Coupe, which caught the car world napping because it was curvaceous and charismatic when everything else it made at the time – the Accent, the Sonata and so on – was at best bland and at worst visual pollution. Then, in 2008, it launched a rear-wheel-drive GT car called the Genesis, but none of us ever got to see it because the company has never sold it in this country.

The rest of the world launches cars designed solely with the wow factor in mind every other week – we’ve got the F-type, Italy’s got the Alfa 4C, Japan’s got the Toyota GT86. Korea’s upped its game lately with attention-grabbers like the Kia Soul and the Hyundai i40, but its ‘wow’ cars, the sort of thing your eight-year-old son Blu-tacks to his bedroom wall, are few and far between.

That’s why I really hope Kia gets its latest concept car into production. Even without the freezing Detroit weather outside, it is a truly cool car.

For starters, the name is spot on – ladies and gents, meet the Kia GT4 Stinger, which makes it sound like a fighter plane. It also might only have a 2.0 litre engine, but it’s turbocharged, and chucks 315bhp through a six speed gearbox at the back wheels. Yet the thing which really stops you in the GT4 Stinger’s tracks is the way it looks, which is stunning.  It’s all bulging wheelarches and narrow windows, and it looks like it means business.

Think of it as Kia’s answer to the Nissan 370Z or – if you’re a bit older – as a sort of Korean reinvention of the Ford Capri. Get making it, chaps!

Aston Martin and AMG Mercedes confirm engines agreement

ASTON MARTIN has signed an agreement with Mercedes which will see the British sports car using the German firm’s engines in years to come.

The company this week formalised a deal which will see it collaborate with AMG, Mercedes’ official tuning and motorsport division, to bring new V8s to the next generation of Aston’s sports cars.

It ends the company’s reliance on the current Ford-developed V12 and the Jaguar-sourced V8.

Winter is here. Thank God for Honda and its new small sports car

IT’S that time of year again – the bit where I’m dreading more motoring misery and driving home in the dark.

A flotsam of leaves have fallen from the trees onto an increasingly wet and windy north west landscape, the clocks have been wound back, and the predictable slew of automotive experts have been rolled out to tell us how we’re all going to have to concentrate extra hard to make sure we don’t crash in the dark.

The perfect time, then, to talk about small, open top sports cars.

Maybe I’ve spent too much time poking my nose around old MG Midgets and Triumph Spitfires this summer, but I’ve been keeping an eye on the more recent al-fresco offerings and haven’t exactly been bowled over. The Jaguar F-type, for instance, toyed with us for years with its promises of being a Boxster basher that’d make every Brit proud, but while it looks fabulous its £58,000 starting price isn’t exactly in tune with a nation worried about paying its next gas bill.

Toyota’s open-top version of the excellent GT-86, it’s now being widely rumoured, has been axed, while the problem with the rest of the small sports cars you can actually afford is that there simply aren’t any. The MG TF, Fiat Barchetta, Daihatsu Copen and Toyota MR-2 are all gone. Mazda and Alfa Romeo have teamed up to create two MX-5 based roadsters, but the finished product still seems a long way off. That is the only ray of faint sunshine in a winter utterly devoid of fun cars.

Or at least it was until Honda and Caterham got in on the act.

I smiled the smile of a chocoholic let loose at Cadbury World when I found out Caterham – who, don’t forget, have been a bit busy running F1 teams lately – have got back to basics and made a cheaper version of the Seven which goes back to its roots. The end result might not be the quickest thing the company’s ever created, but it costs the same as a low-spec Ford Focus and has skinny little tyres, a motorbike engine and next to no weight or creature comforts whatsoever. In other words, big fun.

But even that pales into comparision with what Honda’s been up to, on the other side of the world. While all the eyes at next month’s Tokyo Motor Show will be on the new NSX supercar, the boffins have also found time to create the S660, which is a tiny, mid-engined, open-top sports car.

Forget the technology and the snazzy styling – it’s the new Healey Sprite. Get making it, Honda!

Alfa Romeo 4C is finally ready for the UK

It might have been a long time coming, but Alfa Romeo has finally confirmed the UK details of its striking 4C sports car.

The company said that the mid-engined coupe will cost £45,000 when it goes on sale next month, and will use a new turbocharged 1.8 litre petrol engine producing 240bhp. With the car weighing less than a tonne, Alfa expects the car to hit 60mph in just 4.5 seconds before rocketing on to a top speed of 160mph.

Just 3,500 will be brought into the UK, with the cars being delivered next year.

Don't get stung by one of driving's biggest distractions

IT WAS on a fine summer’s afternoon I discovered perhaps the most dangerous driving distraction known to man.

The Government’s answered calls – although not on a mobile phone while at the wheel, obviously – to up the penalty for those caught texting while driving to ninety quid. Rightly so, I reckon, because trying to spk 2 ur m8 abt 2nite while at the helm of an Audi A4 in the outside lane is, in anyone’s book, a recipe for disaster.

Unfortunately, the Ministry of Transport hasn’t yet found ways to legislate against some equally attention-grabbing, but rather less avoidable, motoring distractions. Nanny State could, for example, do something about those lorries you always find conveniently parked up in fields alongside motorways and dual carriageways, but of far more pressing concern are the appalling spelling, grammatical and punctual errors on an alarming number of them. One, at the side of the A1, reads “Believe ON the Lord Jesus Christ”*, which constantly provokes in-car debate about whether it’s best to believe while standing, quite literally, on the son of God. Another, plugging a car care specialist, proclaims “Diesel’s repaired”. Is it? Trust me, there are few things more dangerous while driving on a dual carriageway than being forced to consult my imaginary copy of Eats, Shoots and Leaves.

There’s also the unavoidable motoring horror of the sneeze, which not only blinds you entirely for half a second or so but, if it catches you off-guard, leaves the inside of your windscreen covered in snot (interior windscreen wipers, by the way, could be a great suggestion for anyone thinking of entering Dragons’ Den). Driving while preoccupied by a recent bereavement is a no-no too, and if you’re a man, there’s the added distraction of billboards with pictures of Keira Knightley on them.

All of these however, pale into comparision with the distraction I encountered on that gloriously sunny afternoon in the North Yorkshire countryside. I was driving a bright yellow Triumph Spitfire – read badly built Mazda MX-5 if you haven’t done your GCSEs yet – down the country lanes, lapping up the rays, when a bee landed on the inside of the windscreen. Seconds later, it flew off and landed straight on my chest. All the advanced driving lessons in the world can’t help prepare you for a spot of motoring melissophobia. How I didn’t crash someone else’s prized classic sports car, I will never know!

What’s more, while bees are fairly benign creatures which only sting when they’re threatened, I dread the day when a wasp – a useless species which stings small children just for fun – decides to join me for the drive.

The Government don’t just need to clamp down on texting drivers. They need to ban wasps as well.

*I am aware that 'on' and 'in' are both, for historical reasons, considered acceptable, but it still draws up interesting debates about the evolution of the English language. Just one I'd prefer not to have while driving along the A1.

New Porsche 911 Turbo ups the supercar ante

If you’ve won the lottery lately and fancy showing up your neighbours with a shiny new supercar, then the latest in a long line of turbocharged Porsche 911s might just fit the bill.

The new Porsche 911 Turbo, based on the current ‘991’ generation of the evergreen German sports car, packs both a rear-mounted 520bhp flat six engine and four wheel drive into its £118,349 price tag, while the Turbo S version ups the stakes, offering up 560bhp for a cool £140,852.

Porsche GB said of the new arrival: “In the forty years since the first prototype appeared, the place of the Porsche 911 Turbo at the technological summit and peak of dynamic performance has never been in doubt. “Now, with the unveiling of the new ‘Type 991’ generation 911 Turbo and Turbo S, the car’s reputation as a technology showcase combining the virtues of a circuit race car with those of an everyday road car reaches new heights.”

If you can afford it, the first right-hand-drive 911 Turbo and Turbo S models arrive in Britain in September.

Desire is brilliant, but what about the F-Type?

ANYONE remember that Peugeot 406 advert from absolutely ages ago?

You'll know the one I mean. A girl in the path of an oncoming lorry gets saved from certain death, M People's soultastic hit Search for the Hero gets belted out in the background, and there's lots of money shots of France's favourite repmobile to establish it's - to reuse Peugeot's wonderfully awful slogan - the drive of your life. Even though it hasn't been aired in an ad break since about 1996, it's up there with Bob Hoskins telling us it's good to talk and three frogs belching out the name of a light beer for sticking around in the old grey matter.

As for car adverts, there's only two others I can actually recall out of the thousands I must have seen over the years - the VW Golf ad responsible for getting my favourite song to number one in the charts (The Bluebells' Young At Heart, if you're intetested), and Vauxhall's efforts to make the 1997 Astra the star of a sort of automotive Apocalypse Now. That's it.

Jaguar, however, has now decided to take the art of car adverts to a whole new level; for the new F-Type a minute-and-a-bit of Britpop and a clever catchphrase wasn't enough. So they sent Ridley Scott, Damian Lewis and their new sports car to the Atacama Desert in Chile not to make an advert, but a movie instead.

 

Desire, the 13 minute short film they came up with, is surprisingy watchable even if you aren't a petrolhead - think Quantum of Solace crossed with trippy Seventies car chase hit Vanishing Point and you won't be too far off. Without wanting to ruin the plot, Damian Lewis plays a suave, Bond-esque delivery driver who has to deliver a new F-Type, but finds himself having to fight off would-be assasins and the searing desert heat.

The only problem is that, for all the Gladiator guru's best efforts, you're always aware at the back of your mind that Desire is an extended car advert, and that poor Damian always plays second to the car itself. There's one scene where he crams the cars Top Trumps specs into a conversation he's having with a gun-toting gangster - something I can't imagine 007 or Jason Bourne doing any time soon. I applaud Jaguar for pushing the boundaries with what's possible, but I can't help feel it might have been better off getting Ridley and Damian to do a sequel to Bladerunner instead.

Desire is, in its own right, a brilliant bit of automotive artwork, but it doesn't answer the biggest question everybody has about the F-Type. What's it like to drive?

Morgan - a traditional sort of sports car

I'VE been asked, by my new employers, to find a secondhand car for sale at one of Britain's hundreds of classic car dealers and take it for a test drive. Will this suit the bill?

It's a 1997 Morgan +4 and if you're interested - which, if you like reading Life On Cars, you probably will be - it's yours for £24,500. Yes, I know that's the same sort of money as a showroom fresh Focus ST, a brand new Toyota GT-86 or a gleaming Golf GTI, but this is a much more enticing prospect. This is an immaculate Morgan that belies its years because it feels as though it's only just been run in.

Regular readers will already know I've got a soft spot for traditional sports cars and what I reckon this lacks in showroom-fresh reliability and warranty it makes up by just feeling more alive somehow. On a grey day at Southport sands it looked the part, and there's something about the view down that long, louvred bonnet that makes this a motoring experience rather than just a drive.

Would I have one over a GT-86? Not if I had to use it every day - it's heavy, defiantly old fashioned and I get the feeling taking a +4 to Tesco would spoil the Morgan magic somehow. But given a sunny day and a set of windy lanes to a country pub, this would run rings around the Toyota.

I mean, just look at it...

End of term report: Mazda MX-5

THE roof has been lowered one last time. The revvy little twin cam engine has been switched off. I have, after nearly two years of small sports car fun, sold my Mazda MX-5.

Due to getting a new job - more on that in a few days, because that's another story for another day - one of the Life On Cars fleet had to go. The MGB GT, despite still being in winter hibernation, is my passport into a world of classic car shows and authentically old-fashioned driving experiences, and even though it hasn't moved in months I'd rather sell my right arm than get rid of the old warhorse. The Rover, meanwhile, has earned its keep by taking a small forests' worth of old wooden furniture to be recycled and taking hundreds of miles of motorway driving in its stride, so it's proved too comfortable, too practical and too useful to get rid of.

So it's the Mazzer, a small, two-seater roadster I bought back in 2011 after years of wanting one on my driveway, that had to go. Which is one of the hardest motoring decisions I've ever made, because I've loved almost every mile it's covered.

It hasn't, don't get me wrong, been plain sailing all the way, after a combination of cheap tyres and tail-happy handling prompted one repair and a split hose prompted another, but once both these issuse had been tackled it's proven one of the most enjoyable cars I've ever owned. If you pick a good 'un and look after it, an MX-5 is arguably one of the best automotive recipes ever concocted - authentically British sports car thrills topped off with bulletproof Japanese reliability!

The Mariner Blue, 1990 Eunos Roadster - meaning it found its way onto Britain's B-Roads as a grey import after starting its life in Japan, but don't let that put you off - has proved a perfectly reliable companion, which just happened to have a soft-top roof you could chuck down in seconds. Which is exactly what I did when I used it on my advanced driving test.

What's more, even in the company of more exotic machinery and grand automotive stages it's never been anything less than sublime. In the company of a Ford Racing Puma, a supercharged Volkswagen Polo G40, a Metro GTi and some stunning Welsh scenery in certainly didn't embarrass itself. It tackled the Buttertubs Pass and felt right at home, and even took the more boring stuff - like motorway tailbacks - in its stride. Not once has it so much as thought of refusing to start.

Would I point an aspiring petrolhead in the direction of an early MX-5's pop-up headlights? Definitely, given it's one of the cheapest routes into the world of authentic, rear-drive sports cars thrills (and, I suspect, a lot more reliable than a similarly priced MGF!). There's plenty of them out there, so choose one that hasn't succumbed to rot and shows signs of being looked after mechanically. Don't skimp on the tyres - particularly the rear ones, where the power goes - because it makes a big difference to how it behaves. Most of all, treat it with respect, but if you do the MX-5 is one of the most rewarding modern classics on the market.

My Mazda was a cracking little car. I miss it already.

Detroit Electric invites you to play Guess the Sports Car

NORMALLY Life On Cars doesn't do teaser shots - annoying images of cars almost completely hidden from view - but on this occasion it's worth making an exception.

This is the as-yet-unnamed sports car from Detroit Electric, a name that's been plucked from America's automotive back catalogue after an absence of over 70 years in order to create a trendy two-seater which will be made at a Michigan factory and officially launched next month at the Shanghai Motor Show.

Don Graunstadt, the company's chief executive, said: "We are proud to become the fourth car manufacturer born out of Detroit, and the first to manufacture a pure electric sports car from Michigan.

"We are committed to doing our part for this great revival of Detroit through innovation, entrepreneurship and determination – what we like to call ‘Detroit 2.0’.  Our investors and management team are thankful to the State of Michigan for the help provided in allowing Detroit Electric to carry on the legacy that began in Michigan so many years ago."

So what makes this otherwise obscure teaser shot so interesting? Well, very occasionally I'll get asked to play Guess the Sports Car - a largely Facebook-based game which involves successfully identifying the more obscure bits of Britain's roadster heritage - and for that reason my inner anorak almost immediately spotted a few familiar styling cues on Detroit Electric's offering.

Could this two-seater's "bold styling, outstanding performance, and exhilarating handling characteristics" be a bit British, by any chance? The LED lights and the minimalist door mirrors, I'm almost certain, are shared by a certain sports car I drove two years ago.

You might also like to know that one of Detroit Electric's backers is a chap called Albert Lam, whose CV includes a stint as the CEO of a car company and engineering group based in the Norfolk countryside. A company which already has a lot of experience of making electric sports cars closely based on its own models, like the Tesla Roadster and the Dodge EV.

Here's the wager, then. I'll eat my own shoes if the Detroit Electric isn't related, in some way or other, to the Lotus Elise...

Toyota in convertible GT86 shocker

IT WAS only a matter of time. Toyota is considering putting a convertible version of its fabulous GT86 into production.

The Japanese car giant will unveil what it's calling the FT-86 Open at this year's Geneva Motorshow in a few week's time, and while it's calling it a concept car I wouldn't be fooled; if the original FT-86 concept coupe was anything to go by, I'd put my money on an al fresco version of the rear-drive enthusiasts' favourite being in the offing.

It's one of two concepts the company's showing off in the Swiss city - the other being what's billed as Toyota's response to the Renault Twizy - and while the official line is that it'll only decide to put the FT-86 Open into production if the public likes it, chances are it will. What's not like about the inevitable but inviting prospect of one of the great drivers' hits of the past decade?

The coupe version of the GT86 is a bit of a Life On Cars favourite, blending sleek coupe proportions, keen pricing and old fashioned rear-wheel-drive, oversteer-happy dynamics to create something that offers as much fun as some sports car costing two or three times its £25,000 price.

The initial impression I got when I drove it last year was that it's a Mazda MX-5 on a 1.5 times scale with metal rather than fabric over your forehead but that's selling it short. It's somehow meatier and more challenging, but more thrilling too.

Of all the cars I drove last year, this was by far and away the one I had to fight my way past other journalists to get a go in, and I can understand exactly why. I can also also understand exactly why Jeremy Clarkson said the GT86, of all the four billion cars he drove last year, was his favourite. In an automotive landscape where everything is anodyne and the loudest sound you're likely to hear is the chime of a seatbelt safety warning, the GT86 is a motor with a sense of mischief. It's a laugh.

Throw in open-top thrills (without ruining too much of the coupe's dynamics) and I reckon they'll have a bit of a roadster hit on their hands.

Video: Porsche 911 Carrera 4S

 

IT’S two days before Christmas and with it being cold, wet and slippery out there the conditions aren’t exactly ideal for the sort of driving petrolheads enjoy. Or are they?

For decades keen drivers have known that a fast car is more likely to cope with wet, slippery conditions if the power’s going to all four wheels – so the power’s distributed more evenly, more of the time – and for more than 20 years one of the fastest  four wheel drivers on the market’s been the Carrera 4 version of Porsche’s evergreen 911.

If you’re the sort of person who likes their sports car to come with a little added reassurance when the going gets slippy then you’ll probably like this latest video from Porsche, which helps you get a grip – pun intended – on the history of the Carrera 4 system and how it’s evolved from the Paris Dakar Rally-winning 959 supercar to the latest 991 Carrera 4S.

Now all I need is to get the right Euromillions numbers. Fingers crossed...

 

Fantastic car, awful weather

IT’S not often I get an entire afternoon to reacquaint myself with an old car. Even when the afternoon’s as wet and unwelcoming as this one’s been.

The old car in question is one you’ll be familiar with if you read these pages regularly; my 1972 MGB GT , which despite being one of my most treasured possessions hasn’t done any meaningful driving since its appearance at the Ormskirk MotorFest back in August. With the weather turning increasingly cold and miserable, the tougher driving tasks have been assigned to the MX-5.

Until now.

I would’ve loved to point the MG’s nose onto the motorway and go hunting for the hills of the Lakes or North Wales but with just a few hours of meaningful daylight I play with I went to a place surprisingly few motorists outside the Sefton/West Lancashire area know about. The shots you see here are taken on Cleaves Hill, which is a stone’s throw from Aughton. Normally, it affords some great views across to Liverpool and even to the Welsh coast, but today just about the most it could do were these moody countryside shots of the MG.

The weather was cold and miserable, the amount of water involved was playing havoc with the GT’s indicator relay and the light was fading fast, but I absolutely loved my afternoon with it. It’s a proper sports car in the old fashioned sense; heavy, noisy and not especially easy to drive, but tinged with a romance and a nostalgia which make its sound, handling and style ever more enjoyable.

I just can’t wait for it to be summer again, so I can enjoy it properly.

Video: Morgan factory

SUPPOSE you were in the lucky position to have Morgan's mad Threewheeler on order.

That's the position a friend of Life On Cars is in, and on a trip to see how his Threewheeler was taking shape he recorded this video of life at the company's Malvern factory.

It gives a fascinating insight not only into how the Threewheeler - one of the best cars I've driven all year - takes shape, but also into how its more conventional four-wheeled siblings are crafted and at why Morgan is still quite unlike any other car maker in the country. Having also toured the old TVR factory in Blackpool before it closed and the Lotus plant in Norfolk earlier this year, it almost tempts me to take a trip down to Worcestershire and see it for myself.

If you're a fan of the Threewheeler but can't afford the £30,000 pricetag then you'll probably like this one...

Renault and Caterham join forces to build sports cars

 

THE problem with Renault's Wind was that it wasn't hardcore enough.

It was my kinda car; small, light, blessed with a clever roof which didn't ruin the shape, and underpinned with the same basic mechanicals you'll find in the Renaultsport Twingo 133. Yet the little roadster always lacked the bite of its hatchback sister, which I suspect is part of the reason why Renault quietly dropped the wind from its range last year.

Luckily, Renault's found an innovative solution to making its sports cars a touch more manic. It's brought its F1 partnership with Caterham onto the road, so the French automotive giant will join forces with the plucky Brit firm to design and build cars together, with the inevitable results getting the famed Alpine badge.

Renault chief Carlos Tavares said yesterday as the tie-up was announced: "Our ambitions of reviving Alpine depended on our ability to find a partner in order to ensure the economic profitability of such an adventure. Right from the start, we wanted to place the Dieppe plant at the heart of the project.

"Today, through our partnership with Caterham Group, we can enter a new phase:  the design of a vehicle that will embody the very essence of Alpine, a vehicle that will rekindle sporting passion once more. It could become a reality within the next three or four years."

It's the second sports car tie-up announced in the space of a year, after Fiat and Mazda teamed up to build an Alfa Spider with MX-5 mechanicals. However, if Renault matches the pedigree of its last proper sports car - the spectacular, race-bred Spyder - with Caterham's best known offering - the bonkers Seven R500 - then the Anglo-French efforts look set to interest the more hardcore end of the market.

Either way, it's encouraging to see that even in these tricky times, car makers still want to give us something to get excited about.

Is stretching an E-Type altering an icon?

A CLASSIC car specialist in Shropshire is about to do what some enthusiasts would call the unthinkable by stretching a Jaguar E-Type.

Classic Motor Cars Limited, based in Bridgnorth, said it is about to start work on a project which effectively involves making a 1968 4.2 litre Series 1 Roadster, but while it involves altering one of the best known sports car shapes of all time the company say they are keen to keep the preserve the E-Type's essence while making it roomier and easier to live with.

Nick Goldthorp, the company's managing director, said: "This is something that we have never been done before. Our client wanted the interior leg room of a Series 3 V12 E-Type but the aesthetics of a Series 1 car.

"We are going to add four and a half inches to the floor pan, which will give the leg room of the V12 plus an additional one inch if required. The V12 was actually nine inches longer than a Series I but a lot of the additional room was behind the seats as storage and is not required on our project. By adding four and a half inches to the length of the car we will be able to retain the overall look of the Series 1 and also turn this E-Type into a unique car."

The project involves not only stretching the left-hand-drive car by four and a half inches, but also fitting the Sixties sports car with modern technology, including air conditioning, power steering, upgraded brakes, a new five speed gearbox, better suspension and handling upgrades among other additions.

Paul Branstad, the American client who owns the car, said: "The stretched E-Type I have conceived sits between the Series 1 and the subsequent vehicles produced after the merger and formation of British Leyland, when the design of the cars underwent several transformations as a consequence of cuts in production costs and the need for more space that resulted in the Series II 2+2 and Series III V12."

While classic car purists would argue against altering aerodynamicist Malcolm Sayer's original vision for the E-Type's shape, the sketch included here, Life On Cars reckons, is sympathetic to the Jag's original styling, and could actually provide the tempting prospect of the earlier E-Types's looks with the creature comforts of the later V12 cars.

The stretched E-Type is expected to be completed in September next year.

Fire up the... Jaguar XKR-S Convertible

BILL Lyons would have liked this car. Jaguar's late, great founder would, I reckon, have got out of the XKR-S, taken in its lines and given it the thumbs up.

Why? Because Jaguar's sports cars, right from the original XK120, through the Le Mans winning C and D Types and through to the iconic E-Type were all about being as fast and beautiful as anything Aston or Ferrari could knock out, and for a fraction of the price. This roadgoing missile and the old E have a mission statement in common.

The XKR-S, to get it out of the way, is almost unspeakably fast. Thanks to a supercharged five litre V8 and a uprated exhaust system at its disposal it has no less than 542bhp at its disposal, meaning that in terms of big cats only the old XJ220 supercar can outsprint it. More importantly, it offers more grunt than the Ferrari California and the Aston Martin DBS for a lower price. Which is a very Jag thing to do.

It also pulls off that other crucial Jaguar accomplishment - it looks good, although I'd argue not quite as svelte as the cheaper and less powerful XKR the S is based on. The XKR-S, in its bid to look bolder and more aggressive, loses a little of the elegance of its slower siblings. Different strokes and all that, though.

In fact, the biggest bugbear about the absolute gem of an engine that Jaguar's created for the hottest XK ever is a surprisingly simple one; that the company, quite simply, has fitted it to the wrong car.

The XKR-S is a wonderful showcase for what the company, finally freed from the limits of ex-owner Ford's finances and the needs to play second fiddle to Aston Martin, can do, but with two doors, tiny back seats and a £103,000 pricetag it's left looking a little indulgent. Especially next to the likes of the BMW M5, a car that'll offer even more grunt and a similar prestige in a more practical package. This engine belongs under the bonnet of the XJ saloon, and when and if the company get around to it (please, pretty please) they'll create a performance car package to die for. Until then, however, the XK will do just fine.

Don't worry, however, if you reckon a 542bhp Jaguar costing upwards of £100,000 is bordering on irrelevant in today's recession-ridden times, because the company does the real world just as well as the surreal one. Tune in next time to find out why...

Alfa Romeo and Mazda announce sports car tie-up

THE successor to Alfa Romeo's achingly beautiful Spider could be one of the most mouthwatering sports cars ever created.

Fiat, the Italian automotive giant which owns the Milanese motor makers, has announced that not only is it working on a new two-seater roadster, but that it's joined forces with Mazda, the makers of the best-selling sports car of all time, to create it. In three years' time, if the two companies play to their strengths, you'll be able to buy a car with classic Italian styling and the fun-to-drive factor of the MX-5.

I saw a mid-nineties Spider being driven along Southport's seafront on a sunny summer afternoon the other day and really, really wanted to be the chap behind the wheel. It never really took off with Brit buyers in the same way the Mazda did, because while the MX-5 had a rear-wheel-drive set up singlehandedly designed for being sporty, all Spider's since the model's '94 reinvention have relied on front-wheel-drive bits from the Fiat Group parts bin. Not that any of that mattered with the savvy souls who did take the plunge, because the reason why you bought any Spider was because of the way they looked. They were and still are, a delight to behold.

So the news that Fiat and Mazda are planning to join forces is brilliant news if you care about simple, small, two-seater sports cars (and, let's face it, chances are if you read Life On Cars you almost certainly do).

Mazda president Takashi Yamanouchi, knows this full well, and said this week: "Establishing technology and product development alliances is one of Mazda's corporate objectives and this announcement with Fiat is an important first step in that direction.

"It is especially exciting to be collaborating with such a prestigious marque as Alfa Romeo on a new roadster based on the next-generation MX-5, which is such an iconic vehicle for Mazda and recognized as the best-selling roadster of all time."

 

The two companies plan to develop two different, distinctly styled, iconic and brand-specific light weight, rear-wheel-drive roadsters. The Mazda and Alfa Romeo variants will each be powered by specific proprietary engines unique to each brand, although both are expected to be built at Mazda's factory in Hiroshima, where it's made the MX-5 in its various iterations for more than 20 years.

The deal, which is expected to be finalised later this year, also includes the scope for further tie-ups between Mazda and Fiat. Does that mean we can have finally have a follow up to one of the best-looking sports cars of all time, the Fiat Barchetta?