Life On Cars passes the IAM Advanced Driving Test

NO L-plates were harmed during the making of this article.

There is no clichéd snap of me ripping one up to add an air of occasion, no cheesy grins for the Champion photographer. But you can bet your Grand National winnings that the sense of achievement, for me at least, is the same. A ham-fisted twentysomething passed the Advanced Driving Test!

I’m particularly proud because I’ve had – and I don’t mind admitting it to you, the region’s petrolheads – a bit of a patchy track record when it comes to learning to drive. Not once have I pretended that I am the North West’s answer to Lewis Hamilton, and I’m lucky to be able to count my attempts at the normal driving test with the embarrassed digits of a single, sweaty hand.

That’s why, even though I’ve been doing the advanced driving course since the start of the year, I’ve kept schtum on the subject until now, because I was secretly worried I’d do exactly what I kept doing with the normal driving test – make promising progress, get nervous on the test day, and make a complete hash of it.

Luckily, I had a top-notch observer who also enjoys driving to the point that it’s a hobby, and helped me fine-tune my control of my little MX-5 to near-police levels of pedantry and precision. So cheers, Alan (seeing as I know you read this column) – your Yoda-like mastery of motoring has helped me to impress the serving police officer who actually had to sit with me this morning, put his life in my hands, and decide whether I made the grade. Amazingly, I did.

Yet in many ways I am the exact sort of person the Institute of Advanced Motorists would like to see passing the test; I’m young, I’m male, and a petrolhead. I not only enjoy driving nice cars but I enjoy driving, full stop. Driving is not getting from A to B on a miserable Monday morning and trying not to think about it – it’s a craft to be finely honed and improved, like fencing or fishing or painting. I’ll travel hundreds of miles to the middle of nowhere if it means finding a rewarding road.

If you’re reading this column chances are you’re the same – you’re a petrolhead and that means you like cars, and sharpening up the skills used to drive them means you’ll enjoy them more. Driving, and doing it well, gives you the grin factor.

Being into cars without being into driving is like ordering fish without chips.

Should speeding drivers be given harsher fines?

MOTORISTS who end up on the wrong side of the law could be made to pay more for their misdeeds under new proposals being considered by the Goverment.

Ministry of Justice plans currently under consultation are suggesting upping the current penalties paid by drivers for offences such as speeding from £60 to £90.

The report which suggests raising the charges, entitled Getting It Right For Victims and Witnesses, reads: “As part of its new Strategic Framework for Road Safety,21 which aims to reduce death and injuries on our roads, the Department for Transport proposes to increase the level of some Fixed Penalty Notices for traffic offences to bring them in line with other penalties which deal with low-level offending.

"Penalty levels for many offences have not increased during the last ten years. The current levels have fallen behind other fixed penalties and therefore risk trivialising the offences. The proposed increases for motoring offences include those in relation to excessive speed, control of a vehicle, mobile phone use, ignoring signals and pedestrian crossings, and failure to wear a seatbelt."

However motoring groups have hit out at the plans, with the Institute of Advanced Motorists saying its own research highlighted that more than half of all drivers disagreed with the idea.

IAM chief executive Simon Best said: "While funding victims of crime is laudable, the real aim of fines for motoring offences should be deterrence. We want to stop people breaking the law.

“Having an income that relies on dangerous driving won’t help reduce crashes. There is a strong case for this money to be spent on road safety.”

The consultation on the proposals, which can be seen in full on the Ministry of Justice website, closes on April 22.

The Rover 100 that'll give a Porsche Boxster S a run for its money

THERE are a great many new motors on the way later this year. Most of which, a mechanic mate of mine reckons, he can easily outrun. In a Metro.

Yes, you read that right; in a garage out in the flatlands of West Lancashire work is underway on turning what was a knackered Rover 100, the Metro's final fling before poor crash test results killed it off, into a bit of a supercar in minature. I know you're probably smirking now, but I'm looking forward to seeing it as much as I am the new 3-Series or the Toyota GT-86. Because it promises, for less than you'd think, to give ‘em both a bit of a run for their money.

The recipe's a surprisingly simple one; take a Metro, making sure it's one of the later ones, remove the Rover K-Series you'll find under its square-rigged bonnet, and then beef up the brakes and suspension. What you then do is fill the hole you've created with the much meatier VVC powerplant from an MGF or a Lotus Elise, which - because it's still a K-Series engine - will slot in perfectly. All you need to do then is finish it all off by fitting a roll cage and decorating it with a nifty paint job of your choice.

The end result might sound faintly ridiculous but consider this; the finished Metro will offer up somewhere in the region of 180bhp in something that weighs about the same as a packet of crisps. That means the final product will offer up a better power to weight ratio than a Porsche Boxster S, which in turn means it should be seriously quick.

Easily rapid enough, I reckon, to lose the pub bet with said car's owner to find something that'll offer the same sort of punch for anything like the same sort of money. I've honestly racked my brains to find a secondhand performance car bargain that'd outrun the modified Metro, and I can't think of anything.

A secondhand hot hatch wouldn't offer the same sort of pace, while you'd struggle to get a slingshot sports car, like a Caterham, without it costing three or four times what the Metro cost. As much as I'm a bit of a cynic when it comes to modifying cars, I honestly can't think of anything that'd match the muscular Metro. If, however, you can think of one, by all means let me know. Only serious petrolheads need apply!

I look forward to reporting later this year whether a Rover 100 that's more Brands Hatch than hot hatch is as bonkers as it sounds. Watch this space...

MGB vs MX-5 - which would you rather have?

A COUPLE of MX-5 enthusiasts I got chatting to a couple of weeks ago gave me a slightly bewildered impression when I told them I drove an MGB as well. Why, if you own an example of the world's best-selling sports car, would you spend your money on an antique built badly by British Leyland?

Let's face it. The MX-5 is faster, stronger, better built, kinder to the environment and a better handler than the thirsty old MG ever was. I should know, because - and I'm not bragging - I own both.

But choosing between them, on an Easter weekend where the sun shines even occasionally, is like choosing between your left leg and your right. On the face of it, both of these cars do the same things for the same reason, but in reality they do them completely differently. I love them both.

Driving the Mazda's a little like ordering a Bacardi Breezer on a night out; it is, depending on who you're with, a little bit girly, but it's cheap and fun in a giggly, youthful sort of way. It's a 22-year-old and behaves like one, with its modern mechanicals, cheap and simple soft top and its sprightly but not scary handling meaning the joys of driving one is accessible to just about everyone.

The MK1 version is usefully more delicated than the ones that followed and yet tougher than the sports cars of the MGB's generation, which is why it's not surprising that it's the best selling sports car of all time. As a sports car recipe, I don't think it's ever been bettered.

But... but... it's the MGB that gives me the bigger buzz. Driving it - in fact, doing anything with it - is like ordering a pint of Adnams Tally Ho on a night out, which might mark you out as a bearded real ale enthusiast to the casual observer but has an ineffable depth of character the alcopop just doesn't. It is a car you describe not with figures and statistics, but with the carefully-chosen phrases best known to Observer wine critics.

The Mazda is, I think, tomorrow's must-have classic because it's more fun more of the time than the MG, firing faithfully into life day after day before dancing deftfully from corner to corner wherever you go. The MGB, with its carburettors which constantly demand your attention and its heavy steering and ocean liner handling, is rubbish by comparision.

But it looks and sounds like a proper sports car of the old school where the MX-5 doesn't, and paradoxically I prefer it because it's slightly worse.

I'll take both.

Jaguar F-Type - the sports car the world has waited 40 years for

I DON'T think it's an exaggeration to say this one of the most eagerly awaited sports cars of all time. In fact, we've been waiting for this for nearly 40 years.

Today Jaguar has announced it will make a new sports car called the F-Type, meaning motoring fans will finally get a successor to the beautiful E-Type, which went out of production in 1975. It will almost certainly be related to the CX-16 concept car we saw last year and - if it's anywhere near as good as the XF, XK and XJ - it looks likely the company could have another sports car hit on its hands.

Ever since the E-Type was replaced by the XJ-S keen drivers have been calling for a true F-Type successor and it's fair to say the company's had a few false starts with the project, with the canned XJ41 coupe project eventually helping to create the Aston-Martin DB7. Then, in 2000, it wowed the motoring press with the stunning F-Type concept car, but again nothing came of it.


But this latest F-Type, Jaguar Land Rover says, will make production.

Ian Callum, the company's design director, said: "A true sports car needs to be pure in both its purpose and its form; to have the opportunity to produce such a car for Jaguar has been a privilege both for myself and for my team.

"The C-type, D-type and E-type Jaguars were all sports cars that held true to this principle in their era, and the F-Type will hold true to that same principle in its time, a time that is soon to arrive."

The F-Type will go on sale in the middle of next year. I'll start saving...

Tell everyone not to panic buy and that's exactly what they'll do

LAST week's panic over petrol was like something out of a film. Specifically, a scene out of Patriot Games, one of my favourite films of all time.

If you haven't seen it, and - like me - you prefer your films with car chases and explosions aplenty, then I urge you to go out, get a copy on DVD and enjoy Harrison Ford shooting at Sean Bean. Because, amid all the IRA-themed action, there is a message which serves as a bit of a bizarre metaphor for panic buying petrol.

In one particular scene Ford's character, the jaded ex intelligence agent Jack Ryan, gets paid a visit by a CIA boss, who's popped round to his house to let him know that a gang of Irish paramilitaries are a bit peeved off with him. The boss says it's nothing to worry about but Jack Ryan, being the quintessentially American action hero, works out that being told there's nothing to worry about is the something to be worried about. It's pyschology. Tell people there's nothing wrong and almost always they'll assume the opposite.

Which is why all you Jack Ryans out there, having been told not to panic buy petrol, immediately went out and bought loads of petrol. You were told to top your tanks up. You were told not to panic buy. Do NOT panic, they said. Yet the more you mention the word panic - even when it's preceded by the word “don't” - the more ingrained it becomes in your mentality. Cue the queues spilling out of every petrol station for miles around, and all this because of a strike that hadn't even been confirmed. People were brimming their tanks en masse at £1.45 a litre, a scenario made even worse because the Twitterati - a shadowy group connected with events going back as far as last summer's riots - were turning the panic volume up to 11. As soon as you even mention panic buying, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

With the local elections coming up I'm not allowed to get political and blame the Government. In the run up to polling day I'm not allowed to point out that David Cameron told you not to panic buy. Or that he did suggest everyone went out and topped their tanks up, just to be sure. Or that Francis Maude admitted telling everyone to bring their jerrycans and stock up on fuel was a mistake. This is a Champion blog and, naturally, we couldn't comment. Other than to observe that lots of you have been out panic buying at petrol stations.

Panic buying petrol. Panicking about people panic buying petrol. Just panicking in general. Don't do it. Please?

The dangerously delightful world of Group B rally cars

IT was an Eighties adventure to rival anything Tom Cruise got cast in. Based on a true story, it was packed with glamourous locations, famous faces, speed, noise and excitement.

In fact, only the unexcitingly anonymous name really needed work. Yet mention Group B to any proper petrolhead and you'll find it's a phrase that gets them strangely excited. Just as I was when I caught a cracking BBC documentary on it the other night.

Group B gave sports fans some of the most nailbiting rallying coverage the world's ever seen and proved to sexists everywhere that women were just as Championship-winningly good at powersliding as men - consider my cap doffed, Michele Mouton - but its real legacy is that we were treated to some of the fastest and most advanced cars ever to scream their way, sideways, through a forest. Not one of which was even remotely similar to any of the others.

Audi arrived with a hugely powerful, shortier, scarier version of Gene Hunt's Quattro, while Austin Rover shoehorned an enormous V6 into the back of a Metro to create the mad 6R4. Lancia couldn't choose between a turbocharger and a supercharger for its insanely fast Delta S4, so it used both, while Peugeot made its 205 GTi into a mid-engined, four-wheel-drive dirt track racer (the 205 T16, pictured). Best of all, Ford got cocky and obviously challenged Bear Grylls to come up his idea of a Le Mans racer. The result was the utterly daft - yet utterly delightful - RS200.

It was all going to end in tears and when it inevitably did in 1986 - three people were killed when an RS200 ploughed into the crowd at a rally in Portugal, while Henri Toivonen lost his life when his Lancia crashed in Corsica - Group B was swiftly banned. The flame that burns half as long, so the saying goes, burns twice as bright.

The End. Or rather, it would have been if plans hadn't been announced this week to bring the old, slightly loopy Group B cars out of retirement to wow visitors to an event in Cheshire over the August Bank Holiday later this year.

They'll be at Oulton Park on August 25 and 26, at an event dubbed the The Michelin Rallye Groupe B. More information will be available online at www.rallyegroupeb.com but for me, there's just one problem that might prevent me from seeing Audi Quattros, Metro 6R4s and Peugeot T16s doing what they were designed to do.

It's the same weekend as the Ormskirk MotorFest...