Le Mans Bentley racer confirmed for Ormskirk MotorFest

A 217MPH Bentley which raced to victory at Le Mans has just been confirmed as one of the stars of this month's Ormskirk MotorFest.

Aintree Circuit Club, which organises the annual motorsport-themed spectacular, said today the Bentley Speed 8 GT racing car, which competed in the 24 hour race in 2003, will take part in this year's event in the West Lancashire market town on August 25.

Mike Ashcroft, the club's chairman, told Life On Cars: "We are absolutely delighted that Bentley Motors have agreed to bring their priceless Le Mans winning Speed 8 racing car to MotorFest. This car won the world's most famous race in 2003 and is maintained in full running order at Bentley's motorsport HQ at the Crewe factory.

"This is a fantastic opportunity to see this fantastic engineering masterpiece in the flesh! The car will be on display throughout the event in the Moor Street race paddock."

In previous years the event has played host to the likes of the Ferrari Enzo and the McLaren MP4-12C, as well as allowing thousands of petrolheads to see Grand Prix cars taking to the town's one way system.

The Ormskirk MotorFest takes place in and around Ormskirk town centre from 11am on Sunday, August 25. To find out more visit the official website.

SEAT needs to find its signature dish

WHEN Withnail and I paid a visit to Penrith they demanded the finest wines known to humanity. When my companion and I ended up there, on a soaked excuse for an evening last week, we ended up staring at the menu outside a Spanish restaurant.

I mention this because – even with every other restaurant in town shut for the night – we still preferred to pop to the nearest chip shop instead because we just didn’t fancy Spanish cuisine. There’s nothing wrong with Spanish cuisine, of course – we just decided we’d rather dine on something slightly more familiar.

It’s exactly the same, I reckon with Spanish cars – by which, of course, I mean SEAT. So far this year, I’ve tried both the new Leon and the hatchback it replaced, and both ticked all the buttons in a nourishing, one-of-your-five-a-day sort of way. Both were effortless when they were on the motorway, entertaining when they weren’t and built with the sort of attention to detail that’d give a chess champion a headache.

Great cars, then, but I can’t think of a single reason why you’d buy one.

SEATs are supposed to be the sportier Spanish cousins of VWs but they aren’t – they are, especially if you look at the Mii and the Alhambra, VW models with a slight nip ‘n’ tuck and a different badge. If I want a VW with a sense of mischief, I’ll get a Golf GTI.

"But SEATs are usefully cheaper than VWs, aren’t they?" I hear you cry. Again, SEAT’s usurped on this one by Skoda, who not only make their cars cheaper than VW’s but more interesting and engaging too. The Yeti, in particular, fills a niche nobody else at Europe’s biggest car maker does by being the perfect car for anyone who owns a Labrador, while the Superb caters perfectly for anyone looking for a car with an overly confident name. They might as well have called it the Skoda Awesome or even the Skoda Screw You, It’s Better Than Your Car, Mate.

SEAT, on the other hand, produces a range of cars that are just as good as anything VW, Skoda and Audi can come up with but there’s no signature dish to woo you with its exotic aromas. There’s no impossibly powerful Leon Cupra R any more, or a small sports car to fill the gap the Fiat Barchetta and the MGF left. Reheating what was admittedly a great dish – the old Audi A4 – in the microwave is not going to get my tastebuds going.

For now, my vote’s still with fish and chips. The Ford Focus, in other words.

You don't have to be a woman to appreciate the Ford Fiesta

FORD’S Fiesta is one of my motoring favourites – and, judging by the stash of awards it’s been showered with, quite a lot of you like it too.

So you might have missed that the clever EcoBoost version has just been crowned Women’s World Car of the Year. I still can’t quite get my head around - and I know I’m probably going to get a few sexism bells ringing straight away – the idea of a motoring award judged entirely by women. Surely, what makes it excellent engenders it to either gender?

In the same way that a MOWO Awards would provoke no end of controversy in the music world, a Men’s Car of the Year would get every member of the Germaine Greer fan club on the organisers’ case, asking how they could dare to disregard the needs of 50% of the world’s population. But as far as I can tell, WWCOTY is pointless because the ladies like the Fiesta for exactly the same reasons as everybody else does.

The women on the panel are all experienced motoring hacks and raved about the Fiesta because it crams fun, feistiness, eco-consciousness, safety and – dare I say it – sex appeal into a small, value-for-money package – pretty much exactly the same reasons I love the current Fiesta. In fact, with the possible exception of Peugeot’s 208 I reckon it’s still the best supermini, five long years after it was launched.

Women’s World Car of the Year though, I reckon, reinforces by its very existence the urban myth that women don’t know as much about cars as men do – something which is, of course, complete cobblers. There are plenty of women who I’ll happily ask for an opinion on for a matter of motoring, particularly because there’s quite a few of them who actually know aspects of the subject better than I do!

 If it were a case that all motoring awards panels were stuffy, gentlemen’s club affairs which hadn’t moved out of the 1950s and genuinely thought women’s opinions weren’t worth considering, than I’d understand. But I grew up in a post-Thatcher era of Girl Power where Vicki Butler-Henderson’s views on cars meant as much as Jeremy Clarkson’s did. Female opinions on motoring matter too much for them to be sidelined into their own gender-specific awards.

Ford’s Fiesta is just a brilliant little car, full stop. You don’t have to be a woman to know that…

The motoring mysteries Life On Cars still needs to solve

THIS year is definitely the year of the anniversary. Porsche’s 911 is 50, the Corvette is 60, and even the humble Hillman Imp has knocked up its first half century.

So it’s probably passed you by that today marks four years since Life On Cars choked into cyberspace for the first time. Since then, this blog – and the sister newspaper column in The Champion – have gone on a high octane journey through a world of car shows, reviews and test drives, taking in a few broken down Minis and sunburnt afternoons along the way.

However, there are a few questions which – despite having a finger on the pulse of all matters motoring since 2009 – still haven’t been answered. Niggling issues and unsolved mysteries, such as…

Does The Audi Lane actually exist? 

The more I drive on motorways, the more I’m convinced the outer lane has – perhaps through the signing of a secret EU protocol at a summit in deepest Ingolstadt – been reserved exclusively for cars with four rings on the radiator grille. Whether you’re in an entry-level A1 or a thumping A7 V12 TDI, your 95mph entrance into The Audi Lane is politely welcomed. Daring to venture there, however, in anything other than an Audi seems to result in the image above dominating your rear view mirror…

Can I get Allegrodote into the motoring lexicon?

An Allegrodote, in case you missed the article earlier this year, is an anecdote solely covering the Austin Allegro, particularly if it’s one that isn’t true. With BL’s great hatchback hope itself celebrating its fortieth birthday, it’d be great to see whether the car which inspires more urban myths than any other could be given its own special term to mark the anniversary.

Is the Renault Clio the most sensible secondhand car ever?

It struck me earlier today that almost everyone I know seems to have an owned a second generation Renault Clio, made by the French firm between 1998 and 2006. Whether it’s the 1.5DCI diesel – of £30 a year road tax fame – or the strikingly quick Renaultsport Clio 172, they do seem to reflect frankly ridiculous value for money. Which is why, I suspect, most of my mates have got one.

Why do cheeseburgers at car shows always cost £5.50? 

This one I’ve yet to understand – a cheeseburger at a car show, whether you’re in Dorset or Cheshire, Lancashire or Lanarkshire, almost always costs £5.50, making me suspect there’s some sort of layby-based cabal somewhere determining the price. That is, of course, with the exception of the Goodwood Festival of Speed, which when I visited earlier this year marked itself out as a car show of a higher calibre. This, I think, explains the £8 you paid for a burger there.

What will the next Fiat 500 spinoff be? 

We’ve already had the 500C, the Abarth, the hideous 500L, the even more hideous 500L MPW and now the frankly unbearable 500L Tracking. Chances are that by this time next year you’ll be able to buy a 500 Roadster, a 500XXL Fire Engine, a 500 Beach Buggy and perhaps a 500 Submarine. All of which will be worth £500 in a used car auction near you in the not-too-distant future.

Can you go green-laning in an electric car? 

I was wondering this earlier today when I’d stopped laughing at the Hummer electric car a UK design firm has come up with. Land Rover came up with an electric Defender earlier this year, but I am left wondering what would happen to an electric 4X4 if, for instance, you took it wading through a river in the Cumbrian countryside. Potentially, the results could be shocking…

Why are Peugeot interiors always messy?

An old colleague of mine got so cross when I put this particular pet theory across that the column I’d been planning for that week got quietly canned, for offending owners of 307s everywhere. It does, however, leave the ongoing mystery as to why so many unloved car interiors I’ve seen are in Peugeots, from a 406 Estate practically blacked by cigarette smoke, the 407 with Seventies-esque disco lighting on account of its numerous technical warnings, and a 206 lined with old McDonalds bags and a distinct whiff of vomit, even though it was barely a year old at the time.

Do ‘GB’ plates make you motor look more modern? 

A mate of mine put this to me today and – annoyingly – he’s absolutely right, although I’m not entirely sure why. All afternoon I’ve been checking out whether cars have the telltale EU blue strip at the side of the numberplate, and determined that all the cars that do somehow look newer than otherwise identical ones which don’t. Weird, but true.

Why are all classic cars described online as ‘BRAN FIND’? 

Genuine classics which are in ‘barn find’ condition are worth a fortune – witness, for instance, the E-Type which sold at auction for £109,000 after spending most of its life hidden away in the aforementioned agricultural building. However, that doesn’t excuse clumsy eBay sellers flogging any old tat as a ‘barn find’, inadvertently mis-spelling it as ‘BRAN FIND’ in the process. In the world of crap secondhand buys, any car of any age or merit can be described as ‘BRAN FIND’ if it's spent even a short of amount of time in a garage or other building.

Will my MGB GT ever be finished? 

Speaking of which, my MGB – which actually did spend a decade of its life in a barn – has over the past three of Life On Cars’ four years kept me busy with visits to shows and appearances in the pages of Classic Car Weekly. While it’s had a small fortune spent on it there are many, many jobs it could still benefit from – least of all, a proper tune up after its latest excursion made it sound like a cement mixer with a cold. I wager, though, that it’s the automotive equivalent of painting the Forth Bridge. Maybe it’s a job that’s never meant to get finished…

Life On Cars thanks both of its readers for all their support over the past four years

How did I ever survive without air conditioning?

HERE’S one to ponder over your post-work pint tonight. Have you an invention so useful you hardly notice when you’re using it, yet to have it malfunction would prompt a crisis of unimaginable proportions?

My vote, obviously, would go for the internet. My first question at any hotel reception I end up on work assignments is what the WiFi code is; my second, when they tell me it’s a tenner a night, is how they think they can away with charging for a service that’s as an essential a part of your stay as having towels in your bathroom and a key for your room. Having access to Facebook and Twitter in one of those 21st century essentials you just can’t do without.

But there’s an in-car invention which – at the moment at least – I’ve been noting by its absence; air con. Even though my job primarily involves working with older cars, a lot of the journeys to shows up and down the country have been at the wheel of cars far newer than my own. Cars which, without exception, were a prod of a plastic button away from a refreshing blast of artificially chilled air.

Even the Chevrolet Captiva, one of the worst cars I’ve driven all year, was saved from complete condemnation because it came with a powerful air con system on a sizzling summer afternoon. When you’re spoilt with the option of an air con button after an afternoon of traipsing around a hot, sticky car show, you simply stick it on, whack it up to full blast and forget about it. Car makers know this and as a result offer it on just about everything; on a truly scorching day, getting air con right can rescue something that's unspeakably rubbish just about everywhere else.

So when I had to do a four hour journey in a car which didn’t have air con – my 17-year-old Rover 214 SEI – it was painful how absent the cool air I’d become accustomed to was. No amount of opening windows or using the power of thought to try and make the dashboard somehow grow its own air con button could help me escape the reality of being sat inside what was effectively a 70mph greenhouse for hours on end. Still, it could be worse – after 25 minutes of stop-starting through one particularly bad traffic jam on the M62, the gentle rise of the temperature gauge indicated the engine was enjoying it even less than I was!

My point is that air con, once you’ve become accustomed to a car equipped with it, is one of those brilliant inventions you can’t really live without.

Renaultsport and Red Bull join forces for F1-inspired Megane

The latest version of Renault’s Megane will give you wings, if its F1-inspired name is anything to go by.

Renault said it had teamed up with energy drink giants Red Bull to create a new version of its hot hatch with the name of the F1 team on its rump, of which just 30 will be shipped into Britain. The Mégane Renaultsport Red Bull Racing RB8, to give it its full name, will cost Sebastian Vettel fans £28,245.

The French firm said: "The Mégane Renaultsport is already hailed by many as the ultimate hot hatch, so the arrival of a new Formula One inspired and Red Bull Racing-branded limited edition is set to ensure it flies even more than the standard model.

"Renault and Red Bull Racing this year celebrated their third Formula 1 Constructors’ world title and the new Mégane looks another sure-fire winner."

The Red Bull Megane isn’t the first time Renault has introduced an F1-branded hot hatch into the UK, with the Clio Williams proving to be a hit with keen drivers back in 1993.

Škoda's go-faster Octavia ready for August launch

PRICES for a family-friendly slingshot from Škoda will start at just under £23,000 when it goes on sale next month.

The company’s performance twist on the latest Octavia, the RS, is available with either a 220bhp petrol engine or a 184bhp turbodiesel, which is packed into either the sleek hatchback or the load-lugging estate.

Alasdair Stewart, the company’s UK brand director, said: "The new Octavia vRS has a very special place in the heart of everyone at Škoda.

"It unites our love of motorsport, sharp design and bold engineering, and is one of the most exciting cars we’ve ever made."

The cheapest version, the petrol estate, starts at £22,990, with the entire Octavia RS range going on sale on August 1.