In the glory days of air travel – when you could still smoke and fly without the fear of being groped and fondled by security personnel wearing latex gloves– some passengers were lucky enough to commute from the terminal to their hotel in the back of an airport limousine. These stretched cars, with their multiple rows of seats and doors, were essentially the primitive precursor to the modern day shuttle bus.
The UK market is welcoming the launch of the third Gordini-badged model after the respective versions of the Twingo RS and Clio RS, this time in Wind roadster guise, with buyers having a choice of two engines, the 1.2-liter TCE 100HP and the 1.6-liter 133HP. In addition to the Wind Gordini models, the French firm also slashed the list price of the Dynamique and GT Line trim levels by up to £2,215, with prices now starting at £12,995, instead of £15,205.
Surely, it has happened to you. You embark on a journey driving your car and, when you feel tired or ready to fall asleep, you keep on driving because you just have to get there on time. At best, you drink a cup of coffee hoping it will wake you up. What you don’t realize is that you are setting up the scene for a, possibly fatal, accident. A new UK study by Brake and Cambridge Weight Plan that was presented today at a Parliamentary reception attended by MPs and road safety professionals revealed than in the past year, one in eight drivers has “head-nodded” at the wheel, or in other words, fallen asleep between 2 and 30 seconds, often without even realizing it.
Toyota today announced prices for its next generation Yaris hatchback in Europe including the UK where the supermini is available for order now with first customer deliveries to take place in September. The new Yaris is available in three- and five-door body styles with British buyers offered a choice of four grades (T2, TR, SR and T Spirit) and three engines including 1.0 and 1.33-litre petrol units and a 1.4-litre D-4D turbodiesel. On-the-road prices start from £11,700.
In an article on a BMW-faced Honda Accord we found for sale on Craigslist back in 2008, we wrote that in a perfect world, our ultimate car would be “designed by Italians, engineered by Germans, built by Japanese and marketed by Americans”. So, what’s the worst car one could imagine? Well, if we played around with the above statements, we’d say one designed by Japanese, engineered by Americans, built by Italians and marketed by Germans. But UK insurance firm Warranty Direct had something a little bit different in mind. Instead of playing the origin card, the company decided to check out its database of 50,000 live policies on cars aged five years on average to part the UK’s most unreliable vehicle that would break down every other month and cost an average of £2,050 (equal to US$3,270 - €2,330) to fix each year.
There are many ways to celebrate the sponsorship of an event like the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, but when it comes to automakers, the norm is the introduction of special edition models. For BMW, the festivities over its sponsorship of the games begin with the UK launch of two new Performance Edition models based on the 1-Series hatchback and 3-Series sedan.
