Good Advice

I happen to have cash in the bank at the moment as the result of a property sale. The ‘interest’ rate offered by my bank on my balance is 0.2%. So should I leave £100,000 in the bank for a year it will gain £200.

Except, with inflation running at 5%, I would actually loose £5,000 in real value, even before the government comes for their chunk of the £200.

No wonder there’s a lot of money piling into classic cars. But there are plenty of pitfalls too, even if you suspect the current bull market is a repeat of the 1988-1991 bubble.

With that in mind here are some very good rules of investing in old cars (courtesy of a well known Belgian car dealer):

1. Don’t be cheap. Do not buy because the car seems inexpensive. Pay for quality at the outset, and it will later turn out to be a bargain.
2. Don’t gamble on ‘future classics’. The safest investment is one made in a car of which the rising value has already been confirmed by the market.
3. Buy what you really like; lead with your heart but invest in your pleasure as well.

SS7

Winter

Well the frosts have finally arrived in my corner of the balmy south coast and I'm off to get the winter tyres fitted to the Golf.

I've been a user since last winter, when they enabled me to make a number of journeys I wouldn't have considered trying on summer rubber. I'm just amazed there is still any debate on the wisdom of changing rubber in the UK.

SS7

The New, New 911

Here's Evo's Chris Harris spilling the beans on the new Porsche 911.

Its the first real 'new' 911 since 1997. So it had better be good, as we've got to live with the basic car for the next decade or more.

Luckily, first signs are good, even though there are the usual internet complaints about dumbing down/making it softer/being too conservative. Really, who'd be Porsche's chief designer?

My worry (electric steering system aside) is that while the new mostly-aluminium body is 40kg or so lighter that the 997, a good chunk more could have been saved by using the old 6 speed transmission. That was quoted as being 25kgs lighter than the PDK 'box, and its difficult to see the same saving now the manual gearbox uses the PDK's castings. Is a 7th ratio really needed when almost all of the world's roads are limited to 70-80mph?

Its also been interesting to read the comments about pricing. There is an oftly expressed view that a good £10k worth of options are 'essential' for re-sale, and that the only version worth bothering with is the £81,500, 3.8litre 'S'. So you very quickly end up with the grand total on the Porsche.com website's configurator heading towards £100,000.

I beg to differ.

A ‘vanilla’ 3.4 has 350bhp and does 180mph. It comes with leather, climate, sat nav, Bi-Xenons, start/stop, 7 speed ‘box, 19”s, 235watts of stereo (with 9 speakers and aux input), alcantara roof lining, and electric windows. That's pretty much what I have on my 5 year old Golf, and the previous owner ticked every box on the form when he ordered that one. The baby 911 doesn't get taxed at the highest rates for VED, and you now get 36 months worth of Porsche warranty.

I can see how its easy to get seduced by the options list; I might add £1100 of PASM, £400 of rear Park Assist and a £150 Sports steering wheel. But I wouldn’t be that bothered.

However a look at options prices quickly reveals why Porsche is still most profitable car maker on the planet - and my views on the subject haven't changed since I sat down and specified my Cayman back in 2006.

For example, to paint the bloody thing in a metallic colour is £800. Total cost to Porsche ~€50.

To take away the complex, expensive stainless steel exhaust system and replace it with a complex, expensive stainless steel exhaust system that’s a bit louder and has a valve, switch, bit of wiring and software tweaks costs you £1800. Cost to Porsche? Must be €75 tops. Black wheels are £950, electric sports seats are £3,800, a window in the roof is £1200, some bits of useless carbon trim £1100, and they want £3k for their top of the line stereo.

So while loading the car with complex (and expensive) options might give you bragging rights on the forum I really think the pauper's version will be enough for the UK's roads.

In fact on the smaller 18" wheels it might even be the sweetest driving of all the 991 variants .

SS7

Give Way - Biker

You see a different side of car drivers on a bike.

Like any other road user, my daily encounters run through the whole spectrum from Redbull’d yoof in a slammed French hatchback, through to the octogenarian gently succumbing to old age at a ‘T’ junction behind the wheel of their Ford Fusion.

On a bike, when most other road users have the potential to do you serious injury, looking for little warning signs becomes both second nature and something you pay plenty of attention to. There’s usually something about the ‘body’ language of the car that indicates dangerous aggression or a distracted driver, and I can usually spot the signs telling me who to be wary of.

Does that car I’ve just encountered on a fast ‘A’ road see my fast approach as throwing down the gauntlet, or will they……..oh hang on a moment, they’ve just driven into the gutter to let me go past.

That’s another one.

Its a trend I've noticed more and more recently, in fact I've followed cars that have hit the kerb in their haste to let me slide past. At the weekend almost every car I approached clocked my presence and very clearly moved aside to let me pass. It didn’t seem to matter if it was on 'A' roads, through towns, or on heavily trafficked roads with double white lines. In fact the main problem was that if it's ok with you, I'd like to decide when I overtake or not, but thanks anyway.

And no, I don’t mono-wheel up to their rear bumper at 150mph on open pipes and putting the fear of God into the poor little mites. Nor does my bike have ‘Polite’ signs and dayglo stickers – although it is a physically big old thing.

Is it me, or has something happened?

The Importance of Wearing the Correct Rubber

After meaning to for some years (and ending up accumulating half a garage full of spare rims), I finally got around to buying and fitting a set of winter tyres last year. To allay any confusion you may have, dear reader, I don't mean tyres with steel studs in for dealing with Scandinavian ice, nor do I mean 'snow' tyres. I mean tyres of a 'rubber' compound designed to stay supple in cold and freezing temperatures, and with a deep tread pattern optimised for rain, snow and slush, and general UK winter beastliness. 


Generally, high performance tyres available in the UK are optimised for summer use, and once the temps drop to below ~7 degrees, the compound becomes hard, and unable to key into the road surface. And large, flat contact patches that give great grip on warm, dry tarmac are pretty useless if there's any snow on the ground. Which explains all that TV News footage of executives sliding out of control down the main road once an inch of snow hits the south east's rush hour.


It’s long been common practise in continental Europe to have two sets of tyres for one's motor. A nice set of alloys with low profile tyres for summer, and a set of old steelies and winter tyres that get fitted once the colder weather sets in. I believe that now tyres marked with a snowflake are even mandated by law in alpine German states from November to March.


For many years, this habit was a funny foreign one, and us Brits, protected from icy blasts by the benign warming seas surrounding our island, carried on regardless. Unscheduled trips into the ditch on winter's days were blamed on 'black ice', and we relied on the fitful and corrosive efforts of the council to spread salt on the roads, thereby preventing water from freezing (at least until it got to quite a few degrees below zero).


Several things have changed since those carefree days of yore. Firstly, we've all fallen victim to 'Ring fever - even humdrum hatchbacks have wide, low profile tyres, secondly a long string of mild winters mean there's a generation of drivers unused to managing in snow and ice,  and thirdly, the changing climate has hit us with a series of cold winters.


I remember arriving on the South Coast to live five years ago, and being told that it never snows here. It has every winter so far. In fact here's a picture of Aldwick beach in January 2009.

I now work freelance; if I don't turn up for work because it snowed, I don't get paid. So last November I bought a set of skinny 16" steel wheels from my local VW garage and after a bit of hassle, got Kwik Fit to mount a set of Continental winter tyres to the Golf.


There was a noticeable difference. The fatter sidewalls did take the edge off the Gti's harsh ride, and there was a drop in traction compared to the summer tyres. Full bore 2nd gear runs up a local hill produced more torque steer.  High speed straight-line stability also suffered a little. It was quite a compromise.


Then about three weeks later it snowed heavily while I was at work up near Gatwick airport. The industrial park is on the edge of town, and the ground falls away from it on three sides. I was one of the last to leave work, and heading back to the coast on my usual back roads route. I joined the main road at a hilly junction to find it in a state of complete chaos. Cars were all over the place, some trying to work their way up the hill on the grass, others with several men pushing, engines screaming, others pointing at haphazard angles up the hill. Behind all this was a long queue of stationary traffic. Lucking I was travelling against the flow. I turned onto the road, covered in several inched of packed snow, and just drove down the hill. It even felt quite normal; no spooky lightness through the steering.


So I hit the brakes to see how much grip was there. The car just stopped dead, as you'd expect it to do if there was simply rain on the surface. I drove happily home, running at 40-50mph on white roads, overtaking the odd hatchback crawling along, and a few 4x4s, whose driver's assumed the £60k they'd spent on their Range Rover/X5/Q7/M Class meant the laws of physics didn't apply to them. Until they found 2 or 3 tonnes of car sliding under them as the little red Golf sped past.


The snow cleared after a few days, but it was back again with a vengence over the Christmas break. In between Christmas and the New Year I had to travel up to the Thames Valley for a family lunch. With my two sons in the back happily occupied with PSP's I headed up the usual A and B road country route.


The roads that morning were deserted. The snow that had fallen a few days earlier was still on the ground, nights of frost had turned it into tracks of ice, with deep ruts of hard packed snow and slush where vehicle tyres had banked it up in-between lanes. The only other vehicles out were those same 4x4's, their drivers having now learnt that a 4x4 equipped with summer rubber may accelerate better than normal cars, but once you start braking they still only have the same braked four wheels.


I drove 75 miles in perfect safety, the only excitement caused by the flashing headlights of 4x4s I had the temerity to overtake.


In March I put the alloys back on for the summer, and the winter rubber went back in the garage. 

Again I noticed the back to back difference. I could feel the added unsprung weight, steering response was dulled, secondary ride deteriorated, and there was a significant amount more road noise.  But the upside is massively increased response to initial turn-in, mid-corner grip and traction. Straight-line stability is also much improved. In this way i enjoyed my summer's motoring.

The nights are drawing in, the first frosts have arrived in the downs, and it won't be long before I spend a Saturday afternoon re-fitting my steelies again.

SS7

Car Porn

I spent the morning idly leafing through Saturday's paper.

I noticed a puff piece on the fragrant and completely unobtainable Yasmin Le Bon, sadly still happily married to the Old Romantic, Simon. She's got a new website out on Monday. Its one of those supplement favourites where the object picks some favourite objects in their life - you know the sort.

Two words jumped out as I skimmed the piece; 'Classic cars'.

I read on: "I am obsessed with classic car magazines. They are like car porn and I just drool over them. Simon has started pinching them from me,which is fine so long as I've read them already. I used to own a 1974 Alfa Romeo Montreal, but Simon wrote it off.*"

Sound woman. I wonder if she has a sister?

SS7
* This didn't seem to prevent Bonhams auctioning it off as the ex-Le Bon Montreal recently

T25 News

There’s been some more in the press recently on Gordon Murray’s T25 project. We’ve now moved from an engineering hack to pre-production prototypes (‘XP’ in McLaren parlance) and pictures of a very finished looking car. So far, so good, its supposed to be cheap to build, brilliantly packaged (for a Mum or Dad of two, a 1+2 layout is perfect) and crucially, good to drive - in spite of the diminutive 700cc motor.

Yet, I’m sure I’m not alone in finding this all terribly frustrating. While Murray has talked to many organisations about putting the project into production, along with its iStream low cost production system, there hasn’t been any news of any contracts signed. And until then, there’s no chance the T25 will be built, maddening for everyone who would head to a dealer with their deposit tomorrow.