Piers Daniell

I am not going to spend time trying to justify myself here but suffice to say petrol is obviously running through my veins more than I previously imagined. The other weekend at 7 am I found myself in the car on my way down to Somerset in search of my next car. I had said to myself last year that I wasn’t allowed to think about cars until I had moved home, and so with the ink still wet on an offer for a new home (the previous Thursday), I was free to look.

I was, of course, just going to look at the car and maybe take it for a quick test drive. It would have been crazy for me to put down a deposit there and then especially when considering a car that barely meets that criteria. It is called the Atom made by the special people at Ariel Motors, who headed up by Simon Saunders was resurrected from the dead when it used to make Penny Farthings back in 1870 before focusing on motor bikes. The Atom was his brain child and one that has stunned car enthusiasts all over the world.

With no windscreen, doors, body panels, heater, radio, airbag, antilock brakes or alarm you have to look very hard to see it as a car. But what-a-car. With 300 bhp available from the supercharged Honda i-VTEC engine the car can sprint to 60 mph in less than 3 seconds! Quite intoxicating especially when sitting inches from the ground with full visibility of the wheels and suspension working in front of you. It has won Autocar’s 0 to 100 mph and back to 0 again competition three times on the trot, achieving it in 11.5 seconds.

So obviously I did what any self respecting petrol head would do and put down my deposit there and then. At least I have 16-months or so to wait until the car is built to justify my decision.

I spent an enjoyable Wednesday afternoon last week filming tonight’s episode of Top Gear. Through a friend of the family I was able to get a ticket and join a few hundred of my fellow petrol heads to see the almighty Clarkson, May and Hammond preach the word. While I enjoyed the day very much, I don’t think it would be for everyone especially as there is quite a bit of standing around. However with Clarkson on hand to entertain the crowd I even enjoyed that bit as well.

You don’t unfortunately see any racing on the track or the Stig but you get a good flavour of the program and the people behind it. Actually everyone was very relaxed with a fine veneer of professionalism, something only the British seem to do. You get the feeling that if America was making this program there would be darn sight more trailers for the stars and a professional stage, not some shed on the side of a runway. The fact that it is one of the most watched shows on earth with some 300 million people seeing it just shows that content rather than razzmatazz wins viewers.

This being the last in the series, I am looking forward to the next show!

I have eulogised at great length already about my car but one thing that needs to now be mentioned is the shoddy customer service that appears to be synonymous with Audi ownership. Having been a loyal Mazda customer for three years, I thought I knew all I needed to know about bad customer service. However having upgraded back to Audi last year I believed my worries would be behind me and I would be able to enjoy worry free ownership once again.

For me the warning signs started soon after ordering the car only to find out that while the car had been built to schedule there was no transporter available to bring it back into the country. A nationwide problem apparently, not helped by the lack of communication and the fact they persuaded me to trade in my old car two months earlier… Then I wanted an IPod dock – “no problem sir, but there is no stock”. Weeks turned to months until I tracked one down at another dealer. As they didn’t post I did a 40 mile drive to pick it up.

Next I had a stone on my brake pad so called up the flash new Audi centre in West London (the one by the M4 overpass). “No problems sir, bring it in and we will sort it asap”. Only to turn up bright and early on Saturday for nobody to have any recollection of my call and a quick two minute inspection to say there was no issue. Also the paint you requested on the phone (to cover a few of those high speed stone chips) is not in stock.

On my way back into London later that weekend with my brakes screaming I decided to book it into Docklands Audi. Spoke to them on the phone, ordered the paint. All was well. Work complete I ask where my paint was. “That isn’t in stock sir, we have to do a special order for that”. Ok time to speak to a manager. So after promising to post the paint I hear nothing. So I gave them a call only for them to tell me they don’t post paint….arghh! And so it went on. Two promises broken and three wasted visits later I have my paint. And I haven’t even got to the puncture and six hours waiting for assistance yet.

After dealing with four different Audi centres across England within the last eight months my experience has been poor. Ok nobody has died (yet), but I do think they should be able to do a lot more, especially when buying what is meant to be a premium product. I’ll reserve judgement until my first service before deciding if the R8 is a worthy upgrade.

With the Geneva motor show into full swing it is obvious that the whole car industry has gone mad. While it was funny to watch ‘green’ people go out in their thousands and buy Toyota and Hondas with a hybrid engine, I was much more impressed with the likes of BMW being able to demonstrate better economy, emissions, acceleration and cost without the need to move to hybrid. Now however, even they are looking it at it, along with the likes of Ferrari and Porsche. I would have thought these companies would understand the complex design make them expensive, and with anti 4×4 campaigners saying SUVs are too heavy as they carry around all their four wheel drive bits, a car with two engines is equally ill-conceived.

Unfortunately, the word ‘hybrid’ sells, and while politicians jump on the bandwagon the idea of having city centres emission free starts to become a reality. And these performance brands know if they don’t innovate the will be stuck with cars that people can’t buy because they won’t be allowed to go anywhere. It is all moving towards an electric future and even a hydrogen fuel-cell future, where cars wiz around emitting nothing apart from water vapours. I’ll skip past the point that water vapour is not very kind to the atmosphere, and get straight onto the practicalities. Electric cars can’t go very far, and while improvements are being made, it is still an issue that will last many years, along with the time consuming refuelling process. Hydrogen on the other hand delivers an immediate refuelling process, although it has to be stored below minus 270 degrees and we have no infrastructure with which to support it. This brings me onto a different technology that has been around for generations, one that solves all these problems, but seems to have been forgotten about.

Methanol was demonstrated by Lotus four years ago as the fuel of the future. Being a liquid at room temperature it can be stored like petrol and even has a higher octane level (100). It can be burned in engines or used in fuel cells (to keep the greens happy) but ultimately could be very easily supported by our existing infrastructure. And as Lotus can demonstrate, you can even use it at the same you’re your car is filled with petrol, giving us a better solution than carrying around two engines. It can be produced in vast quantities from natural gas (still much lower carbon than oil), or made by mixing hydrogen and carbon from the atmosphere making it carbon neutral. The problem is that none of the big car makers have got behind it and so it remains a rare and undeveloped opportunity. Let’s hope someone out there makes them see sense.

Considering there are over 20 million motorists in the UK, it is surprising what rubbish we put up with. You would have thought by upsetting so many people with the huge tax burden, it would become more of a political issue. But as we are all green and ill informed when it comes to emissions and the impact on the environment we are happy to take it.

Not for much longer. It is incredible, that in an election year, Gordon Brown feels it is acceptable to continue to take the mickey and charge 2% extra on fuel duty when he shouldn’t be. It all started when the government came up with the brilliant idea of lowering VAT to 15%. But then they realised their biggest VAT source, fuel, would reduce revenues so they added a further 2% duty tax mitigate any benefit. It doesn’t matter, thought the government, people need fuel and they are too stupid to complain. And maybe we didn’t complain (because we were too interested in working out what a 2.5% reduction meant in the high street, ie not very much) but now that VAT is back up to 17.5% we should as we are now paying a further 2% more.

Unfortunately in our democratic society the only protest that seems to work is blockades and violence. However seeing that we are all too busy trying to work this country out of the black hole it has been put in, can you please take a few minutes to fill in this non violent petition? Hopefully someone will get around to reading it.

As we slowly come out of our short-lived ice age I was surprised at the media coverage on the number of potholes that appeared following the snow this winter. Obviously it makes the situation worse by the water getting into the road, freezing, expanding and then melting. But hasn’t anyone been driving in the last ten years on our roads? Surely this is not a new phenomenon, but one that we have always lived with.

Ever since I started driving I have always driven on the crown of the road rather than in the gutter to avoid the broken surfaces. It hasn’t always served me well and once buckled a wheel on a particularly nasty hole a few years back. The reason it is so endemic is because of our policy on road maintenance and not just about funding. For some reason we have it in our head that it is better to patch the road rather than resurface it. The problem is by patching we are weakening the road and giving the ice the opportunity to penetrate it. Ironically it isn’t any cheaper to patch than actually resurface a piece a road, especially when you consider how many times they have to return to fix it again and again.

I am not talking about resurfacing the whole length of the road either but instead the whole width so that there are no joins (weak points) in contact with the tyres. If they forced any contractor who digs under the road to do this then we wouldn’t have the outcry we currently have. As it is they can’t now keep up with the repairs for the compensation rightly being claimed by drivers.

And the solution our public servant masters have come up? Blasting holes with a new technology which again just deals with fixing the problem, rather than preventing it in the first place.

As we are in the depths of another snow storm I thought it would be a good opportunity to discuss the merits of my car again! I have covered the engine and DSG gearbox in previous posts but now there is another part which is making a real impact at the moment. Audi has always had a reputation for rallying and one of their major developments out of the sport in 1980 was their Quattro technology.

By delivering power only to the wheels that have the most grip means it is one of the most intelligent four-wheel-drive systems currently available. Driving back from the Cotswolds on the weekend I was wondering if it was working as I hadn’t seen any flashy lights on the dash, until I got out of the car and promptly slipped over. I honestly struggled to get back in the car and had driven, at not an insignificant pace, across the country without realising exactly how treacherous it was.

The secret behind Quattro is the Hadlex clutch which moves power between the front and rear axles as required. ESP and other systems then brake each wheel to ensure only those with grip actually spin. It is a similar system deployed on soft roaders from VW and other manufactures, Volvo for one, I know have used this technology extensively with their AWD and XC cars. It is a brilliant piece of technology and one I am surprised more people don’t invest in. Mercedes for example have ‘4matic’ and BMW ‘xdrive’ which are available in all their salon models on the continent but unavailable, for some reason, in the UK.

If as a country we aren’t going to switch to winter tyres during these now wintery months then I believe there is going to be more of a demand for four-wheel-drive in our regular cars. It is incredible what a difference it makes and now will reduce my choice for future cars when I look for a replacement – happily though both the R8 and Bugatti have this system in place as standard.

When I was choosing my latest car one of my main requirements was to have a big engine. I was just fed up of having a small four cylinder engine, and especially on the motorway, having to watch it rev over 4,000 RPM just to keep a reasonable speed. I thought it would be nice to have a smooth V6 or a lazy V8 to make the weekly trip up the motorway less of a chore. Being a petrol head and with the few miles I do each year I wasn’t too concerned on emissions or economy so diesel was definitely out of the question. Also nobody seems to realise you pay a premium on a diesel engine which means 30,000 miles of driving to break even. 

Audi like most manufacturers are under great pressure to reduce emissions and improve economy, so there is a big focus at the moment on reducing engine size. The good news is that they have realised that their clients still demand a sporty and quick cars, so a lot of the downsides have been avoided. Obviously the sales man saw me coming and persuaded me away from the V6 and go for the faster TT-S model which had a turbo charged 2-litre 4 cylinder.

It does produce nearly 270 bhp which is frankly incredible from such a small engine and comparable to a good V6. It was definitely the better choice and while my heavy right foot doesn’t get more than 27 mpg out of it I am sure it would be less in a bigger engine. Driven normally it gets 35, but that’s me talking about economy again. Driving benefits are also plentiful because with a smaller engine comes less weight which is a good thing because it steers and handles better.

There will be a big push in the VW group over the coming months with a range of very small turbo and supercharged engines making their way into the cars we know and love. I for one welcome the change and for once see a benefit for cars going green.

I have enjoyed F1 more and more over the years with today’s Brazilian GP the best yet. Not only did we have a consecutive English champion for 2009 but the quality of the racing and excitement was top notch. I think Button really deserved the title this year and great that a team that was nearly extinct at the beginning of the year gave Ferrari and McLaren a run for their money!

Also I am looking forward to the next season with some new teams and Button squaring off directly with Hamilton (who won’t be able to complain about a bad car). Let’s hope there is more headline grabbing media gossip as well next year with cheating and FIA sex games helping F1 rival Coronation Street.

Well the MX-5 has gone to be replaced with the new Audi TTS. Couldn’t quite stretch to the R8 this year but I do feel I am getting closer to it and eventually the elusive Bugatti. Took a few months deciding on the car I wanted and considered a wide range of different cars (a lot from the Volkswagen Group) before taking a brave pill and getting the TT.

I appreciate it has the same appeal of the Mini (ie every other car is a TT), but in this latest incarnation i.e. the ‘S’ version it is a little rarer and a different beast to the standard model. My main aim was to go for a big engine as I had never owned anything larger than a four cylinder but after the sales man did his bit (and sales people are the easiest people to sell to!) I could see the benefit of choosing the smaller engine. This motor is the latest upgrade from the infamous Golf GTI and offers 272 PS while still delivering nearly 36 mpg and a 0-62 time of 5.2 seconds. Another benefit of this car was the Quattro four-wheel drive giving me the confidence to journey back home on the weekend during a snow storm – something I didn’t enjoy doing in the Mazda.

My most controversial decision however was to choose the S-Tronic gearbox instead of being a proper petrol head and opting for the manual. I had read up a lot on this subject and ordered it without even trying it but the fact that even Jeremy Clarkson liked it meant I had to be onto a good thing. Nothing however prepared me for the brilliance of this gearbox and now I wonder how I ever managed to drive a car before. This is not an auto but actually a dual clutch unit which Audi pioneered with the first version of the TT. It blips the throttle and downshifts automatically during braking while delivering seamless shifts between gears. As I say a superb piece of engineering and one I would definitely recommend to anyone looking to by a car from the Volkswagen group. However other manufacturers are fast catching up and I predict this will become the standard gearbox once the novelty has worn off.

So having fun keeping my work life balance in check!