Trader Dreamer: Rover 200 BRM LE

This time around ‘Trader Dreamer’ is one rather personal to me. This is a car I’ve wanted for several years now, and with prices obscenely low at the moment, this appears to be the time to buy a car that could very well appreciate. What this limited edition car desperately needs is more caring owners, while some have such luxury, many turn up for breaking or with questionable engine conversions. The car is the Rover 200 BRM LE and my plea to you is save one for me, and sell it for the current price in a few years, ta. 

E46 328i Vs F30 328i – In Video

In the most recent ‘Trader Dreamer’ I compare the virtues of the brand new 328i to the model 13 years its senior. If you don’t want to take my conclusion alone, perhaps you should watch the two videos after the break. In one you’ll find Clarkson testing the 328i at its launch in 1998 on ‘old’ Top Gear. The other comes from Autocar, with Steve Sutcliffe testing the most recent model. See for yourself how much has changed in this expanse of time.

 The E46 & F30, both can skirt around a rocky outcrop but which would you have?

Trader Dreamer: BMW 328i E46

The embargo on reviews of the F30 BMW 3 series was lifted earlier this week, meaning that we can find out that once again the 3 series is top of its class. Hardly surprising as this has been the case for as long as I can remember. What is perhaps a little surprising is the engine in the new 328i, a name plate that we in Europe haven’t seen for 11 years. Under the bonnet you’ll find no 2.8 litre straight six, nothing of the sort in fact, the car has a 2.0 litre turbocharged four cylinder. The new car will set you back £28,080 before you start ticking boxes, but if you’re not keen on spending that sort of money a car with a lie on its boot lid, then perhaps consider the E46 328i. It’s not lying and it can be had for as little as £2,000.

Photo from aaronmarks

Trader Dreamer: Ford Scorpio

How do you follow up a V12 Ferrari in a series of blogs? Well perhaps something a bit more realistic. Something with half the cylinders but a top speed only 40mph adrift of the now £60k supercar. A car that offers more equipment than the Ferrari, better economy, more seats, and in facelift form, more exclusivity than the Testarossa? Yes it’s all sounding great you say, well, witness, the Ford Scorpio!

Photo from kenjonbro

Trader Dreamer: Ferrari 512TR

So I've gone a second Sunday without a Trader Dreamer, but to make up for it, here’s one about a true automotive hero. These days if you want a full on lary V12 supercar you must surely go to Lamborghini or Pagani. Yes Ferrari make the fully competitive 599, but it’s engine location gives it the appearance of a GT rather than Supercar. In this day and age it’s harder than ever to make a case for a V12 Supercar that’s so big you need a runway to fully explore its abilities, but if there’s one period of time where these vehicles were at home it was the excess of the 1980s.

Photo from daveoflogic

Missed Opportunity: Finnish Edition

 Finnish as in Finland the country that is. A country that makes itself known to me through two great industries; Valmet, who have made everything from assault rifles to Saabs, and Nokia, a company that brought mobile phones to the masses. For once I’m not going to write about cars, prepare for a phone blog.

Trader Dreamer: Honda FR-V

In 2000 the Fiat Multipla was launched to critical acclaim, its clever seating plan allowed 6 people to fit in a car that wasn’t massive like an Espace, and still had boot space with 6 occupants. It won Top Gear’s family car of the year award 4 years in a row, and in its launch year managed runner up in the ECOTY. With MPV’s very popular at the time, and Fiat bringing this new idea to the table, you could presume that it would be a sales hit. This however was not quite the case, currently there are 13252 registered on the road, compare this to the decidedly mediocre Fiat Stilo, which wasn’t winning any awards, but sold in more than twice the volume. Some reckon the car would have been more successful, if it were not for Chris Bangles controversial styling, and this is where the Honda FR-V comes in.

 

Picture from 'Imnop88a'

Any customer can have a manual, so long as it is automated.

The other day I had the privilege of driving a Gallardo round an airfield. It was awesome. While I know all the raw figures, I never expected it to feel that fast or have that much grip, and that glorious V10 bark would have been enough to get me excited even if it wasn’t that good. Here’s the obligatory ‘but..’ though, it was equipped with an E-Gear transmission, Lamborghini’s single clutch automated-manual.

 A great car, but where's the manual?

Trader Dreamer: Aston Martin Vanquish

Imagine the situation, it's 2001 and you are Vice President of a UK wide company, you’ve risen through the ranks. Eight years ago you were driving a ford Mondeo Mk1, now even your BMW isn’t enough, so you go and splash £160k on a brand new sports car. But even in this elevated status you are reminded where you came from, the electric window switches are exactly the same as that Mondeo all those years ago. The car that offers this experience? That’ll be the Aston Martin Vanquish, which could now be yours for less than £50,000.

Photo from 'RGT3'

Trader Dreamer: Land Rover Freelander I

To say the Evoque has been well received is a bit of an understatement, from what I've been reading it has fantastic looks, it isn’t bad to drive and it has all the premium image you could want for. Thing is, the price is pretty premium too, kicking off a little shy of £30k. So if you don’t have that sort of money there is a vastly cheaper alternative, and that’s a used Land Rover Freelander.

 Picture From 'kenjonbro'

Trader Dreamer: Audi RS6 Avant

So how about this, a regular feature.. I spend an un-healthy amount of time looking at Auto Trader and the like, ogling things I’m unlikely to buy any time soon, so why not put it to some use?

We’ll kick off with something a bit ridiculous, the C5 Audi RS6. I have a huge soft spot for RS Avants, and I’ve found one for a very reasonable £10,995, indicating to me that the prices of this once £58k car may have hit the bottom, with RS2’s and B5 RS4’s still fetching around £12k, this car might not have much more to loose. 

 Picture from CarSpy

The Awesome Lotus Carlton

 When looking at the Autocar website today I was pleased to be greeted by the sight of one of the greatest cars ever built, in my humble estimation of course, the Lotus Carlton. I'm not sure how many people would agree with me here, but I've always thought that this car looks fantastic, take a simple four box saloon and put lots of big grilles in it and you've got a winner as far as I'm concerned.

  The looks aren't important however, because you'd have to be mad not to at least respect his car, unless you're an environmentalist (22 mpg claimed if you're wondering). The impressive comparison of the day was the fact that it could outrun a Ferrari Testarossa, of course the Testarossa isn't the most well respected Ferrari. So how about we compare it to the well respected BMW M3 released in 2007. With it's 414bhp V8 it manages to outrun the Carlton by 1 second in the race to 100mph, or 0.3 seconds if you decide to stop at 60mph, that's 17 years of BMW R&D progress vs Lotus's one off efforts on a fairly average Vauxhall from 1986.

 This Carlton makes 377bhp and a massive 419lb/ft thanks to Lotus's addition of two turbo's to Vauxhall's 3.6 litre in line 6. Two years after turbocharging was outlawed in F1 the car was still very much the product of the era of turbo performance, a thing Lotus knew a thing or two about. In 1988 they were running an F1 car with an awe inspiring, 685bhp, 1.5l Honda V6, while the long running Esprit had been turbocharged since 1980. Of course it's not engine tuning that made lotus the name it is, the companies real forte has always been producing a brilliant chassis, and the Carlton was not an exception. While not the best drivers car, they manged to make a 377bhp RWD saloon handle in a relatively safe manner without any electronic intervention.

 I could continue quoting figures for many hours (did i mention it's top speed is in excess of 170?) but perhaps the brilliance of this car is best explained watching it do what it does best, and doesn't it look good doing it?

The Germanic guide to incorrect engine placement.

When Porsche built the 356 they made a huge mistake. They put the engine in the wrong place. By putting pretty much all the cars weight behind the rear wheels they created a car that should handle worse than any other, but through some admirable German engineering stubbornness they made it work, just find a race a GT3 RSR doesn’t dominate. 

Of course when Ferdinand Porsche created the Beetle his idea of putting the engine aft of the rear axle did create more passenger space, seeing the light however, VW went on to produce cars with engines forward of the Driver. But it didn’t stop them in their quest for space, on larger saloons both VW and Audi have had a habit of putting the engine largely in-front of the front axle. This is bad, especially when these longitudinally mounted engines are driving the front wheels, unless you happen to like understeer. It is good if you like interior space, the only reason I can see why Audi continues to produce cars with this layout. While in recent times Ingolstadt’s foothold in the luxury car market has ever increased, they still lag behind both BMW & Mercedes in terms of driving dynamics.

Audi’s sales (rapidly encroaching on those of BMW and Mercedes) will testify that a quality interior and good design more than make up for this for most customers, but given the choice between an M3 which has a properly mounted engine and a RS5 which doesn’t, a keen driver would surely go for the M3. This doesn’t stop Audi engineers churning them out, the RS4 B5, RS6’s, TT RS and RS5; all of them outclassed by their rivals, but every so often they do get it right. 

This started with the original Quattro, sort of. Using mostly pre-existing parts to create a simple yet very effective 4wd system they instantly overcame the minor issue of FWD, the engine was still in the wrong place, but this was of little consequence. No other sports car had four wheel drive meaning that the Quattro had an immediate advantage, especially when rallying, an activity which it excelled at. Of course any great idea will be copied, and by the time the ‘ur’ Quattro was succeeded by the S2 in 1990 four wheel drive alone was not enough to make it a great car. That master of making the wrong right, Porsche had fitted a 4 wheel drive system to their 911 a year earlier, and despite also having the engine in the wrong place, did it better.

 

It makes sense then, that it was Porsche whom Audi turned to Porsche to sort the S2 out (that’s probably not what it said in the press release). The RS2 avant was the result. It, like the 911 it shared wheels and indicators with, showed the world that having the engine in the wrong place, doesn’t mean a car cannot be good (again). This is the same admirable engineering that means the 911 always wins races, that means the the Bugatti Veyron can do what it does despite weighing as much as Rockall, that means VW could easily fit a V6 into a Golf. 

So was this the start of class leading Audi’s, in the same way that Porsche managed? In a word no, the RS2 was followed by the RS4, and the RS6 which were comparatively crap. By 2006 the excellence of the RS2 would probably have seemed to most, a one off. That was until Audi created the RS4 B7, a car that not only matched the brilliance of the the RS2, but far exceeded it. For the first time Audi was really worrying the M3, you might wonder if it was anything to do with the decision to put a V8 in the next generation M3. In any case, BMW needn’t have worried, the RS4 was killed off far too quickly most would agree, and eventually replaced in 2010 by the RS5, which is again rubbish. 

What now for Audi’s Quattro RS’s? While the RS5 is lacking in talent you at least have the brilliant R8, the ‘poor’ mans Lamborghini, which has the engine in the right place, while the TT RS which pays semi homage to the ur-quattro by having a 5 cylinder turbo, but mounted Transversely, leads the field as a fast stylish small coupe. But is all hope lost for the, engine forward, fast Audi then? One can hope not, for Audi bring us the new Quattro, taking styling cues from the original, it will also feature the 5 cylinder turbo seen in the TT RS, but being based on an RS5 platform we can presume the engine will be mounted in the wrong place. You can read more about said cars specifications here, and it does sound promising.. time will tell.