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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
