Quiet day at Silverstone

Two hundred and twenty five Nissan Leafs driving round the grand prix circuit doesn’t sound much of a spectacle. It’s apparently a Guinness World Record for the largest parade of electric vehicles. I would have thought a good morning at Unigate could match that. Or a biggish club with golf trolleys. Chrysler held the record until now. 218. Nissan Leaf owners travelled from around the UK from, “as far afield as Aberdeen and Belfast, to meet up at the world-famous circuit on Saturday 24th November.”

The stunt was organised by Nissan, “to bring together owners of the world’s best selling electric vehicle to share their ownership experiences and to gather information about how they use their cars.” Brave. Especially keeping all those lights on. How long did it take to drive a Leaf from Aberdeen to Northants? How many times did they charge the batteries? How long did it take in ampere-hours? They have only sold 499 Nissan Leafs so far this year, so 225 looks like getting on for half. Silverstone couldn’t accommodate half this year’s sales of, say, Minis. Nobody grudges the electric car industry some publicity, but “The multi-award winning Nissan LEAF has entered the record books again,” sounds like desperation. The Society of Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) says only 812 battery cars of all makes have been bought this year, notwithstanding the government largesse of £5,000 each. The Leaf is the most popular. None of the other five has sold a quarter as many. Citroën has managed only 21 C-Zeros. There’s one for the record books.

Too old to drive a Duster

Three months before its UK launch the new Dacia is Scottish Car of the Year (SCOTY) and The Sunday Times thinks it fifth best 4x4. A thousand have been ordered. It looks a bargain. I even thought of replacing my Nissan Terrano with one, when I saw it at the SCOTY awards. As a Life Member of the Association of Scottish Motoring Writers I was not eligible to vote. No longer on the Scottish rota, I thought I might borrow one on road test.

No, said Dacia, only if you arrange your own insurance. We know you are over 75.

I have only once been refused a test car on account of age, a Porsche 911 Turbo so a certain caution was perhaps understandable. I said I had been road testing Porsches without incident since 1964 and the ban was quickly rescinded. I test drive Jaguars and Bentleys and Audis but Dacia seems to doubt I can handle its 1461cc and 0-60mph in 12.5sec. Even The Sunday Times thinks the build quality isn’t great. Should Dacias be sold to over-75s? If Dacia has such concern over its press cars, probably not.

I will carry on with my trusty Nissan (behind the Bentley, below).

Electrickery: It isn't working

If there was a way of storing enough electricity to drive a car it would have been discovered by now. In the 200 or so years since Michael Faraday (1791-1867), we have split the atom, been to the moon and back, invented aviation, television, computers and the world wide web. Yet it still needs a 4 ton battery the size of a 550 gallon petrol tank, to provide a family car with 500 miles’ range and 100 mph performance. Electricity is a means of transmitting power, not a source of power, and the electric car has not come far since 1899 when Camille Jenatzy did his 65mph flying kilometre.
He had to charge the batteries before he could do the return kilometre. Last week Auto Express admitted its Nissan Leaf on the RAC Future Car Challenge was charged up overnight at Brighton to ensure it would get back to London. Driver Sam Hardy slipstreamed a lorry for 25 miles and avoided using heater or demister. Some cars were so slow they caused traffic tailbacks.

Even electrophiles on Autocar revealed that UK electric car sales have hardly passed 1,000 and only the Chevrolet Volt (top and bottom) and Vauxhall Ampera, with on-board generators, stand any chance. More Ferraris were sold last year. The Nissan Leaf has not come near its wildly optimistic sales target. Car of the Year 2011 – what a joke; Chevrolet thought it might manage 10,000 Volts but sold 7700.

To appease greenery-yallery foot-in-the-grave lobbyists the government set aside £300million to subsidise electric cars. Yet hardly anybody’s tempted; throwing money at them hasn’t worked. Milk floats, fine – cars, not a chance. It might be all right for hybrids like the Toyota Prius (below). I tested one in 2004 and over 1,300miles it did 45mpg – about what I might have managed with a real car just driving slowly.


In America the National Highway Traffic Safety Adminstration (NHTSA) has been before a Senate sub-committee. Administrator David Strickland was asked why it kept quiet about lithium-ion battery fires following crash tests of the plug-in Volt. The wrecks ignited three weeks after the tests, but the NHTSA waited five months before owning up and only when a news reporter exposed it.

The Islay distillery of Bruichladdich would be fine for a Leaf. You could drive the 30 miles all round the island without running out of juice. Strickland claimed the NHTSA had not worked out why the Volt caught fire, only to be told nobody believed him. He was accused of keeping quiet in view of his taxpayer subsidy and his relationship with General Motors. The implication was that he had become so influenced by lobbying on electric cars he felt obliged to conceal bad news.

Some politicians will do anything ... Strickland was rather like climate change theorists suppressing anything that contradicts their dogma. Inability to distinguish matters of opinion from matters of fact is the last refuge of the dirigist. Everybody thinks they ought to believe electric cars work. It is politically incorrect to say they don’t. Let’s get real.

Ford Kuga and Nissan Terrano

Should I replace the Nissan with a Kuga? When the time comes? The Nissan is taller (see above) but the room inside is comparable. A Kuga is on my shortlist. I bought the Nissan new in 1998 for something like £26,000, about the price of a decent Kuga now, yet it carries its years well, passing its MoT the other week, pausing only to have brakes dusted down. I bought it to replace a 1993 Maverick, its Ford twin, which had also been the soul of reliability so they have been a family mainstay for 17 years. With a stout chassis and non-rusting body I thought it would last for ever, and it very nearly has but its 2.7 diesel has the charm and refinement of a London taxi (no coincidence, lots of London taxis used Nissan diesels) and I now need something more saloon car-ish. Twenty years’ development in diesels shows. The Kuga is smoother, quieter and feels lighter. The only clue to being a diesel is a limited rev range but the strong torque and 6-speed automatic mean that scarcely matters. It was so much smoother and livelier than the Nissan I did actually stop and looked at the fuel filler (which is only a flap – it has no screw cap) to see if it said DIESEL. You can use the automatic like a manual if you want.
I have thought about an estate car yet I am reluctant to forgo four wheel drive. You only need it once in a while but in emergencies, winter, towing, or off-road occasions that happen infrequently you bless it. So, maybe a crossover, on a car platform, with a tall body, high seating, good ground clearance and the appearance of a Sport Utility. The Kuga behaves like a saloon car, handles securely, rides smoothly and doesn’t feel a bit like the harshly sprung Terrano. It hasn’t got a big strong separate chassis but its C-car architecture of Focus and C-Max provide a good balance of comfort and control.

Would a Kuga be big enough for the dogs? That is Wellington looking superior. The luggage space of 360l (12.7cuft) is smaller than a Focus but with the back seats flat it goes up to 1355l (47.8cuft), which is big enough. Underseat storage beneath the rear seats and the boot floor are practical features, the back seats have a 60/40 split and the flat glass upper section of the tailgate can be opened separately. I might miss the third row of seats. The Nissan’s have seldom been used; they are usually folded away or taken out and left in the garage but once again, what a boon on occasion. Their leather upholstery is like new. I would miss the Nissan’s leather. The seats on Kuga I had on test only had leather facings although they are well trimmed and practical. Kuga has some road noise and bump-thump, a bit of winfd noise on the motorway, but against the Nissan it is luxury. Although 41.7mpg is not as economical as some rivals it beats the Nissan’s 27.
The kerbside-opening door was never an inconvenience but the Kuga's upwards one is better. It has a little handle to help short people close it.
Tail-ender. Nelson would not be left out.

Snow and the 4X4

SNOW

No more sneering at 4x4s. The snow has shown they are essential. We live by country roads, if not impassable probably problematical. Our Nissan Terrano 2 has been used by the family District Nurse; the West Country has been calling up WRVS volunteers with 4x4s to maintain meals on wheels, so where would people have been without them? All wheel drive cars have become part of everyday life and apart from a few carping complainants, with terms like Chelsea Tractors, fulfil a real need.

Four wheel drive might not be in the same league as rotary-winged aircraft, but it should never be scorned. It is a technical achievement too easily taken for granted, and like rescue helicopter crews picking up injured children or survivors from foundering ships, it has a great deal to its credit.

My first 4x4 was a Ford Maverick. After reporting on it and the Nissan Terrano 2 in The Sunday Times of 6 June 1993, I borrowed a Maverick, and then bought it when it became indispensable. It carried four daughters and the dogs, pulled the horse-box, took bicycles on the roof and carried many books. I exchanged it for a new Terrano 2, now in its 13th year having become part of the family. The daughters have gone and so has the horse-box, in effect exchanged for pushchair and baby, but the Terrano goes on and on.
It is a matchless multi purpose vehicle. Mine has still only done 68,337 miles, I have just checked; we have other cars and I use test cars a lot. It was invaluable during our recent move and is the most dependable and longest-serving car I have ever had. Except for an occasional exhaust system and battery, it has cost next to nothing beyond routine servicing. It does 27mpg, tows a trailer, and everything on it still works. When I get round to it a new air conditioning compressor will be the only thing I have ever spent money on. The bodywork is like new, except for a rusty bit where the dogs scratch it getting in the back door, and it feels good for another 68,337.

So, no more sneering at 4x4s please, but let us have a small rant blaming global warmists for predicting so mild winters for so long that the authorities did not have enough salt to keep roads clear. The BBC has just interviewed the hapless Hilary James Wedgwood Benn MP, secretary of state for the environment, predictably without challenging him over the warmists’ main argument. The northern hemisphere is having its third freezing winter in succession, most of Canada and America was snowbound in December for the first time in decades and our Met Office, after getting the barbecue summer wildly wrong, predicted this would be a mild winter. Let us have done with panic mongering and consign the Roundheads to Cromwellian history.