Geneva brings out my inner middle-aged petrolhead

GENEVA’S a great place to pretend you’re rich and middle-aged.

Not only is it full of banks and infused with a sense of order and tidiness, but it’s also just about the only place in Europe where you can broaden your already sagging waistline with entire shops dedicated to Toblerone. Oh, and once a year there’s a show stuffed with shiny new supercars too.

I’ve just jetted back from my first ever visit to something that ought to be on every car fan’s bucket list. The Geneva Motor Show is where you go to take the pulse of the motoring world because so many manufacturers use it to launch new cars, and it’s where the European Car of the Year gets announced (congratulations Vauxhall, by the way).

Really I ought have been sensible and reported back faithfully to your Champion-reading chums what the new Renault Scenic’s like – but I failed because I got distracted by the shiny supercars. You would too, given the choice between a Scenic and the new Porsche 911 Turbo S.

So I ended up pretending to be rich, middle aged and with just one question – which one car would I forgo the Easyjet flight for and drive back to Blighty? One of the show’s big stars – the Bugatti Chiron – is out straight away because its makers have wimped out of making it the world’s fastest production car by limiting its top speed to (just) 261mph. It’s 11mph faster than a Golf GTI and nearly seven times as powerful – but when it comes down to it it’ll still lose you a game of Top Trumps.

Ford’s GT gives just as much visual theatre for a fraction of the price but the mid-engined arrival that really won me over was Honda’s new NSX. Not only does it use clever hybrid technology to go fast in a vaguely eco-friendly way, but it looks stunning in the flesh. The Nineties original might have been a flop here, but I really hope this one does better.

The NSX is an amazing bit of kit – but the one car that really won me over was a small sports car made not by robots in Japan, but craftsmen in Worcestershire. Morgan’s EV3 might only be a one-off show car for now but I really hope they make it; it’s essentially the slightly bonkers Threewheeler, but with an electric motor rather than a tuned motorcycle engine. Not only does it look completely unhinged and promise to be on the fun side of terrifying to drive, but it’s also the most compelling argument I’ve seen yet for people like me – the petrolheads – to take up eat-your-greens electric motoring.

Count me in.

Originally published in the 9 March issue of The Champion

May the force be with the new Honda NSX

STAR WARS fans have had it easy – they’ve only had to wait ten years for a follow-up. If you want to see real patience then spare a thought for anyone saving up for a new Honda NSX.

The chaps at Honda are insistent that their new mid-engined supercar will be landing in the showrooms sometime in the spring of 2016, meaning it’s been more than 11 years since the last original NSX rolled out of the showroom. It’s been even longer since Honda actually launched a supercar; Margaret Thatcher was still Prime Minister when that happened.

It’s weirder to think the new NSX’s predecessor arrived at a time when most of us were still driving Ford Sierras, which makes you realise just how far ahead of the game it was. I was lucky enough to drive one the other day, and it just didn’t compute in my petrolhead grey matter that a 1992 car developed in the late Eighties felt slicker and more modern than the 15-reg Astra I’d been piloting half an hour earlier. So I can understand why this automotive iPad would’ve made its Windows 3.1 rivals, the Ferrari 348 and the Lotus Esprit, feel a bit prehistoric.

The NSX moved performance motoring on so much that Gordon Murray used it as his benchmark when he was developing the McLaren F1 – which is why the new one has an even bigger weight of expectation than The Force Awakens did. Ferrari and Porsche upped their game after the original NSX came out and made its party trick of being exciting and easy to use their own, which is why any of you could step out of a Ford Focus and into a 488GTB without feeling too frightened. Both it and the new 911 are hugely talented acts, so unless the NSX is astonishingly good it risks floundering onto their patch looking like the car world’s Jar Jar Binks.

Thankfully the omens are good. Honda’s raided its big cupboard of motoring tech for the new NSX, which is why it’s got four-wheel-drive and a dual clutch transmission with not five, not six, but NINE gears. Oh, and a 3.7-litre V6 that’s given a helping hand by two turbochargers and three electric motors.

I’ve no idea whether that’s enough to tempt rich Champion readers out of their 911s but I’m very much looking forward to my own test. If in 23 years’ time it feels more modern than a new Astra then I can go home knowing it’s done its job.

Shortly after which I’ll probably write a Life On Cars column comparing it to the 19th Star Wars film – see you there!

Petrolheads rejoice - the Honda Civic Type-R is back!

HONDA’S hottest hatchback is being revived after a five year absence, with the first cars arriving in its UK showrooms in July.

The Civic Type-R uses a turbocharged 2.0-litre VTEC engine to produce 300bhp, which helps it get to 60mph in 5.7 seconds and on to a top speed of 167mph.

 It’ll cost £29,995, with a more luxurious GT-badged version costing £32,295.

Honda's clever cruise control is computing witchcraft

THE OTHER week my smartphone – having worked out I was on a train chugging its way through Sandhills station – decided to give me an update on how Brendan Rogers’ boys were getting on against Arsenal.

Somewhere deep within the phone’s brain, a complicated algorithm had worked out that, as I was vaguely close to Anfield at the time of a Liverpool game, I must have been interested in the results. All it proved was that my phone probably knows less about me than you do. It knew where I was, but couldn’t figure out why.

If you’ve ever bought someone a gift on Amazon – say, Michael Bublé’s latest album – and then been hounded with emails suggesting you buy all his other albums despite the fact you hate his records, you’ll know what I mean when I say I don't really trust computerised technology. It makes even less sense when you apply it to real world driving – a colleague and I were circumnavigating London’s North Circular the other day, and even though I’ve never driven the capital’s roads before I could still work when to change lanes long before Lady Satnav did.

That’s why I’m genuinely going to have to take a leap of faith with Honda’s latest invention. I don’t know how they’ve done it, but they’ve managed to come up with an automatic cruise control system that can predict if someone’s about to cut you up. Not only that, but it then applies the brakes to prevent them causing a pile-up.

Surely that’s just witchcraft? Predicting who is going to cut you up on the M58 is something best done with common sense rather than computers. Even a really good computer, developed by Honda’s brainiest boffins, cannot scan every car on the motorway, work out which one is the BMW X5 on personalised plates and take pre-emptive action to prevent them from ruining your drive into work.

However, it’s not something nicked from a science fiction movie. It’s called Intelligent Adaptive Cruise Control – or i-ACC, as Honda’s insisting we nickname it – and it’ll be available on range-topping versions of the CR-V off-roader later this year.

I can’t wait to give it a go and see if it actually works. Perhaps more worrying it’s that it’s being hailed as a step towards a whole new generation of clever gadgets that can predict what other people are about to do and take pre-emptive decisions to improve the situation.

Maybe such a technical marvel shouldn’t just be limited to motoring. Have Liverpool thought about bringing in i-ACC to replace Brendan Rogers?

Winter is here. Thank God for Honda and its new small sports car

IT’S that time of year again – the bit where I’m dreading more motoring misery and driving home in the dark.

A flotsam of leaves have fallen from the trees onto an increasingly wet and windy north west landscape, the clocks have been wound back, and the predictable slew of automotive experts have been rolled out to tell us how we’re all going to have to concentrate extra hard to make sure we don’t crash in the dark.

The perfect time, then, to talk about small, open top sports cars.

Maybe I’ve spent too much time poking my nose around old MG Midgets and Triumph Spitfires this summer, but I’ve been keeping an eye on the more recent al-fresco offerings and haven’t exactly been bowled over. The Jaguar F-type, for instance, toyed with us for years with its promises of being a Boxster basher that’d make every Brit proud, but while it looks fabulous its £58,000 starting price isn’t exactly in tune with a nation worried about paying its next gas bill.

Toyota’s open-top version of the excellent GT-86, it’s now being widely rumoured, has been axed, while the problem with the rest of the small sports cars you can actually afford is that there simply aren’t any. The MG TF, Fiat Barchetta, Daihatsu Copen and Toyota MR-2 are all gone. Mazda and Alfa Romeo have teamed up to create two MX-5 based roadsters, but the finished product still seems a long way off. That is the only ray of faint sunshine in a winter utterly devoid of fun cars.

Or at least it was until Honda and Caterham got in on the act.

I smiled the smile of a chocoholic let loose at Cadbury World when I found out Caterham – who, don’t forget, have been a bit busy running F1 teams lately – have got back to basics and made a cheaper version of the Seven which goes back to its roots. The end result might not be the quickest thing the company’s ever created, but it costs the same as a low-spec Ford Focus and has skinny little tyres, a motorbike engine and next to no weight or creature comforts whatsoever. In other words, big fun.

But even that pales into comparision with what Honda’s been up to, on the other side of the world. While all the eyes at next month’s Tokyo Motor Show will be on the new NSX supercar, the boffins have also found time to create the S660, which is a tiny, mid-engined, open-top sports car.

Forget the technology and the snazzy styling – it’s the new Healey Sprite. Get making it, Honda!

Why the Honda Civic won me over

IT WAS in the wee small hours, long after you’d gone to bed, that a humdrum diesel hatchback stole my heart.

You would’ve found your petrolhead friend in unfortunate surroundings at precisely 00:32am the other Sunday night. A long drive across the country which had already started late was going from bad to worse, because while part of the M62 being closed off for overnight roadworks didn’t frustrate me a subsequent decision by another motorist to have a crash on the Highways Agency’s preferred alternative meant being diverted off the diversion, and what should have been a quick blast over the Pennines had turned into an agonisingly long crawl through Bradford city centre and then around Leeds at stupid ‘o’ clock.

Desperately needing to stay sharp and still the best part of 100 miles away from my destination, I pulled into what must qualify as Britain’s loneliest service station, somewhere near Pontefract. It was somewhere I’d suggest as a shooting location for anyone thinking of a filming a Brit adaptation of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, because it was just one semi-shut petrol station in a sea of unlit blackness, with a single, bored cashier and the distant rumble of a passing lorry every ten minutes to break up the inherent creepiness of my late night calling point.

Caffeine-crammed energy drink aside, I had just one weapon to hand should the road-horror-movie-in-the-making have got real. Fortunately, it was a good one; the 2.2 diesel version of Honda’s Civic.

Having driven one last year, I already knew the Civic had improved in quite a few crucial areas over the old one – namely, the redesign of the rear doors to stop people banging their heads as they got in and out – but at the expense of its wonderfully daring design being watered down a bit. A good car, then, but not as good as a Ford Focus. That was, however, until it decided to stop being a good car and start being a brilliant one, by using its turbocharged diesel whallop to devour the darkness over the rest of that journey.

Honda have always been good with engines but the 2.2 turbodiesel is, if munching through motorway miles is what you’re after, an absolute gem. Not only is it quiet, economical and smooth enough to win it friends in austerity-obsessed 2013 but it has so much mid-range whallop on offer that it makes easy work of overtaking just about anything.

With it being 1am on a quiet, unlit motorway, there wasn’t much call for being frustrated by the Civic’s chief niggle – the spoiler cutting right across your rear view – but the Blade Runner vibe of the digital dashboard, the build quality and the comfort completely won me over.

No, it wouldn’t be as much fun as a Focus on a windy country lane but in the freakishly early hours of the morning, when all you want to do is get home quickly and quietly, I know which one I’d rather have.

Honda GoldWing riders take to the streets of Southport

ALTHOUGH I'm still grinning from ear to ear about my adventures in North Wales, my trip meant missing a great event in Southport last weekend when a parade of brightly-lit motorbikes took to the resort's streets to help raise hundreds of pounds for charity.

Members of GoldWings North West brought their brightly-decorated Honda GoldWing motorbikes into the resort for the Light Parade event last Saturday, which not only gave residents a chance to see the strobe lighting and the unusual colours of the machines but also helped to raise money for Queenscourt Hospice.

Club member Peter Rodgers told Life On Cars: “The event was a huge success, and it was great to see the public turn out in their droves to see all the GoldWings taking part in the parade and in the static displays.

"The weather was absolutely perfect for us, Queenscourt Hospice were delighted with the response the event had, and we were really pleased to see that everywhere we stopped we were swamped by members of the public keen to see more of these unusual bikes. It really was a brilliant occasion."

Members of the public were treated not only to a static display, in which riders showed off the bikes on Chapel Street last Saturday (September 22) but also to a night-time display when the bikes were decorated with strobe lighting and the riders donned fancy dress costumes for the event.

Although collections from the event are still being counted, the club said that it has raised over £500 to help Queenscourt Hospice. GoldWings North West is now discussing whether a similar event can be held in the resort next year.

For more information about GoldWings North West and their Light Parade events, visit the club's website at www.goldwingsnorthwest.co.uk.

Prepare to fire up the... Honda NSX

A SUCCESSOR to one of the most influential - and overlooked - supercars of all time is being considered by the company which first created it more than 20 years ago.

Few companies back in the early Nineties could boast that their fastest offering had been developed by the late Formula One ace Ayrton Senna or boast then-revolutionary construction and engine technology, so it's incredible to think the Honda NSX wasn't more of a hit. However, now that the world is cottoning onto the original's classic-in-waiting status prices for the original are soaring, and Honda itself is keen to cash in on the car's cult following by launching a long-awaited successor.

Yet that's exactly what Honda will be showing off at next month's Geneva Motorshow and if - or, more likely when - it generates enough interest the Japanese automotive giant is likely to get cracking on a production version, which is likely to show off the hybrid technology it's already used to good effect in the Insight and CR-Z among others.

Honda president Takanobu Ito said when he unveiled an Acura-badged version to American enthusiasts last month:

"Like the first NSX, we will again express high performance through engineering efficiency.

"In this new era, even as we focus on the fun to drive spirit of the NSX, I think a supercar must respond positively to environmental responsibilities."

Like the original, the new NSX will have its rear wheels powered by a mid-mounted V6 engine, but it'll use not just hybrid technology but also direct injection to make the most of every drop of fuel. It'll also use a dual clutch transmission with built-in electric motor, to create supercar acceleration while offering outstanding efficiency.

In fact, the biggest problem will be overcoming the brand snobbery which dogged the original, because the NSX will up against the prestige offered by the likes of Porsche, Lotus and even Ferrari.

Can lightning strike twice? With all the technology on offer with the new NSX, you'd hope not for Honda's sake.

Fire up the... Honda Civic

SPOT the difference is a game I've never been especially good at, but it's one you'll be invited to play the first time you get a glimpse of this accomplished new Honda.

Give the new Civic the most casual of looks and - without wanting to be cruel - you'll be wondering whether the company's been spending its money on photocopiers rather than car designers. It does, if you're not paying attention and one passes you in the street, look almost identical to the outgoing model.

But there's some clever thinking behind the evolutionary rather than revolutionary styling. It seems you, The Great British Public, loved the looks of the old one but got a bit hot under the collar about a couple of niggles. The spoiler cutting right across the rear window, for instance. Or the slightly weird and very glassy rear lights. Or the fact you banged your head as you got in the back. That's why the new one's seems the same despite being compellingly different on closer inspection.

Admittedly it's business as usual at the back window because the spolier still cuts across it, but now at least it doesn't obscur the rear view so much it annoys you. The rear lights are a lot more conventional and straightforward, and anyone hoping to get out of the back has got some good news. Your scalp will emerge unscathed!

The new Civic isn't as much fun to drive as Ford's Focus or as achingly attractive as Alfa's Giulietta but goes for your head instead of your heart. It isn't the life and soul of the party but with its roomy and beautifully built interior, its punchy diesel powerplant and its intuitively easy controls, it's definitely the brains behind it.

So it's a single step back and about five steps forward for Honda. The new Civic is a little but duller, but an awful lot better.

Honda to offer go-faster version of CR-Z

HONDA'S just announced the sportiest hybrid it makes will be made a little hotter with the announcement that a performance version will arrive next year.

The company said that it has teamed up with tuning firm MUGEN to offer go-faster version of the CR-Z hybrid coupe, which will offer up 50% more power than the existing car and rocket to sixty no less than three seconds faster.

Martin Moll, Head of Honda (UK) marketing said: “MUGEN Euro magic has created a super responsive yet eco-conscious model building on our sporting credentials and giving us the ability to compete in the hot hatch marketplace as we move into 2012.”

The standard CR-Z is the current Life On Cars car of the year, after impressing last year with its blend of performance and eco-friendliness.

Forget the looks, the best bit about the new Honda Civic is the doors

THE outgoing Honda Civic was always a car I'd buy with my heart. Yet - as anyone who's ever tried to get into the back of one will testify - it's absolutely not one you can buy with your head.

I had this point proven to me at a Honda dealership last night, when I was invited to play Spot The Difference between the Civic you know and love, and the new model, which goes on sale at the end of the year. I haven't driven the new model yet but after poring over both in nauseatingly boring detail I can tell you Honda has eliminated the old car's biggest problem; that you bang your head if you're getting in the back.

The old car's worst feature, amazingly, is a byproduct of its best; that its styling is such a brilliant aesthetic achievement. In 2006, just as Ford's restyled Focus was losing its Blake's Seven looks, along came Honda with something that looked like it'd been stolen from the set of Bladerunner. Here was, in a field of humdrum hatchbacks, something which looked and felt genuinely radical and edgy. It's just a shame the rear doors had a roofline which cut right across where your head naturally goes as you're getting into the back seats. I don't think I've ever got into one without ending up with a very sorry feeling scalp!

However, Honda's engineers realised this, and set the best boffins at their Minor Injuries Avoidance Department to the task of eliminating it from the new model. There are, if you're thinking of buying a 2012 Civic, many things which count in its favour, but its single biggest advancement is the saving you'll make in packets of frozen peas and Elastoplast. The funding crisis hitting the NHS hard will surely be softened as the queue of Honda Civic rear passengers at Accident and Emergency departments up and down the land disappears as the Honda faithful flock to the new arrival. People who wear hats will no longer fear for their headgear if they're asked to get into the back of a Civic.

Whether the new arrival's as appealing as the old one is something I'll only know once I've driven it, and I've got high hopes for Honda's latest effort. If its handling, performance and refinement are anything like as good as its rear door access, it'll be a hit.

For a car that's retained the original's wedgy shape, the Minor Injuries Avoidance Department have done a cracking job.

The only person who knows whether you'll like a new car is you

AN ADMISSION. I actually know very little about the thorough business of test driving cars.

Every week, provided you actually make it past the news, the entertainment, the classifieds and the dating ads to The Champion's motoring page - and haven't end up there by mistake because you're actually looking for the sport section - you're greeted not only with this column, but on increasing occasions by a road test of something new and flashy I've just driven.

Unfortunately, I think it's given off the impression I actually know a thing or two about new cars.

I was a bit embarrassed when a high-ranking member of Lancashire County Council rang up the other day and asked for advice on which of the current crop of the superminis she should invest her hard-earned into. I suggested Ford's Fiesta (this column's car of the year, 2009) and Suzuki's sprightly Swift (runner up, 2010), with the likes of the Fabia, Panda and Jazz worth looking into. But could I reccomend the Polo, the Yaris or the current Clio? Nope, because I haven't test driven any of them.

Nor is my own patchy record of cars I've actually owned anything to go by, unless you're particularly partial to the more rot-prone motors produced decades ago by the long-gone British Leyland empire. The only car I've ever owned that was totally reliable was a £100 Renault 5, which I had to scrap in the end after discovering its main construction material was rust.

While I can tell you fairly confidently that the new Ford Focus will be one of 2011's biggest hits and what a 414bhp Lexus IS-F feels like under full throttle, the only way to make an informed decision about what new car to buy is still to try it out for yourself. It's as much about taste as it is technology, and the only person who knows whether you'll like the revamped Vauxhall Corsa is you.

Don't get me wrong; there's some cracking corkers of cars on sale right now, and as long as I'm allowed to drive them I'll let you know what I think. But the best bet's to ring up your friendly local dealer and ask to have a go.

All that Jazz

IF you've got £3,000 lying around after Fresher's Week your best bet is to spend it on a Honda Jazz, a survey into reliable student motors has discovered.

Warranty Direct said this week after carrying out a survey of all the cars likely to be bought on a student budget of just £3,000 that the smallest car Honda makes is also the most reliable to take to university.

“Sending a son or daughter off to university can be a worrying experience for a parent, so having the peace of mind that you’ve sent them off in a car that’s less likely to break down is a bonus,” said Warranty Direct managing director, Duncan McClure Fisher.

The Vauxhall Astra is second in the list, and Toyota’s trusty Yaris completes the top three recommendations for students looking to blow their loan on something automotive this semester.

But if the Jazz just won't cut it parked outside the halls of residence, here's the survey's top ten student motors, including their reliability rating:

1) 18.53 Honda Jazz (02-08)
2) 26.90 Vauxhall Astra (04-09)
3) 27.35 Toyota Yaris (99-06)
4) 27.99 Nissan Micra (02-10)
5) 30.11 VW Lupo (99-05)
6) 37.99 Fiat Punto (03-06)
7) 41.24 Ford Fiesta (02-08)
8) 41.49 Smart FourTwo (03-07)
9) 41.75 Daewoo Matiz (98-03)
10) 48.74 Citroen C3 (02-10)

Fire up the... Honda CR-Z

HONDA'S latest hybrid might get you seeing red when you're hurtling it around your nearest city centre, but it's for all the right reasons.

The dials on the CR-Z, the Japanese firm's first truly tiny coupe in more than a decade, have a fantastic feature which allows them to glow blue, green and red depending on how economically you're driving it, which works both ways. You CAN go green if you're on a bid to beat the taxman by using the power of prudence, but I find it's much more fun to get glowing red by driving as furiously as possible.

It's an invitation to sample two extremes of driving and quite possibly a first in motoring; a hybrid car someone interested in driving might actually want to buy.

Obviously, Honda are hyping up the ‘H' word as much as possible, but not nearly as much as the really rather obvious links to the sporty little CR-X of the ‘80s and ‘90s, which the new model clearly mimics. So it's an eco activist which chooses to wear running shoes instead of sandals.

You'll find the CR-Z has the same dinky stance as its petrol-powered predecessor, but it's carried over a few nods to the original a little more quietly, like trimming the back seats in a different colour to the fronts, although most people won't notice because they won't get into them. I know it's a coupe, but it's still a bit of squeeze back there!

Normally getting just 122bhp from a car costing £20,000 would have me worried, but Honda's blend of petrol and electricity will impress even the most heavy-footed drivers, while appeasing the eco-minded ones. The fact it still manages to make a fantastic noise is a handy bonus.

If you've got lots of kids and dogs the CR-Z is simply too small, but for fun while keeping your conscience in check the little Honda's nailed it. I'm not sure whether Honda has realised the impossible dream its adverts are always going on about with the CR-Z, but they have made a hybrid to hanker after in the process.

As published in The Champion on June 30, 2010

The best of Millbrook, in one handy radio show

I STILL haven't quite got over the joys of being let loose on the test tracks at Millbrook and really getting stuck into some of 2010's most exciting cars.

As promised, there will be a write up of each of the 16 cars I drove, but if you just can't wait to find out whether a Peugeot's 308 RC Z is better than Honda's CR-X or just why the best sports car you can buy is in fact 20 years old than you'd do well to listen to the clip I've uploaded below.

It's from last Friday's Live From Studio One show on Dune FM, and it's well worth the listen. Plenty of car related banter and the Life On Cars verdict on some of this year's most crucial cars, weeks before you'll get the write up.

Enjoy...

Maxing it at Millbrook

I’VE just maxed a tiny Toyota around a high speed bowl, piloted Peugeot’s most exciting car in years and driven an iconic classic which would make my dad hugely jealous.

Amazing as some of these claims are, they’re all true and they all happened at the Millbrook Proving Ground in Bedfordshire, where I was lucky enough to be one of the journalists invited to take part in the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders test drive day, where 33 car companies laid on their latest and greatest for us to try. Predictably, I was like a child let loose at Alton Towers.

The whole day is basically speed dating for cars, just with the slight problem of falling in love with lots of cars rather than just one. All 16 of the test drives I took will be appearing on here in the near future, but for now I can say:

• It’s a tad unnerving when you’re driving the Skoda Roomster around the tight hairpins of the alpine course and realise a Porsche 911 Turbo, a Honda Civic Type-R Mugen and a Renaultsport Clio 200 can’t get past.

• The Honda CR-Z is the hybrid I’ve genuinely enjoyed driving, and it’s going to be a big hit.

• Peugeot’s 308 RC Z was by far and away the most popular car I drove, but it was well worth the wait.

• The Jeep Wrangler is a worse car than the Land Rover Freelander, but strangely I enjoyed the American icon far more. Strange but true.

• The very first production Range Rover, made in 1969, had a broken seat, the noisiest transmission in history and realistically topped out at 50mph on Millbrook’s high speed bowl. But I absolutely adored it.

• Vauxhall’s Meriva is far better than anyone has given it credit for.

• One of the few cars I wasn’t allowed to drive was Citroen’s new DS3 (I’m six months too young, apparently) but judging by its closely related sister, the C3, it handles very nicely indeed.

• I don’t care what you think about the Mazda MX-5, because it was unbelievably good to drive.
  

David Simister will be on Dune FM (107.9FM) between 6pm and 7pm tonight to talk about the latest cars and how they performed at Millbrook