Motoring Newsbriefs

Sep 17 2008 Steve Hughes

NO CHEQUE FOR CHECK VOLVO is offering its car owners a free safety inspection of mechanical components, critical computers and control units. Worth £56, the inspection takes 40 minutes and provides a check that the car is performing to the original level of safety when new.

All Volvo drivers with a car built after 1991 can take up the offer by visiting one of 200 dealerships nation-wide who have the necessary Volvo Information and Diagnostics for Aftersales system. The offer runs until the end of the year.

The VIDA system has a direct connection to Volvo in Sweden, allowing the latest software upgrades to be downloaded directly to a car in the UK. The system also displays any technical information and individual service actions that need attention on each car.

The free offer is aimed at getting all Volvos back to franchised dealerships rather than allowing them to drift towards independent garages.

To book a free safety inspection, contact www.volvocars.co.uk

SCRAP CAR SCANDAL OFFICIAL figures claiming a fall in the number of abandoned cars on Britain?s streets are distorting the truth.

This is the claim of Recycleyourcar.co.uk, which claims that many vehicles are being illegally scrapped.

Spokesman Simon Palmer says: "Two million vehicles a year come to the end of their useful life yet less than half that number are issued with a Certificate of Destruction, which is the paperwork needed to prove a car has been recycled properly.

?The problem with cars being processed illegally is that there is potential damage being caused to the environment because illegal operators do not have the qualifications to safely de-pollute vehicles by removing and disposing of toxic fluids such as fuel, oil and engine coolant.

"A typical vehicle contains 22 litres of hazardous fluid and with up to one million cars abandoned each year it means that the equivalent of 11 Olympic-sized swimming pools may be seeping into the environment each year."

DRIVING THE DEAL DRIVERS in the north of England could save up to £3,000 by trading in their old car in the south of the country, according to research undertaken by iMotormag.co.uk.

The free digital motoring magazine says that dealers in the North East pay on average £1,000 less for the same car than garages in the South East.

iMotormag.co.uk says it mystery-shopped at 50 dealers from ten different franchises across 11 regions in England, Scotland and Wales. Each dealer was offered the same 2005-model 1.6 Ford Focus over the phone against the price of their represented manufacturer?s equivalent new model.

The best trade-in value came from the South East and was £3,000 or 75 per cent more than a rival North East dealer.

Despite one of the best offers for the Focus coming from Hamilton, dealers in Scotland gave consistently low offers, followed closely by the West Midlands.

The motoring magazine does not say, however, what size discount the dealers were prepared to give off the cost of the new car and, therefore, the actual price of the deal.

BIG BROTHER ONBOARD A NEW in-car recording device that performs a similar function to an aeroplane?s ?black box? could help motorists settle the dispute of who is at fault when involved in an accident.

The new ?T-eye In-Car Driving Recording System? from electronics retailer Maplin, features a front and rear camera, built-in GPS and G-sensor to record audio and video footage.

The GPS receiver records vehicle speed, location and direction, while the G-sensor detects any sudden acceleration and deceleration and abnormal impacts to the vehicle.

Using 170-degree angle dual cameras for the front and rear, it records footage onto an SD card at 20 frames per second to provide a view of any incident. The cameras are also equipped with infrared for night vision and all the data and recorded footage is marked and stored within the device so that it can then be analysed via the playback function.

It is available online for £300 from Maplin?s website at www.maplin.co.uk.

POSH PORSCHES THE Porsche brand boasts the highest reputation among European consumers, according to a survey of premium class brands carried out by the Luxury Institute of New York.

American top earners have already voted Porsche to be the luxury brand with the highest prestige and the sports car manufacturer has now made the leap to the top of the European market.

The independent research institute questioned more than 1,500 consumers with an annual income of at least 60,000 euros from France, Great Britain, Germany and Italy who ranked luxury vehicles in a range of categories.

The 911, Boxster, Cayman and Cayenne were classed as being of particularly high quality, very exclusive and elegant. The price-performance relationship and social acceptance of Porsche vehicles was also regarded positively by the consumers.

FAILING TO IMPRESS ALMOST half of all drivers think they would fail their driving test if they had to sit it again. The figures, released by car supermarket Motorpoint, revealed that 45 per cent of motorists felt their driving skills were so poor that they would not be able to pass their test a second time if forced to get behind the wheel with an examiner.

Last year 1.76 million people took their driving test, with only 44 per cent passing first time according to the Driving Standards Agency.

The results follow an earlier poll by Motorpoint which found that almost two-thirds of motorists feel that the standard of driving has fallen significantly on UK roads.

WRITE OFF THE WRECKS VEHICLE information specialist HPI is calling for used car buyers to be sure that they understand the meaning of the term ?insurance write-off? following a significant rise in such cases.

The number of total losses declared by insurance companies has risen by 86 per cent a year since 1998, meaning write-offs now amount to almost a quarter of all insurance claims.

HPI says that eight per cent of the vehicles it checks are recorded as a category A or B write-off and should have been crushed.

Last year the database held information on 650,000 written-off vehicles.

HPI director Daniel Burgess, says: "Unscrupulous private sellers will sell a write-off to make a quick profit.

"Falling used car values coupled with increases in the cost of materials has meant that increasing numbers of insurance companies are simply declaring a vehicle a total loss."

LANCER PRANCER MITSUBISHI Motors UK says it is developing a race-going version of its new Lancer Evolution X, with which it plans to contest the Britcar Championship.

The car will be driven by former BTCC racer James Kaye and will run as a Mitsubishi works entry and appear in the official red and chrome Ralliart livery.

The first public appearance of the racing Lancer is scheduled for the weekend of September 20 & 21, when it competes for the first time in the Britcar 24-hour race at Silverstone.

A GRANDE PRICE SILVERSTONE Circuits Ltd has released details of its official trackside hospitality packages for the 2009 Formula 1 Santander British Grand Prix.

Costs range from £200 for a Friday ticket to £1,100 for a race-day Sunday ticket. Weekend tickets for Saturday and Sunday range from £995 to £1,165.

AUCTION?S UPS AND DOWNS MANHEIM?S latest monthly Market Analysis report shows that at £6,068, the average selling price of a second-hand car in the UK at auction was 1.7% or £103 down in August compared with July.

The fall compares with a 6.3% or £413 fall in July. In the fleet sector the average selling price of medium family vehicles increased by 2.1% or £102 and the SUV sector rallied by 1.4% or £127.