Mad About Cars

Toyota have been in the news recently after a disastrous start to 2010 when they had to recall hundreds of thousands of cars across North America and Europe after it was discovered that there was a fault with the breaks. As a Toyota Yaris owner I was panicking but it turns out it was only the models above mind that were recall, for once buying the cheaper model worked in my favour. More recently Toyota’s luxury brand, Lexus, has issued a statement in the United States saying that it will be recalling over 138,000 models of its Lexus as apparently some foreign material may have contaminated a small number of the valve springs in these cars. Toyota have certainly had a terrible start to the year and it does not look like it is going to get any better, whether this will have an effect on their sales and the company as a whole we will have to wait and see.

The latest edition to the ever-growing Nissan SUV-crossover family is the Juke. After the overwhelming success of their first crossover vehicle, the QashQai back in 2007, they are continuing to develop their ‘urban proof’ range. The Nissan crossover range already contains the Murano, QashQai and the QashQai+2. Where the QashQai was aimed at young, urban families, the new Juke is aimed at ‘urban players’ which are basically young men and women around 25 to 35 with no children or with a small family. The Juke is also available in four-wheel and two-wheel drive versions for those urban players who like to venture outside of the city at weekends. According to the Nissan press office the new Juke will be available from £12,795 on the road.

In early July Victoria Beckham was brought in to lunch the new Ranger Rover, the Evoque, which has been dubbed the ‘baby’ Range Rover as it is far more compact than the existing models. This new style of Range Rover has been designed specifically to turn the mini-off-roader into a fashion icon for a younger generation of customers. The JaguarLandRover company is now owned by giant Indian conglomerate TATA after being bought by previous owners Ford for more than £1billion. The new mini Ranger Rover will be on sale in the UK in summer 2011 and it will be priced from £30,000 to around £45,000. The Range Rover Evoque will be the ‘greenest’ Range Rover so far produced and will be available in a four-wheel and two-wheel drive version. The new ‘green’ Range Rover will be the lightest and most fuel-efficient in the series Range Rover, with CO2 emissions of below 130g/km. The car will make its debut at the Paris Motor Show at the end of September 2010.

At first glances you will think that this car is something out of Robocop mainly due to the size and the futurists LED lights however this car could be on the streets next year.

Yes this is new police interceptor that could be used you may have already seen the Volvo’s, BMW’s and the Subaru however this Ford  based on the Taurus has been heavily upgraded for 100,000 hard miles a year. Brakes and suspension are upgraded i would say this vehicle is pursuit-ready.

It comes either as a V6 FWD or a turbo Ecoboost V6 with 4WD. If that car takes hold, powersliding movie car chases will never be the same again.

It was only last year i was looking at buying a brand new car and the hardest thing was whether or not to buy brand new, ex demo or used.

Of course i had to decide on what i wanted to buy with a 13,000 budget and so started to look at manufactures the first ones i thought of where Vauxhall, Volkswagen Seat and Audi.

After weeks of test drives and going over the car specs i decided that i wanted something sporty but that was efficient on petrol.

The three cars i narrowed it down to was the:

Vauxhall Astra 1.4 sxi

Seat Leon 1.4 tsi

Volkswagen 1.4 s

After looking at the specs and the prices i decided to go with an ex demo Seat Leon it has the sporty feel with a six gear change and the 1.4 engine makes it that bit efficient.