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Steve Orme

Trinity Mirror Regionals Driving Force columnist STEVE ORME gives his take on everything from the car with the biggest cup holders (Ford Edge, 20oz) to congestion charges and how your money is spent getting toads safely across the road. It's motoring but not as you know it ...

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April 2007 Archives

Throwing down a challenge

Posted by Steve Orme on April 26, 2007 2:53 PM

It’s a slow news day. I could give you some detail from the Peugeot 207 van press release but I have a feeling that is in direct contravention of the Geneva convention or at least the blogger’s manual.
However, if you are desperate to see this seminal vehicle in the world of window cleaning and television aerial erection it is on show at the 2007 C V show in Coventry next month, alongside the new E7 taxi from the same company. Riveting.
I am more interested in how Liverpool failed to beat a goalkeeper who had clearly cycled to the match judging by his silly hat. Tell you what, if you think that’s a tenuous link to motoring I’ll do you a Challenge Churchill. Post a subject on this site and I’ll get a motoring line out of it.

Is there anybody out there?

Posted by Steve Orme on April 25, 2007 2:19 PM

Great news! We may not be as alone as we thought. Scientists from several countries have had a peek up the periscope and agree that a body in the constellation of Libra 20.5 light years away, could well have the watery wetness necessary for life as we know it.
It is a big planet, one and a half times bigger than our own and with twice the gravity. Subsequently any beings living there would be heavier than us. A bit like America.
This has nothing to do with cars unless you want to protest at the size of engine these beings would need to drive uphill against the pull of gravity.
On the other hand speeds would be slower, except going downhill or falling out of an aeroplane. Always supposing they have aeroplanes because getting off the ground would also be that much more difficult.
Actually this is beginning to sound less like Earth every second.
Presumably apple trees would carry a health warning because fruit would have higher velocity and beer would flow from a tilted glass with such force that all beverages would need to be consumed through a straw.
Unless, that is, the planet’s inhabitants had mouths as wide as buckets and super sized gullets.
Good lord, it is America.

The day after

Posted by Steve Orme on April 24, 2007 5:08 PM

When you think about it there is probably no justifiable reason for we English to be banging on about saint’s day observance. We have hardly hung onto much of what made us great.
The Irish are still kings of world porter and stout production, the Welsh are still lambing with the best of them and Scotland still exports huge numbers of Chancellors of the Exchequer.
We, on the back of knowing more about being able to stand around a brazier slagging off Margaret Thatcher than actually building cars that worked, awoke on St George’s day with Ford owning Jaguar, Aston Martin and Land Rover, BMW owning Rolls- Royce, Volkswagen owning Bentley, Proton- yes Proton - owning Lotus
Oh, hang on. we have got London Taxis International in Coventry.
Surprisingly, this month has seen the launch of a new UK car maker. But don’t spill your gravy.
Firstly an event called the Sexy Green Car Show at the Eden Project is hardly likely to block all roads to Cornwall. Second Axon Automotive may be boasting the greenest petrol car since the Ox cart but it is based on the Caterham 7 with bits taken off.
Which as far as I can see makes it a nudist.
There’s not much to the Caterham as it is but Axon plans to take away the roof and windscreen and make the body out of recycled carbon fibre fishing rods.
The result will be fast and economical with a device to encourage drivers to change gear according to revs and not speed.
Rejoice for it could just be that we are about to lead the automotive world. In go-cart production.
To be fair Axon has some previous in getting good consumption out of a Caterham. In the 2006 Shell Eco-marathon 131mpg was achieved. Which is nicer than being slapped with a cod.
Next year Axon will be launching what it describes as an ‘affordable’ hatchback along the same lines. With a roof I hope.

A word on patriotism.

Posted by Steve Orme on April 23, 2007 11:48 AM

Today I have driven into work in a Swedish car, later I will take delivery of a French Citroen and already this morning my silicon valley Intel processor has opened invitations to car launches from Mercedes, Peugeot and some Americans.
On the plus side I cut myself shaving so have some red marks on my pallid English features. And my middle name is George.
That, however, is as far as it is likely to go on our patron saint’s day.
Unlike the diddly, diddly, die-do fest that is St Patrick’s day, my local will not be giving away crimson-crossed merchandise and heavily discounted bitter beer. There will be none of the malts, tatties, neeps and free Savlon of Burns night.
And since TVR went breasts up in the sand I can’t even drive an English car today unless I want to ‘enjoy’ the fundamentals of motoring in a Morgan or live in perpetual fear of scraped knuckles driving a Caterham or Westfield.
In fact, so dire is the situation that last week we were actually celebrating the news that General Motors, address downtown Detroit, was going to build the new Astra in Ellesmere Port rather than some far flung eastern bloc outpost of vodka abuse.
I suppose we shouldn’t complain too loudly. St George, after all, was a Turk who soldiered for the Romans. What is more he is the patron saint of Milan and Moscow, of all places and, understandably, Georgia where they celebrate today and in November. Oh, and the following: Canada, Catalonia, Ethiopia, Greece, Montenegro, Portugal and Serbia.
Frankly he is as much a mongrel as the British car industry has become.
Even so, as Billy Wobbledagger wrote in Henry V- The Richard III Years: “God for Harry, England and St George- my kingdom for a Ford Focus.”

You don’t have to be mad to work here- part 3

Posted by Steve Orme on April 20, 2007 11:55 AM

IF you want to see a classic example of overloading have a look at the global warming bandwagon.
Early blossom, early swifts, early Easter and early to bed have all attracted their doomsayers this month.
Now pray silence for Traffic Lights Man! Marvel as our hero in red, amber and green spandex saves the planet and simultaneously promotes his idea for a sci-fi television series. What?
Well what is right. I have, over the years, received press releases that rival The Prisoner for incomprehensible story lines but Traffic Lights Man, aka R B Newberry, does not just take the biscuit, it takes a whole year of Hobnob production.
Essentially what he is saying is that if none of us had to stop at a traffic light the world would be a safer place, the sky would feel better and all manner of endangered species would adopt the snappy slogan ‘R W Newberry for world president - Archive Island for prime time TV!’
His staggeringly bemusing idea is that if you give people a few miles warning of when traffic lights are ahead and they have fitted to their cars a computer that has the length of each lights phase, the speed limit and how far away the lights are you will arrive on green every time just by pushing a button and adopting the advised speed.
Confused? Me too.
Sadly Mr Nutberry has not got what you might call a working model of his Lightathon or Autophaser or whatever it is called. what he has got is an idea for a television series based on the island if Archive, the only free place on an earth governed by a military dictatorship which is trying to right environmental wrongs.
Tomorrow is Saturday, which is good because I now need a long lie down. And so will you if you log on to http://www.archivillia.com/energy/forthefuture.php

Name game

Posted by Steve Orme on April 19, 2007 1:57 PM

The vandalised car saga continues. The repaired Vitara came home yesterday with an interesting name change. The side badging now has it as a Gra d Vitara.
Standards of English in our schools really are slipping. Mind you there were other possibilities: Rad Vitara, G it, ad it,Gr it, R ita and R vita, the crispbread that slimmers adore.
What really upsets me is that the job by Knock It and Bang It Motors is not the best I have seen. I would have seen. I would have used my mate Fester but the insurance people nominate a workshop based on for all I know agreeable lunches.
I can be certain that the cost was much higher than my local man would charge for tender loving car care.

The train is a strain

Posted by Steve Orme on April 18, 2007 12:42 PM

Today I took my life boldly in both hands and came to work on the train.
Why? Test car trouble.
The way test car booking works is quite simple and dependent on both parties keeping a record of the arrangement.
So, for instance, I ring a manufacturers press office, let’s say Vauxhall and ask to drive a mad as rice Corsa VXR. We agree on a suitable date and the press office makes a computer log of the arrangement while I scribble something in my diary.
Ah, yes. Then I forget to read the entry properly and no Corsa arrives on the appointed day. That’s because the word ‘confirm’ was clearly written down. Vauxhall were still finalising the press fleet when I booked and could only give provisional access. My fault not the press office.
So I commend to you Ms Veronica Borrelli who, on a day of madness for the press staff after the new Astra was announced as an Ellesmere Port product, rummaged around in her fleet and managed to send me a Saab just one day late.
Hence pain on the train. The morning murder express. Sentenced to public transportation. Death by cattle truck.
Public transport is big on two things, crazy pricing policy and signs.
It is cheaper to buy a return ticket than a single even if you are going one way.
Around my way they even have cheap evening returns but no cheap singles. Listen up Fat Controller, it is quite reasonable for a person not to be returning the same day, you know.
Maddest mad thing is the policy of charging more at peak times to encourage travel off peak. Try telling your boss you want a change of hours because the train is too expensive. Go on, I dare you.
Signs abound on trains. Keep your feet off the staff. No smiling.You may incur a penalty are if you do not buy a ticket before you are born. Do not clean soot off the window. Actually that was a favourite bit of vandalism from the seventies, the sign really read ‘do not lean out of the window.’ Daring times.
Roads have signs, of course and these can be a source of entrainment, amusement and edification.
In China 6,500 road signs are being corrected after misinterpretation to English.
Ethnic Minorities Park was translated as Racist Park and a sign leading to the Eternal Palace reads: ‘Take notice of safe - the slippery are very crafty.’
They should have that one at the Department for Transport. It makes about as much sense as current policy and is a fair warning of political veracity.

Too hot to handle

Posted by Steve Orme on April 17, 2007 9:28 AM

ANOTHER weekend held hostage in my own imagination. As I imagined I could get out and about on Sunday but couldn’t.
Hot, hot, hot always brings the crowds to where I live, my own fault for insisting on an agreeable rural canal side location with a good pub.
On top of that the car boot crowds clogged up escape routes so I retired to the garden to seek out some amusing motoring tales to brighten your Monday gloom.
Like the elk tests in Sweden.
every year elks licking salt of frozen roads are involved in horrible accidents with Volvos and Saabs. Well Volvos because clearly Saabs are aeroplanes and would take off immediately faced with a distracted elk.
Now 14 animals are being given access to variously flavoured salts in an effort to find one they will not lick.
Why don’t the Swedes take a leaf from the book of so many UK local authorities and simply leave the roads ungritted?
At the other temperature extreme, Indian farmer Naryanswami who died aged 65 was buried in his beloved Morris Minor.
Not a form of words you hear very often these days, beloved and Morris Minor.
Oh for the days of string backed driving gloves, cravats, stout shoes and split screens. Actually I think I’d better go inside, the heat’s getting to me.

Honey: it's the future

Posted by Steve Orme on April 13, 2007 2:25 PM

Oh hell, it’s Friday the thirteenth and I haven’t brought any spare underwear with me.
On top of that it is also clearly the end of life as we know it.
Bees. Yes buzzy buzzy Arthur Askey bees are leaving home, flying the coop, deserting the pen and hopping the hive for no reason whatsoever.
In disaster movies this usually precedes a huge earthquake, an asteroid strike or walk on part by Al Gore.
Clearly this is another example of climate change as indeed is the perfectly normal spring we have enjoyed with frosty and misty mornings giving way to warm sunshine before rapid cooling at sunset. My, how interesting the weather is.
With this in mind any responsible person would spend the weekend recycling their family car into garden furniture and water troughs for oxen.
I’m going to spend mine seeing just how outback the Subaru Legacy Outback really is, watching vapour trails in the sky and investing heavily in the honey futures market.

The question is......

Posted by Steve Orme on April 12, 2007 1:12 PM

Right, no sooner had I complained about the amateur hour habits of many drivers than a man old enough to be my grandfather’s best mate at school carves me up in an undertaking move that defied the laws of physics.
With this in mind today sees the start of an occasional educational quiz to help smooth the pothole poxed highway of modern motoring.
1. You are on the motorway keeping two chevrons between you and the bright yellow metrosexual Porsche Carrera in front when it takes off at 130mph. Do you:
a.Tut loudly and check your own speed.
b.Wonder if he is an undercover police officer investigating gay hate crime.
c. Shout yee-haa and clog it to ensure you adhere to Highway Code advice and keep the two chevrons between you and the Porsche.
2. On the way to an important sales conference at the squash club you encounter slight congestion with the traffic moving at 60mph. Do you:
a. Drop off and wait for conditions to improve.
b. Turn on your radio traffic advice to be kept informed.
c. Get as close as possible to the last car in the queue, flashing your lights and shouting while steering with your knees and dialling your squash partner on a mobile.
3. When such manoeuvres are prohibited you may make a U-turn :
a. Never.
b. If instructed to do so by a police officer.
c. If you miss the turn for the supermarket.
4. In a superstore car park it is recommended you:
a. Drive slowly.
b. Be aware of young children.
c. Try to make your tyres squeal.
5. The car in front slows for an amber light. Should you:
a. Change down and pull up smoothly behind him.
b. Come to a halt and ensure you are in neutral before picking your nose.
c. Drop to third, swerve around the slowing car and jump the lights.
6. You have a very important sales job in the toilet paper industry and a two-litre Vectra. This means:
a. The Road Traffic Act applies to you, too.
b. Applies only a bit.
c. Is a serving suggestion.
7. A road sign advises that one of two lanes is closed ahead. Do you:
a. Immediately seek to filter into the traffic thus ensuring a smooth flow.
b. Filter into the traffic while wondering if it might be better to have the advice signposted further back.
c. Race right to the last cone before causing the lead car to brake heavily as you force a way in, giving a matey thumbs up to the man with the air bag in his face.
8. Double yellow lines near junctions and pinch-points are:
a. For road safety.
b. For traffic control.
c. For someone else pal, not me, I need a packet of fags from the shop over there.
9. Driving through the countryside with your Doris on a day out you come upon a small group of houses, a farm and a pub where the national speed limit runs into a 30mph zone. What should you be thinking:
a. Slow down there could be children playing or loose animals.
b. What does 30 in a red circle mean?
c. Watch me show the window-licking yokels how to drive. Oh s*** where did that tractor come from?
10. Answering ‘c’ to the above nine questions makes you:
a. Dead cool and a piece of babe Velcro.
b. A better driver than Alonso.
c. A complete toss pot. (See Wm. Shakespeare - A Midsummer Night’s Dream)

No, I am not a happy post-Easter bunny

Posted by Steve Orme on April 11, 2007 4:59 PM

The car buying pain continues. Two weeks after taking ownership of a Grand Vitara some goat has keyed the whole of one side and the tailgate. £600 to repair. £200 insurance excess.
Funny, the Santa Fe was scratched, too and at one point it had been parked in the same place. Have I upset someone?
Unlikely, it’s just another example of the pig-ignorant world we live in.
In driving terms this manifests itself in undertaking, tailgating, refusal to let people join slow traffic from side roads and generally driving like a bottom.
So long as none of this offends the speed cameras you are likely to get away with it.

I hate buying cars

Posted by Steve Orme on April 10, 2007 4:42 PM

UNDER any circumstances I hate buying cars. You may enjoy being massaged over vending machine coffee by an earnest young man from an executive housing estate. You may welcome an invitation to join the gold card club entitling you to free sex and a courtesy car should it so much as rain. But only if you live within five inches of the forecourt. You may even think the whole, costly, fandango is justified by the nice bunch of Tesco flowers for the little lady.
I don’t.
It’s a money thing. From the moment I step into a showroom I’m looking for highly trained wallet snipers to pop up from behind a well polished receptionist and machine gun my family’s fortunes to death.
You see, my idea of what constitutes a fair price for a jam jar would have the car retail industry starving to death in the gutter. Dealer principals, as they are known, would be downsizing to cardboard boxes and salesmen forced to go without strong aftershave.
The full horror of buying a car is only exceeded by the torment of selling one.
Not that trade-in rigmarole: “Look mate, no one is really interested in those Datsun Magimixes but throw in the wife and a daughter and it’s worth a monkey.”
“Five hundred quid?”
“No, a small simian.”
No, the sort of selling that has me dribbling in the corner is through those picture advert magazines like Auto Robber and Car Buyer’s Regret.
To start with the picture of your family hatchback will have been replaced by one of a small trawler which apparently has covered over 220,000 miles under the pilotage of one lazy owner.
Then there are the punters who have been advised by the same magazine to haggle. Which they think is the same as bartering and so have come equipped with a supply of ripe mangoes and three goats.
Strangely everyone who answers these adverts is a time- served MOT inspector, able to spot loose nuts two houses away yet owning a vehicle that couldn’t get a ticket for a bingo night.

Happy holiday driving

Posted by Steve Orme on April 5, 2007 1:13 PM

When we all cycled to work at the match factory people took their holidays when they were told. No you just chalk them up on the wall and away you go. Workplaces are 24/7 365 days a year. Well this one is.
Oddly though there has been gravitation towards certain dates for holidays, half- term and of course Easter.
And I love it.
While families are enjoying some well earned time together I’m driving to and from work at lightspeed.
So hope all those on a Costa packet break are having a good time. I am with nothing in the way of what has to be one of the maddest cars of the year, the estate version of Vauxhall’s Vectra VRX. Plenty of room for the luggage and the dog as well as crazy fast performance. Nice!
And on the subject of holidays, lovely to see the Easter environ-mental bunnies ave got a handle on the whole idea of holidays.
Apparently if you fly off in a plane there will be climate change.
That’s the whole idea isn’t it?

Testing result

Posted by Steve Orme on April 4, 2007 9:17 AM

Yesterday was a black cloud day. Months of lessons, careful coaching, financial and pastoral support ended in my daughter failing her driving test. Ah well, all the best ones take it twice.
However, and I know this has a whiff of putrid fruit about it, the reason for failing he has bemused all comers.
Although racking up only six minor infringements she failed on her turn in the road, for taking seven moves.
Now, I was always taught that far from being a three point turn it was as many as you needed to get around without threat to pavement dwellers or perambulationists. Clearly not.
Even the driving instructor, Stan the AA Man, was moved to ring Wigan test centre and seek an explanation.
Secretly my feeling is that 17 is too young to be let loose in the mayhem of modern driving but on the other hand I don’t want one of mine using public transport, especially late at night. For a start she will get her good clothes dirty off the seats.
And besides that I have to concede that my grandfather had a gun in his hands at that age.
Hard life, bank robbery.

Show me the way to Santa Fe

Posted by Steve Orme on April 3, 2007 4:16 PM

The Santa Fe has gone back. Not without incident.
The delivery man rang to ask if I could confirm the existence of a scratch on the rear near side wing. No.
You would be surprised just how many test cars get belted or scratched. It’s almost as if they have an idiot magnet designed to attract plantpot parkers and drunks.
I have had my share of the downright vindictive. I have returned to convertibles to find chip papers and coke cans thrown in them. I have had kebabs smeared over the windscreen of a £60,000 Audi and I once returned to a test car after playing football to find it smeared smiley stickers. We didn’t even beat them.
Bizarre damage has included an almost perfect buttock imprint on the door of a Audi Q7.
The most vindictive incident I have been subjected to is a neighbour taking a picture of me getting into a Skoda, before the VW takeover, and pinning it on the pub notice board.
Anyway, back to the Santa Fe. The man with the trade plates and screw top bottle of coke, says it looked like a deliberate key or nail scratch.
Now, it may or may not go to an insurance claim by Hyundai but if it does it will be one more addition to the global insurance bill next year.
The worry with that is what the cost will be calculated at.
Try this. In a recent court case a love lorn chap was before the beak accused of smashing his girlfriend’s windscreen in a crime of passion.
The cost of the windscreen - Renault Clio of indeterminate age by the way - was claimed to be £1,000.
For £1,000 I would want a force field fitted, never mind a sheet of laminated glass.
Like having your roof fixed after the January storms, every job was £480 because the insurers were paying out without question below £500.
But £1,000 for a bit of Triplex? I think it should have been questioned. Closely.

Short on temper

Posted by Steve Orme on April 2, 2007 2:12 PM

A short holiday followed by a short temper. Funny how when you take a break from everyday driving your immunity to motor morons becomes diluted.
I spent the week making best use of a £27,000 Hyundai Santa Fe which deserves a better press. Think of it as a BMW X5 at two-thirds of the price.
Anyway, use was local because mum’s moving house to the lane next door and there was stuff to shift. It’s a great load carrier the Santa Fe with really simple fold flat seats.
Come Monday and it’s back to commuting. In 18 miles I saw one genuine, no really, case of make up application while underway, I was carved up by a single-handed undertaker on his mobile then infuriated by a bus that ran right to the last meter of a temporary filter that has been in operation for eight weeks.
There’s an interesting bit of traffic self-management developing to thwart filter hogs. Vehicles, especially heavy goods are straddling the white line to block the run up and dissuade drivers from jumping the queue. What would be even better would be lane closed advice given much further back than is often the case.
And talking of advice, or lack of it, my favourite illuminated sign this morning brilliantly advised drivers to ‘Think!’ So I did. I thought: “I wonder what’s causing this tailback and should I slip off the main drag now?” Oh, and why this sign was pt up and connected to the mains if all it is ever going to do is state the bleedin’ obvious, Sybil
All this to get to work. Of course, could catch the train. I could also remove my knees with a rusty spoon and that’s not going to happen either.

This page contains an archive of all entries posted to Driving Passion in the April 2007. They are lis