Motoring News
Yesterday, 28 December 2015French pedestrians launch guerrilla campaign against badly-parked cars
Fed-up city dwellers put stickers saying "I'm parked like a s**t" on cars blocking pavements and cycle lanes
read moreVolvo aims high with premium model
Chinese owned carmaker seeks to take on German rivals
read moreVolvo gears up for first bond issue
Chinese-owned carmaker considers tapping capital markets in potential precursor to IPO
read moreVolvo mounts US fightback
New XC90 sport utility vehicle gives carmaker a boost
read moreAriel Nomad - my best car of 2015
It's the Ariel Atom's brilliant, muddier brother, and it's also a feat of engineering brilliance
This has been a pretty good year for cars. You’ll know that if you’ve read any of the other blogs posted here by my colleagues: it has been easy for each one of us to pick a ‘best’ car of 2015, and make a convincing case for it. Subjectively, objectively, or by pure blind prejudice, it’s as easy to make a case for the Mazda MX-5 or Volvo XC90 as it is for the Ferrari 488 Spider, Porsche 911 GT3 RS or McLaren 570S. All are, ultimately, entirely fit for the purpose they were designed for. And that’s how Autocar rates cars: does it do what it’s supposed to do? Then it gets top marks.The Ariel Nomad, then. What, exactly, is it meant to do? Ariel defines the car, of a fashion, as the Atom’s grubbier, dirtier brother. That it links it to the Atom at all is significant. The Atom is a road and track going sports car, which means it has a pretty narrow brief: it’s meant to go quite quickly and entertain its driver in the process.The Nomad is meant, then, to do similar, only on a broader selection of surfaces than the Atom. Yes, it will entertain on the road and yes, it will even entertain on a circuit thanks to its truly remarkable suspension system. But it’s the Nomad's ability to go beyond smooth surfaces and still bring a huge smile to your face that is its trump card. To drive one on a
read moreEnd 2015 with a classic car investment - Matt Prior's tester's notes
Ferrari's F12tdf was one of my 2015 highlights
Classic cars can make great investments - so here are my hot tips on where to put your money in 2016
Recently I expressed my frustration at the professional investors who were looking to milk as yet untouched areas of the classic car market.This week I have more positive advice to offer. I’m thinking, given that you might have a bit of time off over this festive period, this could be the perfect opportunity to get in before them.Said investors are right in as much as that, while the classic car market has gone soft in the head recently, there are still areas that haven’t yet gone completely bonkers. The key is knowing what those are.And I reckon it’s the relatively modern classics – from the 1980s onwards – where those little nuggets lie.Not that everything from that era is going to go well, or hasn’t done so already. I wouldn’t ever expect to make money out of a Mazda MX-5 because there are just so many of them, while, conversely, BMW E30 M3 prices are already touching the moon.But if you had your head delved deeply enough into car magazines at the time, those models that struck a nichey, enthusiast-orientated chord then are the sort of thing that, I suspect, might serve you well now. Stuff like the Mercedes 190E 2.3-16, for example. It never quite held the acclaim of its contemporary BMW M3 rival, which is why they only cost into the low teens now.Official
read moreEast Anglian Air Ambulance - Christmas road test
The quickest way to get emergency care to those who need it most
Even by the standards of Autocar’s Christmas Road Test, in which we deliberately test something that is not a car, this is slightly unconventional.Assessing the East Anglian Air Ambulance is a test of not just the rotary-massed hardware on show but also the way it is operated. It is, in effect, a test of two things that are interdependent on each other.The first of those things is a state-of-the-art helicopter, one of the newest and most capable in the range of Airbus Helicopters (the company that was called Eurocopter until last year).It’s an EC145 T2 helicopter but, rather than being the sole subject of this feature, it’s what an organisation called the East Anglian Air Ambulance has done with the EC145 – how it has kitted out the helicopter and operated it – that is the true subject, the true hero, of this year’s Christmas Road Test.The East Anglian Air Ambulance – shall we just go with EAAA from now on? – operates two helicopters, one from Cambridge and one from Norwich. It’s a charity that deals in emergency response, bringing medical care to those who need it most urgently: often traffic accident victims, horse riders and those who’ve had accidents in remote areas.One of the EAAA’s helicopters is an EC145 T2, the first such model to become operational in Britain and only the 12th EC145 to hover away from Airbus’s production line. The EAAA is about to receive its second EC145 to replace a smaller, older Eurocopter helicopter.Our test is of its recently delivered machine. We have flown in it and interviewed its pilots – although not th
read moreTOTD: Stuck in the office over the festive period
If you're working over Christmas, PHers feel your pain! Share your experiences here
read moreNick Tandy deserves a knighthood: TMIW
Tandy is perhaps the best racing driver nobody has really heard of; ahead of the new year honours Matt suggests he's properly celebrated
read morePH 2015 - Carpool Of The Year
PH owners on their cars - but which of the diverse range seen in 2015 attracted the most attention?
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