“But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone.” We love cars; we earn our living from them, we drive as many of them as we can, and we spend far too much of our money feeding our motoring habit but even we have to admit that it is nice to think about other stuff from time to time. Here is a miscellany of…

The ability to travel off the beaten track is important to an awful lot of drivers, even if most refuse to acknowledge that they’ll never do anything more adventurous than exploring a muddy field now and then. The result is an explosion of SUVs, off-roaders, and crossovers all of which are heavier, taller, thirstier, and less stable than they need be. This is a Bad Thing for the driver, the…

Peugeot suffered a drop in form in recent years – and it’s entirely its own fault. The problem is that Peugeot is best known for producing small, sporty hatchbacks and when it didn’t offer a sub-1.4-litre engine option in the 207 – a capacity that accounts for more than 40 percent of the market – it excluded a lot of potential buyers. This was a Very Silly Thing to do….

The SEAT Mii joins a crowded marketplace, and its stiffest competition comes from its VW Group siblings the VW up! (yes, I do think all the jokes have been done by now but if you come up with something new let us know so we can steal it) and the Skoda Citigo. Only Audi are resolutely staying at home instead of whopping it up with the bright young things, but…

Show someone, anyone, an early Ford Granada and it’s an odds-on certainty they’ll mention ‘The Sweeney’. Ignoring the fact that the most famous Sweeney car was actually a Consul, few cars are so indelibly linked in the public’s collective memory thanks to Ford’s canny PR department. Watch an episode today and you’ll be stunned by the sheer volume of Dagenham cars they used – all of which were restricted to…

The life of a motoring journo might not be all beer and skittles – but it isn’t far off. We drive a stream of interesting cars, often in fabulous places, and once a week, regular as clockwork, a very nice man will drop off a new model for us to review at home. This tends to distort ones view of cars, motoring, and real life and while some of us…

Ford’s EcoBoost three-cylinder engine shouldn’t, in theory, be very nice at all. Nine hundred and ninety-nine cubic centimeters really isn’t much, even if it is turbocharged, and experience shows that it will be a high-rev screamer with peaky power delivery and bugger-all torque. Experience can be a faithless mistress… Fresh from winning the International Engine of the Year award (which the EcoBoost won with the highest score ever recorded) Ford…

Jet engines are cool. This is an indisputable fact. But they’re expensive to buy, expensive to run – and sodding dangerous; would you fancy whizzing along in this 155mph jet go-cart? No, thought not… However, there is a cheap and (relatively) safe way to indulge your fancy by building a turbojet from an old turbocharger. If you buy the components carefully you should be able to get up-and-running for under…

“But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone.” We love cars; we earn our living from them, we drive as many of them as we can, and we spend far too much of our money feeding our motoring habit but even we have to admit that it is nice to think about other stuff from time to time. Here is a miscellany of…

Those who were there will remember the eighties with huge affection. Duran Duran, CAR magazine, Sly Stallone, Filofax, Born in the USA, shoulder pads, big hair and Miami Vice; what’s not to like? Some of them might have aged better than others but each one reeks of capitalism and youth, a heady combination as you enter your teens… As you might expect though I remember the eighties mainly for the…