What Porsche gives to BMW M April 23, 2009
Posted by richard in : Minutiae of cars , 6commentsBMW’s M3 is the core of the M brand, Rolf Sheibner from the division told me.
So who is its closest relative? Step forward the Porsche 997 911. Yes, really. ‘In terms of dynamic skills and character, the M3 and 997 are like relatives,’ Sheibner revealed.
Well, I’ll be.
He was straight up, though. The M division hadn’t benchmarked the M3 against other M cars, but the mighty and ever-better Porsche, the definitive everyday supercar.
‘For 30 years, M3 customers have also been drawn to Porsche. When someone considers one, they’re usually looking at the other, too.’
Which presents quite a high bar for the M division to clear. That’s why they start early. Albeit, from a solid base.
‘We let the road car division develop the standard 3 Series for two years. And, once they reach a certain level, we then start to develop the M version.’
Makes sense. So how much independence do they have here? A wry smile from Sheibner. ‘Look in our papers: we’re a maker! We’re called M GmBH…’ All that was missing here was the cheeky wink.
He knows his customers pretty well, though. I asked about the eight million different settings for the V8 M3’s suspension, engine mapping and whatever else. How on earth will customers get their heads around it?
‘They will play at the beginning,’ he said. ‘But then, after 3 weeks, they’ll probably leave it, happy that they’ve explored enough.’
Hence the importance of getting the standard setup right – and why there will always be a degree of computer reprofiling as per driving conditions here.
Even if customers can’t be bothered prodding buttons, there still needs to be some reward for the money spent…
BMW tells me why its instruments are lit in orange
Porsche makes cranky Cayenne cool
Mini brochure makes fascinating reading April 20, 2009
Posted by richard in : Minutiae of cars , 1 comment so farSTUDYING new car data is something I do every day at Motoring Research Ltd.
Torque figures, combined fuel consumption, CO2, weights, boot capacities, the whole shooting match.
So it was with fascination that I flicked through the classic Mini brochure I dug out recently.
That’s Mini Classic – as in, the 1997 Rover-BMW model, by then differentiated from the forthcoming new MINI by yet another name change (and the retention of correct capitalisation).
Looking at it with today’s eyes, it’s truly fascinating. For example, engine power output of 62bhp is no great shakes by modern 1.3-litre standards: a Peugeot 107’s 1.0-litre triple yields 68bhp.
However, 70lb/ft of torque IS much more like it – particularly as it’s generated at an almost diesel-like 3000rpm. I read into this, lots of low-rev sluggability.
Performance figures still stack up, too – for a tiny city car, 0-60mph in 12.2 seconds is pretty decent, even if aero effects ultimately does limit the maximum to 90mph.
This is, alas, why economy is less than glittering. That modern Peugeot 107 returns well over 60mpg. The Mini? 43mpg combined.
That equates to CO2 emissions of circa 155g/km: compare this, for example, to something like a BMW 320i. Which emits 146g/km (and the diesel 320d puts out just 128g/km).
Still, at least modern car service intervals were quoted. After an initial 6000 mile check, you’d only have to take it to the Rover dealer every 12,000 miles, or 12 months.
That’s probably all for the better, mind. For the dealer’s sake. At the back of the brochure, a finance example is quoted. Yes, a Mini could have been yours, for just £2715 down, then £169 a month for two years.
Great!
Sure, you’d have a final payment of £3800 on the PCP scheme, but a minimum guaranteed value of £4700 would easily cover that.
All good? Well, no. See, this £9000 Mini would actually, by that stage, have cost you £10,572. Why? Average APR of 15.9 percent, that’s why.
To modern eyes of 0.5 percent base rates, and car dealers not bothering to get out of bed if they can’t do 0 percent finance, that seems somewhat rich…
More insights on my brochure studies to come!
Can you help me buy a Mini in 2009?
How Chevrolet today became cool
Audi Q5 economy enough to tyre you out April 19, 2009
Posted by richard in : Minutiae of cars , 1 comment so farDON’T buy an S line Audi Q5 if you want the best fuel economy possible.
The Q5 scores a Cd drag coefficient of 0.33 – for all engines… fitted with 17-inch or 18-inch wheels. That’s standard and SE, then – not S line, with its great-looking standard 19”s.
In days gone by, this would have forced Audi to publish individual CO2 and economy figures for the S line version. Today, while eco rules are generally tougher, they’re also more lenient in areas like this.
It also means customers can really destroy the mpg, by taking up optional 20-inch wheels. There are air brakes that are less effective.
Me, I can’t deny they look great – but it still seems a shame to undo all the good work done my engineer insider, whom I met on the Q5 launch.
Boasting of the Q5’s low drag, he said it was all the more impressive, considering the 2.65 sq m frontal area. Not particularly aero, that.
How to overcome? ‘We designed in a V-shape, which helps,’ he told me. ‘We also have a smooth roofline and a tapered rear end. The underside is flat, too.’
But Audi prefers not to use complicated solutions such as BMW’s active aerodynamics. ‘We’ve managed to reduce fuel consumption by 15 percent without them,’ my engineer insider said.
Canny. Then, someone goes and ruins it all by bolting on a set of 22-inch aftermarket rims. Dammit…
Fuel economy economical with the truth?
Secrets of the new Toyota Prius
Why Renaultsports don’t have rear spoilers April 18, 2009
Posted by richard in : Minutiae of cars , 3commentsRENAULTSPORT Megane customers want sporty cars, but they also want low running costs. Apparently.
That’s why Renault doesn’t fit a rear spoiler.
See, it would up the drag, worsen the Cd, and push up mpg.
That’s also why, it was explained to me on the car’s launch, there’s a RenaultSport Megane diesel – with multi-stage Piezo injectors, the last pulse of which is charged with burning off soot emissions. Overall, 45mpg. Good, oui?
Fear not though, I was told. Being racy is still the prime reason for the RenaultSport.
The need for bigger brakes, for example, led Renault to develop trick double-axis front suspension. Another benefit of which just happens to be high stiffness levels.
As an engineer explained, it means there’s ‘no wobble under hard acceleration, so no geometry loss, so no steering squirm.
‘During cornering, forces on the front outside corner are high, which distorts the suspension. Not on double-axis though, which is twice as stiff as MacPherson strut.’
And that’s not all. ‘Less parasitic movement means less need for steering correction, so it’s more precise…’
Blimey. But yet more precise still is the Cup version. This has ‘reinforced dampers, 37 percent more rear spring stiffness, and ESP that can be turned completely off.’ Hardcore features for hardcore drivers.
Clio Cup Runneth Over
He was a handling geek, my insider. And how I delighted in speaking with him, over the fizzy water. I soon got him onto the Clio RenaultSport, where his revelations were just as cool.
Did you know, for example, the Clio’s seats help lower the car’s centre of gravity? It’s also 27 percent stiffer in spring, and 10 percent firmer in damping… ‘And the double-axis front suspension separates steering efforts from the damper.’
Now, it was a veritable flurry of gems from him. Four-pot Brembos come on the Clio, which he revealed to me (but not the guys within Renault who control costs) are ‘oversized’.
The rear diffuser? It has a 26 degree angle, creating a depression under the car, which ‘weights’ the back down at speed. Not only does it reduce lift by a factor of 3, but it also ‘primes’ the suspension for best response at speed.
Genius. And for real.
I can’t repeat what he said about makers who fit false rear diffusers.
‘The diffuser also does away with the need for a rear boot spoiler,’ he added.
Which takes us back to the start. That’s why Renault doesn’t fit one to the Clio RenaultSport, either. But why, ahem, Vauxhall has to fit one to the ‘diffuser-equipped’ Corsa VXR. Ahem, ahem.
How Chevrolet today became cool
BMW X5 – reviewing the 2007 launch
Security worries for old car ownership April 15, 2009
Posted by richard in : What I learned today , 2commentsHERE’S something I haven’t considered before. When I buy a classic Mini, how am I going to make sure it remains mine?
See, old car security is, generally, pants.
My parents’ old BL cars had locks so lax, it often didn’t matter if mum lost her Mini keys. She could just use dad’s Dolomite ones. Me, I remember getting into the Mini once with the key to the garage.
Thatcham was just a distinct of Berkshire. Alarms were something that sounded when the fuel was low. Modern cars are immeasurably more secure – but this doesn’t mean old ones have benefited.
Nowadays, we’re used to leaving our cars in the middle of urbansville and, so long as the window’s not smashed, generally finding both it and its contents there when we get back.
I sure won’t be able to do this with a Mini, though.
Night out in Brum? Leave it on the street and I may as well Sellotape the keys to the roof. Use a car park and, even if they have CCTV, the canny criminal would still be in and away without rousing even the most caffeinated security guard.
Even storing it in the garage could be an issue – the locks on that are barely any more secure than the car’s potentially would be.
No, this is a worry. It was brought home to me by something Tracker said – apparently, lots of owners are fitting tracking devices to their classics, and the company’s responded by ensuring installations can be done discreetly, without being seen and putting concourse show points at risk.
Learning as I go, I certainly am. How does everyone else tackle classic car security?
Can you help me buy a Mini in 2009?
How Chevrolet today became cool
BMW tells me why its instruments are lit in orange: an iDrive iNsight April 7, 2009
Posted by richard in : Minutiae of cars , 11commentsLAST year, I was sworn to secrecy. A fellow scribe and I nipped into BMW’s uber-secret FIZ development base, to have a swatch at the latest iDrive system. Which was to be installed in the even-more-secret new 7.
Down in the dungeon-like, windowless lair (keeping us away from windows, you see…), the BMW engineers gave the background of their iDrive philosophy.
Now, with old iDrive, turning and prodding 4-leaf ‘Rose’ menu was fine for the turn of the century. But, today, it’s limited. BMW needed a fundamental overhaul of its controller system. As we now know, and was shown to me then, the solution it found is brilliant.
‘We’ve kept the 4-Rose menu as ‘direct’ buttons,’ said the engineers. ‘But, if you’re trained in iDrive, you don’t use the buttons. You do the whole interaction WITHOUT looking at the controller.’
That’s fine, we wagered, but isn’t it even easier to have touchscreen? No, said a horrified engineer. See, touchscreen is absolute: ‘you need to guide your finger all the time, by looking at the screen.’ Imagine, they said, driving along and trying to input a nav destination.
‘iDrive is relative, though – you can turn, wait, give your attention to the road, but still know where you were when your eyes flick back.
‘This is a system for driving. We’ve designed iDrive in general to consist evolutionary steps, so you can see where you came from. It doesn’t overload drivers. And is, we feel, far safer.’
It’s not an issue of justifying cost saving, either. ‘Touchscreen is cheaper. But we don’t go for cheap. We go for premium – like Audi, like Mercedes-Benz.’
As we’ve seen, now it’s been launched the left-to-right hierarchy structure is, indeed, very logical. Proving BMW wasn’t lying when it got us to wear jazzy ‘goggles, limiting our vision to flashes within periods of total blackout.
Intended to replicate eyes flicking between display and road, it was a key test in developing the system. ‘Our tests amazed us – there was little difference in input time between wearing goggles and not…’
Believe me, these guys live and breath iDrive and instrument panels. Geeks, like me: hence, at the end of the day, all my geeky questions. They loved ‘em…
• Why orange dials? Because it’s BMW, and the best colour for legibility. The worst? Blue and red, apparently…
• Why an oil temp dial in the new 7? Because BMW is about engines, and it shows the brand’s sporty outlook.
• Why not Lexus-style black panel dash? Because you should be able to see the dial tubes when the car’s turned off. To show they’re ‘real’ hardware. Mechanical.
• Why not go all-digital instruments? Never! What’s more, there should be no visual split between mechanical and digital displays. The development and integration here took BMW years…
The engineers also proudly told me the left dial ‘tube’ was for velocity, and the right for ‘info’. Mirrored by the buttons on the steering wheel. Mirrored on the dash layout. Great! There’s a dash masterplan.
Shame the logic didn’t make the conversion to right hand driver, though. Think about it: because, no, BMW hasn’t switched the steering wheel buttons for right-hookers…
BMW X5 – reviewing the 2007 launch
Total recall for Japanese makers April 4, 2009
Posted by richard in : News clues , add a commentRECALLS for Japanese cars are up, by a staggering 25 percent.
This is most unusual. People bet houses on Japanese car reliability, so to see a rise in fault-related recalls of a quarter is more than eye-opening.
But, meticulous as ever, Japanese analysts have quickly discovered the root cause. What, slipping standards? Decline in quality? Cost-cutting?
No – the sharing of common parts across more models.
Really, see, the number of parts faults hasn’t increased. Standards haven’t changed. Everything is as it was. It’s just that now, a single part used on one car can also be used on many more. More than has ever traditionally been the case.
And, such multiplication means that, if the part has a fault in one car, then it will suffer a fault in all the others, too.
Hence, the rise in recalls. If it’s a component that’s the problem, you have to bring back every car using that component.
Manufacturers do it, of course, to save money. Why develop bespoke bits for every car you sell, when the same ones can be used across all of them?
This is a trend that’s only growing as car ranges diversify.
It therefore follows that Japan’s leanest manufacturer may show the biggest increase in car recalls.
So it proves. Toyota: cars recalled last year? Over 1.1 million. A jump of 44 percent.
Component sharing is here to stay, though. Solution? Well, rest assured the Japanese are working on it. Right now. If I were an OEM supplier, I’d be bracing myself from a whole heap of imminent car company edicts and demands…
Lewis Hamilton radiogate April 3, 2009
Posted by richard in : What I learned today , 2commentsANOTHER day, another take on radiogate. Seems Hamilton and team manager Dave Ryan told fibs to the stewards.
Yesterday, of course, I thought the FIA was mad. Just what was this ‘evidence’ being withheld?
After all, hadn’t we all seen him on TV, telling us that he’d discussed over the radio about what to do with Trulli? Cut and dried, we thought. The boy done no wrong. Here was the FIA, continuing its McLaren witch-hunt.
How odd, though, that McLaren didn’t protest it. Oh well. Then, this morning, McLaren suspended team manager Dave Ryan. Eye up.
Then, a contrite Hamilton apologised and, with admirable sincerity, told us he wasn’t a liar. What the? Why? Because, they didn’t quite tell the truth.
They’d only gone and ‘forgotten’ to tell the FIA about these radio conversations. Ah. A decision that was made just before they met with the stewards, but after Hamilton had spoken to ‘us’, via TV.
Ah indeed.
What on earth they were thinking, nobody knows. Suddenly, though, the FIA looks blameless. Merely the moral upholder of the law. But it still can’t be pleased with how things have turned out (there’s the bleedin’ obvious stated).
See, to fans, it’s all a bit sniffy, this whole situation. Why have we had to wait so long? Why could it in the end come down to someone telling porkies? Don’t they have computers, and tech, and, well, all sorts of gadgets? Don’t they monitor the team radios?
This is F1, for heaven’s sake. Pinnacle of world motor racing. Can the world really have been misled by a chap and his colleague not telling the whole truth to some other chaps? Really?
It’s took me this long to work it out, and I follow F1. For the casual F1 fan, listening to the news, they’ll be utterly, utterly baffled.
Guess that could all be part of the FIA’s plan, though. Hold back, hold back, become the whipping boys for a while, then – bam. The truth is, McLaren’s at fault. It’s serious. Fans have been misled. They had to be excluded.
I just wonder, though. Thinking about it, this week’s machinations look like yet another FIA political masterstroke.
Hats off to it, in one respect.
Pity the sport part of F1 seems to have been forgotten, by all concerned, though.
Mini owners sought for display
The latest thing to sell cars April 2, 2009
Posted by richard in : News clues , add a commentFirst it was Honda. Then, Volvo. Then, Renault. With what? Something so brilliant, I’m amazed nobody’s offered it before.
Free payment protection insurance for those buying on the car makers’ finance schemes.
In other words, peace of mind that, if they buyers sign for a new car and then lose their job, payments on the new car will still be covered.
Genius, or what?
The more you think about it, the more sense it makes. It illustrates, for example, that while banks may not be lending, cash-rich car company finance houses most certainly still are.
After all, their very business is pitching out money secured against new cars, then pulling in the interest from the monthly payments.
If they don’t lend, they don’t trade or function. So, car makers tell me, they’ve certainly got the reserves to lend. And are trying their damndest to do so.
The whole car industry crisis has been borne of fear. Buyers, not buying, because they’re fearful. This one simple incentive reassures them, in three ways – by…
• Proving the cash is there
• That eye-watering finance deals such as Civic Type-Rs for £199 a month are available
• That buyers will be protected if the worst does indeed happen…
… I’d wager a successful uptake will mean these three companies won’t be the last to implement such schemes.
Volkswagen Golf looks to history for GTD inspiration
F1 insight – Lewis Hamilton speaks
Why car scrappage is now inevitable
F1 insight – Lewis Hamilton speaks April 2, 2009
Posted by richard in : What I learned today , 2commentsFIA decisions are generally illogical, as the latest McLaren saga proves.
But, at least motorsport’s governing body is, in the process of further befuddling F1, taking fans a bit closer to the background action – by publishing a delicious insight on its website.
The lunacy of wrecking yet another race and making the sport look a laughing stock in front of the world yet again apart, the audio excerpt it’s just published is pretty intriguing.
It uncovers conversations between Lewis Hamilton and the team, during the closing stages of the Australian Grand Prix.
You have to admit, looked at from a single-minded, closed-opinion viewpoint, they’re pretty illuminating. But do they clear the situation up for race fans, never mind the general public? Do they show the common sense behind the FIA’s decision?
Not at all. And so commences another weekend’s F1-McLaren-FIA-Hamilton-gate.
My take? The FIA is barmy. It’s placed great weight on what Hamilton said – but, really, you can’t take as Gospel something a driver said immediately after a race. I wasn’t party to the post-race inquiry, but surely ‘someone keeping secrets’ shouldn’t be an issue?
Besides, didn’t Toyota decide not to appeal?
But whatever the actual rights and wrongs, look at it from all the new BBC viewers. Who may have sampled F1 for the first time. And, may now, be considering it a bit of a farce. In what other sport would this happen?
It’s not the last we’ve heard of it, though. Certainly, on that, I’m more sure than race goers thinking they’d seen a definitive result last weekend were.
