Car / Travel Archive

GET IN YOUR WAGON!

Posted on 09 January 2012 , under Car / Travel

WHY DON’T WE EMBRACE THE WAGON IN IRELAND? It just might be that Irish motorists are ready to embrace a variant of their cars that has been neglected over the past two or even three decades. The estate car. The wagon. Whichever takes your fancy in terms of description. Or whether you were raised in auto terms on this or on the other side of the

REVIEW: BMW 1

Posted on 09 January 2012 , under Car / Travel

NEW 1 SERIES MOVES GAME ON It’s funny how small things can put you off a car. Take BMW's 1 Series. When the first generation came out, it had some problems. Tight room in the rear, ditto the boot. But what I disliked was the curved character line along the lower part of the doors, which made it look like a pregnant daschund. Everything else about

MOTOR NEWS: DEC

Posted on 07 December 2011 , under Car / Travel

RANGER MAKES IT FIVE Ford’s new Ranger pickup has achieved a 5-star rating in the ENCAP crash test regime. The vehicle scored 89 per cent for overall safety - the best score ever earned by a pick-up. It also achieved the highest rating of any vehicle ever tested by Euro NCAP for pedestrian protection at 81 per cent. ENCAP described Ranger's test results as 'remarkable'

REVIEW: MINI COUPE

Posted on 07 December 2011 , under Car / Travel

SINGING THE JOYS OF A SPECIAL MINI Sometimes I get into a car and I have to search for a word to describe the experience. Sometimes it takes a while to find the one, or even three or several words to do the job. Not this time. Just one. Joyous. Just simply that. The new Mini Coupe is the latest in a line of derivatives on the original BMW

REVIEW: PEUGEOT 3008

Posted on 07 December 2011 , under Car / Travel

PEUGEOT 3008 - A REVISIT TO A CONTINENTAL I.C.O.Y. This is the time of year when I like to take a relook at cars which have been with us for a while, to see if they have stayed the pace at which we first found them. So I recently had a chance to drive the current version of the Peugeot 3008, which was the winner of

REVIEW: BMW 6 SERIES

Posted on 07 December 2011 , under Car / Travel

NEW 6 SERIES BRINGS OUT THE BEST OF BMW You don't buy a BMW 6 Series on a whim. Not least because you're going to be paying a six-figure sum by the time you get it out of the showroom and into your driveway. But you do buy it because you want it. It is what I call a 'me' car. A car not considered because

REVIEW: VOYAGER

Posted on 04 November 2011 , under Car / Travel

A VOYAGER FOR A LIMITED MARKET In European car terms, Ford's Galaxy and VW's Sharan are large MPVs. Or people carriers or minivans, whatever's your favourite flavour of the genre. But they're small in relation to Chrysler's fourth generation Voyager. At more than 5.1 metres it is rather a family bus. Which is fair enough, because the car is essentially designed for just that purpose. Mom's

REVIEW: VW UP

Posted on 04 November 2011 , under Car / Travel

A CAR FOR CITY ANARCHY Although the city car segment in Ireland is very small, Volkswagen's new up! is likely to shake it up when it gets here in March 2012. The up! is a perky full 4-seater which will come highly specified when it rolls out here at a guide price of around €11,000. It comes into a crowded space where Hyundai's i10 leads a

REVIEW: TOYOTA YARIS

Posted on 04 November 2011 , under Car / Travel

NEW YARIS GRABS YOU EVENTUALLY Sometimes a car doesn't immediately make an impression. And then, gradually as you share a few hundred kilometres with it, you get to appreciate its qualities. Toyota's Yaris in its two previous iterations was never a car to wildly excite about. Didn't stop it being one of Ireland's top supermini models, though. It had the brand. It had a couple of distinctive

REVIEW: CHRYSLER DELTA

Posted on 04 November 2011 , under Car / Travel

SURPRISE IN THE DELTA Sometimes a car comes at you, as they say in American baseball jargon, out of left field. Out of the mainstream. Unexpectedly. The Chrysler Delta is one such. Even though I knew it would be part of the Fiat-Chrysler new marketing game, I didn't realise that it might be so attractive. I should have. Like anyone with a motoring interest who

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