Latest on the S60

Autocar has posted some novelties regarding the upcoming incarnation of the Volvo S60, namely some interior shots and a list of engines. Portuguese site Autoportal has some additional information, namely the engine’s designations, which are rather interesting. Volvo’s T5, T6 and D5 were always cool (though I am biased, I have a T5), and this new power plant line-up expands to such designations as D3 and T4. Here’s the list of the initial range to choose from:

Petrol
2.0T – turbocharged 2-litre straight-4, 203bhp (One could initially assume that te 2.0T was straight-5 like the old one, but alas, Autocar reports it’s not so).
T6 – turbocharged 3-litre straight-6, 304bhp and 4WD.

Diesel
D3 – turbocharged 2-litre straight-5, 163bhp.
D5 – turbocharged 2.4-litre straight-5, 205bhp (already available on the latest S80).

Apart from these, later on there’ll be more petrol units added to the range. Autocar and Autoportal diverge on the number, with the British mag saying it’ll be two, and the Portuguese portal saying it’s three. Also, Autocar says the new ones will be straight-4’s, while Autoportal say one of these will be a straight-5 and two other straight-4’s.

Those who have accompanied S60 news will recognise the 1.6-litre, straight-4, turbocharged, direct injection, 180bhp unit, first called the 1.6 GTDi. Autoportal calls it the T4. This will sit in between the T3 (a 1.6-litre, 150bhp engine, probably a detuned version of the T4) and the latest incarnation of the T5 (2.0-litre, 240bhp – again, a retuned variation of an existing engine).

I’d be very interested to know the consumption figures, since all I can find is a 5,9l/100km (48mpg) for the D5. The D3 sounds especially miserly, and a DRIVe version would be spectacular.

Is going electric as green as we think?

The march toward all-electric vehicles continues with some good ideas, like Volvo’s power-storing bodywork, and less good ideas, like the stupid-looking and stupidly-named Protoscar Lampo2. I’ve mentioned the pros and cons of EV’s before, and the bottom line is that unless recharging a car is as fast as filling it up with fuel, and that it’ll go a long way before having to stop again, the future of motor transport lies with another fuel or mode of propulsion. I suspect car manufacturers insist on EV’s because they’re easier to build and something more easily understood by the public, because even a corporate accountant can see the inevitable downsides of betting on electricity as the petrol of the future. Apart from its practicality issues, there’s an even bigger issue that EV’s have to deal with, one that attacks the very cornerstone of their existence: their carbon footprint.

An interesting article in the Portuguese website AutoPortal speaks of how a Dutch company, CE Delft, has uncovered an aspect of European law that, while an incentive for making EV’s, is at the same time an excuse for less environmentally-friendly behaviour. Loosely translated:

The study indicates that the European legislation that regulates car emissions presents “serious loopholes”, by allowing car manufacturers to ‘compensate’ the sale of electric vehicles with the sale of more polluting vehicles, which go beyond the emission limits set by legislation.

It’s an interesting point and one which isn’t easily visible, unlike the other disadvantages which are the realm of common sense and simple inferences. An overtaxed power grid, consuming lots of fossil fuel to produce the juice needed to recharge EV’s, and the junking of old cars are the main contentious and valid points, and they’re simply not being addressed.

Citroen: back in the s**t

This can be a slanted blog. I freely admit I like Citroens, and it shows. Saab nearly hit the shitter, Toyota went from super-reliable to utterly liable overnight, and I didn’t breathe a word on the subject. But Citroen announces some pathetic plan for the future and I start tapping away at my keyboard. No other carmaker (perhaps apart from Volvo) can prompt me more to write than the Marque, though if the following piece of news is true, this could change.

It would seem Citroen is returning to its dingy days of corporate, accountant-run projects. After the renaissance of its characteristic quirkiness, embodied by cars like the C3 Pluriel, the C4 and C6, Citroen’s decided it’s time to cash in. After announcing the Essentialle line, which was supposed to be dedicated to making cheap, simple cars and be a counterpoint to the luxury DS-badged line-up and represented by the C-Cactus concept, Citroen have chickened out of the basic concept:

Research has uncovered aspects of the car that potential buyers were not happy with. The lack of dashboard and the way its instruments are clustered around the steering column were said to be particularly off-putting.

Citroen is also considering fitting electric windows instead of the concept’s wind-up units, which reduce complexity.

At least the comments on the article were far more lucid than Citroen’s judgement on this issue, expressing that what Citroen is doing is basically alienating their regular customers while failing to garner new ones. And it’s a pretty clear most people who take part in the aforementioned research are idiots.

And the utmost worst was reserved for last. Of all production cars in existence, the only one I would want, given the choice, is the Citroen C6. It’s the Citroen flagship, and the defining model of the Citroen’s line-up and the standard by which the quirky-factor can be measured. And make no mistake, if Citroen cock up the C6, all is lost.

Citroen is also working on a successor to the C6, although the replacement will, according to Banzet, be “something different”. It will still be a flagship car, but of an as-yet-undisclosed format, though some kind of crossover seems possible.

A crossover. The most pointless, stupid, pathetic brainfart of the car industry of the last two decades. Big Citroens are the epitome of innovation and style, and they’re a beacon of good taste for those who can’t stand the nouveau-riche vulgarity of BMW’s, Audis and Mercedes. To give it a format that’s only driven by morons is to defeat its point. To drive a big Citroen you have to have intelligence and taste. To drive a crossover you have to have no passion for cars, only for flashiness and feeling taller than other people. And these people who will go for SUV’s and such utter crap aren’t going to buy a Citroen. They’re going to buy stuff like a BMW X6 or a Q7, because they’re only made to sport badges. If anything, a big Citroen driver shows that he/she doesn’t care about the fricking badge, because he/she knows that people who are impressed by badges can only be shallow, slimy weasels.

So Citroen, show some sense. Don’t let a brand that probably has more legendary cars to its name than any other fall into the muck and lunacy of the rest of the herd.

Dream garage #7 – Citroën CX

Perhaps readers who are a more than distracted may have noticed a motif (that is, if I actually had any readers). In seven cars, four are French (five if you count the Bugatti, it’s made in France and named after a Frenchman) and three of these are Citroëns. There’s a reason for that, and it’s probably embodied by the Citroën CX.

This was the car I grew up with. My father owned more than half a dozen of these big beauties, and the impression it made on a young car fan was, to say the least, indelible. The looks, the size, the interior quirkiness were enough to make me believe that all other cars’ design were simply wrong. Why do other cars have indicator stalks instead of the clever boxes? Why do they use large, round dials instead of the space-saving revolving drums? Why do they have levers to pull to open the doors instead of the trigger-like mechanism of the CX? I could go on and on, since one of the advantages of having observed this car so much as a child is that my attention to detail was obsessive.

The CX had big shoes to fill. It had the task of replacing one of the most revolutionary cars of the 20th century, the DS. Now I won’t go into the debatable realm of whether it succeeded or not, but I think it will suffice to say that the CX’s run lasted for fifteen years (the DS had a twenty year stint), in an age where automakers had to keep changing, evolving and continuously upgrade models in order to stay afloat on the market.

The overall design was the brainchild of Robert Opron, who had joined Citroën under Flaminio Bertoni, the man responsible for the design of the DS. Opron appreciated the importance of aerodynamics, and implemented the DS’ swivelling headlamps that were glass-covered, as part of the DS’ 1967 makeover. This design element was also present in the Citroën SM, which, when looked at closely, heralded some design characteristics later included in the CX. In fact, personally I think it’s easy to see the similarities and Opron’s designing consistency in his Citroën designs, from the revamped DS passing through the GS and SM and on to the CX, what with them all sporting the same swooping rear and slightly curved-ness and horizontal-ness of the front.

I’ve always thought the CX as one of those cars that has stood the test of time extremely well. I remember how 80’s youths such as myself absolutely loathed the 70’s, yet this very openly 70’s car was irresistibly attractive even in the thick of the Thatcher years. It’s beautiful, sleek profile and tapering end gave it the necessary reminiscence to the DS to remind the drivers of the huge shoes it was filling. And like the DS, at the heart its look was the drive to find as aerodynamic a shape as possible, hence the name “CX” (“Cx” is the acronym for drag coefficient). I loved the curving shoulder-line, the long bonnet with the single, asymmetrical vent, the huge sloping windscreen, the rubber bits beneath the front bumper, the slightly concave rear windscreen on the saloon models, and especially those smiling front headlamps.

And that interior. I could dedicate an entry to the inside of the CX alone, such was the attention to detail and uniqueness bestowed by the geniuses who dreamt this car up. The single-pronged steering wheel, the absence of stalks behind it, the revolving drum speedometer and rev counter, the trigger door handles, the space, the comfort, even those crazy door-mounted ashtrays.

But enough of my slobbering praise. I’ll save some of my opinions for the captions in the following pictures.

Citroen CX gallery

A sports car

When I’m sometimes watching Top Gear, and seeing those three lark about in insanely expensive two-seaters, I inevitably find myself whimsically thinking that an overpowered sports car, or super car or whatever, would be a lovely thing to have and frolic around in. And just the other day (or night as it were), I dreamt I was driving a flappy-paddle Aston Martin. It was a lovely dream, though most of what I remember was looking at the gear-paddles as I shifted up or down, and not so much the sensation of speed or doing a corner at 200mph.

And so one easily finds oneself on the interweb gazing at pictures of a DB9 or V8 Vantage, and actually trying to realistically visualise being the gushing owner of such a specimen. I imagine 1000 mile cruises across Europe, and stopping for coffee at Monte Carlo, or trying to get the needle onto the top number on the speedometer on a German Autobahn. All very nice, but then the more nagging, everyday thoughts start taking a grip, and it begins to crumble.

I caught some heavy traffic on the way home the other day, and imagined afterwards just how much petrol an Aston or some other V8/10/12 engine would drink down like an Irishman on Shit-Faced Night at a pub. I like low fuel consumption and always have, so a yawning pit that senselessly swallows huge amounts of gasoline is anathema to me.

Perhaps one of the silliest things on Top Gear is how they talk so idiotically about handling and power and top speed and such. No-one buys super cars specifically to go 180mph. They buy them to impress women (or, if you are a woman, turn other women green with envy) and that’s it. You could power a Ferrari with a mouse going round a wheel, and you wouldn’t care less if it kept you in the attention of the ladies. But alas, in the real world, a flashy car won’t exclusively attract six-foot blondes, but most likely yobbos, thugs and nerdy middle-aged men with unkempt facial hair, i.e., those most interested in the type of car you’re driving. And then you’ll have to contend with young delinquents in modded Puntos who come up and nearly touch the back bumper on the motorway because they want to race and show how manly they are.

And picture owning a six-figure car and going out to the shops. Just the stark fear of leaving it out of sight for more than a few minutes will be a constant source of exasperation. And when you come back it’ll have a crowd around it, and nose prints and grubby hands all over the windows. And this isn’t the sort of car you can park on the street in any old spot, and not care if you give the car behind a nudge, or, God forbid, the car behind gives yours a nudge. Imagine if it gets a scratch on it! It’ll ruin the looks and cost probably a million pounds to get repaired.

And I won’t even go into the practicality issues, because if you buy a sports car, you must have already grasped the notion that that’s the last thing on the designers list to worry about.

Yet owning a flashy sports car is (nearly) everyone’s dream. But it sounds like a nightmare.

A blight on God’s clean Earth #4 – Smart ForTwo

This post is written out of pure, fresh dripping spite. Everyone hates inconsiderate drivers, and wishes them a mediaevally horrible demise. And few things are more irritating and inconsiderate than lazy, pathetic, fat-cat parking. Leaving a vehicle diagonally across a spot, or leaving it a metre and a half away from the pavement, or in the middle of two parking spaces is an affront to civility, common sense and all that’s not blood-boilingly maddening. And it seems no-one is better at this than the average Smart ForTwo driver.

The basic idea behind the ForTwo was laudible. A small, cheap urban vehicle that sips fuel and can be bunched up together in herds while parked to save space. Unfortunately, the message that got through to the average commuter was to bring these things in to town in droves and park them in any sodding lazy way you please. Then there’s the business of its youthful, hip status symbol, but I’ve covered that in passing.

The other day, I saw two Smarts together occupying a single space. I should have taken a picture because it was like seeing a yeti or a UFO, or some strange, rare phenomenon people talk about but never see. A friend of mine, who was also my neighbour at the time, used to park his Smart head on, with no further manoeuvring after, whether it was 5 miles away from the pavement, diagonal, or bang slap in the middle of two other cars, where a simple reverse and approximation to one of the already parked cars could allow a normal, proper car to park in the resulting space. When I asked him why he wasn’t a bit more thoughtful he’d say “Why should I waste petrol bothering to park properly?” I don’t know if this is the way of thinking of other Smart drivers, but if it is, it’s a capricious thought because I had another neighbour who’d waste petrol to screw us other drivers over by leaving his litte crapmobile as far between cars as possible whilst parking. Not to mention the way they tax their weedy little engines by speeding stupidly and dangerously in town.

I haven’t even mentioned that pathetic “compact parking” concept. The idea was to be able to park the car at 90º angle, and given that the car was 250cm long, it would fit in spaces with that particular width and everyone would be happy. But parking spaces with 2.5 metres are usually perpendicular to the street, so people can open their doors without denting the car next to them. Spaces on the side of the road are usually around 2.2m, though you can easily get away with just 2m because even the fattest and stupidest jeeps and vans are around 1.9m in width. So “compactly-parked” Smarts jut out inconveniently, and it’s no wonder certain cities have forbidden this stupid practice.

In sum, the Smart ForTwo is a space-wasting, road-cluttering fashionista-mobile. Its potential advantages are blown to smithereens by the thickness of their owners, it’s practicality moot and its place in modern urban society debatable at best.

Amazing! Upcoming Peugeots may not be crap

After slagging off Peugeot, and especially the 3008 quite ruthlessly, here’s an entry to prove I’m not a mindless Peugeot hater. The above image came from here, and the fanfair is grand.

Take a look at Peugeot’s new baby coupé! Auto Express has learned that the Lion is getting ready to roar into the small sports car market with this sensational 2+2, which boasts Ferrari style at an affordable price tag.

Phwoar! A insy-bitsy Ferrari! I’m being a little sarky, but let’s be honest: it looks good. Gone are the ridiculous Peugeot grills and exaggeratedly swept-back headlamps. This seems promising! Let’s read on:

Small coupés are big news! You don’t need big engines and a huge price tag to have fun, which is why pint-sized sports cars are making a comeback.

And we’re then treated to a list of future coupés that fill the above criteria, which stupidly include a MINI Coupé (a stupid concept, since the MINI is already coupé-ish, and if you look at the pictures it resembles a MINI that’s previously had cartload of bricks tipped on it) and a Toyota Prius Coupé (?!?!?? I thought a criterion was it had to be fun and pint-sized? How can a bloated, soulless object like a Prius ever be either?).

But is the news of this Peugeot coupé too good to be true? Yes. Sifting through the comments, an interesting datum popped up. The Hyundai Veloster Coupé concept looks suspiciously similar. In fact, it’s obvious this Peugeot coupé was Photoshopped from the Hyundai, which gives us two possibilities; either Peugeot is teaming up with Hyundai to give us a common platform car; or the most certain, AutoExpress has been duped. Besides, after the announcement of the 308 RC Z, it would be stupid for Peugeot to compete with itself before the 308 RC Z was even available.

But fear not! If you, for some unfathomable, irrational, bile-swelling reason have a fancy for the Lion brand, Peugeot have decided to make a car that, at first glance doesn’t completely suck.

Dubbed the 508, it marks the return of the “5″ at the beginning of the designation, and harks back to my personal Peugeot favourite, the 504. It’s based on the RC HyMotion 4 concept of 2008, which shows Peugeot at least manages to make good use of its nicer concepts, unlike, say, Citroën, who ignore the C-Airplay. But I digress. This 508 car looks crackingly good, and not just for a Peugeot. It reminds me of an old Bugatti four door saloon, the EB112, which never saw the light of day. It has the same sort of profile and fundamental concept.

In conclusion, it’s a sign that upcoming Peugeots may not be dreary crap after all.

A blight on God’s clean Earth #3 – Peugeot 3008

Peugeot’s designation of cars was doomed from the get-go. The 504 was followed by the 505. The 205 by the 206 and 207. The 605 by the 607. The 309 by the 306. It’s messy, hard to distinguish, and worst of all, limited. The number-zero-number may be snazzy and unique, but it’s confusing and will only last as long as Peugeot are willing to dexterously play with the combinations. But we can safely say they’ve utterly botched it when the 305 was succeeded by the 309 and now their current 308 model has no possible successor number vacant in the present format. So they’ve shot themselves in the foot and added an extra nought. 1007 and today’s car, are examples. It’s doomed to failure but who cares? Peugeots tend to be so bland and forgettable they could call a model the Pi-0-Pi or 123Brilliant and no-one would look up.

One of Peugeot’s latest brainfarts is to make a car, in Autocar’s words:

part SUV, part estate car, part hatchback, part MPV.

Wow, talk about a fudge, But the underlying logic is as thus:

As Nissan has done with the Qashqai, Peugeot seeks to appeal to buyers’ fantasies by offering a taste of SUV without the weight, expense and social opprobrium of the real thing.

And from the response of the public, who have flocked to Peugeot dealers, this has worked. So you could say “Well, if lots of people liked it, it must be good!” But let’s not forget, majorities freed Barabbas, elected George W. Bush, and made Coldplay successful. Ergo, large numbers of people adhering to something doesn’t automatically make it brilliant.

Now I have no idea how it drives, how spacious it is or if it goes 1000 miles on half a tank. This isn’t de facto car journalism so objectiveness doesn’t count unless it suits me. So let’s get to what matters: the 3008 is unbelievably ugly.

Because it’s made to be high (to appease the ego of short people, methinks) and roomy, the proportions are dismally out of balance. And then it’s a Peugeot. And as all current Peugeots, it has the aesthetic appeal of a run-over badger. The ridiculously large grill looks even more ridiculous with that square pattern, a sure sign that the designer simply couldn’t be bothered to give the matter a second thought. The result is a gaping maw with the space between the ugly grill struts so large it looks like it can suck in small children unwary enough to wander too close while the car’s idling at the traffic lights.

The 308, though still hideous and nightmare-inspiring, at least has some interesting tail lights, a simple dash of sanity in an otherwise disastrously horrendous car. The 3008 has no such redeeming feature, with its tail lights having the appearance of symmetrical tomato stains someone carelessly dolloped on the back.

It’s an atrociously designed car, yet it has won over many people. To me, it epitomises the downward spiral in aesthetics Peugeot has been suffering from for quite some time. I’ve praised the 308 RC Z, despite its ugly face and silly wing mirrors, but your heart sinks just looking at this 3008 monstrosity. Will things get worse? Perhaps not. As I’ll comment in upcoming posts, Peugeot know how to make not completely crap cars every now and then.

Citroën DS2

After the Revolte concept, which got people talking of the prospect of a new 2CV, Citroën has decided to make a production version, naming it the DS2, as part of its new premium range that borrows its designation from that most sacred of cars.

I don’t know what to make of this. If I’m not mistaken, I read somewhere that the Revolte concept, apart from the silly-sounding name in English, was tailored toward a more feminine crowd. However, if the DS3 is a premium parallel of the C3, then it stands to reason that the DS2 has a correspondence to the C2, which doesn’t add up. The C2 is openly intended to be the so-called “boy racer’s” (i.e., street thug’s) car of choice. So logic dictates the DS2 for rich street thugs. Which is also a debatable point since street thugs with the slightest extra bit of dosh go straight for wanked-up BMWs.

But perhaps the most heated debate is the hype surrounding the car as a modern reincarnation of the Citroën 2CV. Now, in the interest of fairness, Citroën itself has never said anywhere that the Revolte was intended to be a 21st-century deuche. This was a sensationalist journalistic invention that cropped up when a teaser image showing the Revolte’s silhouette was posted on Citroën’s Facebook page, and people enthusiastically made out 2CV-style grooves in the bonnet. Of course, Citroën have done nothing to deter this idea, since all publicity is good publicity, but it might be counter-productive in the long run, when people find that this is nothing like the original 2CV.

The official production Volvo S60

Volvo have lifted the curtain (not that people have constantly peeked through it) on the production version of the S60. Its resemblance to the concept is very close, which is good because cars usually are awfully watered down from concept to production.