Can anyone guess what I’m hinting at here?

Many carmakers aren’t interested in having dealings with Volvo, because it’s owned by the Chinese. Citroen however, is betting heavily on the Chinese market, with models developed exclusively for China. Volvo would benefit from Peugeot and Citroen’s expertise and platforms in the small car arena (even though the French brands’ legendary cars are large things like the 504, the CX and the DS, what they’re really good at is selling 206′s and Saxos and such), while the French would be able to use Volvo’s higher-end platforms and delve into more premium segments. Well, I’m no market analyst or such, but hey, this is what blogs are for, to spout out prattle to anyone who reads it, even if it makes no sense to the experts.

So even though naming your vehicle might seem strange, even stranger are the most common names that are given by UK drivers. Lady Gaga. Rooney. Prince William. What the…? What sort of car inspires the name “Lady Gaga”?

Let’s crunch some quick numbers to you can get the idea. Diesel now costs around €1.49 a litre. LPG costs €0.75 (I’m rounding the numbers in favour of diesel, to drive the point home). Now, I get around 8.8l/100km (32.1mpg) on an average journey with a car full of people, luggage and air-conditioning. An equivalent diesel will do around 5l/100km (56.5mpg). LPG saves €0.90 per 100km, and though that might not sound like much, over the lifetime of a car that’s a lot of lolly.

Anyway, this might not hold true tomorrow since LPG prices are set to go up in the near future, but either way, I stand by my logic. However, if you already own a diesel, you might be interested in something I found out yesterday (though it’s been around for yonks): dual-fuel LPG/diesel cars. In a nutshell, cars that inject 66% diesel and 34% LPG into the cylinder. From what I’ve read, the result is smoother running, more power and torque, and significant fuel economy (20-30%). The bottom line is a 5l/100km car now drinks some 2.5l of diesel plus a litre or so of LPG. That’s half the amount of normal fuel plus some half price fuel. Personally, I think it sounds great and I’d jump at the chance, if I had a diesel, except for one small snag. The cost of fitting an LPG kit to a diesel can be around €2000, and offsetting that value can take a jolly long time. Even if you save €1.50 per 100km, you’d have to do around 130,000km (80,000 mile)s to compensate the investment, and considering you’ll probably be converting a used car that’s clocked 150,000km (as most converted cars – no-one wants to tinker with a relatively new car), it might not even last that long. Compare that to LPG cars, where even an expensive conversion like mine paid off after 30,000km.

Either way, it’s an interesting alternative, and might be worth it given the right set of circumstances.

Perhaps their greatest advantage is that they can run on nearly anything that burns. Petrol, diesel, kerosene, whiskey, perfume, basically anything that’s liquid and combustible. And that includes all sorts of lovely biofuels that hopefully will be produced just as cleanly as they burn. However, this application of gas turbines to automotive propulsion is only being pursued by a consortium (that includes Jaguar), apparently.

It even crossed my mind to do something I’ve dreamt about for years: to get myself an old car, rip out the engine and turn it into an alternatively propelled vehicle (just as these guys turned a classic Toyota 2000GT into a solar-powered EV). In this case, a gas turbine electric hybrid. And I thought to myself, how hard can it be?! You just remove the ICE and strap in a gas turbine, batteries and some electric motors behind each wheel hub. But I’m absolutely certain that in reality things would be much more complicated than it sounds. The most elementary components that have a clear place in a conventionally-powered vehicle could become a nightmare. How many gears would it have, if it even had gears at all? What would power the brake servo, the air-con, or the rest of the HVAC system? Would it be the turbine or the batteries? How would someone who wasn’t a very clever engineer even begin to rig the readouts as to how much juice you have left on the batteries, what shuts down or comes to life when the turbine kicks in, etc., etc.? That’s complicated s**t.

I’m still curious as to how gas turbines compare with regular engines. I can’t seem to find any sort of specifications as to what mileage you could get from a gas turbine electric hybrid car or what’s their emission-per-km figure. After all, it’s a very nice technology in principle, but not really worth it if takes a gallon of fuel to keep the car fully operational for a mile. The Jaguar C-X75 concept has “an estimated fuel economy of 41.1 mpg, 778 horsepower, 0 to 62mph in 3.4 seconds, and a top speed of 205 mph”, which is very nice for a concept car, but that doesn’t mean it can to it in the real world. While trying to find some proper numbers, I stumbled across yet another type of engine I wasn’t aware of, called the Cyclone Engine. Its working principle is (if I’m not very much mistaken) a modern take on the steam engine, and has many real world applications, not just powering cars. And like the gas turbine idea (and unlike the split cycle engine and, from what I can tell, the shockwave motion generator), it can burn virtually anything in order to function. The website boasts a lot of advantages over conventional internal combustion engines, just like the split cycle and shockwave engines, from efficiency to number of components, which makes me wonder why these sorts of things aren’t being pursued more aggressively by more mainstream car manufacturers. If any one of these technologies (or hopefully, all of them) take hold, they’ll be tripping over themselves to play catch-up.

So yes, things don’t look too bright for small car makers. And this opinion is especially noteworthy since it came from the head of Fiat, who would be in especially deep s**t if they hadn’t merged with Chrysler (as Sergio Marchionne says in his own words). 15 or 20 years ago, Fiat’s small and mid-range cars dominated the markets they were sold in. One out of every three cars I’d see on the road would be an Uno or Tipo or Punto. Today Fiat practically only sells 500′s in any significant number, but I digress. I want to talk about the future of all these brands that depend mostly on more affordable vehicles.

I’ve said before how car interiors get nicer as time goes by, but this recession will see an end to that tendency, because luxury in common items is proportional to the prosperity of the era they’re made in. In time, we’ll go back to the spartan interiors of shoddy plastics and zero trim, like in a Renault super 5 or Fiat Tipo. We’ll be back to two-spoke steering wheels and the absence of a central column, all in the name of making cars more affordable to the recession-stricken populace.

Or not. Early economics theory, which was the reflection of a 19th-century mindset, said that Man was a rational creature and would make economic decisions that would be in his best interest. We know today for a fact that people are incredibly irrational, and make terrible financial decisions all the time, and that’s especially blatant when it comes to cars. As I keep insisting in various instances all posted on this very blog, the average buyer is overly badge-conscious, and will get neck-deep into debt to go round with a 3-series or A4 (the cheapest one possible, of course) rather than spend less on an equally reliable and better-equipped S60 or Mazda6. However, the same frame of mind gets people to buy spanking new cars, be it superminis or mid-range saloons, when a cheaper second-hand one would do, which makes me reckon that perhaps the mainstream market won’t be so f**ked after all.

So if you’re planning to buy a new car, get a nice economical mainstream one instead of a status-car. And get a non-German one, the Germans sell far too many cars and are well-off enough as it is. If it were me, I’d get myself a Citroen C3 or DS3, with a 1.6-litre e-Hdi diesel engine. They’re fab.

My dad had a 1966 Cortina. It was cold to sit in when my dad took me and my sister to school in the morning, since its windows wouldnt close properly. It was also rather thirsty and not that reliable. All I know is that my dad got rid of it rather quickly.

What bamboozled me growing up was how popular Ford cars were. Fiestas, Cortinas, Sierras, Escorts were all the rage, and I don’t really remember anyone I knew who didn’t own a Ford a some point or other. Of course, their huge popularity in Britain was due to the fact that they were assembled in Dagenham and that Brits have always had a tendency to buy rubbish cars (take Morris, Austin or any other British Leyland car, for example).

Ford’s usually get high marks when appraised by auto-journoes, but get rather bad reviews by people who actually drive them around for more than an afternoon in ownership surveys. Everyone I know here in Portugal who has a Ford usually isn’t too happy with it. My uncle bought a Focus when I bought my Volvo three years ago. Both were the same age and had similar mileage, and Volvo was even owned by Ford at the time, so they should have similar underpinnings. My uncle hates his car because ir coughs up water mixed with oil, and comes apart, and the rear windows fall down when it rains, so he’s gotten rid of it. Same goes with every Escort, Mondeo and Fiesta owner I know. The only person I know who seems to like his Ford is a friend of mine with a 2004 Mondeo (probably because instead of a Ford engine it has a 2.0 litre Peugeot-Citroen diesel engine). BTW, I’ve driven it and let me just say how its interior looks like it was designed by apes.

And that’s a big probably the biggest gripe I have with Fords. If they make a good-looking car, there’s always some small design feature that ruins the whole thing. Take for example the current Focus. Those triangular vents on the front look like the designers ran out of ideas to compose the snout of the car. The Mondeo looks like it has a rounded brick for an arse. The Fiesta’s tail lights are too small and high, while its interior looks like a chintzy attempt to make it look like it’s sheathed in aluminium. The first Mondeo’s were too curvy in a way reminiscent of boring Japanese design. The first Focus had rear lights that looked like they been inserted into wounds in the car’s body, as opposed to looking like they belonged there.

I’ve never liked the Blue Oval. It’s stupid since it’s one of the only car manufacturer symbols that’s aren’t straight forward to draw by heart, with its pathetic 19th-century lettering. Perhaps what I hate most of all about Ford was how it was founded by an anti-semite who had his own staff beaten and shot and was a toadie to one of History’s greatest plagiarists.

However, will it sell? The Citroen C6 is iconically beautiful, and has garnered praise for its looks and and comfort, and excels in these respects the German offerings. However, its sales are dreadful, as car-makers simply can’t pry customers away from the Audi/BMW/Mercedes badge-snobbery that runs so deep among motorists with enough cash to afford a car in this segment of the market. That said, however, this 608 certainly looks more consensual than the extravagant C6.

I’ve always been one to root for the underdog, and also for what’s different and sets itself aside from the dominant norm. So if this Pug lives up to the dazzling aspect it has in the above picture, I wish it success.

For €21,000 (that already carries a €5,000 tax discount), one of these EVs can be yours. But then you have to pay €82 a month for battery pack rental, for a maximum of 10,000km a year. That’s not counting electricity. Which makes this car a jolly expensive vehicle to run, even in the long term. Doing the corresponding maths, each year you’ll pay €984 alone for the battery rental, plus electricity (which Renault say will cost around €2 per 200km), for a measly 6,000 miles. I do more than double that a year and my fuel bill is around €800. Even counting maintenance costs, my ten-year old Volvo is still a better deal.

OK, then there’s the usual drawbacks of it being a fuss to recharge, the range, etc. I once read (I don’t remember where) about an entrepreneur who wanted to create a network of battery-recharging stations where you’d take your EV and simply switch a depleted battery for a fully charged one. This implies a certain standardization of batteries I don’t think car manufacturers are ready for, but it would be a clever way to go. Either way, I don’t think it’s unfair to say that the current model of EV usage is way, way too inefficient to appeal to a wide-ranging market. The cleverest bet thus far is an EV with a range-extender, best exemplified by the stunning Fisker Karma. This isn’t to say the Electric Car itself will fail, just that the current concept of it will.