Category: cars

It’s a tad warm to be racing around

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July 1, 2025

9:26 pm

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Hello everyone,

It’s gone a bit warm here ! Time for another of the look back and catch ups that I need to do.

Picture meme. We're looking at a German Shepherd type dog looking at someone unseen behind us and to the left. They have a party hat on. There is a plate with a dog biscuit bone shaped thing with 5 lit candles in it. The caption is "I just wanted to eat but you lit my food on fire."

I bet that’s how it feels for everyone with birthdays at this time of year :-D.

Motor racing ? I always look forward to watching the Le Mans 24 hours race and the Nurburgring 24 hours race. They’re the motor racing highlights of the year for me. The tracks are great and there’s a big variation in the cars and teams to especially spice things up.

Whereas most racing circuits are only a few miles long and it takes between a minute or two to go around them, the Le Mans Circuit de la Sarthe is 13.6km long and the Nurburgring Nordschleife is even longer at 25km long. It takes the current top flight hypercars 3.5 minutes to go around the Le Mans circuit and GT3 cars 3 minutes 50 seconds to go around there. The hypercars don’t race on the Nordschleife, the racing there this year was between 136 cars in 27 different classes. The GT3 equivalent there take just over 8 minutes to do a single lap, with the slower cars taking about 11 minutes for a lap. They start the formation lap twenty minutes before the race is scheduled to start and they cut down on potential mayhem by having three separate starting groups.

There are a few reasons why I enjoy watching this form far more than racing like Formula 1 – one of the biggest and we’ll get this out the way first is that the racing is very honest and there’s very little of the infantile behaviour we see from the Formula 1 circus. 😀 Got that out the way so we can focus on the positives.

Picture, meme. We're looking at a tiny white kitten looking at us from inside a black with red fire trim motorcycle helmet. The captions are "Ai haz a motocycle unner here. Mah helmet iz jus' too big."

Another strength of the endurance racing is just how competitive it is now. Previous years have seen the winning cars form up and cross the finishing line in an arranged formation. They could do that because the cars would have laps separating them not. Not now though ! If you want to skip the results (the races were a few weeks before typing so I figure it’s safe to drop these), please do jump ahead to where I post the next meme. That’ll be the Safe Spot. (Now I have to find another meme !)

Le Mans was a close finish again this year, with the 83 yellow privateer team Ferrari finishing strongly being chased by one of the Porsche hypercars. I think the winning margin was about 15 seconds, with the two factory Ferraris taking it a bit easier behind because they were having to limit the driving because they thought their engines were about to go boom.

We’ll see variation in how the cars do as well in the different conditions. The Toyotas weren’t doing so good in the day this year but were very strong in the night. The drivers race the cars at 110%, balancing that in the knowledge that a small incident can either take them out of contention completely or mean they’re in the pits for a couple of laps getting fixed up. That’ll take them out of the running for a win but they can recover to good points playing positions as other cars get incidents.

Nurburgring was a bit of an odd one this year. The organisers know that it’s not a particularly safe track, with a small misjudgment quickly going from getting away with it to having an upside down or otherwise trashed car. F1 cars and the hypercars wouldn’t be racing here because the run off areas are non existent on a very challenging track. if there’s an accident then it will probably be a big one.

So the organisers would usually heavily punish drivers who broke the safety rules. That didn’t happen this year … drivers were being permitted to keep their licenses to race on the track even after doing things like driving at 160+km/h in qualifying when the track had been closed due to a red flag incident. And that was the winner of the race … Other drivers were doing that as well. I hope we see a reaction next year before we get a more serious incident than the ones this year that leads to injured marshals or drivers.

Because we want the racing to be fast, close and with drama … but we don’t want anyone to be hurt during the event.

Another note there – one of the drivers of the 83 Ferrari at Le Mans was Robert Kubica who was retired from F1 contention after suffering multiple serious injuries (details at the wiki link) in a rallying accident. F1 will turn a lot of its discarded drivers into a joke with a trashed reputation, those drivers will then find their way into endurance racing and proceed to show the world what they can do in a competitive racing car. Will Stevens and Antonio Giovinazzi both started in F1, got quickly labelled as terrible drivers because they were in awful cars. Put them in a hypercar and they turn it into a rocket ship.

Picture, black and white meme. We're looking at a vintage open wheeled car speeding toward us down a twisty road. The rather concerned driver is looking to his left ... at one of the car wheels in the air bouncing away. The captions are "Why risk certain death? Because race car"

And I better emerge out of the spoiler space before I ramble too much 😀

A big difference for the Nurburgring is the vast array of cars that compete there. The main result will be fought out very closely between the GT3 sports cars. There was less than 10 seconds over the 8 minute lap separating the top cars in qualifying. And then there are the multitude of slower, less expensive cars that allow people and teams with less resources to compete and even take the scalps of faster cars that had incidents.

Cars like the humble Dacia Logan, which had been upgraded to have a Renault turbo engine that gives it the potential to be competitive in class along with the Beetle RSR car. I was following a Mini that was racing there too.

A lot of the time, I’ll have the racing coverage on a hidden tab with the commentary coming through and I’ll be keeping an eye on the timing numbers. I’ll be following the Dacia, the Beetle, the Mini and cars that have had incidents climbing the field again after they get patched up. I’ll be saying “Dacia’s gonna get you” as the slowest car climbs ahead of a fast car that’s had something unfortunate (and suddenly violent) happen to it.

The mix of cars and speeds of cars also opens up opportunities for the fast cars to close gaps and get past too. It keeps the racing dynamic and interesting. There’s rarely a dull moment, especially in modern day endurance racing where it’s a series of sprints for the full duration of the race broken up by them having a little breather in the pits while they refuel, change tyres and swap out the drivers. There’s almost always something going on.

Have I sold it yet ?

Picture. Meme. We're looking at a cat in a window sill in a curious posture like they're holding a steering wheel in their front paws. The captions are "Invisible race car, Purrrrrrrrr I iz NASCAR racer."

The two big 24 hour races are both done for this year now, we have to wait until next year for Nurburgring and Le Mans again. In the meantime, there are more World Endurance Championship races to go, sadly behind a firewall. There is IMSA racing in the USA, these races go between under 2 hours to the Daytona 24 hour race at the start of the year. I should watch more IMSA racing again, I’ve lost touch with it.

There’s also European Le Mans and Asian Le Mans series. I should look into these, they’re not something I’ve watched.

But whereas F1 quickly degenerates into something in the background to ignore while I’m reading a book, the hypercar and GT3 endurance racing stays compelling even after the longer duration.

Check it out 🙂

PS Also in racing around … Gromit Unleashed 3 started today, I’ll hopefully find my way out and about around as many of the statues as I can get to. I’ll need the temperature to be a bit less though, 2025 me is very unfit and I’m struggling more and more in the heat. But if it’s cool, we’ll see what we can do. Here’s a link to the old blog with the tag that has the Gromit stories.

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A long time to do a race ?

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June 13, 2024

10:47 pm

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Hello everyone,

Le Mans weekend coming up and the start of a week off for me. Not going anywhere except maybe day trips … just looking to chill out and there’s some stuff that really needs catching up on at home too. I’ve hit pretty severe energy debt so I need to heavily go on the recharging. I’m looking forward to the race, there’s something very compelling about the endurance racing and GT format. How about a meme though …

Picture. We're looking at a captioned picture of a race track. Lower left, a motorcycle rider in mostly white overalls is kneeling on the track, looking at his red and white motorbike, which is sliding up the track on its side. Captions : "Motorcycle curling. Harder than you think"

A couple of weekends ago, I was watching the Nurburgring 24 hours race. There are several big endurance events during the year around the various championships and Nurburgring fell at the start of June this year. It’s held at the Nurburgring Nordschleife race track in the Eiffel Mountains and I think it’s the longest active racetrack in the world at the moment.

Picture. We're looking at a video window inside a browser. In the background, a very high zoomed out view of a race track winding its way through fields to the left and forest to the right. Over the top is a layout of this almost 26km racetrack.

Lots of screenshots coming from the Chrome window I was using to watch the race. The Nordschleife is a massive extension to the Nurburgring Grand Prix track which takes up the tiny little bit in the bottom left of that track layout. The track itself is 25.378km long, or 15.86 miles. This year, there were 127 cars starting the race of all of the different classes from the GT3 cars which go round the track in 8 and a bit minutes, to the front drive touring car type racers that take more like 12 to 13 minutes to do a lap.

Picture. We're looking at the video again, with 3 race cars on a starting grid and a safety car ahead of them.

That’s a Herbie lining up on the starting grid. This was a VW Beetle RSR, one of 5 cars in the SP 3T class for little cars with turbos. This class also had the crowd favourite Dacia Logan. The first Dacia in the race was destroyed last year in a huge crash in the night time and they came back with an upgraded one this year.

It makes for compelling racing with cars of different speeds and capabilities racing each other. The classes are limited mostly by engine size and whether they have a turbo. There’s an article about it at the link here. There is also a Balance of Performance system, which looks to even out the small differences in the cars. Sometimes they get it wrong and a car gets overly restricted but most of the time, they get the cars supremely well balanced against each other. There’s still overtaking but it means that as the race develops, you have no idea who will come out on top at the end. At Nurburgring, this goes into the pit stops as well. Instead of racing style pit stops, all of the teams have an enforced minimum pit stop time so that no one is disadvantaged if their pit area has a slower fuel pump than the others.

Picture. We're looking at the winding corners of a race track, with a succession of cars rolling through on the formation lap before the actual race. The side of the track is thronged with spectators a couple of rows deep.

The race is a firm favourite with fans as well. This was from the formation lap, where the crowds are allowed in to cheer on the cars they’re following. And then they have plenty of time to retreat behind the barriers before the cars come back round, at racing speeds.

Picture. We're looking at the aftermath of a crash. Two cars are to the side of the track, one has its nose embedded in the car in front of it. A medical car is to the right. The drivers are sitting and standing by the crash barrier to the left, with track marshals looking after them.

And incidents definitely do happen, with the crowds being kept well away from any flying bits of motorcar like what happened in the incident above. Both drivers ok, just shaken up. The one in the sideways car took a turn on the commentary later as well.

What happened there was another car had dropped down oil on the track, which caused the grey car ahead to have a heavy crash. The driver stayed inside until the marshals could get them, which was a Very Good Thing as the driver of the red car also caught the oil at high speed and was out of control right into when they went into the other car. Both drivers ok, the safety standards in these cars are excellent.

Incidents occur throughout the race and the teams are allowed to recover cars in trouble and attempt to repair them enough to get them back racing again. Often, I’ll have the leaderboard as the active window and I’ll be listening in to the commentary while watching the numbers on the timing screen. The coverage is free via Youtube by the way, there’s no paywall (Le Mans is either paywalled for uninterrupted coverage or 25% ads on Channel Not To Be Named).

Picture. We're looking at a screenshot of the leaderboard timings screen. It's an absolute sea of numbers, with the teams on the left, the lap numbers and time differences in the middle and the time they've taken to do the separate parts of the track on the right.
MANY NUMBERS

That’s the timing screen, with the lap being broken up into the sectors. I’m usually watching the numbers for the tail end of the field, where fast cars that have hit trouble are attempting to catch back up again. Or cars like the Dacia are steadily climbing up the field past cars that have had an incident. The commentary for the race is always very clear and interesting to listen to, maintaining what they do over the full duration of the race.

Oh ! Looking in there, you’ll see some numbers like the 29:33.804 where a car has taken half an hour to catch up with someone who has crashed. It makes a delightful mess of the timing screen :-D. Or it could even be the Glickenhaus car down in 118th place there, which had just got back on the track after over an hour in the pits for repairs. (It had a new engine the night before the race and continued to have issues).

Sometimes the cars have really bad issues, or they decide to follow the crowd and start up the barbecue in the evening.

Picture. We're looking at the race track in a darkening scene being lit up by a car stopped at the far side, on fire. A line of fire runs back a decent way from the car.

Yep, there’s a car at the end of that line of fire … Driver ok again but that car wasn’t going anywhere after that. It probably had a fuel line pop off.

But with the darkening scene above, that marks the time to start wrapping up here … I had a feeling that we weren’t going to get a full 24 hours of race, the weather prediction was showing consistent rain which means cloud. The Nurburgring is situation up in those Eiffel Mountains, which means the circuit is prone to being affected by low cloud and fog. The race was red flag stopped at about midnight 20 local time as thickening fog made it too dangerous to race. There was an attempt to restart coming up to the end, with several laps behind the safety car before …

Picture. We're looking at the finish line for the race. A blurred blue car is crossing the line to the right, with more cars to the left. A lady in blue coat and black trousers is waving a black and white chequered flag.
There’s a grand stand over there I think

The race was called off due to the heavy fog. A sad end to a race that showed a lot of promise for its first third, not even a sprint at the end to let them race it out for a lap or two.

So, sad end to the race this time but I’ll be looking forwards to the next one in June next year, although it looks like the actual race date will be shifted so it doesn’t clash with Le Mans.

That’s going to be my weekend after tying up loose ends at work tomorrow. Hope it’s a good race ! Have a great weekend everyone.

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Still here just in the bunker

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January 29, 2024

9:16 pm

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Hello everyone,

Been thinking for a while that I should resurface for a bit and say hi … I have to admit to being rather in the bunker at the moment. It’s a combination of things. Most of it is IRL worries, not so much with me (because I don’t do that), more with family. But that’s not something I’ll put here except saying that I’m very worried about someone/somepeople.

Yeah, I do that, I worry more about other people than I do me. And that little monitor voice is telling me I’m getting close to hitting that wall again. That’s perhaps my biggest fear. I keep on going, whatever. But I know that at some point, I’ll deplete all of the reserves and be forced to stop. I have that feeling that the stop is approaching. So I’ll attempt to look after myself so I can look out for others, as limited as that might be.

It does feel more often now that I need to do a change of life style. The barge plan is one of those ideas. It would be a reset, a chance to start fresh. The job is another, I’ve been working for who I work for since the end of 1997. That’s a long time – 26 years ? I’m still committed to getting stuff done … but I’ve been at it for a long time. Perhaps that’s another symptom of being closer to that stop wall.

So that’s me in the bunker again, trying to hang in there again. Being able to escape for another cruise or similar getaway would be good, although the amount of leave I have remaining means that won’t happen until after Easter.

Gosh, that’s more than I intended to go into when I hit Add New Post, this was supposed to be a quiet one about :

Picture. We're looking at a box of Lego. The picture on the front is of a yellow and black sleek sports car. The red dwagon plushie is on top of the box, looking down at it from above.
What’s in the box !

Something from the Xmas break.

Picture. We're looking down from above at a desk with multiple assorted pieces of Lego of all sizes.

This was bag 1 of 4. Lots of little components to pin together, what will they make ?

Picture. More Lego ! Assembled into a rectangularish frame with more parts dotted around on the desk. A dwagon looks over it from the left.

The rear frame starts coming together.

Picture. We're looking at the lower frame of the Lego car. Not much to it yet but at the back (left of shot) is an engine with 2 rows of 4 brown pin things pointing up at us, with another set of those on the other side of the car. The frame is grey lego. We can see the black and yellow at the top.

There we are with the engine in the back and the start of the steering rack up front. The cog up top is how you steer the wheels. The back wheels are directly connected to the representation of the engine. This time, it’s 4 cams that rotate, which push the brown things up and down. The model is of a Bugatti Bolide, which has a highly unusual W16 engine (wiki linky) which is a pair of V8 (2 banks of 4 cylinders in a V) engines smashed together. I’ve been hunting for a diagram of how it is inside. Nada. Techie geek needs the info !

Picture. Lego car. We're looking at the front of the car, which is hiding all of the bits to the back. The black sills are on each side. The front is being held up on the head of a sturdy green dwagon.

Another peek with the sills and body frame coming together.

Picture. Lego Car. The car is more complete, with yellow bodywork at the back. We're looking at the left side with the car pointing left. At the front, we can see a short axle to a slight angle due to the steering being completed.

More progress, now with the steering in place at the front and some of the yellow bodywork at the back behind the engine.

Picture. Lego car. More pieces are being added. We're looking down at the front of the car again, with the front now having yellow pieces for aerodynamic wings.

More bodywork appears, including the Bugatti signature bumper grille. Nice detail in the pieces representing aerodynamic devices.

Picture. Lego Car. We're looking down at it from directly above. There is bodywork covering the engine at the back. We can see the cog on top which is how we turn the steering.

Now with engine cover.

Picture. Lego Car. We're looking down at the right front of the car. Yellow bodywork has been added above the front. We can't really see the doors but they're black with yellow doors that lift up to open. The red dwagon plushie is underneath holding the car at a good angle.

Almost there, that’s the front hood bodywork been added and the gull wing doors are on there as well. Last one coming up.

Picture. Lego Car. We're looking at the side of the completed car, pointing right towards a dwagon looking over the front of the car. Behind, we see the Lego book with the real yellow and black car on the left and the similar looking Lego car on the right.

There we go. Last one. They actually look more similar than you’d think you could get with Lego. Nice job by them and a good little kit to put together.

That’s it for me for now. I’ll be hanging in there, although that IRL stress is manifesting in increased levels of pain. I was able to disappear into Little Big Workshop and a couple of others (like the Motorsport Manager mega campaign) but I haven’t done much flying lately. Too much soreness from the shoulder, which is another indication of hidden tension.

We’ll be ok, I suspect you’ll be putting me in your thoughts after reading this, that’s appreciated. I’ll pass them on to the people I’m worried about.

Thanks for reading, back later 🙂

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Cruising car

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November 30, 2023

10:57 pm

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Hello everyone,

I kinda got out of the habit with the blogging since I got back on shore ! Don’t worry, the cruise posts will start up again next time, I just need to talk about some after cruise stuff … and maybe get back to a little cruisey summary too for some good vibes at the end.

Picture. We're looking at a cute little green dragon, curled up asleep with head resting on their front paws.

This is skipping ahead a little bit with cruise stuff but the not too spoilery summary is : storms happened ! They were looking pretty serious, so our return was delayed a day with that day being spent sheltering in a fjord. More on that in a future post. But it did mean that instead of me returning on Saturday and having a sleep day on the Sunday, we got back on Sunday and then I was up the road again for a car service on Monday before restarting work on Tuesday.

I’ll be either for a bit of quiet over the coming weekend.

The car service is drawing a bit of a rant actually … It could well be Strike 3 for the Lexus organisation. They make wonderful cars but I’ve had them delivered with pre-delivery defects that in two cases, should have been picked up in the 150 point pre delivery quality and safety inspections they talk about for the used cars.

The least bad one was the IS with the battery terminal that popped off leaving me with a dead car incident. I think this would have happened as a consequence of the cars probably being shipped (by ship) with the batteries disconnected … and then all the predelivery configuration gets done and the battery’s connected. It was just bad luck that it wasn’t tightened up enough, but also careless.

The serious one was my last car, I think it was shipped with a fault in the back suspension which led to massive understeer and excessive body roll. This would have been picked up in a test drive and it would have been a factory defect. It also wasn’t picked up in two services.

And I got a £700 service bill for my latest car. The extra cost was for wheel alignment and a new tyre because the old one had excessive wear due to the poor wheel alignment. Red’s a 68 plate car, which means it was registered in the second half of 2018. When a UK car is 3 years old, it has to start having annual road worthiness checks, which is how stuff like bald tyres and faulty wheel alignment get discovered.

So when it comes to having a car delivered 3 months after one of these checks, with faults like that … you could call me rather ticked off about it. I don’t think it was anything I’d done post delivery, I can’t remember whacking anything. (Although I had another bout of covid not long after getting the car) Especially as it had the wobble vibration kicking in between 35 and 50mph which is indicative of either alignment or balancing. (Or a faulty wheel bearing)

Yeah, I’m decidedly unhappy about it. But it’s not something to immediately change the car about, like what it was with the Blue car with suspected suspension fault and the Silver one which had a power steering fault which was also skipped over in a service. My impression of both those was pretty much “Ok, you’re not finding and discovering these obvious faults, so I’m not going to tell you about them as part of the negotiations for me changing to the next car.”

This might be giving a bad impression of the brand though … The 6 Lexii I’ve had so far have been fantastic cars. Their drive by wire behaviour fits exactly the behaviour I want from the cars I drive. I like to be able to settle into a chilled out essentially autopilot for cruising, with the option of going very quick when I need to. The CT200h (aka Posh Prius) is on the low side for power for me (10 sec to 60, 134bhp system power) but when you ask it to, it cheerfully gives you everything it’s got. And what it had was far more effective at getting down the road quickly than the performance Focus ST170 I had before.

The toys are great too. I’d like to keep going with the brand, except they’ve caught the marketing urge to move everyone into SUVs … which is not something that I can support. They get a lot of things right though, with no design stupidity like you’d get with Ford or dodgy electronics which you’d have with the French cars. Or cars which just disintegrate like certain other EU cars, cars which have special modes to cheat emissions and economy figures, or cars which are excessively difficult to repair by design.

Toyota (and Lexus) make excellent cars. Maybe it’s a Corolla next.

Book stuff ! I read two books while off on the holiday :

Erebus by Michael Palin. It’s tagline is that it’s the story of a ship. Essentially, two ships HMS Erebus and HMS Terror. They were special Napoleonic War ships, with the war ending before they could actually do their purpose. So after being mothballed for a while, visionary people saw their potential as extreme exploration ships with them being dispatched to the Antarctic and later the Northwest Passage. This book is the story of the ships and what we know of their expeditions. It’s well worth a peek as a look into life on the ships and the discoveries that were made when so much of the map was Terra Incognita with “Here Be Dragons” labels on it.

It was a bit of a slow one though, perhaps a bit too much in there and it felt like a bit of a slog. Still worth checking out though.

Next up was Winter World by A G Riddle. This one’s set in a near future Earth, which is becoming steadily colder. It’s like an Ice Age is coming but it’s not from planetary conditions, it’s ALIENS blocking out the sun. Good book too and it sets up a trilogy. I’ll be looking forward to reading the next two in a while when the book 2 is on offer. (Bought book 3 in a 99p offer)

Ref the cruise though, there will be more posts with pictures to come there but the quick summary is :

It was a Hurtigruten Expeditions cruise on MS Maud. She’s a small cruise ship accommodating around 300 guests. Cozy. The crew were amazing, making it a lovely experience from start to finish. The expeditions team were fun, super motivated, friendly people with an infectious spirit that got us massively looking forwards to what was coming up to see. And Norway supremely delivered on that promise of good things to see.

I’d thoroughly recommend them, when I do more cruising (and that’s a definite), I’ll be looking at Hurtigruten again. You see cruise ship and you think Party Boat. It was a fun atmosphere but it was much more about the getting out there and seeing great things than a dress up for dinner party ship. Just what I wanted and what I didn’t realise I needed.

Economical too, I was able to book less than 5 days before the sailing date with a nice little discount and … there is no solo traveller supplement like pretty much everything else applies to the cost of going away. The atmosphere on board totally supported solo travelling as well. You’d be placed with other people in the main restaurant for food but the guests were lovely too and meal conversations were very pleasant. I could have picked up a collection of great new friends on the trip. (I hope some of you remember me and are reading this – you’re amazing and made the trip much better !)

Disclosure note time – I paid fully for the cruise, the only freebies were what every traveller with them gets : free coffee, cookies, wifi, food, selected expedition things. There was absolutely no nickel and dime behaviour here (like you might remember me complaining about with Novotel)

It was a very rewarding, informative, pleasant, educational (camera, science, people) trip. And it was the getting away from the world that I desperately needed, even though I didn’t know ho much I needed it.

Last message ? Sometimes we need to get away from the world for a little while and do something different. The world can get you down. I hope you all get that chance to escape from it for a little while. I was having lots of fun out there and I hope the posts here about the trip and the pictures I was sending around the various parts of the internet brought out smiles.

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Talking about hybrids again

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August 29, 2023

9:38 pm

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Hello everyone,

Oops I blinked and a couple of weeks went by again. I think I nearly posted a week or so ago but may have got distracted by a) a flare up and b) a game again. Oh well.

Picture. We're looking at a white fluffy dog that's looking at the camera with an open mouth. They're riding in a small red fire truck model. The caption is "No time to explain just get in."

Yep. Had a flare up again, which got my legs a bit miffed with me (but not badly) and my arms quite angry with me. Enough for me to get a bit worried about it, sufficient that if the measures taken hadn’t addressed it I might have actually gone to the doctor. But using a tubigrip to protect it at night and more of the topical steroid gunk helped it out a huge amount and it quickly turned course into becoming much better almost immediately. It isn’t fixed yet but it’s not uncontrolled leaking now. (Too much info ? Maybe !)

I’ve been wanting to talk about cars for a while and specifically, developments with the hybrids and electric cars … Actually electric cars is a new one on that and it’s come from watching a The Car Care Nut video looking at a Tesla (youtube link). They have some stunningly amazing tech in those cars. And apparently atrocious build quality. I’d recommend that Car Care Nut video, he talks a huge amount of sense and can explain everything in a way that’s very easy to understand.

He’s mostly about Toyotas, from learning his trade in the Toyota system looking after their cars. As regular readers will know, I’m a firm convert to the Posh Toyotas aka Lexus cars. I like their hybrid system, the tech appeals to the geek in me and the way they drive aligns with how I want to drive instead of taking a few minutes to figure out what you want to have happen like that one Volvo.

So … Hybrids. When I started driving them in 2011, it was pretty much a choice between Toyota and Honda with a bunch of other expensive ones in the Coming Soon bracket. There are a lot more now … I’m back in a similar car to the 2011 one now with Red being a Lexus CT200h. A few of the myths and legends are things like they weigh more so they can’t be as good. Reliability is in question as well. The truth there is that they’re Different, some of those reliability and weight things just don’t apply. I’ve had multiple alternators and starter motors die on cars over the years, there is no alternator or starter on the Toyota system. There’s no gearbox, no clutch. The air con pump doesn’t work off the engine, so it doesn’t take 10% of your engine power when you turn on the chill.

Instead of alternator, starter and gearbox, you’ve got the two motor generators that work together to make the car go. Plus an invertor and battery placed around the centre of gravity of the car. (Which means it makes the weight balance better). The electric part is also pretty well balanced. The 1.8 litre engine gives 97bhp and the electric gives 71bhp for a combined total of 134bhp (they don’t add), so the electric can easily take the car up to 40mph on its own. The torque combines to give the car 300Nm of torque. The 0 to 60 is slower at 10secs but the car is much more flexible than the performance orientated Focus ST170 I had before (170bhp/195Nm torque). The driveability in traffic is outstanding.

So how come this idea popped into the head ? Mostly because an advert from another car company was annoying me enough to check out what they have.

(Ok it’s the Renault)

What are Renault doing now ? It takes a bit of digging to get to their actual tech specs but they’re saying 96kW for the engine (128bhp) and 50kW (67bhp) and claiming 200bhp for the advert. Oh dear, that’s a red flag. Firstly because you can’t add the power together because the power doesn’t come at the same time (motor power is max at 0rpm, engine power is max at high rpm) but they got their sums wrong there. Most people would call that misrepresentation. The torque is actually really good at 205+205.

On the surface, that looks like a pretty decent combination, with a turbo charged petrol engine combining with the motors for good performance (as good as my IS300h’s) and economy.

A very good friend is getting a Hyundai hybrid soon, that’s got a 105bhp engine and a 44bhp motor. Not so sure about that one, the motor might be a bit small. But … I’m not sure that my bigger motor combination is being driven at 71bhp all the time, I’m very curious to see what she thinks of the Hyundai set up. I hope it works out well. One thing about the CT hybrid is that it gives you everything it has when you ask it to, so a 10 second to 60 time works out similarly rapid to the 9 second to 60 time of the old Puma sport coupe.

Picture. Meme. We're looking at several dogs looking out of a car window. One is looking very shocked at us. The caption is "It was then that Carl realised they were going to the vet."
It’s ok Carl

Talking of vets … or mechanics … and Pumas. What’s Ford giving us now with the Abomination Puma ? Firstly, don’t buy one. The engine has so much designed in self detonation potential I’d be surprised if one lasted 50,000 miles. Nice range of engines and specs though but I’m not seeing anything about how big the electric part is outside of it being 48V. The Lexus system is a 220V battery that runs the motors at up to 650V. Higher volts are a good thing, they mean less Amps for the same Power. Less amps means less heat and less losses in the cables. Low volts is bad. 😀 It’s why a kettle takes twice as long to boil in a 115V country compared to how quick we can make tea with 230V kettles.

Don’t buy the Ford. (Also, don’t buy the Renault but I’ll come back to that).

I’ve had several Vauxhalls before but I’m not counting them or the other Plug in Hybrids here because I’ve got no way to support plugging in a car.

I’m struggling to think of more though (bit out of touch with the market) but Auto Express has an article recommending the Kia hybrids. No idea on the motor size again but it’s another 48V system. Sure, if they’ve made it work … that’s great but the numbers work against it. Heat is very much the enemy in electrics and lower volts means higher amps means heat.

Picture. We're looking at the front dashboard area of a car. There's a big screen area, except we can't see the screen, it's being used as a bed by a cute fluffy doggo.
Sleep well Fido

I better close up there … The specifications aren’t important though at the end of the day. What’s really important is what you think of the car on the test drive. How does it handle ? Is it comfortable ? Does it have the speed and flexibility you want in a car ? Does it have enough space ? What toys does it have and are you ok with how you can interact with them on the road ?

There are cars that have gone through the family which I’ve refused to drive more than once. Like the VW Golf TDI which had its weight distribution so bad, it would plough straight on instead of rotating through corners. Like the Volvo which had the complete opposite vibe to how I wanted to drive a car. We didn’t get on.

The IS300h powertrains were great in specification but it took a few iterations before Toyota/Lexus got it right. And the software in the car felt like it was constantly being tweaked between versions of the car with varying levels of success. The mouse like pointer in the CT looks like a great idea but the dial selector in the IS was actually easier and quicker to use. The ES didn’t have a pause button for the hifi. This doesn’t feel like much but when you’re pulling up to a gate person who you need to talk to, it’s really handy to have an actual pause button.

And that’s without getting into reliability. Toyota and Lexus built their brand on reliability and outside of damage (stone in the power steering pump, pandemic induced 12V battery death and a couple of on build defects), the 6 Lexus so far have been top notch reliability. I wouldn’t trust a Renault for electrics … even before considering the extra complexity of drive by wire hybridness. I wouldn’t trust anything in the Ford.

I’m very curious about that Hyundai though, I hope they’ve cracked it with the car my friend is getting.

I haven’t looked back since getting the hybrids, they work extremely well for how I want to drive. (50+mpg is great too) One legacy from the cricket is a lower back injury which affects my left leg. Driving the ST170 in traffic with its clutch would lead to actual high degrees of pain. That’s completely gone with the hybrid autos.

I’d definitely recommend the hybrids. But … as always with cars, make sure you know what you’re getting. If they’re being cagey about specs, like with the Kia and the Ford, then walk away. If you don’t like the driving experience, then walk away. If you’re suspicious about certain “CVTs are the bane of car existence” reviewers, pay attention to different ones. Yep, CVTs send the engine revs up high when you ask for speed … they’ll also send the revs high on part throttle, which those reviewers know full well about and they post the footage to let them grind their axes. How good the electronic brain is determines how quickly the CVT figures out that you want to go fast, you’ll be able to check that on a test drive.

What’s under the hood is pretty irrelevant. What really matters is whether you connect with the car, in all facets of how you interact with it. I like little cars that go round corners quick and quickly go fast with a nice noise when you ask them to. I like good sounds from the sound system too.

But that’s just me, other people want different things from their cars, like being able to freely rev the engine or make the gearbox go crunch. I prefer seat heaters and the simplicity of Left Pedal Made Stop, Right Pedal Make Go.

Must check under the hood some time.

PS The game was called One Military Camp, nice little base builder game with a strategic aspect to it as well. Would recommend.

Thanks for reading, would you like to share ?