TOPS NEWS – April 2006
A mobile speed camera generated £23,100 of fines in 4
hours from 400 vehicles after the limit was cut from 70 mph in a roadworks
section of the A11. The Norfolk Safety
Camera Project denied it was a money-making exercise. Last year it raised £1,437,480 in fines and spent £1,330,832 on
cameras, wages and administration.
(Profit £106,648!)
Traffic lights are to be placed on entry slip roads to stop drivers
joining crowded motorways. The first
will be the M6, M60 and M62 followed by the North East, South East and Midlands
later this year.
The MSA and the Open College of the North West will offer a training course
including marshalling at motor races for thousands of volunteers involved in
motor sport.
A Chicago woman arrested for drunken driving
slipped off her handcuffs and drove away in the police car. She was later re-arrested.
The VSCC have appointed Mike Stripe as Secretary following
the departure of Stewart Pringle. Roger
Lucas will remain as Chairman of the HGPCA. The BRDC are still seeking a new President to replace
Jackie Stewart who leaves in April.
Their development plans are in limbo following the EGM at which members
requested more information about the proposed contract with St. Modwen.
The HGPCA has announced the
formation of a Limited company together with the Masters series and Arbuthnot
Latham bank. The objective is to
promote historic Motorsport.
Ford car sales rose 18.3% in January; Land Rover jumped by 33.8%. Jaguar sales dropped by 28.9%.
The French Government classed ALL
collectors' military vehicles, as Class A arms and decreed that all obsolete
military vehicles were to be scrapped by the end of the year unless an
exemption certificate could be obtained.
We are pleased to report that after huge pressure on the government, the
vehicles will now be called ‘second category’ and not liable to destruction.
LAT, owners of over 9m motoring pictures, has acquired the
splendid Fellowes collection of photographic negatives from Neil Corner.
Devon and Cornwall Constabulary has crushed 20 mini-motorbikes
which were confiscated from drivers riding on the pavement.
Transport for London is running a trial using electronic tags on cars which
enable deduction of congestion charges via a ‘credit card’ fixed to the
windscreen. The card can be topped up
like a mobile phone card. A large
quantity of cameras are required to operate the scheme.
A recent Motors TV programme about Maurice Trintignant
was spoiled by the commentator’s lack of understanding of what he was reading.
Aston Martin is using hand-knotted silk carpets from Tibet in its new
£200,000 Rapide model likely to be on the market within 3 years.
The AA say that 1 in 5 car breakdowns is caused by flat tyres, run down
batteries, locking in keys and filling up with the wrong fuel.
James Hull, a dentist from Newport, stored his 60 Jaguars in a
warehouse which was broken into by a gang of teenagers who hotwired the cars
and played dodgems to devastating effect.
HFI, an Anglo-American consortium, has bought the Healey name and intends
to build models in Britain. GB Sports
has been warned that it may not use the name Austin Healey.
A Corvette sports car stolen in 1969 has been recovered
in California and returned to the amazed rightful owner.
In the High Court, Mr Justice Stanley Burnton refused
to grant either Mr. Svenby or Mr. Lloyd the right to use the Lister Jaguar
chassis number BHL 126 (registration WTM 446).
Svenby’s car is known as the Spaceframe and appears to be reconstituted
from a wreck for which he paid £285,000 in 1990; Lloyd’s car is a Costin built from original parts and he paid
£124,785 in 1988. Svenby argued that
Lloyd’s vehicle had crashed soon after its Le Mans race and lost the right to
the chassis number because it spent 20 years being rebuilt. (Two cars with
the same chassis number - an old story. Ed)
General Motors has reported a
2005 year loss of $8.6 billion. Kirk
Kerkorian’s Tracinda Corporation has repurchased 12 million GM shares which it sold late last year to
cover tax obligations, giving the billionaire owner the same stake he held
before the sale.
Roelant de Waard has been appointed chairman and managing director
of Ford Britain.
Unscrupulous dealers have been
cleaning up and selling cars which were flooded in Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
A Dallas driver, Evangelina Gonzalez, who collected $76,000 in
charges for cruising through toll booths 3,000 times without paying has pleaded
guilty to three of the offences.
Enduro Cars sold 17 replica
C-type Jaguars during the Stoneleigh show.
Porsche set a registration record in its German home market in 2005 with 16,565
vehicles, up 2.1% on the previous year.
Ten policecars were needed to stop a German pensioner who was speeding
down an autobahn in the wrong direction.
Fiddling around with in-car satellite navigation
systems is causing motorists to lose concentration on the road, according to
yet another anonymous survey.
Government ministers are to be given a choice between
the Prius and a Jaguar in order to try to meet targets for cutting carbon
dioxide levels. According to Jeremy
Clarkson the Toyota Prius (subsidised by the government at £1,000 per new
purchase) is spectacularly ungreen. It
has both an engine and an electric motor requiring production from two
factories churning out emissions and only does 40 mpg compared with the little
VW Lupo diesel which does 70 mpg. The
government has confirmed its plan to increase road tax for cars producing more than 250g of CO2 per
kilometre e.g. Range Rover.
A busy stretch of the M1 is to have a 40 mph speed limit for the next 3
years while it is widened to make a special lane for cars carrying passengers.
Formula One fans are purchasing £8 candles which smell of pit lane oil
and burning rubber.
Eurazeo (France) has bought VW’s Europcar car rental company for €3.36
million.
An Iowa woman faked her own death to avoid paying parking tickets but
was caught when another ticket was issued after she had apparently died.
The government of Kazakhstan is planning to build an international standard racing
circuit near the Astana International Airport. There has been scandal following the killing of Altynbek
Sarsenbaiuly, a leading opposition politician, followed by the resignation of
Nartay Dutbayev, the head of the country's national security service. The opposition alleges that the government
has links to organised crime and does not respect basic human rights.
From April 2007 camera partnerships, which include police and local
authorities, will be able to repaint yellow cameras to make them blend into the
background. They will also be able to install cameras where there is a speeding
problem but little history of crashes.
A man who
beeped his horn at seven policemen manning a speed check in Bournemouth was
given a £30 fine.
Foreign drivers owe more
than £10m in congestion charge fines and £30m in unpaid parking and bus lane
fines. In 2004, 330,000 tickets were
issued to foreign registered vehicles but only 1 in 20 was paid. It is now proposed to clamp vehicles until
their fines are paid with particular attention given to the 1.5 million lorries
p.a. which now use British roads.
A report by the UK government watchdog,
into the collapse of Rover and the support provided by the Department of Trade
and Industry, concludes that the affair has cost UK tax payers around
£275m. MG Sport and Racing Ltd are in
administration and offering all racing cars, support fleet, infrastructure, and
memorabilia by auction.
Mr Lerga from Croatia is demanding £33,000 from his
mechanic in compensation for stress followed by a nervous breakdown after work
on his Alfa Romeo 147 took too long.
2,500 motoring fines were handed out in Camden last year
based on CCTV camera footage (not speed cameras) taken in the town.
A German man (67) who drew his dead
brother's pension for 26 years after taking on his identity was unmasked after
police stopped him for driving without a seatbelt.
TOPS NEWS is an abridged version of one
section of the TOPS magazine sent to members.
Trisha Pilkington