TOPS NEWS – October 2004
Alistair Darling, the Secretary of State for Transport,
has suggested that car tax and fuel duty be scrapped and replaced with a system
of road tolls - £1.45 per mile on busy roads ‘would reduce congestion’.
The Home Office is testing a device to be issued to
the police which beams radio waves at suspect vehicles, knocking out their
electronic fuel injection systems and causing the car to stall - better
drive old cars!
Uninsured drivers could have their cars confiscated
and crushed under new Government plans. 300,000 people are hit by uninsured drivers
every year.
The Blade Runner is a new coach with retractable
steel wheels between its rubber tyres allowing it to transfer from road to
rail. The suggestion is that it could
use the rural branch lines which are neglected due to their isolation.
Steve Lucas was caught speeding on the M62 but when he was accused of
doing 115 mph in his Fiat Punto he took his car to a race track and hired a
driver to see how fast it could go.
Downhill at full throttle with a tailwind indicated a top speed of 104
mph. The police conceded that Lucas was
probably doing 85 mph and gave him 3 points on his licence.
The FBHVC is campaigning to oppose the DVLA’s suggestion that all SORN
registration should be charged at £4.50 per transaction, collecting over £155 million
extra revenue from vehicle owners without it appearing to be an increase in
taxation. They are concerned that the
fee could rise rapidly.
The lower house of the Swiss parliament has voted in
favour of changing the law to allow F1 in Switzerland. Motor racing has been
banned in Switzerland since the Le Mans disaster in 1955.
A California judge has upheld a jury verdict that Ford
was responsible for an accident which left a woman paralysed when her Explorer
rolled over, but reduced the damages against the car manufacturer from $US369
million to $150 million. Buell-Wilson
said she was frustrated that Ford has not expressed regret or acknowledged its mistakes.
"I'm the kind of driver they market these cars to and, if anything, that's
the frustrating thing to me because they don't show any remorse at all." Ford
reportedly has been hit with another massive lawsuit claiming defective
door latches on as many as 400,000 pickups and sport utility vehicles have
caused the doors to open in side-impact crashes and rollover accidents,
resulting in death or serious injury for occupants.
Nissan Motor will recall 33,000 Elgrand minivans produced in Japan
between April 2002 and March 2003 to fix defective catalyst systems.
Inchcape has
lost the right to distribute Ferraris and Maseratis in the UK. Shares in Inchcape rose 5p.
BMW have now produced 500,000 of its Mini and its Rolls-Royce
plant has completed its 1,000th Phantom.
MG Rover’s UK car sales dropped 37% in August. They sold 11,568
cars in Britain in September, down 35% over last year. Their directors paid
another £4m into their own trust. Fiat temporarily closed two factories
due to slack summer demand. Bentley
is to build the saloon version of its Continental GT coupe in Germany – the
first time a Bentley will be built outside Britain. Land Rover returned
to profit in August for the first time since it was bought by Ford four years
ago.
The Army is having to sell the Supacat all-terrain vehicles and converted Land
Rovers which it bought to fight the Iraq war because the government has refused
to pay for them.
Trailers and caravans are likely to be forced to use the
inside lane on motorways at peak periods after experiments near Bristol were
voted a success for other motorists.
A British university professor claims four-wheel-drive vehicles
are contributing to an increase in dust in the atmosphere, with potentially
serious consequences for human health and climate change. There has been a tenfold
increase over the past 50 years in the quantity of dust being blown across the
world from part of the southern Sahara, the single greatest source of the
problem. In deserts across the world
formerly stable surfaces have been breached by the use of four-wheel-drive
vehicles, especially in the southern Sahara and the Middle East, an effect
labelled "Toyotarisation.”
A Devonport man returned home from work at 6 a.m.
to find that a car had been driven through the wall and into his bedroom. The driver of the stolen car has not been
found. And an elderly couple escaped
injury after a BMW crashed through the side of their home in Surrey.
Parking wardens Phil Mansell and Bruce Edwards -
who dealt with 10 car parks in Bromsgrove - were told to hand out more £30
fines. Phil claimed that his manager made him fine a woman of 85 who parked
outside a store to pick up her handicapped husband. He was also allegedly told
to ticket a Royal Mail van that halted to pick up post. When the men
complained, they were sacked.
Renathe Opedal was hopelessly stuck in traffic
during rush hour in Oslo when an eager attendant gave her a $73 parking ticket.
Opedal took the case to court and got the ticket annulled, plus an award of
$585 for costs.
A Swedish man says he has received a ticket for illegally parking
his snowmobile in Great Britain - even though the vehicle has never left
Sweden.
Edexel is to offer a new training course for "vehicle
immobilisers" promising to help wheel-clampers deal with situations when
"conflict may arise". If wheel-clamping is not for you, then Edexel
also revealed it is launching a course for night club bouncers, or "door
supervisors" as it calls them.
Gordon Miller, 38, was served with a five-year anti-social behaviour
order (Asbo) for "intimidating and harassing" motorists. The rogue
road enforcer clamped hundreds of vehicles illegally - including an on-duty
police car and two drivers trying to perform three-point turns.
A policeman had his car clamped when he parked it in a private car park
whilst he investigated a burglary.
A 1930 Bentley Speed Six sold for 3.8 million euros at the
Christie’s LM auction. £4,181,500 was paid for the 1929 Mercedes SSK and
£265,000 for a 1931 Invicta at the Goodwood Bonhams auction.
A thief who raced off from a service station with a car - and the driver's
mother-in-law -crashed a short time later and left the woman in the vehicle
German engineers have built a car that can travel a
world record 1,800 miles on less than a gallon of hydrogen fuel.
A Serbian man survived a 50 foot fall from his flat by landing on the
roof of Lada parked below. “It was
amazing the way the Lada just disintegrated and softened the fall like a
mattress.”
A teenager endured a driving test lasting over three hours because
her examiner got lost. Tina Wilson, 18, was eventually led sobbing from her
Nissan Micra, but was given a pass after the test in East London.
Greek taxi driver Gregorios Sachinides' Mercedes 240D
has clocked up a record-breaking 2.8m miles since he bought it in 1981. The
mileage is the equivalent of six trips to the moon and back, or 82 times around
the earth. He wishes to donate it to
the Mercedes museum.
Toyota's latest environmentally friendly concept car is made from
potatoes. Rear bumpers, trims and mats
in the ES3 prototype hatchback are built from a plastic derived from a natural
acid in sweet potatoes. “The organically formed substance is perfectly
biodegradable as well as being as tough as conventional materials. It's proven
science and environmentally kinder. Eco-plastic has enormous potential. Toyotas
made using potatoes are being introduced in Japan and may soon be launched in
the UK” said Toyota’s spokesman.
An ‘investigator’ claims that scores of Italians have
‘bought’ their driving licences and some have paid to become driving
instructors. Italian police have
uncovered a chain of car number plate switching – the cars are not stolen but
have their identity changed.
London’s iconic Routemaster buses are being phased out partly because
of a surge in litigation from passengers who fall off their ‘hop-on, hop-off’
platforms.
Car drivers in Germany can now insure themselves against
rising petrol prices. For £ 13.80 per
year, an insurance company offers a policy against petrol prices rising by more
than 15 %. If the price for the chosen
type of petrol does go up more than that, the company will cover the difference
in cost. It will pay the price difference
for up to 2000 litres. Even if prices
only rise in the part of Germany where their client is living, the insurance
will cover the costs. Germany has seen
strong rises in petrol prices in the past years both, both because of crude oil
prices and a special tax introduced to protect the environment.
An Austrian soldier has been fined £13 for driving a
25-ton tank at 40 mph in a 30 mph zone whilst on a military exercise.
Lynda McAfee has been told she has to pay £1,300 in parking fines run up by a man she sold her Rover to who gave false address details.
Saab has developed a key fob which measures the amount of alcohol in a driver’s breath and automatically immobilizes the engine if they have had too much to drink.
Auto Express claims that the popular Vauxhall Astra 1.7 CDTi does 37.1 miles per gallon against a claimed 56.5 mpg.
TOPS NEWS is an
abridged version of one section of the TOPS magazine sent to members.
Trisha Pilkington