Stories from the world of Motors
CONSOLATION PRIZE:
Good news for Martin Leach, the former head of Ford's European operations, who claims he was sacked this summer after being offered a lucrative position with Fiat in Italy. Michigan's Automobile mag has named him man of the year. A small moral victory for the Brit as he prepares to sue Ford for an eye-watering €60 million.
AMERICAN CAR OF YEAR:
The Toyota Prius, Mazda RX-8 join the Cadillac XLR as finalists for the North American Car of the Year award. A jury of 49 motoring journalists selected the finalists from a pool of 17 models. The Prius has already won Motor Trend magazine's car of the year award. The winner will be announced on January 4th at the start of the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. We'll have a full report from the show in our January 7th edition.
LAST CHANCE SALOON: British car buyers are putting the brakes on saloon sales in favour of niche models. Ten years ago, saloon cars took a 21.2 per cent share of the British new car market, but now this figure has almost halved to 10.6 per cent, according to motor industry experts Glass's Information Services.
Conversely, multi-purpose vehicle (MPV) sales have soared from 0.6 per cent of the market to 8.3 per cent, while convertibles have gone from 0.9 per cent to 3.8 per cent and estate cars from 10.2 per cent to 13.7 per cent. There has also been a growing preference for smaller cars, with the market share for city cars and superminis increasing from 26.4 per cent to 35.8 per cent over the last 10 years. In 1993, 8 per cent of new cars were from prestige marques such as BMW, Audi and Mercedes. Now the total British market for these type of vehicles has more than doubled to 17 per cent.
HYUNDAI CONFIRMS: The Hyundai Coupé Concept Study (pictured) first shown at the Frankfurt Motor Show in September is to go into production. The coupé-cabriolet will feature a roof mechanism engineered Karmann changing from glass-roofed Coupé to a convertible.
A FLICK OF THE HAND: At the MPH '03 show in London, the top movie car sequences were voted as 2 Fast 2 Furious, The French Connection, Ronin, The Blues Brothers and Gold Finger. A fine mix of quality movie, led in true seasonal form by a complete turkey.
FAST EDDIE: A warrant was issued in London last week for the arrest of former Formula One driver Eddie Irvine, after he was caught speeding on a scooter with no licence and no insurance. The 38-year-old, whose address was given as Conlig, Newtownards, Northern Ireland, was arrested by police in London on July 24th this year for driving at over 30mph on a scooter through the city's Hyde Park, with no scooter licence and no insurance.
TAKING THE AIR: Gallic Distributors, importers of Citroën, admits that its C2 specification sheet could cause confusion. For the record, the C2, subject of last week's road test, does have four airbags including driver and passenger side airbags, and not an optional extra as stated. "We will reword for future printing," says spokeswoman Maeve Dolan.