The UK and the Eco Box Crisis

For My first post on this new blog I though I would talk about how the UK is being flooded with boring, noisy, diesel motor vehicles.

Diesels only started to become popular during the mid to late 90's due to the fitment of turbos, before this time they where considered to be very slow heavy alternatives to the cheaper, more refined petrol engines. Remember this was a time when petrol was only 40p per litre! Many car companies such as ford and vauxhall didn't think twice to fit there models with petrol engines ranging from 1.8 four pots to 2.5 and 3.0 V6's. They didn't have to worry or bother to much with making them economical either, at 40p per litre your average joe bloggs could run his 3.6 carlton or his 2.9 XR4i to work and back without complaining how much fuel he had used burning off that BMW on the slip road. The insurance companies were fairly lenient back in the 90's also, you could get an uprated Turbo or slap some throttle bodies onto your little fiesta without worrying. Massive exhaust tuning and going to meets with fellow tuners to see how many components you could cram into your engine bay.

These where fun times,

but then the rein of the millennium came.

Now its a sad time, here we are in 2013 and the Eco boxes pretty much dominate the market. The old "Whats your 0-60 time?" has changed to "How many miles to the gallon do you get". People actually boast about there MPG and how much money they are saving compared to the petrol equivalent. Its not just the consumers either Car companies main selling point is that their cars will do 60-70 + to the gal.

It was inevitable that fuel prices where going up and up. Every year fuel was rising by 30-50% and it wasn't going down! Car companies latched onto this especially since everyone started down sizing, selling the 200bhp hot hatch for a mk1 diesel focus or a mk4 TDI golf. People started to realise that they could "Save Money" by trading the 25mpg saloon in for a 40-50mpg diesel hatch.

Another thing that started really coming in was safety, "buy our car because it has a brilliant Ncap rating". Every year cars seemed to become safer, more reliable, more economical and most importantly Friendly to the planet -_-

Motorways are not interesting either its;

Oh look thats the 10th 320d ive seen in the space of 5 minutes.
Wow! OMG its a Mondeo 2.0 CDTI Titanium

My personal favourite is, that C5 HDI is really bellowing down the fast lane

This would be fine if the cars had presence, noise, drama but they don't!

The other day when I traveled down to Newark we spotted an old 1974 Triumph Stag in a yellow. It instantly caught me and a friends eye. We went crazy trying to follow it just because it was an icon. It doesn't just stop at looks though, due to the straight through exhaust the 3.0 V8 sounded AMAZING and you could smell the burning fuel 5 car lengths away. It was a spectacle.

Thats what you don't get with diesels and eco cars, and I understand some people may not want a loud noisy sports car. Your typical non car enthusiast may just want to tootle around town in a 2 pot diesel fiat 500. I just think old cars have so much more presence and "Fun" to put it bluntly.

One final Rant before I invite opinions and questions,


Car companies in the last 5 or so years have started creating diesel (sorry for the quote marks again) "sports cars" or cars with sport packs. Especially Audi with the A3 2.0 TDI Sport and the diesel s lines.  I don't have a problem with this due to Audi having a selection of petrol S3's and RS3's (Even the x reg S3). One thing I do have a problem with however is when car companies make a fast hatch, or a car that is marketed as Sports when they have Limited diesel engine choices such as Skoda's MK1 VRS and Mini's new SD range. Your not fooling anyone!

Ok rant finished :) Let me know what you thought of the post and if you have any questions of want to voice your own opinions please feel free to do so.



    

 

Hello and welcome

Hello and welcome to this brand new blog. I will be using this space to post my thoughts and feelings about classic, kits and alternative cars, but firstly Im going to talk a little about myself.

My name is Tom, I am a student from yorkshire with a huge passion for classic and kit cars. Although I do not study mechanics or motor sport I am very mechanically minded and know car makes and models in and out, especially rare and classic vehicles. I will try and post as regularly as possible and try and keep my opinions and thoughts fairly bias.

I am currently building a lotus 7 style kit car and have a separate blog documenting my progress. As well as this I am helping a friend restore an old 1974 Triumph Stag and i'm constantly on the lookout for icons and potential future classics.    

If you have any questions or input please feel free to ask them and if you like the content i'm posting please follow me.