The annual SMMT Test Day blog (2012)

Every May, all of the major car manufacturers gather at Millbrook Proving Ground for the SMMT test day – and it gives us all a chance to speak to people we haven’t had a chance to for a while, as well, of course, as the chance to drive the cars we missed.

It’s always a brilliant day, even when the rain comes at you sideways. Luckily, though, this year was scorching. And so I drove 14 cars. That brings a few problems, though, because driving 14 cars in one day for about 15 minutes each causes the synapses in your brain to malfunction, and so all I can write about each car is a couple of paragraphs. They’re below in alphabetical order.

Retained in translation

Mine was yellow and had 46s all over it.

Before I learnt to drive a car I rode a motorbike. Three, in fact, all very different – a laughable sports 50cc with six gears and a rattling two-stroke engine, a pretend Harley made of the worst steel known to man and a Yamaha commuter that was impossible to break.

Riding a bike teaches you habits, and some of them don’t really translate well to cars. When I first started to drive I always ended up too close to the kerb because I was used to being in the middle of my side of the road – the middle of a car is in a different place. I had to shake that one pretty quickly.

But there are some habits that, whether rightly or wrongly, I’ve retained.

Ugly Cars: Porsche Cayenne

This looks pretty crap

 

In London you’ll see many a large 4×4. It’s entirely understandable, really, what with all the tiny, tiny speed bumps that are completely impassable in anything without 40 inch wheels and seven feet of ground clearance. Anyway, one such SUV is the Porsche Cayenne, a car first introduced in 2002 – and the first generation, pre-facelift model is genuinely ugly.

All roads lead to Slough

The SMMT test day 2011

It’s been a week or so since the SMMT test day, but I’ve been far too busy doing real work and playing Xbox games to write a blog. In fact, I haven’t written a blog for about 6 months. Unless the newspapers are right to call Twitter a ‘Micro-blogging site,’ in which case I’ve written about 5,000 blogs in the past six months.

I digress. At the SMMT test day this year I drove several cars, and rather than attempt to write an in depth review of each I’ve decided to keep it short, sweet and simple. So here goes.

Lots of crashes

Did you know that EuroNCAP’s website has videos of almost all of their crash tests? It’s really quite interesting to sit and watch some of the tests, and see the improvements over the years.