Discreet bargain bluetooth headset - the Jabra BT2010

I try to use my mobile phone as little as possible when behind the wheel as I find protracted conversations can become distracting and I firmly believe that safe driving demands one’s full attention. Nonetheless, the value of being accessible when on the move, both from a business and a social perspective, cannot be underestimated, and since it is illegal to use a hand-held mobile when in control of a vehicle, some form of hands-free device is now an essential piece of kit.

This week, I’ve been trying out a new lightweight Bluetooth headset from Jabra. The BT2010 weighs only 11 grams, yet still allows up to 7 hours of talk time.

As I unpacked the unit from its box, I was dismayed to find the user manual supplied on a mini cd-rom which is completely useless on my MacBook Pro slot-loading drive. Undeterred, I went for the quick start manual and was able to ‘pair’ the unit with my naff Sony Ericsson K800i (Apple/Santa, if you’re reading, I’d like an iPhone) in a matter of seconds.

The unit is so light that the earhook supplied is described as optional. I can well see why, but I preferred to leave it in place as it made the headset feel more secure. On the go, I found I was able to quickly forget that I was wearing it at all.

I found the sound quality to be excellent and had no complaints from my callers. The design of the unit is very neat and compact and it’s therefore fairly discreet.

Best thing of all though, is probably the price. It’s a penny under twenty quid and that for me makes it an absolute bargain.

Yours truly with the C4 Transformer - Kenneth Hansen

There are some terrific talents throughout the world of motorsport, despite the TV media having you believe that the only one worth mentioning is Lewis Hamilton.

Every now and again, my job allows me the chance to get first hand experience of such talent and recently this occurred at an event organised by Citroen at Rockingham.

Having donned a full race suit and squeezed a medium-sized crash helmet onto my extra-large cranium (someone had already claimed the XL hat), I was invited to take a seat next to the 13 times FIA European Rallycross champion Kenneth Hansen, in his competition Citroen C4.

I must confess that I’ve not followed the rallycross scene since the early 1980s, and even then, I only saw the little coverage that was featured on Grandstand, so I politely shook Mr Hansen’s hand and said, “Pleased to meet you.”

Sensing that I had no idea who he was, he gave me a brief resume: he told me humbly that he had been involved in motorsport for over 30 years, starting out in karts, but had never imagined that it would become his career as he had been training to make butter and cheese!

After a couple of startlingly, electrifyingly hot laps of the makeshift gravel circuit (which Kenneth himself had marked out the day before), we finally came to a halt and as my intense adrenaline rush began to subside just a little, I turned to Kenneth with the broadest grin that my helmet would allow and said, “Thank you very much. If that’s how you drive, I’d like to try some of your butter and cheese!”

We’ve posted a video with highlights of the day. It will only give you a taster of what it’s like to ride with Kenneth Hansen - a true modern day motorsport hero. If you get the chance to see him in action - don’t miss it.

Fiat 500 optical mouse

Some of you will know that the Fiat ‘Nuova 500′ which launched in 1957 (the car upon which the brand new Fiat 500 is based) was the successor to the 500 ‘Topolino’ (Italian for ‘little mouse’) which first appeared in the mid-1930s. Topolino was also, incidentally, the name given by the Italians to Disney’s Mickey Mouse.

So where am I going with this? Well, you can now also get the newly-voted 2008 Car of the Year in mouse form, but this time as an optical computer mouse.

For the traditionalists among you, there is also a Nuova 500 version but I think the new one is the ‘must-have’ this Christmas so have a quiet word with Santa.

Spotted round the back of Clacket Lane services

The Public Relief Order under Section 18 of the Motorways Act (1972) is about to be repealed. This will enable motorway service areas to convert the public toilets on their sites to retail outlets and thus offset some the punitive increases in ground rents proposed by the Highways Agency.

It place of toilets, it is understood that operators intend to encourage motorists to adopt the French method and protect their modesty by using the surrounding scenery. The Health and Safety Executive has no objections provided that suitable warning signs are erected, and these are presently on trial at selected sites.

As an alternative, motorists can continue with the present practice of fiscal extraction. This involves pulling up at any convenient fuel pump and allowing the operator to take the piss.

Not many takers in Bude

Forget weather maps. Every morning on breakfast TV there should be a petrol prices forecast: it is likely to be just as variable as our weather.

Using petrolprices.com, I took a tour round the UK to see who’s paying what. I keyed in a few familiar postcodes, which took me north, south, east, and west, and a few places in between.

One thing is certain, isobars joining up those places with equal pressure on the pocket would look like the work of a one-year-old let loose with a crayon.

For example, using the lowest available pump price as a guide, motorists as far apart as Swansea, Norwich, Carlisle and Wolverhampton can all get unleaded from 98.9 pence-per-litre. Motorists in Richmond (Yorkshire) are being charged at least 99.5 pence, and in Exeter, 99.9 pence.

Margate, Aberystwyth, Keswick and Worthing are all over the ton – the lowest price in any of those places is 101.9 pence. But spare a thought for Cornish drivers: the prices in Bude range from 102.9 to 105 pence-per-litre.

The lowest price I came across in England – 97.9 pence – is to be found in SW1A 2AA, which is the postcode for 10 Downing Street. In Scotland, the lowest price I found – 97.8 pence – was in EH99 1SP, which, as you might have guessed, is the postcode for the Scottish Parliament building in Holyrood. So, don’t bother to petition MPs to regulate fuel prices; just get them to fill up for you.

A force for good

General Motors is to spend some serious money on a new advertising campaign for its Hummer SUV range.

Hummer Marketing Director, Megan Stooke, is reported in Automotive News as saying that the war in Iraq and growing environmental concerns has led the Hummer to be seen as “…an icon for all things evil.”

The new campaign hopes to counteract the negative image by promoting ‘Hummer Heroes’ – people who have used their Hummers as ‘…a force for good’.

As an example, Stooke cites the comment of an owner who used her Hummer to deliver water to victims of Hurricane Katrina: “Nobody asked me then what kind of fuel economy I was getting.”

Mark LaNeve, General Motors’ vice president of North American sales, service and marketing, says Hummers “….are designed to do a very specific task. They are what they are because they can do what they can do.”

I utterly concur with LaNeve’s sentiment. I drive the UK equivalent of a Hummer, namely a V8 Range Rover (that’s my car in the picture). In the past couple of years I have lifted a mountain-biker with a broken ankle from a remote area of a country park to a waiting ambulance; I have towed a broken-down motor-cycle from a mud-laden green lane to a waiting AA van; I have given a lift to a bewildered and frightened family who were lost after dark in heavily forested uplands; and I have towed another 4×4 containing a boorish and ungrateful man, his wife and toddler, out of an isolated gravel pit in which he was stranded through sheer incompetence.

And there are thousands like me, using their large 4×4s for official, unofficial and voluntary rescue work, and it’s about time tree-huggers realised that not all off-roaders are mere status symbols, and that many of them are used to provide a service – often unpaid – for which no other vehicle is suitable.

Hats off to Hummers, I say.

Wot no Grande?

Choosing a new car has never been more complicated and car manufacturers don’t really help.

A friend of mine who is looking to buy a new car for the first time in 20 years, dropped by at the weekend to consult with me on a shortlist of cars he was considering having visited both a Fiat and a VW showroom. The list included 2 Fiats: Grande Punto and Sedici and 2 VWs: Golf Plus and Touran. I pointed out that he was comparing apples and oranges as the Polo is the logical VW competitor to the Grande Punto. He was unconvinced as he felt the Polo seemed a much smaller car, but then I came to realise that his decisions were being heavily influenced by style. He didn’t like the look of the Multipla so it was ruled out whereas the Touran ticked the right box in the looks department (and he liked the idea of an extra pair of seats in the boot). Another factor turned out to be the limited space in his garage which meant most 7-seater’s were out of the question.

OK, so it’s clear that my friend has some thinking to do before he gets to a shorter shortlist, but the fact that the Fiat Grande Punto is badged only as a Punto with not a hint of ‘Grande’ was one source of confusion.

Another is a more general point in the way that cars are categorised. With every manufacturer seeking to differentiate their products, it makes the consumer’s purchase decision devilishly difficult and they often find themselves, like my friend, comparing apples with oranges…which will eventually drive them bananas!

Let me know if you find (or have found) yourself in a similar quandary.

Toyota tests new marketing device

Regular readers may recall that a few months’ ago I took issue with Toyota over its Tundra truck – an all-American gas-guzzler that’s a lot more mean than it is lean and green.

I criticised Toyota for concealing behind a smokesceen of corporate virtue and moral rectitude – i.e. Prius - a heavyweight pick-up upon which the company hoped to carry forward its aspiration to become the world’s largest car-maker.

It seems I am not alone. It is reported in The Economist that a coalition American environmental groups has decided to call attention to Toyota’s double speak by launching a website – the truthabouttoyota.com.

The coalition is seeing red about Toyota’s not supporting the Senate-passed Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) provisions. The site in particular focuses on the company’s willingness to support various trade associations that intend to sue a number of American states in an attempt to block legislation that will introduce what appear to be quite reasonable limits on average fuel consumption.

According to the website, Toyota says it recognizes the problem, but it doesn’t want to be part of the solution.

Mind you, this accusation of hypocrisy is from a nation that uses the ‘fight against terrorism’ and ‘peacekeeping’ as a smokescreen from behind which it can siphon off half-a-million barrels of oil every day from a country, which, were its main export potatoes, would almost certainly be left to mind its own business.