A friend of mine went to test-drive the new Abarth 500 and was given a photocopy of the colour chart to take away with him. A black and white photocopy. When my friend expressed surprise, the dealer pointed out that the signature grey colour is very popular.

As the August bank holiday approaches, no doubt the good folk of Exeter are anticipating another nightmare weekend of traffic as the Exeter by-pass grinds to s standstill under the onslaught of Brummies heading to or returning from the West Country. The same will be true of pinch-points throughout our trunk-road network.

Of course, the problem is that our roads suffer from the classic 80/20 syndrome. 80 per cent of drivers try simultaneously to occupy 20 per cent of the nation’s road network. And that happens every day.

I seldom use motorways or trunk roads. Instead I mainly use minor and unclassified roads that weave their way alongside arterial routes and are often the ‘old’ roads to the selfsame destinations but which progress has relegated to mere capillaries.

Yet they still represent some 80 per cent of our total road mileage, but occupied at most by only 20 per cent of the traffic, and, quite frequently, none at all.

OK, so using minor roads might mean a few more miles, but I would bet that my zig-zagging, traffic-free routes use less petrol. At least for every squirt of the injector I cover a few more yards, rather than merely adding another puff of CO2 to the atmosphere without any corresponding benefit.

And I would also bet that my journeys take no longer. For sure, motorways and trunk roads (A303 excepted) can at times be faster, but most times they’re not. And whereas drivers see only trucks and tail-lights, I see tall skies, open countryside and pleasant people who are not forever on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

You can keep your sat-navs – at least I know where I’m going. When
most of you arrive at your destination you have no idea how you got there. I dream of the day when Uncle Sam pulls the plug, and millions of British motorists suddenly find themselves with no more idea of their whereabouts than the apocryphal tribe of short people consigned to live in long grass.

Try to forget the Puma, Edward..

My NCN colleague Ed Morris is the happy owner of a Ford Puma. The Office Automotive Debating Society (TOADS) rarely agrees on much, but in considering the Puma we’re gruntingly agreeable that it’s decent, nippy and fun, distinctively styled and reliable.

Last week a low speed shunt broadsided the car, causing just enough damage to make it an insurance write-off. Luckily, no-one was hurt. The ignominy for Ed was seeing his good car destroyed by some shoulder-shrugging jerk.

However, this has chucked TOADS a new bone to fight over. Ed is keen to replace the Puma with an identical car, same spec, same everything. Describing the few he’d seen over the weekend as ‘ragged’ and ‘dogs’, this may not be that straightforward.

So might not another Ford Puma only lead to disappointment, akin to trying to throw a great party, or go on the same holiday, for a second time? Could it be that he needs to take the memories, and move on to owning a different kind of car?

Perhaps someone who has bought the same car twice can shed some light.  

Honda has launched a new online comparison tool that it says, “enables any customer or potential customer to compare Honda cars against any other car in the market and calculate the potential savings on offer.”

It is a bold move to publicly pit your product against its competitors and this speaks volumes in terms of Honda’s confidence in its range of cars.

I’d say that confidence is not misplaced either, as it took me a few minutes to find 4 cars (comment if you’d like to know what they are) to line up alongside a Jazz that would place the baby Honda last in terms of whole life running costs.

However, I do find myself wondering why Honda, and other car manufacturers, bother creating such tools at all since modern-day consumers (and car buyers in particular) are simply too savvy to rely on information provided by vendors. Some will be sceptical that data is presented in a fair and balanced way, but even the more trusting will simply carry out their research on good-quality independent websites with no conflict of interests.

Tom Gardner, Head of Marketing – Cars for Honda (UK) says, “We want to support retail and corporate customers by helping them make an informed purchase decision based on the issues that are relevant to them. The car comparator enables the customer to do this with impartial, third party data.”

Even if the data is supplied by an impartial third party, the primary goal of a car manufacturer’s website is to promote and ultimately sell that manufacturer’s cars. So when it comes to displaying comparison data to the potential customer, Honda, as you might expect, lists all the standard features on its own product above those of its competitors.

This is not in the best interests of the customer who would truly benefit from seeing the features listed in terms of relevance… I simply cannot imagine what kind of car buyer deems a digital clock to be more important than power steering.

Honda’s advertising is renowned for taking an intelligent approach. Perhaps it should credit its customers with a little more of the same.

The car in front is this, it\\'s seriously good. Seriously

Moving house over the weekend offered up a rare chance to play at being that bane of the road, the ‘white van man’.

My trusty hire turned out to be a Volkswagen Transporter with a 2.4 TDI under the nose, in white of course. Daily Star and Styrofoam cup on dashboard optional extras.

Returning it some 300 miles later, I’m now thinking: I actually want one of these. It’ll seat three in comfort, commanding drive, a turn of speed and draws none of the ire of other road users that large 4×4s seem to. And that TDI was almost stupidly efficient, sipping diesel as it did all the way to the south coast and back.

Great. Now I have ‘white van man envy.’ 

Careful - you might get your fingers burnt completing this form.

With my European insurance certificate, I received an ‘Accident Statement’ form. You know the sort of thing – an official form where you write down the details of the accident, with helpful little diagrams for you to draw on.

All good so far. But then I read the bit which tells you to fill in the form if your car is stolen, or burnt. And then the very next line, which tells you in big, bold, capital letters to KEEP THIS FORM (AND A BALLPOINT PEN) IN YOUR CAR.