15 Apr 2015 – Driven To Write

Theme: Roads – Central France

A recent trip to La Belle France served only to remind me of just how dire are our UK roads, and to wonder at how the French can afford to keep theirs in such good condition.

During the Easter period, my family spent 10 days tooling around roads in the very centre of France. There was a real mix of roads: Autoroutes, dual-track roads, main roads (we’d call them A roads), as well as single track stuff and streets around towns and villages. All this was in a new-ish, but humble Megane 1.5dCi hire car. Our base was a pretty (but not fancy) little town called Argenton-sur-Creuse, but we ventured as far as La Rochelle, and in and around La Brenne. It’s fabulously rural (La Rochelle excepted), but the state of the roads is anything but that. Continue reading “Theme: Roads – Central France”

Archive: “More T-Junctions, Vicar?”

DTW presents another look back at the archives of motoring writer Archie Vicar. This item appears to be a transcript from “Motorists and Motorism”, August 1975.

1975 Simca 1301: best car of Vicar´s week. — 1975 Simca 1301: best car of Vicar’s week.

What a week and indeed what a summer it has been so far. In May I had a chance to sample Michelin’s tyres at a special “closed track” day at Silverstone. A Mercedes 240D and a Peugeot 504 LD served as test-beds for Michelin’s new all-weather radial tyres. Peugeot have thought to bring these diesel cars over as they have had enough experience selling them on the continent. Also, seems as if they don’t want to Continue reading “Archive: “More T-Junctions, Vicar?””

Variation in Colour Palettes for the VW Golf in Four Major Markets

This bit of research aimed to determine what, if any, variation existed in four major markets in the choice of colours available for the VW Golf.

VW Golf colour palettes in four major markets. Images: VW

I looked at the configurators at VW’s websites in Brazil, Australia, the US and Germany. The expectation was that there would be some variation in the number and type of colours. The first part (number) was confirmed by this empirical study but the second expectation (type) was not confirmed. The number of paint colours was counted for a typical variant of the Golf in each market.

The author selected the model Continue reading “Variation in Colour Palettes for the VW Golf in Four Major Markets”