Ferrari have got a surprisingly good reason to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee

I WAS a bit confused when Ferrari announced how it'd be celebrating the Diamond Jubilee.

Italy's most iconic car maker are not only sending a cavalcade of their finest creations to Windsor to mark the celebrations, but they're also bringing a division of the mounted Carabinieri (that's Italian for bobbies on horses) with them. All this for a foreign head of state who, while being fabulously rich, has never actually owned a Ferrari. Prince Charles we all know for being a bit of an Aston man, but I don't recall Queen Elizabeth II being on the waiting list for the 458 Italia.

Then it clicked. The bosses of the most obviously petrolhead company on the planet are paying tribute to something you probably didn't know about Her Majesty. Whisper it softly, but the Queen is a car enthusiast! You probably thought Britain's highest profile motoring fan was Jeremy Clarkson, didn't you? There are, even if you exclude the presenters of Top Gear, all sorts of powerful and influential people who have a passion for motoring. Steve Coogan, for instance, or Jamiroquai frontman Jay Kay. Chris Evans, meanwhile, is a proper Ferrari ambassador, and has an entire collection of the Prancing Horse's finest. Arguably, though, the Queen is more high profile than any of those. She appears on our banknotes and everything!

Don't believe me? Well, it's a fact that Her Majesty The Queen is a trained mechanic, and while she could have done all sorts of different things to help the British war effort in the 1940s she spent most of the conflict in a boiler suit underneath army trucks, mending things. It's also true that she had a Rover P5B Coupe (a proper, regal old Rover from the days they were fitted with plush carpets and thumping great V8 engines) which she had not as something she could be chauffeured about in, but so that she could actually drive it herself, simply because she enjoyed it. When she eventually got rid of it she got a Jag for exactly the same purpose.

There's something strangely comforting in these austere times about knowing that the ruling monarch, deep down, is a keen driver with a James May-like command of mechanical knowhow and a taste for V8-engined luxury saloons. No wonder Ferrari thought it'd be a good idea to celebrate 60 years of her reign by showing her some F40s and Daytonas.

Deep down, I reckon she'd like ‘em...

MINI John Cooper Works GP II promises to be a hot hatch hit

POWER. According to the Spiderman movies, having lots of it comes with great responsibility.

So it's a shame then that BMW's being tight-lipped about just how much responsibility the latest hot MINI will need to be entrusted with, because at the time of writing exact horsepower figures for the Cooper Works GP II are a little hard to come by. However, they are promising it'll be at least as hardcore as its illustrious predecessor from 2006, so chances are it'll be rather a lot.

The company proudly claims of its mightiest MINI yet: "Only once has there been anything like it, but even that wasn’t as quick. With the MINI John Cooper Works GP, the British premium brand has come up with another car of exceptional talent designed to deliver extreme performance on both the race track and the road.

"The sportiest road-registered MINI ever made will go on sale later this year in a limited run of 2,000 cars. It is currently completing a programme of testing in preparation for series production, part of which has involved setting an impressive fastest lap of the Nürburgring’s Nordschleife circuit."

So while there's no word on power it will have a limited production run, no back seats at all, beefed-up brakes and suspension and a scrabbly turbo engine based on the one you get in the normal Cooper S.

Oh, and a pricetag expected to be at least £25,000. Chances are though it'll be at least as collectable as the original from six years ago, though!

Hyundai i30 passes The Monkey Test at Knowsley Safari Park

HYUNDAI has headed to the north west to put one of its models through the toughest test Merseyside can throw at it - a trip to Knowsley Safari Park!

A troupe of baboons based at the wildlife attraction were let loose on the new i30 to test the toughness of the hatchback's interior and exterior fittings - and unlike many a motor that's had the odd mirror or two knocked off by the animals - it was still fighting fit at the end of the visit.

David Ross, General Manager at Knowsley Safari Park, said: “For a baboon, to have a car to play with for a whole day is manna from heaven! If you put them on any car they will scour it for the weak points and find any faults. At one point there were 40 monkeys in the car, pushing it to its limits – that’s ten times the size of the average human family.

"I’ve seen thousands of cars pass through this enclosure, get mobbed by monkeys, and none have lasted the distance as well as this Hyundai. These baboons are incredibly inquisitive."

 

Hyundai said the car's paintwork had been smeared and scratched after being attacked by the monkeys, but otherwise the i30 had emerged unscathed from the experience.

 

Felicity Wood, i30 Product Manager at Hyundai, said: "At Hyundai we believe in new thinking, which is why we decided to take a new approach with this durability test. You have to be pretty brave to subject a car to the most rigorous quality testers in the world, and the monkeys certainly gave our i30 a thorough examination!

"The fact that it survived with only a few scrapes is testament to the way a modern Hyundai is designed and engineered. We really do give a monkey’s about building tough cars!"

 For more information about Knowsley Safari Park visit www.knowsleysafariexperience.co.uk or call 0151 430 9009.

Why the Lakeland Motor Museum is well worth the visit

ONE of the great things about the TVR Car Club's gathering in Cumbria last weekend was that I could pay another visit to the cracking Lakeland Motor Museum.

I've been before to the Newby Bridge site but not with a camera good enough to show off the cornucopia of classics they've got stashed away in there, which prove a mouthwatering draw for any motoring enthusiast, no matter what their marque of preference is.

The museum's laid out logically enough, going chronologically from the dawn of motoring right through to the Eighties and Nineties, with the treasured exhibits including the world's oldest TVR, the Cumbrian-engineered Ford Focus rally car campaigned by the late, great Colin McCrae and a delivery-mileage, and a Bentley owned by speed record ace Donald Campbell, fittingly finished off in Bluebird colours.

In fact, speaking of the Bluebird legacy the site has an entire section dedicated to the machines of Malcolm and Donald Campbell, which is worth the admission price on its own. Seeing some of the Bluebirds boats and cars brought together in the same place for the first time, if you've got a passion for speed and machines, is a stirring sight.

The museum, as my emphatically non-petrolhead girlfriend told me afterwards, something you don't even have to be into cars to enjoy...

 

More information about the museum can be found by visiting the website or by calling 015395 30400. The postcode for your satnav, if you're thinking of going, is LA12 8TA.

Would you Adam and Eve it? The quirky name for the new baby Vauxhall

ARE you the sort of person who gives your pride and joy a name, like you would a pet?

Don't worry, you're in good company if you do - as an enthusiast, I've always thought giving a name to a car shows you've formed an emotional attachment to it, which is why in true Gone In Sixy Seconds tradition all the sportier motors I've owned have always had girls' names. Richard Hammond infamously christened an old Opel as Oliver on an episode of Top Gear after he got attached to it. Plenty of people I know have given all sorts of cars all sorts of names.

Vauxhall, with their new small car, have decided to go a step further and actually name it for you. Their new hatchback, on sale, next year, is not a Corsa or an Agila. It is called Adam!

Adam is the company's answer to what the car industry calls the ‘premium urban hatchback' - in plain English the likes of the MINI and the Fiat 500, which over the past decade have proved runaway hits for the companies which created them. In the past few years plenty of companies have tried the same trick of putting executive car luxuries into supermini-sized packages, with Alfa Romeo offering you the MiTo, Audi the A1 and Citroen the DS3.

Although few details of the car's looks or specification are available at the moment - word is that it'll be unveiled officially at this year's Paris Motorshow in the autumn - the car will be pricier than the larger Corsa model and have an emphasis on offering a premium feel to the interior, a sportier drive and more of an emphasis on styling. Adam will be offered as a four-seat, three-door hatchback, and is rumoured to be around the same size as the current MINI.

The company is aiming to attract more affluent, image-conscious customers who would currently consider the likes of the MINI and the 500, but are turned off by the current Corsa and Agila.

Will you be welcoming Adam with open arms? Do you give your cars names? Let us know what you think by leaving a comment below...

The easy way to work out what you're getting for your gallon

THE pensioners in their mollycuddled Nissan Micras powered passed me as I puffed uselessly up the incline. My 40-year-old car, despite looking a bit sporty, doesn't really do hills.

It didn't really help that I was a bit nervous this time last Sunday. You'll probably already know that I've got an old MG and I've been on all sorts of adventures with it, but in the two year it's spent under my wing it's not once ventured beyond the fields of West Lancashire. Mainly because I wasn't entirely convinced it'd go much further.

But there's a first time for everything and as I gingerly ventured onto the M6 and pointed that never-ending bonnet northwards I was keen to find out not just whether my MG BGT could make it to places outside Lancashire without conking out on the hard shoulder. I also wanted to answer - and stay with me on this one - the all important question of fuel economy.

If you've ever wanted to work out what your car actually does to the gallon - and it's worth doing, because most of the manufacturers' figures are a tad optimistic - there's an easy way of doing it. Simply brim your tank until the fuel pump clicks, drive it around for 100 miles or so, and brim it again. Even though you've got to faff about converting the amount from litres into UK gallons you can fairly easy, and accurately, work out whether your car's as frugal as it should be.

I've done it with each and every one of my motors - in fact, I did with the MX-5 the other week, which despite being driven with a particularly weighty right foot around the windy roads of Wales still returned 34mpg. The best I've managed so far was with my old Renault 5, which despite having been to the moon and back mileage-wise still knocked up a respectable 43 to the gallon. Your car, if you're sensible and drive a diesel hatch like everyone else, should do at least 50 on a good run.

So what about the MG, which uses two enormous carburettors to shovel high-octane petrol into an engine designed in the Fifties and made largely from pig iron? Well, on a 150 mile run on motorways, country lanes and the A6 through rural Lancashire it managed 25.3mpg. Pretty poor compared to a new car, I'll admit, but not bad for an older model I'm still smitten with.

What's more, my car did an entire journey to somewhere far away, and back again, and didn't break down! A summer of adventures await...

TVR Car Club show at the Lakeland Motor Museum

TVR fans were in for a treat this weekend when fans of Blackpool's finest rocked up at the Lakeland Motor Museum for a special show.

Members of the TVR Car Club travelled to the museum, based at Newby Bridge in southern Cumbria, for a triple celebration. Enthusiasts had travelled from across the north west not only to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the company's M-branded sports cars, and the 30th anniversary of their wedge-shaped successors, but could also see the oldest surviving TVR, which is kept at the museum.

Life On Cars took these pictures at the event:

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