Have a Seat.

My job’s a funny one. Travelling around to drive new cars you often end up with the same people every couple of weeks – this little community has built up around launches and you get to know people that little better every time, until they get a new job and someone else takes their place.

It seems to me there’s this unwritten rule of ‘what happens on launch, stays on launch’. A few stories escape of minibar binges or cars written off, and I’ve seen first-hand the carnage that alcohol can wreak, with people dancing on tables or waking up with Slovenian women in their hotel room.

But you get these signpost events in the journalistic calendar – motor shows, one-off specials and especially the end of term Seat Christmas party. Tonight the latter took place – a trendy confection of who’s who in motoring journalism crammed into an Oxford St. hotspot with recently former F1 driver Jaime Alguersuari pumping out obnoxiously loud music from the decks and a bar positively vomiting drinks into people. It was great.

Of course, I can barely talk now that I’ve spent an entire evening gossiping at the top of my voice (subtly, of course) and I’m aching having spent the whole evening sucking in my stomach so that my waistcoat didn’t explode. There are definitely things to speak of – the monthly consumer mag editor dancing like an ageing lesbian, the up-and-comer getting progressively slurrier and the seasoned pro on a queasy prowl for the ladies. But we will leave those suitably vague to avoid any lawsuits. Of course, I left fairly early, so I'm looking forward to hearing about whatever fights, vomiting and embarrassing activities have gone on.

What was really nice was to see unseen rivals and colleagues gathering in one place to have fun and relax in each other’s company. So there we have it – the Seat party has happened, now we can have Christmas.

I am an official friend of the environment.

I was recently engaged as a co-driver in the RAC Future Car Challenge by the indubitable Hannah from Green Car Design. It was quite the thrill, going up against some of the best drivers in the world. And Damon Hill was there too. Haha, see what I did there?

Damon was driving the same car as us, a Peugeot 508 e-HDI, and I was determined to smash him. I’m competitive like that, you see. More out of our league was television’s favourite North Face-wearing building site visitor Kevin McCloud. He was driving a sexy little EV prototype that looked far less comfortable and warm than our Peugeot, but infinitely greener.

The route took us on the reverse route of the following day’s London to Brighton veteran car run – the unadulterated poisonous clouds of death the classics would be belching out clearly offset by our environmentally friendly ways. We started off at the coast and made our way up to central London, where the adoring crowds were waiting for us in Regent Street.

It’s massively nerve-wracking, doing eco-driving. You don’t want to be driving inefficiently, slowing down for red lights or other cars. You become relentlessly focused on the task in hand, supremely selfish and obsessed with your dashboard readouts. The biggest problem was getting stuck behind EVs – their optimum speed was something approaching walking distance, but our turbodiesel engine was better at higher speeds, with double digits.

Once we had arrived in Regent Street there was a terrifically nerve-wracking wait* to find out the results. And do you know what? My neurotic competitiveness had won the day – we beat our competitors to a surprising class win. I can’t even remember the figures by this stage – I think our MPG was in the mid-60s somewhere.

Let's be frank though. It’s not the facts, but the winning – and beating Damon Hill – that counts.

*By nerve-wracking wait I mean interminable train journey to Brighton to pick up the car I’d gone down in.

Stuck on an Italian motorway.

"Er, help?"

"Schwibbledy bon giorno telepass."

"I have no Italian, could you say something in English, please?"

"SCHWIBBLEDY BON GIORNO TELEPASS."

"WE HAVE. A TELEPASS."

"SCHWIBBLEDY BON GIORNO TELEPASS!"

We were getting nowhere. I was sitting in the facelifted Mazda 3 MPS with the internet's Alex Goy in he driving seat, apparently on the verge of sobbing down an Italian motorway intercom.

We had survived the Mazda's violent tendency to throw you into the path of oncoming traffic under acceleration, and we had survived my somewhat perky driving style. To die here, to die now, in the corner of some unknown Italian tollbooth... Well, it would just be perverse.

To die in a Mazda 3, that would be something. Nowhere near James Dean's Porsche Speedster on the scale of cool ways to go. They may have tinkered with the driving dynamics, fettled the dampers and reprofiled the front bumper to shave 0.01 off the drag coefficient, but they had done nothing to make James Dean want to crash one. Though he may not have had a choice - seriously, that torque steer...

Something in Alex's voice, the faint quivering tremor, the fact that he had just reversed the car out of one toll lane to try the next Telepass booth and nearly triggered a minor RTA - the stoic man at the other end of the intercom marked HELP in blocky yellow letters took compassion where I could only laugh and take the handbrake off so that we rolled imperceptibly forwards as Alex hung out of the window yelling. The barrier, once forever blocking our way to freedom, lifted up. Zoom zoom.

I am in Portugal.

I am in Portugal, strolling round a seaside car park for several minutes. I say strolling. I mean gasping for air next to the new Kia Rio. It's humid.

Enter a policeman, stage left.

"Hola, Portuguese?"

"Er, no, sorry. English."

"Why so many of this cars?" 

"It's a...NEW. CAR. (steering wheel gesture) Laaaunch. First time. EVER. (expansive arm gesture nearly hits policeman in face) Driving." 

"Ah. You come from England to drive? Nice life!"

Despite being a patronising twat, I come away from this moment of bonding and international reconciliation with a warm glow. It was really hot out there, you know?

But the car was surprisingly good and it is a nice life. Although perhaps this is me being patronising again, because Kia has been on a roll of late. I love the new Picanto - it's one of the few cars I could see me spending my own limited amounts of money on to own.

The best thing about the car was far and away the new three-cylinder 1.1-litre diesel engine that Kia has developed. I'm still struggling for accurate adjectives writing up my roadtest for the mag, but it thrums with charm and has more accessible torque than any of its sister engines in the Rio range, petrol or diesel. It is basically magical. With those other engines you find yourself hunting up and down the gearbox for the sweet spot like an addict in search of the most fleeting fix. But the 1.1? It is that sweet spot.

The handling isn't too bad, either - there's minimal feel to the steering and you can occasionally lose where the front wheels are pointed, but the Rio doesn't wash out into understeer at the sight of a mildly tricky corner, it just seems to cling gamely on. If they can knock together a half-decent performance version of the Rio I reckon they'll be onto a winner. No really.

Kia's inexorable march to the top (it and sister company Hyundai are joint fourth in the list of top 10 global car manufacturers) has a narrative that bangs on endlessly about the mojo that formerAudidesignerPeterSchreyer has brought to the table, but the company still needs to come up with the goods in other areas. It's well on the way - and besides, the police like it.

Attacked by a zombie.

To tell you the truth, what really tickles me about Peugeots is the badge. They redesigned it not long ago to have a fresh business face and all that shizzle, simplifying and funkifying as is the corporate wont these days.

Jaguar has done something similar with its unfortunately nicknamed ‘Growler’ which appears on the front of its cars. Personally I always preferred the leaping cat to the gurning gargoyle, but the former does conjure up certain images of 1950s limousines, so I can see why they went bling.

The Peugeot badge, though…or the zombie lion, as I call it. It genuinely does look like a rampaging zombie wildcat. I’ve never really thought of animals being zombies, but why can’t the walking undead have pets? If Siegfried and Roy ever stalked the earth hunting for brains they’d need something on a chain to keep them company, no? To tell you the truth Zombie Lion does scare me a bit.

The Growler seems like a cool dude - he wears shades, after all - he seems like a mentalist car badge that can be reasoned with. Zombie Lion less so. He would chew off your face and use your femur as a toothpick before remembering he was only going to ask you what the time was. And it must kill him that he's stuck on the front of a Peugeot - no wonder he's mad. Grr.

I do a podcast whilst on a racetrack. Oo-er.

I recently got to spend some quality time on a nice racetrack up in the north somewhere (the Midlands) with television's Charlie Butler-Henderson of the great Butler-Henderson clan. He's a racing driver, who also does some telly. He's quite a good racing driver. It was lots of fun to drive around the racing track with him giving me some tips and encouraging me to explore the talents of the Seat Leon FR+.

It's not the hottest Leon, but I reckon it's the most fun. It's all fast and that, with nice handling and Volkswagen's twin-clutch gearbox that does gear changes REALLY QUICKLY. Like faster than it takes for you to read this. It just reaches that nice balance between a spunky car you can have fun in, and a spunky car that will land you in prison.

Anyway, I sort of digress - the main reason I bring all of this up is not just to brag about all of the fun I've been having, but also to point you in the direction of a PODISODE that I recorded with Alex Goy. Well, he recorded it with me. It's his podisode. But he graciously allowed me to be a background artiste and converse with him as we drove around the circuit. That was also fun.

Have a listen here. Go on.

Stranded on a Nazi island

I would say that you've not lived until you've been shuttled to a deserted rocky island littered with sinister ruins of Nazi battlements and anti-aircraft guns, intimidated by the drug-addled owner of a shabby seafood restaurant (I wasn't quite sure whether the 'danger of death' signs accounted for the sharply poignant military area or Ozzy Osbourne's langoustines) and then harassed by the most ear-pearcingly irksome folk band for many minutes between courses. 

Indeed, I wasn't the only one saying that the Peugeot 3008 HY4 launch was the most batshit crazy we'd been on...

My driving partner for the launch, James of Car Dealershire, asked for some tabasco sauce to go with his oysters. The answer? "I don't have any of that shit, you'll eat it how I tell you to eat it," delivered in the most scouringly hoarse French whisper you could imagine. We were a little bit scared of him. Also, his hands were grubby and he'd been on that island since March. No wonder he was insane.

Bizarrely enough after all that, the car itself was neither here nor there, the automotive equivalent of a fridge. You could be impressed by its chilling capacity, but you'd never love it (although its chilling capacity was remarkably diminished every time the car switched to batteries only and turned off the air conditioning in 30 degree heat).

That said, the world's first diesel hybrid will no doubt sell a few on the back of its impressive numbers and in spite of its depressing drive. Incidentally, I'm always impressed by the ability of communications-types to pepper their presentations with such choicely inappropriate words as 'dynamic', and 'premium'.

But seriously - there was an old French man in a kilt dancing on a table and playing the bagpipes. I might not remember the car so well (thankfully I made some notes), but I'll always remember the Nazi island, Irish folk singing and a tremendously dodgy tummy.

Frankfurt in stats and shades of humour.

The Frankfurt motor show in rubbish statistics:

3 days gone
102 litres of petrol used getting there and back
5 countries traversed
9 empty plastic bottles found in the back of the car
1,119 pictures taken
1 Bratwurst
12 cups of coffee
0 blisters
0 words written - must get that sorted quickly

I was just reading Ben Barry's liveblog for CAR magazine (not as good as mine, obvs) to find out what happened, because I genuinely can't remember half the show despite  having walked round it at least twice. It's the sort of sensory overload the CIA employ to such devastating effect when making new friends.

Anyway - at 12.28pm he mentions the Jaguar C-X16 concept car which he seems to think is great (I think it's a bit boring and derivative myself, but don't tell anyone), but he does mention a little tip from Jaguar which is that the Growler (pun probably intended) badge on the front of the car is wearing glasses. I wasn't sure about this little titbit but...

It's true.

I have raked through my impressive back catalogue of 1,200 pictures from Frankfurt and only spotted the glasses thanks to that blog entry. Maybe the concept isn't so bad after all...

Frankfurt motor show - the (semi-a) live blog.

[my Frankfurt motor show 2011 as it happened...]

Monday 12 September 2011

6.44am - I am finally packed and ready to go. I'll be taking the Audi A1 longtermer from the office and driving it all the way to Germany for this evening, via Dover, France, Belgium and the tiniest sliver of the Netherlands. I am already knackered - the wind was awfully loud last night and kept me awake. Fingers crossed, the ferries are still running.

8.52am - I have arrived at the ferry terminal. I love getting the ferry, although it's been about 10 years since I crossed the Channel the old-fashioned way. It's a touch sodding windy, so I suspect you'll be able to dip a finger in the water from the top deck. Should be about five hours to Frankfurt once I get to the other side, although I suspect I'm going to end up stopping at every novel fast food place I see along the way...

9.58am - Bored. Still sat waiting to get on the 10am ferry. I wonder if it will leave on time.

10.03am - Still here.

10.17am - Yeah, still here.

10.22am - It's a good job I don't have anywhere to be.

10.29am - Phew.

11.07am - My new-found (no really) optimism was misplaced, but we are finally on the move over an hour late. The water looks hideous - I'd buckle up if I could. Otherwise it's time to settle down with a coffee and a book.

2.58pm - Sheesh, it's 3 o'clock already. The boat took more than two-and-a-half hours because of the massive swells, but I'm finally motoring on. The A1 clearly enjoys driving on the right, it has averaged 57mpg so far through France and Belgium.

7.16pm - Those lost two hours have really set my day back. I've already missed the Honda Civic reveal in Frankfurt and I'm only in Aachen. I started out trying to be economical and get to Frankfurt on one tank but I've already lost the will to live and I'm getting slightly crazed. POOOWER!

10.21pm - Bleurgle. I am finally in my hotel about four hours after I expected to be. Phew. Only the 14 hours on the road. It was lifted at the end by the magnificent yet terrifying stretches of open autobahn. I got the A1 up to an indicated 123mph several times before the wind got the better of it. Seems that's its terminal velocity.

It was happy cruising along at about a hundred, but above that everything starts to get a bit too light and drifty. Ruinous on the fuel too, but I think it was probably worth it just this once... Anyway - time for bed, it's going to be an early start.

Tuesday 13 September 2011

7.04am - Thought I'd live life on the edge and set my alarm as late as possible. I've got half an hour to get ready and leave for the show venue...

9.18am - I have arrived at the show. It's massive. Bigger than Liechtenstein. Just walking to the Seat stand to meet the boss got me sweating like a beast. A coffee and a glass of water have got me raring to go, but this place is going to break me.

12.50pm - Sat on the Citroen stand. Having a coffee. You really have to pace yourself at these things.

1.54pm - I've spent a considerable amount of time today (between coffees) just trying to work out where I am. I bet they don't have this problem in Liechtenstein.

3.36pm - I have stopped for a little sit down by the BMW stand - I say stand, it's so big it has its own weather system - I thought I was feeling light-headed because of all the walking, but I think it's more to do with the fumes belching out of the M5 doing laps around the ceiling.

6.32pm - Sheesh, what a day. Just on the shuttle bus back to the car park. I can feel my feet, which is either good or means I haven't been working hard enough. There's been such sensory overload that I can barely remember anything in the show, but I'm going hypnotherapy and a few notes should start to bring it all back.

7.41pm - Well that was horrible. I was heading over to a Hyundai thing in Frankfurt centre - left the Audi at the convention centre car park and got the tram through to the main railway station. I was only two streets along from the station when things started to get weird: sex clubs, a gang of Turkish guys fighting, prostitutes touting for business, a woman crouched on the pavement lighting up a crack pipe. The usual.

I've never felt so suddenly unsafe and obviously out of place, I was compelled to turn around and head for the tram stop again. I've always been perfectly at ease in Germany and have travelled a lot here, but not even in London have I felt so intimidated and threatened. I know I'm a bit of a wimp but gosh is Frankfurt a dump.

Wednesday 14 September 2011

6.56am - Another day, another go round the Frankfurt motorshow. This time I've got to hobble round taking the pictures I missed yesterday and maybe actually sitting in some cars if I get time. Getting in should be quicker this morning - hopefully I won't get lost on the motorway again.

8.22am - I got lost on the motorway again. The important thing is, I'm here. German signposting is frankly shocking, I can't figure out how they get anywhere. I can't figure out how I get anywhere - I genuinely couldn't tell you how I ended up at Frankfurt Airport this morning.

2.19pm - Gosh, I'm properly exhausted now. I've left the main venue to fetch the car and start the epic drive back to the UK. I'll blog about this later probably, but the show was strangely muted for me. I find it hard to pick out any highlights for two reasons: firstly anything good is always revealed before the event and secondly there wasn't really much unveiled that was exciting. Hmm.

11.12pm - I ran out of internet juice, so no updates for me this afternoon. Finally back in the UK after an exhausting trip - won't speak too soon though, still got a couple of hours left before I get home.

Thursday 15 September 2011

1.35am - Finally home. Must. Get. Sleep. Got to be in the office tomorrow morning.

I go to a green motor show.

"Is the Touareg available to drive?"

"Yes sir, it's a hybrid. It has batteries, which it runs on below 30mph and when you brake and things like that it charges them up."

Well yes, OK, but I just want to jump behind the wheel of the thing and crawl round the Battersea track for a couple of minutes to get a feel for it. But apparently I need to read through an entire A4 page of legalese and sign my life away before providing some contact details for marketing purposes. Before I can get the car going there are even more minutes of being shown the controls and the hybrid oeuvre is explained again in a nutshell.

It's not just Volkswagen, in fairness - it's everywhere. "Have you driven an electric vehicle before, sir?" is asked at Nissan, but apparently doesn't change the response. I have to be driven round the track in the Leaf once before I can have a go - making sure to pay close attention to where the steering wheel, pedals, etc, are. It's amazing how conventional an unconventional car can be. Indicator stalks! How whimsical. Renault won't even let you have a go in the intriguing Twizy (which is a lot smaller than it looks in the pictures), despite it being sat by the track all day.

I did get to drive some interesting cars that I'd not yet had a go in, but the Ecovelocity event ("The low-carbon motor festival!") served to remind me of the civility of arrangements between journalists and manufacturers - I truly love my job, driving the latest cars and informing my readers what they're like, and in fact it's not just civil, but privileged. It's a heady responsibility that a car maker would let hacks loose in their newest prides and joys on actual streets with proper traffic. Hopefully it will stay that way, too, because EV drivers are super slow and Battersea power station just isn't quite there for real-world driving.