Once Around The Block:- New Mercedes-Benz B-Class, LHD Flavour.

The New Mercedes-Benz B Class is scheduled for UK release very soon, but MB took the initiative, unusually, to bring a handful of European market machines over so that their sales network could have a play. It’s a sensible move, really, to ensure that your sales drones are basically familiar with the product before you expect them to commence shifting units.

It’s also great to be able to offer your valued customers a sneak preview of what lies just around the corner. All this, though was partially lost on me. Truth is, I didn’t really care about the corporate justification of the whole endeavour. I was too busy revelling in the fact that I had a car to hoon about in that was Left Hand Drive.

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Driven #35:- Alfa Romeo Giulietta

 

I owned an Alfa Romeo for an unacceptably brief period of time, but I can still legitimately say that; “I have owned an Alfa Romeo”. Being truthful, though, I haven't. My Alfa was a late 156, a beautifully styled, gloriously appointed machine indeed, but quite a long way removed from the “proper” Alfas of the old school.

I mean Suds. I mean Alfettas and GTVs, and the forgotten 90 and Six. Some may have had more memorable styling than the others but, universally, the engines, engineering and spirit of the Alfa was endemic in every one of them. Today, a name from their illustrious past graces the catalogues again, but is it a desperate cash-in or a triumphant return to past glories?

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Driven #32:- Honda S2000

Note: I have also published the content below on Hooniverse.com

I'm not easily embarrassed. I can't afford to be, really; my height, Sideshow Bob feet, stupid hair and laughable fashion sense combined with my propensity for making stupid jokes make being thick skinned an essential defence mechanism. As a result, I can do things that are quite phenomenally idiotic because I don't fear looking a complete fool.

Usually.

On this beautiful sunny June day, I am in the company of a svelte, trim Honda S2000 roadster on a Sainsbury's fuel forecourt, but instead of enjoying all the envious glances, I wish the ground would swallow me up. For all my experience driving the good, bad and ugly, never before have I so comprehensively failed to open a fuel filler cap.

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Missed Gears

Why, after being partially responsible for the first car ever to hit the road, and after a hundred years of vehicle production, many of which have passed into legend, can Mercedes-Benz still not produce a decent Manual Gearbox?

Mercedes have long had it in for fans of the row-your-own 'box, we can have a manual in some models if we're desperate, but we have to make do with a foot-operated parking brake neccesitating the rapid growth of a third foot if you want to perform a smooth hill-start. That's OK, it's a foible we have learnt to adjust to, even joke about with each other.

And it's not as if they seriously want to do away with them altogether, the new E-Class diesel is marketed heavily on the promise of low emissions, even lower when a slushbox is omitted. To remain class competitive you have to offer a nice modern six-speed gearbox, with nicely chosen ratios to compliment the power delivery of the car. On paper MB have done just this.

But it's terrible.

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