So, what does the fall of Petroplus mean for you, as a motorist?

Well, Petroplus supply 10% of the country’s current fuel, and as of today all fuel sales have been halted with immediate effect. So, we can understand why scaremongering newspapers (we’re looking at you, Daily Mail) are jumping up and down screeching about fuel shortages, strikes, and (if the rhetoric is anything to go by) the impending doom of the human race.

Still, sinister hyperbole aside, is this something to be worried about? Are drivers suddenly going to see a hike a cost and a fall in fuel availability.

According to The Department of Energy and Climate Change, this isn’t the case. Their spokesman is on record saying:

“The refinery remains operational. We understand that a process is underway to put in place the necessary commercial arrangements to deliver product into the market. Companies have already made alternative arrangements to ensure adequate supply of products are available while these commercial arrangements are being put in place.”

In addition BP have confirmed that there are no immediate supply issues across their retail network, which should ensure that the current fuel market remains stable for the timebeing. Alternativbe funding for the refinary or suppliers will need to be found, but right now motorists shouldn’t be worrying.

The temptation is always to stock up, to queue up and panic buy in advance of the fuel apocalypse. But here at THE Blog About Cars we think it is sensible to sit back and see how the situation develops – as right now it looks like we’ll be OK.

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The scrumptious NSX

Honda (or Acura for the Detroit Motor Show) has confirmed that the NSX Supercar is going to be reborn, with a launch date planned for three years time. It’s because of this that the unveiling of the concept was so widely talked about, and it certainly didn’t disappoint. The end result was undeniably stunning, making use of the typical Honda styling points that were never used to their full advantage in cars such as the reworking of the Civic. As well as the distinctive looks the NSX will feature that Honda petrol-electric hybrid powertrain that the brand keeps harping on about, as well as the SH-AWD (Super Handling All Wheel Drive) - essentially a V6 for the rear wheels (with direct fuel injection) and two electric motors mounted at the front.

The surprisngly popular Q3 Vail

The Q3 Vail is one of those cars that will only excite you if you’re heading off to do some skiing with the family and want to buy a car specifically for the occasion. OK, so that’s a little harsh, but the winter-sports theme to the Audi concept is impossible to ignore. As for the car itself, it’s nothing we haven’t seen versions of before - 2.5-litre, 310bhp five-cylinder petrol engine, seven-speed S tronic transmission and 295lb-ft of torque, enough to deal with the snow on its off-road tyres. It’s stylish, just the right amount of powerful, and targeted at a specific audience – so there seems very little doubt that this will do well when it is released onto the market.

Sexy stuff from the Lexus LF-LC

Well, you won’t miss the Lexus LF-LC in a crowded room. Staying with the brands recent movement in the direction of stylish superconcepts with a distinctive brand to them, the LF-LC has a curvy front grille and the sort of concept headlights that you just know will be watered down for any future Lexus models. Either way, it’s the sort of wow car that elicits an immediately passionate response in most people upon first viewing (whether love or hate is up to you), and the  FR setup–front engine, rear-wheel drive makes use of that now-familiar hybrid drive. It’s a wave themed beaut that will be interesting to watch for clues of upcoming Lexus models and styling, albeit hopefully without the tacky looking plasticky styling.

More fun for the VW Beetle this year!

The Beetle has got a big year coming up, what with the release of the most controversial Beetle redesign since they relaunched all those years ago. We’re massive fans of the new look here with that low down sporty sweep and the upping of the aggression ante, but we can’t help feeling like the e-Bugster hot rod concept that VW were raving about is little more than a nod in the direction of all the environmentally friendly critics that were hating on the brand in 2011. That said the battery-electric E-Bugster has a range of 110 miles, and will accelerate from 0-60mph in 10.9sec, planting it securely in the range of current electric cars if it ever makes it to market.

Volvo go hybrid. Again.

Sticking with the (predictable) electric and hybrid themes at this year’s Detroit Auto Show was the Volvo XC60 Hybrid Plug-in. The super safe plug-in hybrid is an indication of the route Volvo are looking to move in with regards to the US market, and their stats make for some interesting reading - a 35-mile all-electric range, and a recharging time of 3.5 hours from a 220V outlet. That’s 7.5 hours charging for most 110V outlets, but even so they are starting to make moves to correct the issues that the American consumers are most likely to be concerned about for hybrid drives. Other than that this is yet another safe and kind of attractive Volvo, expected on the marketing in 2014-2016.

The future of the Prius?

Our final pick is the Toyota NS4 concept, a plug-in hybrid that ties in with the brands existing eco-friendly credentials. I perhaps would have liked to see something more different from the Japanese Automaker, but the styling is certainly sleek-yet-Toyota, and the attitude more pronounced. Aerodynamics is the name of the game here (note the lack of wing-mirrors), and the shape is tailored to reduce drag and improve fuel efficiency. As for the tech, the NS4 boasts an advanced plug-in hybrid powertrain that is being kept strictly under-wraps, but which we would hope to exceed the current Prius offering of 135mpg and drop the fuel emissions down another notch.

Which has been your favourite car at the Detroit Motor Show?

Anyway, according to the BBC Breaking News account on Twitter, Saab have this morning filed for bankruptcy following all those months of trouble, after their latest attempt at finding funding has been blocked by General Motors.

We’ll bring you more news and as when it comes!

Such is the news with Saab. The company have been mired in financial difficulties for nigh on a year, and in reality for probably even longer. They haven’t paid their workers, they’ve had massive governmental handouts, but all to no avail, as the British division (Saab GB) has gone into administration. Now, it isn’t the whole god awful company, but it’s definitely a step in the direction of everything coming to an end.

As for now? Well, everything hangs in the balance for the 58 Saab dealerships scattered around the country, with everyone waiting to see if the company will mange to secure the funding it needs to keep in business.

Do you think Saab GB will survive?

This is the start of a new short series on this writer’s view of how to make the best Sports/Saloon/City/Hot Hatch/Green/GT Car. They are recipes, open to personalisation to suit different tastes – but without these basic elements the end result will be like watery packet gravy, looking about right from a distance and utterly disappointing when you eat it!

In this first piece I’ll delve into what goes on behind the scenes at an automotive manufacturer in order to engineer any car, and more importantly to try to pin down the best mindset to develop something with “soul”.

First off, of course, what exactly is “soul”? Despite what many people may think, any car can have a little soul, and those with it will be far more than instruments of personal travel, getting people simply from A to B. If you think that alone is what a car is for, then I hope can open your mind up to a few other possibilities.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines soul as: Emotional or intellectual energy or intensity. I think that describes what you find in the best cars as well. It’s not generally something you can put your finger on, just a combination of factors that make driving it feel a little special, which turn driving into an enjoyable experience, or even a hobby.

For many years this feeling was built into cars via subjective development – all based on an engineer’s intuition and years of experience. Cars such as the Jaguar E-Type we taken on weekend jaunts to North Wales, and changes were made based on the driving experience. Once they were implemented, back out the car went – engineering sounds like it was much more fun back in the swinging 60s! After all, the soul of a “perfect” car is all about the human perception of all sorts of factors relating to the input of the random environment that is the natural world. It’s a logical way to do it, yet it is very labour, cost and time intensive for the modern Auto industry. Of course, this is possibly why so many 60s cars are considered to have soul – although I speculate that perhaps this is due to quirks and flaws which arguably are not equivalent to the concept of “soul” itself. After all, character endears you to something/someone; soul makes you fall in love.

In the 21^st century, of course, we have these wonderful things called computers. Sadly many people, especially non-hands-on engineers, frequently believe computers are a replacement for the old and outdated, ways. Everything that goes on in a car can be explained by physics and thus can be replicated by maths, lots and lots of maths – exactly what computers are for. That’s the theory (and I agree that it’s a sound theory), however what seems to be generally forgotten by those developing a car in the virtual world, is that we cannot yet (and I seriously hope never will be able to) fully explain human perception and reaction to the result of these calculations. The key point is this – perfect, isn’t actually perfect. Perfect does exist, but it can’t be fully defined, and it cannot be calculated as there are more variables than terms in the equations. Perfect certainly isn’t found by having the highest set of spec numbers on a piece of paper – life is not Top Trumps.

Imagination is the eye of the soul...

So how, in the modern world with its need to develop new cars as quickly and cheaply as possible, do you develop a car with soul? Well it’s not an easy one.

To get the soul wanted, you need a real vehicle to drive and assess, to make changes to and see if it feels better. But prototype cars cost money, a lot of money, and so the fewer you have, the more money you have as profit to make shareholders happy (yes I am cynical, it goes with being an engineer!). So you start with something you know, a current model that’s similar to your new one, a mule. You make changes to it, and make a lot of objective AND subjective measurements to start to understand how measured changes relate to feel – the holy grail is to find some measured quantity that changes proportionally to how the car feels. Once you’ve defined all these things, how they change and affect feel, you use the computer as a tool to combine all of these things together – this is CAE, Computer Aided Engineering – with Aided being the most important part. You make some changes in the CAE, and when you think you find something that gives a big change, one you’ll feel in the car, you replicate it on the mule. If it works, great, you have a correlated model that stands a chance of calculating what the car will do.

Emotions are the colors of the soul...

Now with this model you try and virtually build a new car that has a lot of the stuff that made the mule car feel good, and as little of the bad stuff as possible. It is a compromise, as all engineering is. For example, stiffer suspension to improve dynamic response generally increases the amount of road energy getting into the body, thus making the car louder. It’s all about happy mediums, the balance of not having any one variable perfect, but just enough of them all in perfect harmony. Then, when your CAE model has given you the perfect car, you build it. Which is when lots of people like me start running around like headless chickens whinging about CAE because the car isn’t ever what you hoped it’d be! But you understand the trends from the mule testing and CAE, so you tweak this, and you tweak that, and at the end (if you get it right) you give it soul.

Now for a reality check. This is near impossible. We now understand pretty much everything a car does, how it reacts, how to make it safe/secure/reliable/economic – there are too many known variables and if you consider them all, you get watery packet gravy. So what you do is this: forget everything that gets in the way of soul. Sadly this means you’ll end up with a car that most people won’t want, it’ll use too much fuel etc. But they never think about the value of what can’t be easily measured – smiles per mile, how good driving it makes you feel. Put them in a car with soul, and they’ll get it instantly, and if they have any passion in them, they’ll rebalance the scales in favour of having a car that makes them feel good. Then you’ll sell them by the bucket load, even though they’re not the sensible choice. The new MINI, Fiat 500 (especially the Abarth) and Land Rover Evoque are perfect examples of this.

Driving a car that makes you smile is worth more than can be measured.

The main problem is almost two thirds (62%) of what we currently pay for our fuel is to cover fuel duty and VAT costs. So here’s where we get slightly mathematical; consider that the average petrol price is currently around 134ppl (134.5 according to the AA, but for the sake of making a point let’s round it down). Now 62% of that equates to around 83ppl; so for every full tank, of say a Ford Fiesta (42 Litres), you are spending £34.86 out of your total £56.28 on taxes!

It’s starting to get ridiculous, and others are agreeing; with 87% of those surveyed concerned about the rising cost of petrol, and of that 9% don’t even drive! However, a little leeway is being made; with a debate forced for MP’s to discuss the excessive charges next week, thanks to a FairFuelUK petition signed by over 100,000 people!

Subaru BRZ

The new Subaru will use a 2.0L Boxer engine, which will actually feature a front engine, rear-wheel drive set up; strange for a Subaru. With this car and its kin the Toyota FT-86 II being dubbed a Toyobaru collaboration it should be hard to choose between the two models when they go into production.

Toyota FT-86 II

I have to say both cars really look stunning; now we simply need await the yet announced pricing!

Auto Express carried out a survey further validating this point; with the findings that many car manufacturers provided the reasoning that the DAB standard “isn’t yet high enough” for not having them within their cars. To be fair; it isn’t, with only high end cars having them fitted or offering the option, purely because no one would stump up the cash for them at a lower level.

There is a definite need for some intervention, with incentives and help, from the government here, but what’s the likelihood of that in current times? How much would you pay for a digital radio in your car, and do you think the changeover is necessary?

Nissan Juke-R Concept

Well who needs speculation; Nissan have unveiled their Juke-R concept, with an elaborate body shape and paintwork to say the least. The concept was created by Ray Mallock Limited on behalf of Nissan and along with the reveal comes the news that two Juke-R’s will be created; one left-hand and one right-hand drive.

Testing will then follow next month, with the two cars being put through their paces with the hope of refining them into viable production models to go on sale. The Juke-R required a near-rebuild to incorporate the GT-R’s drivetrain, as well as new Brembo brakes and a custom roll cage; on top of the obvious modifications to the body and wheels (now including the GT-R’s 20” wheels).

To contain all of this sports car performance the Juke-R also employs the GT-R’s traction control, dynamics logic and engine control system as well as it touch-screen interface.

Yes it’s a little unrefined now, but I definitely see something behind Nissan’s newest venture; lets just see what they come up with after some testing!