Month: January 2024

There’s no getting around it – being on a motorcycle is more dangerous than driving a car. You’re more exposed, more reliant on the good driving habits of other motorists and more susceptible to weather, too.

But that’s why having the right equipment can make all the difference. Not only does it boost protection in the event of a fall, but it’ll help to keep you dry and warm when the weather turns, well, British. So here, we’re going to take a look through some of the key items worth getting if you’re starting out on two wheels.

Helmet

Remarkably, a helmet is the only legal requirement for motorcyclists in the UK. However, it’s the most crucial bit of equipment that you’ll need. All helmets – to be legal in the UK – must comply with the British Standard BS 6658:1985 and carry the BSI Kitemark, UNECE Regulation 22.05 or a European Economic Area member standard offering at least the same safety and protection as BS 6658:1985, and carry a mark equivalent to the BSI Kitemark.

Now that might sound like a lot, so if you’re unsure, you can always ask a retailer or even get in touch with a manufacturer to find out. Helmets come in all shapes and sizes, including a ‘flip’ style which allows you to open the entire front (not just the visor) – just like this Shark one we’re looking at here.

Jacket

As we’ve mentioned, there’s no legal requirement to go above and beyond a helmet in terms of safety equipment. Still, it’s very strongly recommended that you wear specialist motorcycle clothing as it could really help protect you if the worst should happen.

A proper motorcycle jacket is a great place to start. This particular jacket includes abrasion-resistant material, and has a waterproof finish to help keep you dry. A zippable liner adds warmth, too. But most importantly, it includes protection at the shoulder, elbows and back to help cushion your fall should you have a spill.

Boots

Boots are an often-overlooked aspect of motorcycle safety. Motorbike-specific boots bring abrasion resistance and are reinforced to help in the event of an impact. They’re also available in different heights, with taller boots adding protection to your shins.

Not only do they help protect your feet, ankles and shins, but they also provide you with a stable platform on which to stand, brake and change gears. There are also loads of different ‘styles’ of boot, depending on the type of riding you’re doing. These ones pictured, for instance, are angled towards long-distance rides and touring.

Trousers

If you think about the process of riding a motorcycle, your legs are at the sharp end of things. They’re exposed to all of the wind blast, as well as gravel and stones which might fly up from the road. To help combat this – among other things – a good set of motorcycle-specific trousers can make all of the difference.

These Richa Colorado 2 Pro trousers are insulated with a removable liner so they’re warm when it’s cold, but they’re also waterproof. Importantly, they’ve got additional protection at the knees and you can add more to the hips, should you want to.

Gloves

If you come off your motorcycle, it’s instinctive to put your hands out first. It’s why gloves are so important, but they also help to keep your hands warm and dry. They’re right out in front of you, after all, so they’re in a direct impact with the wind and elements.

You might want to have two sets – a winter pair and a summer pair – as the former will be better insulated. Summer gloves still bring plenty of protection, but aren’t quite as thickly lined so your hands don’t get too hot.

Is there anything else I need to know?

Absolutely. All motorcycle kit sold in the UK should be sold with a rating which gives you an idea about how much protection it offers. All trousers, jacket or leathers should carry a small icon of a motorcycle and rider, as well as a rating from AAA-B, with the former being the highest possible level of protection.

When it comes to the armour within jackets and other garments, this will need to be tested to EN 1621 standards – and this code should be stamped on the armour itself. As always, if you have any questions, be sure to speak to a reputable seller.

Google is planning to introduce artificial intelligence (AI) systems into its Android Auto in-car technology.

Designed to allow drivers to ‘stay focused on the road’ while still being able to communicate safely when behind the wheel, the new version of Android Auto will use AI to automatically summarise long texts or ‘busy group chats’ to make them simpler to decipher when driving.

To reply, the system will be capable of suggesting relevant replies and actions that the driver will be able to take via the car’s main screen and, most importantly, without touching their smartphone. The tech giant says that the new Android Auto system will allow owners to ‘enjoy the best of their smartphone in the car’.

Google says that, for example, it would allow a driver to easily access a location shared by a friend and plug it into their Maps system at the press of a button. The system would also give drivers the option to let their friend know their estimated time of arrival all through a series of simplified inputs.

The update was announced alongside the introduction of Samsung’s new Galaxy S24 series smartphone. Google also added that future Android Auto systems would be able to reflect this new Galaxy’s appearance so that an owner’s personal wallpaper and icons would be transferred seamlessly to the car’s infotainment.

A number of carmakers already use Google’s Automotive system to power their in-car infotainment systems. Brands such as Volvo and Polestar both use the brand’s know-how as a basis for their own car entertainment systems, so there’s a likelihood that these new AI-based services could also be used by car manufacturers too.

The Ford Fiesta was the UK’s most-stolen car during 2023, according to new data.

In fact, sixteen of the Blue Oval’s famous small cars were pinched each day during 2023 – equating to one every 88 minutes.

Though the Fiesta was axed by Ford in July 2023, the number of examples stolen didn’t even contract in the latter half of the year when production ended. LeaseLoco, which issued a Freedom of Information request to the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) for stolen car data, says that increasing demand for second-hand Fiesta parts could also have contributed to thieves making them more of a target than before.

John Wilmot, CEO of LeaseLoco, said: “The Fiesta was unable to shake off the title as the UK’s most stolen car despite being axed by Ford in the summer of 2023.

“Logically, with fewer new Fiestas on UK roads, we might have expected to see thefts fall significantly last year. However, Ford’s decision to discontinue the popular small hatchback could well have sparked an increase in demand for second-hand parts, making them a hot target for thieves.

“DVLA figures revealed that thefts of Mercedes C Class were up almost 30% and total car thefts exceeded 60,000, as they did in 2022. Car owners need to continue to be extra vigilant to avoid becoming a victim of crime.”

In total, 64,087 vehicles of all makes and models were reported by the police to the DVLA during 2023, representing a near-five per cent increase on ht 61,106 cars pinched the year prior. This latest figure equates to 176 cars being stolen each day or one taken every eight minutes and 12 seconds in the UK last year.

Jaguar Land Rover’s attempts to curtail Range Rover Sport thefts appear to have helped, too, as thefts of this model were down by 29 per cent compared to the previous year. Thefts of the Mercedes C Class, in contrast, were 30 per cent higher than they were in 2022 at 1,786 vehicles in total while the most-stolen electric vehicle was the Kia Niro, of which 177 incidents of theft were recorded.

The Freedom of Information request also highlighted that 43 Ferraris were stolen during the year, alongside 51 Porsches and 14 Lamborghinis.

Hyundai has revealed an updated version of its Bayon – a compact crossover that rivals the Nissan Juke.

Only introduced in 2021, it follows Hyundai’s pattern of regularly updating its cars to keep them fresh. The Bayon is based on the same underpinnings as the firm’s i20 supermini and is often overlooked in its segment and the Hyundai range in general.

But this refreshed version aims to change that, with a much bolder design inspired by the South Korean carmaker’s newer models. Like the Kona, the Bayon gets a new front light bar stretching out across the bottom of the bonnet, while the front grille gets a new pattern as part of the revised front bumper.

Various new alloy wheel designs are available alongside four new paint colours; Lumen Grey, Meta Blue, Lucid Lime and Vibrant Blue.

Moving inside, the Bayon now comes with a large 10.25-inch touchscreen as standard, with this previously reserved for higher-spec models. It also now comes with over-the-air updates, while a large digital instrument cluster continues to be included as standard. LED interior lighting is also now the default.

Hyundai is yet to announce engine and trim details, but it’s expected to remain the same to the current Bayon, which comes with a 1.0-litre mild-hybrid petrol engine with outputs of either 99bhp or 118bhp. The same choice of SE Connect, Premium and Ultimate models will also likely be offered.

Expect prices to start from around £22,000 when orders open later in the year.

A paint colour can say a lot about a car and a person, and you should never underestimate the effort that manufacturers put into finding the right shade for a certain vehicle.

It can also provide an excellent opportunity for car manufacturers to let their hair down and get creative when it comes to coming up with the name.

Volkswagen UK recently took a different direction and let the public decide on the name for a bright yellow finish for its new T-Cross SUV on social media, with the result being the rather excellent Rubber Ducky (see above).

But this is far from the only great car paint name over the years, so let’s take a look at some other excellent choices.

James Blonde – Vauxhall Adam

Vauxhall wanted to turn up the fun factor when it introduced its Adam city car in 2013, specifically designed for younger drivers and with more than a million different personation combinations available.

Is creative teams were working at their finest when it came up with some of the colour names, too, with Saturday White Fever, White my Fire, Goldbusters and Orange Alert all available. But the highlight has to be the brilliant James Blonde (yellow).

Green Hell Magno – Mercedes-AMG GT R

Back in 2016 when Mercedes-AMG revealed its GT R, it was one of the firm’s most advanced and powerful cars to date, and was billed as a road-going version of the firm’s race-winning GT3 race car.

It needed a name to go with it, and Mercedes chose the brilliant Green Hell Magno paint colour. Not only does it give it a brutish name to go with the vibrant matte green finish, but also references the Nurburgring race circuit in Germany where much of the GT R’s development took place, which carries the nickname of the, you guessed it, the green hell.

Tangerine Scream – Ford Focus ST

Ford has made some great colours over the years, and these have often been accompanied by brilliant names too. A few highlights are Nitrous Blue from the last Focus RS as well as well as Grabber Orange from the Mustang.

But the best name has to to go ‘Tangerine Scream’, which came on the third-generation Focus ST. We’d struggle to come up with a better descriptor for this bright orange finish.

Hella Yella – Jeep Wrangler

Jeep is another car brand that is known for its creativity, and especially when it comes to its iconic Wrangler 4×4. Renowned for its off-roading ability, you might expect that Jeep only offers it in darker shades.

But far from it, as there have been a range of bright colours over the years, with the best-named being Hella Yella from the latest model. You could even have it in a bright green ‘Mojito’ finish, though these are almost impossible to find.

Norfolk Mustard – Lotus Elise

Lotus is known for its British roots, with the firm having a factory in Hethel, Norfolk for several decades. This was acknowledged with the brilliantly named ‘Norfolk Mustard’ that perfectly describes this flat yellow paint finish available on its sports cars.

It could be found on cars like the Series 4 Lotus Esprit and the first Lotus Elise from the 1990s. A similar colour continues to be the iconic paint finish for this brand, although it’s now only called ‘Hethel Yellow’ referencing the town in Norfolk where Lotus is based.

Green Tea Latte – Kia Soul

Kia had always been a fairly safe and sensible carmaker, but the 2009 Soul crossover aimed to inject a bit of fun into this South Korean brand, and was fairly successful at doing so.

Kia offered its Soul with plentiful personalisation and also some vibrant colours with the names to match. Highlights include Green Tea Latte and also ‘Vanilla Milkshake’ that accurately describes an off-white colour this Kia was available in.

Frozen Berry – Porsche Taycan

Porsche has one of the most extensive range of colours of any manufacturer, courtesy of its ‘Paint to Sample’ (PTS) range that essentially lets buyers choose whatever shade they’d like.

But perhaps Porsche’s best colour name is Frozen Berry, which is a light pink hue that you would certainly have to be bold to choose. It’s available on the standard colour palette of Porsche’s electric Taycan, though can be had as a PTS shade on its other models.

Are there any other great colour names we’ve missed off? Let us know in the comments!

Drivers in England waste an average of 38 hours on the road due to delays each year, new research has found.

Equivalent to over 2,200 minutes or 136,000 seconds, the wasted time combines to mean that a total of 1.3 billion hours are wasted by all motorists each year due to delays.

The study, by comparison site Go Compare, used Department for Transport figures on the average road delay per delivery mile alongside DVLA mileage data from 2022 to find out how much time is lost each year. This figure was then applied to the estimated number of licensed vehicles in England.

Looking at delays on major motorways, A- and B-roads, it found that most hours are lost on the latter. However, an average of six hours are wasted by each motorist on the motorway and A-road network managed by National Highways, with each driver losing a day and a half on these roads due to delays in 2022.

Tom Banks, car insurance expert at Go Compare, said: “There’s never a good time to be caught in traffic and losing such a huge amount of time while going nowhere is extremely frustrating.

“Although navigating traffic is stressful, it’s important to stay as calm and alert as possible, making sure to keep an eye on all the vehicles around you. Otherwise, you risk colliding with another driver.”

Overall, the total amount of time lost to delays by all drivers during a year is 55 million days or 1.3 billion hours. As the person lives for around 28,000 days in a lifetime, it’s the equivalent of over 19,000 lifetimes spent waiting in traffic.

Trading Standards officers have warned of the dangers of buying from used car dealers pretending to be private sellers on Facebook.

Officers said that they had seen a ‘large number’ of used car dealers using social media sites to advertise privately.

However, these cars are often plagued with faults and, since they’ve been sold privately, can’t be returned or repaired by the original seller as would be the case with a vehicle purchased from a legitimate car dealership.

Speaking to Car Dealer Magazine, Chris Hill, senior investigations officer for National Trading Standards, said that he had conducted a probe of more than 2,500 car adverts on Facebook in Wales and found that they had been posted by only 432 individuals.

Hill added that one of the users had advertised 90 cars during the six-month period of the probe and was ‘clearly a motor trader’. In fact, more than 100 of the users advertised more than 10 cars via Facebook.

By law, dealers are required to label adverts ‘trade’ so that buyers know they have consumer rights, such as being able to return a faulty car or have any issues resolved by the retailer.

Hill said: “This problem emerged a few years ago as we started to get a lot of complaints from people regarding vehicles they had purchased on social media.

“These are usually for lower value vehicles – around the £500 to £2,000 mark – or what the trade likes to call “end of life cars”.

“The problem comes when there is an issue with the car and the trader should have been liable but the consumer has nowhere to go. Some of these cars were still being sold in pub car parks and lay-bys and the buyers didn’t know who they were buying from.

“We would like Facebook to ensure that traders mark themselves up as traders so that when consumers have a problem they ultimately know who they are dealing with and know that they have their statutory rights.”

National Trading Standards told Car Dealer that it believes that the issue has become far more widespread and is asking Facebook to help weed out these traders posing as private sellers. At present, the social media site has no functionality to allow buyers to flag sellers who may be posing as private individuals.

A spokesperson for Meta, Facebook’s parent company, said: “This is an industry-wide issue and scammers are using increasingly sophisticated methods to defraud people in a range of ways including email, SMS and offline.

“If someone believes they have spotted content or an account they believe to be fake, they can report it using our in-app tools. We have a trained team of reviewers who check these reports 24/7 and move quickly to remove content or accounts which violate our guidelines.”

Royal Enfield’s new Shotgun 650 will go on sale on February 1 with prices starting from £6,699.

The new Shotgun 650 – which takes inspiration from the SG650 Concept unveiled at the EICMA show in 2021 – has been designed to offer a ‘blank canvas’ for riders to customise and shape into their own personal design.

It sits around Enfield’s 650 Twin Platform, which has been used in bikes like the Super Meteor, but brings a relatively low seating position with an upswept bar design to help maximise confidence and control. It also gets Showa forks on the front and twin tube five-step preload adjustable springs at the rear while the 18-inch front and 17-inch rear tyres combine with 320mm and 300mm disc brakes respectively.

The Shotgun also employs a modular design, which allows the rider to tweak it towards its desired use. As standard it comes with a double-seat setup, but via a key-operated barrel this can be changed into a single-seater by removing the pillion section. A rack can also then be added to this area to help boost the load-carrying ability of the Shotgun.

B Govindarajan, chief executive of Royal Enfield, said: “The Shotgun 650 is a very unique motorcycle within our portfolio, but at its heart is the same Royal Enfield pure motorcycling DNA. The 648cc parallel-twin engine that powers this machine is a characterful and versatile platform that is capable of adapting to any kind of riding form and format.”

As with other Royal Enfield motorcycles, the Shotgun 650 has been designed to offer a lot for a value-orientated price, which is why prices start from £6,699 in standard ‘Sheet Metal Grey’, rising to £6,799 for a ‘Plasma Blue’ version and topping out at £6,899 for a ‘Stencil White’ variant.

Ford has revealed a mid-life update for its Kuga, bringing a more modern design and improved hybrid powertrains to this popular SUV.

The Kuga has been part of Ford’s range since 2008 and is now the firm’s second best-selling car, only behind the Puma. The latest version was introduced in 2020, but amid increasing competition in the SUV segment, has now had a series of updates.

At the top of the agenda are styling revisions which give the Kuga a much bolder look than before, courtesy of new silver detailing and a revised grille. There are new LED headlights with a bold signature, while a more rugged-looking Active specification is also introduced, with greater plastic cladding and underbody protection.

Other changes include a front LED light strip, while Ford’s emblem is moved from the top of the bonnet to within the grille.

Inside, the main difference to the Kuga’s interior is that it now uses a large 13.2-inch touchscreen, the same as what was introduced to the Focus. Running Ford’s latest Sync 4 infotainment. Features such as wireless smartphone mirroring are introduced, while Amazon Alexa is built-in too.

While Ford will continue to offer a 148bhp 1.5-litre petrol engine, it has revised the popular hybrid versions already available. Changes include a four-wheel-drive self-charging hybrid model for the first time, while the plug-in hybrid model has a small power bump from 227bhp to 240bhp. Ford claims this can travel on electric for up to 43 miles.

Both these hybrid models are said to offer ‘significantly improved’ acceleration, while a 2,100kg towing capacity is said to ‘beat all rivals’.

The new Ford Kuga is set to go on sale later this month in Titanium, ST-Line and Active trim levels, with prices likely to start from around £34,000.

While police forces across the UK might use more humble hatchbacks and vans, over in Dubai, it’s a bit different, as the city’s police recently took delivery of a £200,000 Lamborghini Urus Performante.

It’s the latest collaboration between Lamborghini’s Dubai dealership and the local police, with an example of the firm’s Aventador supercar previously on its fleet, along with various other exotica from Ferrari, Bentley and McLaren.

The Performante is the most extreme version of Lamborghini’s Urus SUV, which is a popular choice in the region known for its wealth. Dubai Police has already had a standard version of the performance SUV on its fleet since 2022.

It’s not just a stunt car, either, with the Urus Performante equipped for service with its police livery and 360-degree blue LED lighting. Inside, it features an armoured gun box and a special compartment in the boot for storing equipment, including an on-board defibrillator.

One thing that hasn’t changed is what’s under the bonnet, with the Urus Performante using a 4.0-litre twin-turbo V8 producing a huge 657bhp and 850Nm of torque. That allows for a 0-60mph time of just 3.1 seconds and a 190mph top speed.

Paolo Sartori, regional head of Lamborghini in the Middle East and Africa, said: “We are delighted to continue our collaboration with Dubai Police, supporting them in their crucial public safety mission.

“Following our delivery of a Urus to the force in 2022, this new Performante edition will be used to carry out a range of public duties and, above all, will help enhance the city’s security and safety, with this initiative further demonstrating our brand’s longstanding presence here in the UAE.”

This latest Urus was handed over to the police at a special ceremony at the Dubai Air Show last year, coinciding with with Lamborghini’s 60th anniversary celebrations, though information and pictures have only now been shown.