NEWS

BANGERS4BEN3 is off – and this year has some of the best and wackiest cars ever taking part in the rally! Our trip from Dover to Monaco and back in cars costing less than £500 in aid of motor industry charity BEN has really brought the motor trade out of their shell. We thought our [...]

OUR Project Stealth team have been on the road since 5am Wednesday on their round-the-UK trip to get our car ready for Bangers4BEN. Commercial manager Dunc and worky James Batchelor arrived in Scotland Wednesday afternoon at Carwrapz.biz’s Edinburgh base. The wrapping wizards worked on our 1.4-litre Honda Civic late into the evening on Wednesday and [...]

Project Stealth has begun – it’s our operation to turn a boring Honda Civic into an SR71 Blackbird for Bangers4BEN 3. We’ve dispatched commercial manager Duncan Chappell and worky James Batchelor to Scotland to get our car sorted. Here’s James’ account of day one… SO far on Project Stealth, Duncan and I have been awake [...]

INSURANCE is just a joke isn’t it? Why on earth they charge such ridiculous amounts for cover beggar’s belief. Rant time… I’ve just insured our Honda Civic bought for Bangers4BEN for the frankly ridiculous price of £621.47p. That’s more than double what we paid for it. We took out insurance with Admiral.com after searching the [...]

IN the words of a cigar-chomping A-teamer – don’t you just love it when a plan comes together? Well, I may of course be jumping the gun, but after two days of frantic phone calls and emails our plan to transform our hippy-coloured Honda Civic into something far cooler certainly does seem to be getting [...]

A FEW weeks ago the Car Dealer team spent a rather enjoyable five days in Wales with some incredible cars. The reason? Well, it was for our Road Test of the Year special which will be featuring in the next issue of Car Dealer, out in the middle of September. This year we brought together [...]

WANT a frank and honest opinion on a new car from a bunch of car hacks? Stick a mic inside and record the drive. This week the Car Dealer team were invited to take part in Alex Goy’s Gas Station Podisode – a weekly car podcast – to discuss the new Mini Countryman. The new [...]

WE’VE found it. Not the answer to why buyers expect to pay £1k less than the sticker price – no one knows that! No, we’ve found the car that’ll get us to Monaco and back for our Bangers4BEN adventure in just over a week’s time. Well, at least we hope it will. It was sourced [...]

WHEN car makers lend new models to the press they hope the coverage they receive will result in sales. But can they ever actually directly link lending a car to a motoring hack with a signed order form? Well, Kia can now… Our Sportage – on long term loan from the manufacturer since July – [...]

IT WAS going to happen all along. Like the £10 gallon is looming and excessive CO2 taxation is in full swing, city cars are about to become even more offensively eco-friendly and therefore derided. Honda has announced details of a new hybrid Jazz. All we really need to know is that it’s got most of [...]

OUR trio of Mazda MX-5s bought as part of our 911 for 2011 bid have got a celebrity connection! You may remember the Hyundai i10 World Cup car we sold as part of our charity challenge was formerly driven by Jeremy Clarkson, Tiff Needell and The Stig as part of their Duel video. Well, now [...]

WHEN you think of product placement successes in the automotive world most people think of Bond and his Astons. But by far and away one of the best in recent times was BMW’s decision to support Jedi Ewan McGregor and Charlie Boorman on their trip around the world. The pair rode the ‘Long Way Round’ [...]

James Batchelor was on work experience the week our cars were delivered for this year’s Road Test of the Year. Here he explains just what it was like to experience three of them (from the passenger seat). THE Porsche Boxster Spyder, the Audi R8 V10 Spyder, and Aston Martin’s Rapide – three of the most [...]

Oh dear. Oh very dear. What with our 911 for 2011 campaign and the Road Test of the Year, I seem to have overlooked the fact our Bangers4BEN MKIII event is looming. In under a month the Car Dealer Magazine crew – plus 30 other teams from across the motor trade – will be setting [...]

AFTER the incredible highs of selling our Hyundai i10 World Cup car for £3,005 more than we paid for it… … you’ll have to forgive the lack of an update on our 911 for 2011 campaign. But just because we’ve been celebrating for the last week doesn’t mean our attempt to turn £0 into a [...]

THERE is so much positive talk in the trade press about the need for main dealers to retail older cars, that I feel like I am reading a newspaper article from the 18th century waxing lyrical about the riches to be found in the new world. Of course, those articles seldom mentioned the natives looking [...]

SORRY for the lack of a Road Test of the Year update yesterday – the 3am start sort of killed the end of the day… We were up well before dawn to bag the cover shot for the next issue – and it was well worth our bleary eyes. The results our snapper Dean Smith [...]

PEOPLE do very strange things when you rock up in a bunch of supercars – and today was a good example of that. Sunday was location-scouting day for tomorrow’s big shoot and we headed to Black Rock Sands beach, near Porthmadog, where we’ll be shooting the cover for the next issue. It was there we [...]

NEW rule: If you do not want to enjoy twisty roads PULL OVER. That concludes today’s public service broadcast. As you can probably tell, the first day of this year’s Road Test of the Year has been rather frustrating. If it wasn’t soaking motorways in Warwickshire, it was outside lane-hogging white van drivers. Then, after [...]

I’m stressed out. Like a lot. But it’s stress in a good way. If that’s possible? It’s the sort of stress that comes with weight on your shoulders – £350,000 worth of weight to be exact. Today the cars are arriving for our annual Road Test of the Year – our celebration of the best [...]