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Back in March of this year Ford made a fairly major announcement at the Geneva Motor Show that few newspapers or car journals picked up. They announced a new service scheme that would initially be rolled out to fleet customers but could finally be made available to all customers of Ford cars and vans both new and used.

As the manufacturers compete against large networks of independent service providers and small garages they have come up with a cheap and competitive option, mobile servicing. Specialist mobile service vans have been around for a few years to service commercial vehicles, that are often parked for hours on site or outside buildings, in which the drivers are working, saving the owners time and cost by having their vehicles serviced by a mobile unit during down time.

Initially Ford have successfully rolled out 8 mobile service units, as a pilot scheme, within the M25. They have now been operating for over a year. Ford’s chairman, Andy Barratt, announced that he plans to increase this number within the M25 to more than 100 operating out of Ford Stores and Transit centres. The scheme will be extended nationally if seen to be successful.

The first cars that will be included in the scheme will be the Ford premium brand, Vignales, sold through their 68 Ford Stores. It’s an interesting concept that other manufacturers will be looking at very carefully. By Graham Hill

Whilst I happily sit on the wall over the whole EU thing – should we be in or should we be out, there are certain things that they do that provide us with great benefits. One of these is standardisation. Safety issues sometimes require a group of people to get their heads together in order to agree a standard because clearly we can’t leave things to the individual manufacturers.

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Have I ever told you about the Ford Pinto back in the 1970’s? At the time it was the best selling compact car in the US. In fact there were 11.5 million of these cars on the road but they had a major fault. The fuel tank was mounted in the back of the car in a position where, if the car was shunted in the rear, the tank would explode. More than 500 people died as a result of the fuel tank exploding and bursting into flames with many more suffering severe burns.

This only came to light because one of the burn victims sued Ford. It then turned out that Ford engineers were fully aware of the danger posed by the fuel tank but company executives carried out a cost benefit analysis with shocking results. They decided that the benefits of fixing the problem in lives saved and injuries prevented were not worth the cost of $11 per car to fix the problem on all of the Pintos.

They calculated that if the tanks weren’t repaired there would be a further 180 deaths and 180 burn injuries. They then applied a cost of $200,000 per life and $67,000 per injury. They added to this the cost of repair and replacement of cars as a result of the tank explosions and they came up with a cost of $49.5 million but to make the cars safer at a cost of $11 per vehicle would cost $137.5 million so they chose not to repair all the cars already on the road.

When this came out in court the jury found against Ford and awarded the plaintiff $2.5 million in compensatory damages and $125 million in punitive damages (later reduced to $3.5 million). So my point is that if manufacturers were left to make their own decisions on safety I suspect that cars would be nowhere near as safe as they are now.

So on the plus side we can feel comfortable that when we get into any car across Europe we are protected by some very high standardised safety levels. God forbid we ever leave our safety in the hands of just the manufacturers. By Graham Hill

Stop/start is an energy saving method that is now being fitted into more and more new cars as it saves fuel and cuts emissions. Great news. I have it on my car and although I had intensions of switching the damn thing off (which you can do on most cars) I am now used to it and it doesn’t cause any difficulty whatsoever.

It means when I am stop start in the middle of a town or attempting to crawl round the biggest car park in the UK, commonly known as the M25, my fuel consumption doesn’t drop to single figures. But one thing I didn’t mention in my ‘lease a new car vs HP a used car’ series of articles was the increased cost of service and maintenance due to this new technology. I hadn’t realised but the cars fitted with stop/start technology need a much tougher battery than those fitted in a standard car.

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English: Halfords at the Ocean Park retail park in Portsmouth. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

And to make matters worse, until recently you could only buy replacement batteries from main dealers. I only found all this out when I read that Halfords are now able to fit replacement batteries into cars with stop start technology. The reason for the delay was that they needed to invest in new diagnostic equipment for its branches and be able to provide suitable replacement batteries.

Dave Poulter, head of trading at Halfords said that Halfords were the first national retailer to sell and fit the new Yuasa batteries at a cost of between £175 – £200 a go! Mr Poulter went on to explain that their prices were between 20% and 40% lower than main dealers. Kwik fit stated that are also able to replace batteries in stop/start cars with AGM batteries designed for stop/start cars.

So as this new technology expands so does the cost of service and maintenance. Another reason to lease a new car.

Car Radio (Photo credit: nedrichards)

You know when you are on your computer and you start searching for holidays then by the magic of technology every time you open a page or carry out a search for something else you suddenly see holiday ads flash in front of you on the screen?

Well the same is about to happen on your radio. Instead of hearing general ads during programmes you will start to hear targeted ads.

Known as Aha Radio they say that instead of you hearing an ad for We Buy Any Car.Com you could hear we’ll buy your car for £8,900 based on your car being a 2007 BMW 320d with 80,000 miles on the clock, which of course is your car.

The new radio is in fact an Internet platform that will be bundled into infotainment systems in new cars from Porsche, Mazda and Ford so far. Their aim is to target the customers as they do on the Internet rather than scattergun.

Thinking of a change but unsure as to the best way to finance your car? Then you need a copy of my car finance book, Car Finance – A Simple Guide by Graham Hill. Click on the link below to buy the best car finance book on the market, available as a Kindle Book and Paper Back.

The ad breaks will be tailored based on the car you are driving, where you are going and where you are. For example it will detect that you are about to pass a branch of Starbucks and alert you to any deals going on at the time.

Safety experts might have something to say about this as it might prove to be a major distraction. A clever idea though. By Graham Hill Car Finance

I’ve mentioned on several occasions that you are able to have your car serviced at a non franchised dealer but you have to be extra careful about warranty claims as manufacturers will try to squirm out of them. A recent case involved Ford and a young lady with a 4 year old Ford Ka. She suddenly found that the car had developed rust Read more »

Ford has announced a new rear seat, seat belt. It has long been thought that rear passengers are not as well protected as front seat passengers with air bags going off in all directions in the event of an accident. So the clever chaps and chapesses at Ford have devised a cross between an air bag and a seat belt for rear seat passengers. It is an inflatable Read more »

Isn’t it about time the manufactures started to put their design staff on some internal company awareness courses or set them to work planning the layout of the staff canteen or something? Why should they do this? Because we have far too many cars and variants. Over the years we have seen the manufacturers start to change their cars every year with Read more »

Image via Wikipedia

There seems to be a move back to company cars from cash for car alternatives. A few years ago when the Government changed the way the benefit in kind tax was calculated to a CO2 based system there was a big move to cash for car alternatives. Drivers liked the idea of driving a 3 year old BMW rather than a new Ford Mondeo but BMW’s are Read more »

Image via Wikipedia

With reports that insurance costs are continually rising and teenage insurance now said to average £4,000 per annum it seems that car makers are likely to wade in and fight the fight. Ford has announced a new service that will handle accident management claims. By cutting out injury lawyer referral fees it says its customers could soon be enjoying Read more »

Image via Wikipedia

Another step closer to the combined car and computer. Ford’s new Focus will allow you to create a Wi-Fi hotspot in your car by using the 3G connection from a smartphone. Ford’s SYNC system accesses a phone’s signal via Bluetooth and shares it with up to 5 compatible devices, simultaneously allowing them to surf the Internet. The set up, due to be Read more »