2011 Was A Difficult Year For Japanese Car Manufacturers

Monday, 31. October 2011

You have to have some sympathy for Honda after our hearts go out to those that died in the Tsunami then over the last few days those that have lost their lives in the Thai floods. But talk about bad choices of location, Honda shut down production for most of the summer following the tsunami and we now hear that following the severe floods on 4th Read more »

Kia Wins Against German Rivals

Friday, 21. October 2011

VW Tiguan

Image via Wikipedia

I’m not going to labour this point but whilst thumbing through a recent copy of Auto Express I saw the comparison reviews between the VW Tiguan and the Kia Sportage, their versions of small 4WD cars similar to the Rav 4 and Honda CRV. The Kia won hands down and yet whenever I’ve offered Kia’s to potential customers as a great alternative to some Read more »

Japanese Car Manufacturers On Road To Recovery

Tuesday, 27. September 2011

There are some encouraging signs coming from the Japanese manufacturers with regard to recovery following the tsunami. Toyota and Nissan are working close to capacity now to fulfil orders and to replenish inventory of cars and parts depleted as a result of the March 11th disaster. Whilst car production was ready to roll very quickly it was a Read more »

Tsunami Causes Production Problems

Sunday, 1. May 2011

2011 Honda CR-V

Image by Rennett Stowe via Flickr

Toyota and Honda have run into production difficulties following the Japanese tsunami. Honda had scaled down production of its Civic, Jazz and CR-V models at Swindon in Wiltshire by half earlier in April and have now announced short time working whilst their Japanese plants, producing essential parts, get back up to full capacity. Toyota shut Read more »

A Toyota Car Doesn’t Hold The Record For The Largest Number Of Recalls In 2010

Friday, 27. August 2010

Which car had the biggest recall of the year? Toyota? Did you say Toyota? Then you are wrong! Amazingly, thanks to the press and other media you would easily believe that a Toyota car had the biggest recall in the UK following the problems they had with stuck accelerators. But it turns out that it was another Japanese car, a Honda Jazz which had 171,372 cars recalled as a result of a leak that could cause a fire in Read more »

Graham Hill, Car Finance Expert, Shows Huge Differences In Lease Rates Between UK & USA

Monday, 19. April 2010

As we know, we tend to follow behind America, whether it’s the weather, release of new technology, a recession, an economic recovery and so on. So I was pleased to read in the Wall Street Journal that the leasing industry is just taking off big style in the US with (surprisingly) Toyota leading the way with Honda following up offering incredible deals to move new cars with rates dropping lower than they were at the Read more »

Reasons Why Cars Fail Their MOT’s

Thursday, 28. January 2010

I’m not sure how useful this information is or what real conclusions can be drawn but I found it interesting so am passing it on. Under the Freedom of  Information Act the BBC obtained data regarding MOT failures and Business Car  analysed the figures to identify which cars had the highest pass rates and which cars had the highest fail rate. The statistics are based on 2004 registered cars that were MOT tested for the Read more »

What Is The Most Reliable Car On The Road?

Friday, 13. November 2009

Trade journal Fleet News has carried out a survey into reliability of cars by contacting the top 50 leasing companies and asking which manufacturer and which individual cars have proven to be most reliable over the last 12 months. BMW just pipped Honda to the post as the most reliable manufacturer with Audi coming in third, jumping from 7th place last year. Audi was highest rated dealership network for Read more »

Great Lease Deals – Have You Missed The Boat?

Friday, 30. January 2009

Do you ever feel that you are banging your head against a brick wall? How many times did I say before Christmas that some of the deals that are available may never return so take them whilst you can. But no, obviously I was lying or simply trying to pull a few deals in to pay for my extravagant Christmas and New Year celebrations. The truth is that I wasn’t. There was a huge effort on the part of some manufacturers to Read more »

I Explain Which Cars Are Most Reliable

Sunday, 9. November 2008

Looking for a reliable car has always meant that you must look in the direction of Japanese cars but following the annual survey carried out into company car reliability BMW has come out on top. The survey which sampled 881,000 vehicles leased by the top FN50 companies showed BMW to become the first ever non-Japanese company to top the reliability charts. Since the reliability charts were launched either Read more »