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Buying a used car from a dealer? Then you should be more aware of your rights according to the Office of Fair Trading, who have reported that the number of complaints against dealers, for faults that have come to light within the first 3 months, has increased by 18% during the first half of 2010. The Office of Fair Trading Direct received over 38,000 complaints and, as Michele Shambrook of the OFT pointed out, ‘Most of the faults that come to light are the dealer’s responsibility.’ Had a bad used car experience when purchased from a car dealer, please let me know? By Graham Hill

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• Second-hand car complaints soar (bbc.co.uk)

Transport Secretary, Philip Hammond revealed in a speech that 84% of all journeys made in the UK were made by car. This means that there is little prospect that we will move away from cars and onto public transport in the near future. However, the Campaign for Better Transport has carried out a survey, in which they found that certain towns and cities were more dependent on cars than others. The worst offenders and those most car-dependent were: Read more �

Graham Hill’s gadget of the week is unfortunately only available on Ford cars but I have to say it seems like quite a good idea. It’s called a MirrorNavi and is essentially a sat nav built into the mirror – more like an extension to the left of the mirror with a 3.5” colour touch screen. It has no visible wires and can be installed into your car in an hour for £299 + labour. It will help to reduce clutter, according to Ford and Read more �

I’m all for making roads safer, especially when we are talking about making roads safer for children but sometimes I thing we go a little too far when it comes to health and safety when actions seem to be taken for the sake of taking them. Some of my favourite country fetes have been stopped from taking place because, thanks to health and safety, the insurance costs would be more than they raised for their local Read more �

As most cars have in car computers fitted these days wouldn’t it be a great option to have incorporated, whereby you input the cost per litre of the fuel that you put into your car and at the end of each journey or possibly during the journey, it showed you the cost of the fuel that you’ve used. Now wouldn’t that stop a few unnecessary trips, especially short trips that might return on 10 miles to the gallon compared with the average of say 40mpg. Any views? By Graham Hill

The AA has revealed that we are seeing a North South divide open up when it comes to fuel. Apparently prices are rising faster in the south than in the north. Recent drops in oil prices should have resulted in pump prices dropping but the garages in the south seem reluctant to pass on the savings. The average price of a litre of petrol in the north is now 115.5 pence but in the south it’s 117.2 pence. The gap has opened Read more �

Beware of service intervals. As most people know service intervals have been extending and it’s not uncommon for cars to have 18,000 or 20,000 mile service intervals. If you are a low mileage user this could suggest that if you had a car for 3 years, covering around 6,000 or less miles per annum, you wouldn’t have to carry out a single service to retain the car’s warranty. But this is unlikely to be the case as most Read more �

Moving on to legitimate parking fines, it turns out that local authorities may follow the Westminster council lead and name and shame the worst culprits for not paying their fines. It seems that some of the worst culprits are the very wealthy and Westminster has taken the unprecedented step of announcing the worst offenders on it’s website. It would seem that many of those that refuse to pay the fines are Arab Read more �

The renowned Graham Hill in depth car review this week focuses on yet another dopey car, although you may find it gorgeous. Yet another major sports car manufacturer has stuck their badge on the front of a city car. This week it’s the recently revived Lotus. I don’t care that it is a hybrid powered car that will return 100mpg it simply looks dopey! Now I know that all manufacturers have had to introduce some low Read more �

The reputation of motorway services has never been too good, that was until M&S and Waitrose were introduced and food quality was seen to improve. But leading the way was Westmorland who actually won awards for its Tebay site in Cumbria. It was the first service station to source its produce locally for its shops and café (70%) and its green picnic area. The services even won awards from Egon Ronay. It has now Read more �