Monday, 27. September 2010
It’s turned out to be a pretty busy week following the launch of my new book, Graham Hill’s Simple Guide To Car Finance which I hope will get everyone driving a great car. Preparing for finance is vitally important at the moment as there is little money about to lend. So that tempting low APR or monthly lease rate, that gets you sending off your finance application, may lead to a decline if you are not totally Read more
Monday, 27. September 2010
Another amazing piece of news is that my blog is number one! When I was much younger I had aspirations to become a singer and maybe top the charts, make a fortune and have lots of screaming teenagers throwing themselves at me whilst I disappeared off down the road in my E Type Jag. OK, with a voice like mine it was never going to happen and I’ve dated a few nice ladies over the years and of course driven some Read more
Sunday, 26. September 2010
Halfords owned Nationwide Autocentres has revealed the top ten 3 year old cars and 5 year old cars to pass the MOT amongst the UK’s best selling cars. This information is normally very hard to find so Halfords have pretty much broken ranks by revealing the information that I print out below:
3 Year Old Cars |
% Fail |
BMW 3 Series |
7 |
VW Golf |
11 |
Ford Mondeo |
12 |
Ford Fiesta |
13 |
Ford Focus |
13 |
Renault Clio |
13 |
Vauxhall Astra |
14 |
Ford KA |
15 |
Vauxhall Corsa |
20 |
Renault Megane |
25 |
5 Year Old Cars |
% Fail |
Ford Fiesta |
20 |
VW Golf |
21 |
Vauxhall Astra |
21 |
Ford Focus |
22 |
Peugeot 206 |
24 |
Ford Mondeo |
27 |
Peugeot 307 |
33 |
Renault Clio |
34 |
Renaukt Megane |
35 |
Vauxhall Corsa |
39 |
The figures were based on the top 10 selling cars during the year of manufacture according to Halfords. One or two surprises there I have to say but it would be interesting to see stats for all cars, not just the top sellers, now that would be revealing! Are you surprised by any of the figures, drop me a note? By Graham Hill
Saturday, 25. September 2010
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
Thursday, 23. September 2010
The Graham Hill in depth review of a new car has this week focused on the facelifted Bentley Continental GT. It looks nice, as you would expect and frankly I would describe the differences in the look of the car as ‘subtle’. I’m told that every panel of the car is new but the door mirrors are from the Musanne. Great! OK when you get up close you can see that there are changes but they have kept the overall look very Read more
Wednesday, 22. September 2010
If you are a regular reader of my newsletter and blog you will recall that I announced that the Government was considering moving out the first MOT to 2 years and the annual MOT tests thereafter to be moved from annual to bi-annual as a result of pressure to do so by the EU. This has sparked some strong resistance from road safety groups. RoadSafe has said that the Government shouldn’t change the current Read more
Wednesday, 22. September 2010
One of the last meetings I attended at which we discussed the state of the motor finance industry, we were told by one of the leading accountancy practices in the UK along with a couple of large leasing operations that the biggest problem faced by the industry was lack of liquidity or in other words lack of money to lend to you and me. This has been confirmed by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders Read more
Tuesday, 21. September 2010
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
Monday, 20. September 2010
The last Labour Government made a big thing about toll roads, this was going to be the way forward if we were to make the roads less congested but according to research by the Campaign for Better Transport the showpiece M6 toll road has failed to meet its targets. The report claims that the operator, Midlands Expressway is losing millions of pounds every year. The cost of £5 drops to £4.50 at weekends and Read more
Sunday, 19. September 2010
According to Experian, the credit reference agency, automotive fraud increased by 35% during the first half of 2010. 34 in every 10,000 applications were considered potentially criminal. The majority were recorded in the second quarter showing an upward trend. First party fraud overtook third party identity fraud during April to June as the most common type of attempted fraud. First party fraud is typically where individuals attempt to hide adverse credit history or misrepresent their employment status to try and secure credit and other Read more