The Most Unreliable Car Ever

This car, aptly named 'Monster' is made up of parts from some of the most unreliable cars on sale in Britain including Renault Megane and MG TF. 

The Monster Mk1 was created using the UK-based warranty company - Warranty Direct's -database of 50,000 policies on cars that were an average of five years old.

Here is the breakdown of the parts used on the car:

Engine - MG TF Engine

Renault Megane - Electrics

Gearbox - Land Rover Freelander

Suspension - BMW M3

Brakes - Audio A8

Air Con / Heating / Cooling - Seat

Steering - Volvo V70

And here is the result...

The reason this vehicle has been named 'Monster' is because according to Warranty Direct, this car is likely to break down every other month and cost an average of £2,050 to fix each year. Warranty Direct compiled the list of the worst-performing cars in various categories from its data of what cars suffer which faults and which parts are normally to blame. Warranty Direct says that 'monster' is five times more likely to break down than the average car based on their reliability index which measures car reliability by considering the average cost of repair, frequency of failure, age and mileage.

Overall, the index shows that 4 out of 10 vehicles require a trip to a garage each year and some models can cost up to £7,000 a time to repair. 

Duncan McClure Fisher, the Managing Director at Warranty Direct said that "The wide range of cars included in our special blend highlights how mostly reliable cars can be dragged down by one problem part."

Results from the company's claim records show that almost 40 per cent of BMW M3s require repairs to axle and suspension components alone each year, while the same proportion of Renault Meganes suffer an electrical fault.

About a quarter of MG TF's will experience engine troubles, while more than one in eight Seat Ahlambras will need their air-con fixed during a typical year. One in five Land Rover Freelanders have transmission glitches, while the same number of Audi A8s will need repairs to their braking systems.

Kate Middleton's Used Car On Ebay

A few years ago before marriage and a royal life were on the cards for the young Kate Middleton, Prince William and her had dated for a while but broke up for a short time. Kate wanted to get rid of anything that reminded her of the Prince, including her used Volkswagen Golf. This was a car that she and the Prince spent much time in and it is now for sale on the auction website eBay to buy.

Sonny Brazil with the Duchess of Cambridge's used Volkswagen Golf.
Picture from The Daily Mail.

The first owner of the car was the future Queen of England's and it has been authenticated on the official car report. The Middleton's traded in the Indigo Blue Volkswagen Golf in 2009 and the car is reportedly still in good shape. The owner of the car lot, who took the car as a trade-in, gave the car to his son, Sonny Brazil. Brazil got the car from his father but decided to put the car on eBay last weekend, according to the Daily Mail. The car lot owner bought the car from the Middleton's in 2009 for £1,400, when they had originally bought it in 2001 for £10,818. Now the price of the car could fetch up to £30,000 according to auction houses that have assessed the car, all because the Duchess of Cambridge's name is on the log book. Another added bonus to purchasing this car from eBay is that inside the car were found a pair of silver cufflinks, whether these could belong to any of the Princes of the Royal Family it is still uncertain, but these will be included in the price of the car. The cufflinks are estimated to be worth £30,000 +. 

Source: The Daily Mail.

World's Most Exciting Roads

In February 2011, AutoEvolution ran a feature exploring some of the world's most exciting roads. If you happened to miss it, it really is worth a look, here they are again:

ATLANTIC OCEAN ROAD – NORWAY

Known to the locals as Atlanterhavsveien, the Atlantic Ocean Road is part of the Norweigian national road 64 and links the villages of Karvag and Averoy with Vevang in Eide.

Currently, the Atlantic Road ranks at the top of the list for tourists going in the region and is recommended by almost all the travel agencies as a worth remembering road trip experience. At the same time, the road has been voted Norwegian Construction of the Century.

Pictures below: Atlantic Ocean Road - Norway

The construction of the road begun in 1983, taking the builders six years to complete the 8.3 km (5.2 miles) stretch of road. During this time, the construction site was hit by no less than 10 severe storms.The road uses small rocky islands as support, giving it one feature you don't easily find with other roads; as you travel along, you can feast your eyes on the waters of the Atlantic Ocean. The fact the road has been built to include fjords and mountains adds to the dramatic effect.

JEBEL HAFEET MOUNTAIN ROAD – UNITED ARAB EMIRATES


From the icy waters of the Atlantic Ocean to the scorching heat of the desert... As with most of the gargantuan engineering projects in the oil rich Gulf region, the Jebel Hafeet Mountain Road is a more recent accomplishment, having been constructed to help motorists climb the mountain wearing the same name. Jebel Hafeet Mountain is the highest peak in the United Arab Emirates, rising 1,249 meters above sea level and overseeing the city of Al Ain.

Pictures below: Jebel Hafeet Mountain Road

The road, which stretches for 11.7 km (7.3 miles), as everything constructed using oil money, comes close to perfection. The 60 bends and corners that animate it mean nothing for a well-balanced car, which travels on the perfectly flat tarmac. 

SEVEN MILE BRIDGE – FLORIDA KEYS, US

Considered by some the most exhilarating road in the world, the Seven Mile Bridge is a... nearly seven-miles-long bridge. It links Knight's Key to Little Duck Key over the waters of the Atlantic Ocean. The bridge, the longest segmental bridge in the world when it was finished in 1982, rises 65 feet above the water (20 meters) to allow boats to pass underneath it and has been built to withstand winds of up to 200 mph.

Considered a wonder of the engineering world, the current bridge builds on an older one, the Knights Key-Pigeon Key-Moser Channel-Pacet Channel Bridge, erected in between 1909 – 1912 and nearly destroyed by a hurricane in 1935. Parts of the original bridge are currently used as fishing piers and access to Pigeon Key.

Pictures below: Seven Mile Bridge - Florida Keys, U.S.

The popularity of the bridge is so big that each April it is closed on a Saturday for 2.5 hours to allow scores of people to take part in what has come to be known as the fun run (or Seven Mile Bridge Run), an annual event meant to celebrate the building of the bridge.

GROSSGLOCKNER HIGH ALPINE ROAD - AUSTRIA

Austrian road in between mountains links the state of Salzburg with the state of Carinthia, taking tourists into some of the country's most respected and highly regarded natural wonders, the Hohe Tauern National Park, the Grossglockner mountain (the highest in Austria, 3,798 meters) and its glacier, the Pasterze. 

Pictures below: Grossglockner High Alpine Road - Austria

The Grossglockner High Alpine road stretches for 48 km (30 miles), bringing the tourists and passer-bys through 36 bends and all the way to an altitude of 2,504 meters (8,215 feet). During the trip, drivers and riders will encounter anything and everything from alpine meadows, mountain forests, massive cliffs and, of course, tons of ice.

TIMGAD – ALGERIA

Proof that, at times, the ancients were way ahead of some of the nations currently considering themselves as part of the modern age can be found in Algeria, in the former Roman town of Timgad.
Built by Emperor Trajan in 100 AD at the convergence point for no less than six major roads in the region, the ancient city has been erected with respect to all the city building principles in use today.

Pictures below: Timgad - Algeria

At the centre of the town lies the 12-metre-high triumphal arch, called Trajan's Arch, underneath which the main road of the city passes. As a witness to the engineering capabilities of the Romans, the road has survived pretty much in its original condition to this day.

TRANSFAGARASAN -ROMANIA

In between the Carpathian Mountains, where Dracula is said to have been born, lies a 90 km-long piece of road (56 miles) that is surely going to give you nausea. The road is called the Transfagarasan and it passes through the tallest section of the Carpathians.

Caught in between the two highest peaks in the country, Moldoveanu and Negoiu, the road connects Transylvania to the cities of Sibiu and Pitesti, on the outside of the mountain arch.

Pictures below: Transfagarasan - Romania

The road is full of twists and bends, climbing to an altitude of 2,034 metres (6,673 deet) and taking the tourists not only through a wide range of landscapes, but also from summer at the bottom of the road to all out winter at its highest point.

So there you have it! Do you have any suggestions? please feel free to comment below!

For credit for each stunning picture and content please visit the original AutoEvolution article.

Ford Launches Free Accident Management Programme for UK Customers

The U.S auto-maker, Ford Motor Co., has launched a new accident management programme that the company says will help customers in the UK to simplify communications between the Ford repair network and insurance companies. All new and used Ford vehicle drivers can utilise a special hotline to have repairs conveniently carried out at their nearest Ford Accident Repair Centre using genuine Ford parts fitted. The new programme follows the recommendations of the House of Commons Transport  Committee in creating a transparent and efficient programme to drive down the total cost of claims.

Personal injury claims will not be included under the Ford Accident Management Programme, which allows customers to retain their legal right to make a valid claim but neither Ford no any of its partners will benefit from this. The new programme requires no signing of credit agreements by drivers underwriting the cost of repairs or hire car provision. 

Ford's collision repair manager, Paul McDermott, said Ford's Accident Management Programme takes over many complex parts of the repair process such as contacting the insurance company, organising vehicle recovery and providing a courtesy car, with a single phone call.

Ford Use API Technology (Google) To Predict Driving Behaviour

Ford and Google are teaming up to try and predict driver behaviour and optimise performance for their EV’s and Hybrids. Using Google’s Prediction API, Ford aim to increase efficiency and decrease commuting times by tracking regular routes that drivers embark on on a daily basis.

The API technology which was released last year by Google, can convert information on a driver’s actions in the past into real-time predictions, such as where they’re likely to be headed at a particular time of day. The predictive API will be exclusively focused on the driver, logging and analysing driving history. By studying a car owner's driving patterns, the system tries to predict where the driver is going and then optimise the upcoming trip with respect to electric driving zones. Data is collected remotely by Ford and transferred to dedicated server hardware as the history logging and route analysis is quite intensive, in terms of storage and processing power.

Ryan McGee, a Ford Technical Expert said "The Google Prediction API allows us to utilise information that an individual driver creates over time and make that information actionable. Between Google Prediction and our own research, we are discovering ways to make information work for the driver and help deliver optimal vehicle performance". 

Apparently the system will work as soon as the driver starts the vehicle. Making a note of what time the driver has switched on the vehicle will determine what regular routes they would normally take at this particular time of the day. When the vehicle starts, Google Prediction would use historical driving behaviour to predict the most likely destination, check with the driver that it's correct and then optimise driving performance for the journey. When drivers start using the service, an encrypted driver data usage profile could be built, based on routes and time of travel.

A plug-in hybrid vehicle could program itself to optimise energy usage over the total distance of the route, in order to preserve enough battery power to switch to all-electric mode when travelling within an EV-only zone. McGee goes on to explain that "Once the destination is confirmed, the vehicle would have instant access to a variety of real-time information so it can optimise its performance, even against factors that the driver may not be aware of". 

Ford and Google are keen to assure drivers that their privacy will be protected. "We realise that the nature of this research includes the use of personal data and location awareness, something we are committed to protecting for our customers in everything we do," says System Architect, Johannes Kristinsson. 

"A key component of this project is looking at how to develop secure personal profiles that will ensure appropriate levels of protection and specific data use only by the driver and the vehicle to deliver the best driving experience."

Watch a video that goes into more detail about this here: