Author: Robin Roberts

Discounted business registrations meant Britain’s millionth battery electric car reached the road in January 2024, while the new car market grew 8.2% for the month, according to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders. The first month of the year saw 142,876 new cars registered led by the Kia Sportage (above), which repeated its success of January 2022, and an UK uplift of 10,882 units on January 2023, the best performance for the month since 2020 and the 18th consecutive month of growth. Welsh dealers enjoyed a 6.5% rise in registrations to 5,208 new cars last month compared to 12-months…

For some, the Volkswagen Touareg is very old school, but for many newcomers it can still teach them lessons. If you have to regularly cover long distances at all hours, with or without people or luggage, or have to tow a horsebox or trailer, the Touareg will perform such tasks without trouble. Appropriately named after a nomadic Sahara group, the VW Touareg has been in production since 2002 and was a joint development with Porsche which led to the Cayenne, Audi Q7 and Q8 as well as the Bentley Bentayga and Lamborghini Urus. So, its pedigree and wider family is…

The Ford Puma outran all its rivals to sit on the top of Britain’s car sales in 2023, and it’s easy to see why. Ford has a soft-spot for the Puma, first considered using it for a performance version of the Escort and then putting it on the 1997 compact coupe before shelving it a couple of years later, only to resurrect it after 17 years for the present suv series. It has also played about with the ST and Vignale suffixes as it did with the Ghia years before along with the famous RS badges. Now it has sort…

When buying a new car, it’s always worth thinking about the potential resale value and how much it will depreciate over time. Some cars can prove to be very worthy investments, with their value increasing over time, while others may drop quickly in value as soon as they leave the forecourt. Elements such as age, condition, mileage and number of owners are all influencing factors, and there are many things that you can do to minimise the effects of depreciation, but choosing a vehicle that holds its value well is always a good place to start. Scrap Car Comparison’s new…

Diesel cars are a dying range but all I can say is long live the Skoda Octavia Estate turbo-diesel. It’s going to become a model we will look back upon and ponder; wonder why such a thoroughly good all rounder has to be replaced by much more expensive, less practical and, frankly, less satisfying electric rivals. It’s one of the oldest model names in the Skoda stable and still accounts for about half of the brand’s European sales but the fact its semi-estate shape and diesel engine have become unfashionable in the eyes of many buyers suggests we need to…

It has been working on electric cars for many years so it was probably only natural that modernising its best selling Golf family car would feature in its approach to the future, and the ID.3 fills the sector in which its petrol and diesel hatchback did so well before it led to the e-Golf. The pure electric ID.3 is a very worthy successor, if expensive particularly when you look at the price of options, but it’s not alone as moving to electric power is not cheap. More importantly, Volkswagen do it better than most rivals. The ID.3 was the first…

To mark National Pothole Day, Go.Compare Car Insurance can reveal the top ten counties in England and Wales whose roads are most peppered with potholes today (Monday 15 January). Topping the peak pothole list was Derbyshire County Council, which reported 215,787 potholes over three years between January 2020 and December 2022. Two more northern counties took the 2nd and 3rd place spots, with Durham and Lancashire County Councils featuring respectively, with more than 180,000 potholes reported in the same three-year period. The comparison site submitted more than 300 Freedom of Information requests to councils across England and Wales to find…

Honda’s product range is one of the most diverse on the market but it’s all steadily heading in one direction towards pure battery power over the next few years. In the meantime, and probably being very wise to hedge bets about the roll out of the battery electric vehicle industry, Honda has given us the widest choice and the family friendly CR-V series. The Honda CR-V was launched in 1995 as the Japanese manufacturer wanted to capitalise on the rapidly developing SUV sector and it was made in Swindon for a number of years before the plant closed. It is…

The UK new car market has recorded its best year since the pandemic as a strong December up 9.8%, wrapped up the 17th month of consecutive growth. Some 1.903 million new cars reached the road during 2023 – an increase of 17.9%, according to the latest figures from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders. In Wales last year, registrations reached 66,761, a rise of nearly 16% over 2022 and it was incredibly nailbiting for retailers with just three car sales separating the mid-three models, a unique acheivement. Growth was driven entirely by fleet investment as the previous year’s supply…

It’s a familiar problem; you have to pick up a Christmas tree and somehow get it home along with maybe a few other seasonal plants and excited children. Or perhaps you are reading this in the New Year and are having a clear out instead! Most motorists resort to tying the netted tree onto their roof and hoping it stays there but the flexible seating in the Skoda Karoq offers a more practical packaging solution unless you have a very long tree. The split folding rear seats drop in an instant to take an average sized tree and leave room…