Ouch. According to The Motor Authority, the big cat didn't quite move 60,500 units last year. Yet its British sibling Land Rover sold 226,395 4x4s. Turns out that our nouveau riche Russian and Chinese comrades prefer rock-hopping to intercontinental cruising. Who knew? We're kidding by the way, as 99.9% of those Land Rovers will never leave socialist asphalt. Regardless, Jaguar is shagged. The Blue Oval Boyz blame for their sub-brand's sharp sales decline on the S-Type's death rattle. We're thinking several decades of inept management culminating in front wheel-drive diesel-powered Ford station wagons had something to do with it. But what about the new XF? Well, as car-mudgeon Jeremy Clarkson points out, Jaguar's new 5-Series competitor fails to realize the XF concept car's mission critical sex appeal. How'd Jezza put it? "Arguing that the two have the same proportions and stance is like saying I have the same proportions and stance as Brad Pitt. I do. But I'm never asked for his autograph." Jaguar dealers are claiming 10,000 pre-orders. As George Carlin would say, what the hell's a pre-order? An order before an order? Oh, and did you think Tata Motors wanted to buy Jag? No way. To acquire profitable Land Rover, the Indian motoring powerhouse had to adopt the underachieving, inbred, basket case money pit as well. They're still trying to get out of that one. 

Clean Green Cars (CGG) is providing some rhetorical ammo for Porsche's fight against changes to London's Congestion Charge. CGG worries that the new emission-based charges are likely to increase CO2 emissions and congestion. That's cause Londoners are snapping-up what Clean Green calls "Congestion Charge Busters:" vehicles whose tailpipe emissions (120g/km of CO2 or less) give their owners a free ride. Some 200 British new car models qualify; in the last year, their market share has increased from 5.4 percent to 7.4 percent. Clean Green reckons that number will soon soar to 10 percent and beyond. While that's a good thing, it's possibly a bad thing. Congestion charging was supposedly designed to get people to drive less— not buy higher mileage cars and keep on driving. Or drive even more. Clean Green Cars recommends that London kill the exemption altogether and implement a graduated scale of charges: £4 for the lowest emission cars, £8 for moderate emission cars and £12 for vehicles that spew over 225g/kms of carbon. Fare enough?

Over the last five years, London Mayor Ken Livingstone has been the paterfamilias of the UK's anti-car jihad. Spearheading this effort: London's congestion charge (CC), a £5/day daily toll to drive into the central parts of the City. Amid charges that the CC is ineffective and inefficient, emboldened by talk of global warming, Ken's upped the stakes. Literally. The Times reports that the daily CC is about to ascend to a whopping £25/day (50 bucks to us Yankees). At the same time, "Red Ken" is closing CC loopholes. The hybrid exemption will expire in 2010 (which is about seven years too late for Lexus's LS600h). But the part that really sticks it in and breaks it off is that London is ditching the exemption for people that live inside the zone. Right now they're paying a reduced rate of 80p/day. Residents within the large Congestion Charge Zone will now have to pay a cruel £6000 per year. Cars that emit less CO2 will still be exempt, which is nice. Mr. Mayor says the estimated £30 – £50m in "extra" revenue generated by the modified scheme will pay for new mass transit systems. And if you believe that, you'll believe Ken doesn't secretly want to ban private passenger cars from the inner city.

Can 30,311 British citizens subjects be wrong? That's how many inhabitants of the North Sea island nation have signed an online petition calling for Prime Minister Gordon Brown to step down and make way for Top Gear presenter and notorious "Little Englander" (a.k.a. xenophobe) Jeremy Clarkson. Yahoo! News reports the petition is getting more attention than petitions for issues like fuel duty rates. Apparently Downing Street is taking the petition seriously; they routinely remove petitions from the official government website that The Oxbridge Powers-That-Be consider spurious. If they leave the Clarkson for PM petition alone, it will hang around until its closing date of April 17. Even the conservative Daily Mail newspaper is getting on the bandwagon: they ran a page full of suggested policies Prime Minister Clarkson should adopt. If he'll accept suggestions from the Colonies, I humbly recommend appointing Hamster as Transport Minister.

Bentley CEO Franz-Josef Paefgen had a little kaffee und kuchen with the Financial Times Deustchland, kicking things off with a representative combination of Germanic bluntness and English understatement. "I loved the car and the company, but if you saw the scale of the challenge and the inexperienced workforce, it was a bit of a challenge." Und now? Bentley's racked-up €107m profit in the first nine months of this year. But Paefgen warns that Bentley's endive days are over. "You should not expect another 15 per cent growth now with all the basic models now in place. The growth will be more moderate and the business more stable – not exploding as it was over the past five years or so." Responding to Bentley's "growing exposure as a fashion brand," Paefgen's glad not all his customers are "football stars and other trendy people," and claims Bentley's protected by its "very strong connection with our traditional brand values." Amongst which fuel economy does not rank, and that's a BIG problem. "'If everyone is going to reduce CO2 emissions by 20 per cent, we have to do at least 20 per cent, or maybe more. This is accepted. There is no problem.' But he admits that if particularly stiff limits on CO2 emissions were imposed 'there will be no Bentley any more.'" Oh dear.

When someone says "ugly car," names like Aztek, Sebring and Multipla always seem to pop up. The New York Times adds Aurora to that group. Arguably the ugliest prototype car ever built, the Aurora was the brainchild of priest-turned-auto-designer Alfred A. Juliano in the mid-1950s. The prototype was partially financed by his parishioners. His intent was to produce the world's safest car, using a totaled 1953 Buick as the platform for his prototype. Unfortunately his lack of knowledge of automotive design and engineering trumped his enthusiasm and good intentions. Juliano was driven from the church and died penniless. Interestingly, production cars use some of his safety concepts: seat belts, side crash protection (offsetting the driver was his solution) and Euro-style pedestrian safety (the foam-filled cow catcher out front). The Aurora was rescued from oblivion, restored and now resides in a museum in Beaulieu, Hampshire, UK. You have been warned.

What does the word "draconian" mean to you? The Telegraph reports that tough new government guidelines allow UK judges to impose a two-year jail sentence on motorists caught driving whilst using a hand-held mobile phone. The shift reflects a punitive upgrade. iDistraction moves from "careless driving" (£5k and up to nine points on a motorist's license) to "dangerous driving" (unlimited fine, two years in gaol and a license suspension). Motorists nabbed entering a sat-nav destination, spinning through an MP3 player menu or texting could also face prison sentences. But distracted drivers shouldn't 't worry too much, as "prosecutions will be brought if by using the equipment a motorist is judged to have posed a danger to other drivers, such as causing another car to swerve." C'mon? Swerve? What if the swerve is the result of the other driver using an iPod? What are we talking here, cell mates? Hang on folks, cause "drivers who kill while using mobile phones could be charged with causing death by dangerous driving, which carries a 14-year jail term. In extreme cases they could be charged with manslaughter for which a life term can be imposed." Oh, and UK police now check phone records after accidents to see if the driver was making a call at the time of the crash. Fair enough?

While greens (and tax collectors) the world over have hailed London's Congestion Charge (CG), the scheme is far from the showpiece legislation its proponents suggest, and it's about to get worse. The Times reports that London's traffic has returned to pre-CG levels. Even less surprisingly, well-paid bureaucrats swallow a full 47 percent of the £800m raised by the CG– to the point where London has cut bus subsidies. At the same time, "The introduction of more bus lanes and pedestrian-friendly measures, TfL [Transport for London] admits, have also contributed to congestion." And now The Evening Standard reports that the recent tweak to the system– adding low CO2 cars like the Fiat Panda and Ford Fiesta to the hybrids who get a free pass– threatens to hole its income. As you (but not London Mayor Ken Livingstone) might imagine, the city cars' exemption from the £8 daily fee has sparked a boom in small car sales. I'm sorry, did I say £8? As part of the tweak, "gas guzzlers" will have to pay £25 a day to drive in inner London. Anyway, a study commissioned by Land Rover (for obvious reasons) reckons that the Mayor's plan to give A and B-class cars a free ride could add an extra 10k cars to London's traffic and "contribute to global warming" (way to stick the boot in). 

Last week the credibility of the UK's anti-speeding jihad took a knock, when "Top Traffic Cop" Meredydd (Med) Hughes received a 42-day driving ban for excessive speed (90 in 60). After it was revealed that the camera-crazed cop had two previous speeding convictions, road safety groups criticized the sentence as overly-lenient. But that's nothing as compared to the brouhaha surrounding revelations by the BBC that twenty-six speeding cases against Med's fellow South Yorkshire officers were dropped on a "technicality." The Sun reports that the cops in question refused to admit they were behind the wheel. Oh, sorry, I mean they  couldn't be sure IF they were in the car caught speeding. "Bob Pitt, South Yorkshire branch secretary of the Police Federation, said: 'This is not necessarily a matter of our members refusing to come forward. There will be a lot who have used a police vehicle fleetingly who didn’t realise they had gone through a speed camera and genuinely are unable to say they were the driver at the time.'" Not necessarily a matter of one rule for some, one rule for others. Got it. Of course, if a civilian is caught by a speed camera, the law forces the registered keeper to name the driver at the time of the infraction, or face a fine and imprisonment.

Pistonheads reports that the UK's anti-speeding Holy War continues apace. Actually, it continues to gather force. "The [above] figures were released by the Government in response to a parliamentary question and showed that in some areas speeding fines had increased tenfold." In general, the '05 stats represent a doubling of the number of speeding camera tickets issued from '97, and slightly more than a fourfold increase in ticket revenues over the same time period. Ostensibly, that's not the point. Supposedly, the cameras are designed to improve road safety (as if you didn't know). On that score, The Department for Transport clings to its pro-camera rationale like an eighteenth century English bureaucrat defending America's tea tax. "The best safety camera is the one which takes no fines at all, but succeeds in making everyone slow down. Independent research shows a 42 per cent reduction in the number of people killed or seriously injured at camera sites – that means more than 100 fewer deaths each year." To which Paul Smith of the SafeSpeed anti-camera pressure group says bollocks [paraphrasing]. "We have only seen a seven percent improvement in [road deaths in] the last eight years. This is absolutely terrible performance and it is perfectly clear to me that 'bad road safety policy' is responsible."

The Sun reports that most German of British brands– I mean British of German brands– is set to build cars outside The Land of Hope and Glory. The paper reckons BMW will manufactur its MINI SUV in Graz, now that the plant's X3 production is headed stateside. A spokesperson for the propeller people said the MINI brand's geographical locus will remain in Oxford, as both the fast-selling standard car and the sure-to-be-a-hit Clubman greet the world from Southeast England. In fact, the factory is maxxed-out at 260k units per annum. Hence the move to the Fatherland. In a related story, Motortrader reports that most Kuwaiti of English car brands, Aston Martin, is also looking to craft vehicles abroad, beginning with the four-door Rapide. Bidders for the work read like a who's who of outsourcing: Italy's Pininfarina, Germany's Karmann, Austria/Canada's Magna and Finland's Valmet. 

The Association of British Drivers (ABD) is calling for the UK government to get their thumbs out and start building some more damn roads already, and bloody well do something to improve the safety of the ones they've already got [paraphrasing]. "Major roads like the A1 still have dangerous crossing points in the central reservation, instead of proper graded junctions. It is outrageous that people continue to be killed in these places because the British Government refuses to invest in decent roads." As I discussed with ABD's affable spokesman Paul Biggs, the government is being pulled in two directions. On one hand, environmental pressure groups are pushing The Powers That Ride in Limos to legislate against car use (or at least tax the Hell out of it). On the other, the pols need new roads to stimulate the economy (so they can collect more taxes). And the winner is… stasis. "The government have listened to frankly silly suggestions from the anti roads lobby that 'roads create traffic' which is considered a 'bad thing', and so improving the roads has become taboo. On the contrary, removing roadspace and obstructing the roads is supposed to make traffic magically disappear, with no ill effects on people's lives." Supposed?

You might thing the words "holistic" and "motorsports" go together like "Segway" and "Nürburgring," but Motorsport Development UK (MDUK) claims their industry is "approaching energy efficiency and emission reduction in an holistic way." According to their self-financed study, "the UK motorsport industry is a major innovator of environmentally friendly technology, exploring all facets of fuel and performance efficiency (aerodynamics, transmission systems, lower emission fuels, super-lightweight materials, etc), rather than simply concentrating on biofuel take-up. The developing technologies will be of use not only on the race track but will help increase energy efficiency in other sectors, particularly the automotive, aerospace and transport industries." The Earth Times is happy to reprint the press release, but I'm a little confused. Does this mean that going Hell for leather in cars without emission controls that get single digit mpgs, watched by hundreds of thousands of people who accessed the race venue by car, is good for the environment? Let the wild rumpus start! Or will the EU send the wild things off to bed without their supper? Watch this space.

Mind you, there's plenty of ethanol action in The Land of Hope and Glory. As just-auto [sub] reports, the UK is now home to its first sugar beet-based ethanol factory. In a light reworking of a breathless press release ("Last week, British Sugar was proud to announce…"), just-auto's crack editorial team revealed that BS' new Norfolk plant will produce some 550k tonnes (70 million litres) of bioethanol per year. At the opening of same, their intrepid reporter asked The Minister for Sustainable Food and Farming and Animal Health– working for the Government's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA)– whether the UK gov would do its part to bolster British sugar's bottom line– I mean, "incentivise further UK production of biofuels." Lord Rooker's reply: not on your Nelly [paraphrasing]. So what about offering some kind of "help" for manufacturers peddling E85-compatible vehicles? "'There shouldn't be any reason to do this,' was Lord Rooker's rather surprising answer. 'As long as the motoring public has absolute confidence in the fuel and sees other cars and buses running on these new types of fuels such as bioethanol E85, there won't be any problem transferring over.'" Ah, another refreshing free market eccentric buried deep within the British government's bowels! Look for that policy to change.