Videoman Paul (expert bike-rider, at least in his own head although admittedly he is still alive) drove me down from North West London to the amazing Honda Institute in Colnbrook – they really ought to consider offering day trips.

It was a tense trip to say the least. I do appreciate that there is only so much reassurance that a person can give, and Paul had reached his limit after 15 minutes. Sadly my need for it extended for the entire hour-long journey.

My agony was further prolonged when we arrived, as my contact had taken a bike for a spin – occupational hazzard I suppose working with so many lovely toys. Paul was happy watching and naming aeroplanes flying overhead (the Institute lies a few metres from Heathrow’s runways) – I made him take his anorak off.

Then it appeared, being wheeled towards me – if only it were in slow motion to show off its shiny black bodywork and chrome trim. This was exciting.

So what is the PCX 125?

This is Honda’s all-new scooter with fuel-saving Idle Stop technology. It’s compact yet still has the look of a bigger bike and is actually rather gorgeous with great curves and flowing lines. Looks great in white too (the alternative colour scheme)…

What I like best of all though is the sitting position with its low seat height for my petite size and very spacious footrests which makes me feel quite secure when I’m riding it. There’s a little back or rather bottom rest although I’m still normally so tense that I forget to relax and lean into it.

The lights are permanently on (of course) and there is a switch to turn off the idle stop although I’m not sure why you would do that. I find it so satisfying when you come to a stop at lights and the engine goes silent. No only is the lack of noise rather soothing, but also the fact that you’re saving fuel and the environment . The dials are easy to see although a clock would have been a nice touch. Under the seat is a very handy lockable storage compartment which keeps my helmet out of the way with room to spare for a handbag. Paul has returned from a trip to Waitrose with this compartment full of goodies.

And all for the price of £2420, enabling you to get into town without having to pay the congestion charge, cheap parking and the ability to ride around for 100 miles for a few pounds.

That expression ‘like riding a bike’ I suppose is true, although I experienced a scary few seconds before this kicked in. So a couple of wobbles and off I went.

I kept trying to remember all the things I had learnt in my CBT. Shoulders down, relax, be assertive on the road and hold your position. Indicate, life saver – although I never seem to be able to see much past the side of the helmet, cancel indicator, shoulders down, relax, mirrors and enjoy!

Needless to say I did get home in one piece!

Three generations of Saab Convertible have hit the road in the last quarter of a century and almost 300,000 have been sold around the world (at one point it seemed like 250,000 of those were in London SW1), establishing the vehicle as a global icon for the brand.  Amazingly the convertible has accounted for as much as fifty percent of total sales in Europe. Pity the poor team designing the next Saab hatch then?

Life on the Road: The journey of the Saab Convertible

The journey of the iconic car began in 1986 when a production run of just four hundred Saab 900 Convertibles came off the line for the US market, and we were young and happy. By the time the 900 Convertible went on sale in Europe that year, demand exceeded production capacity. Seven years later and a second generation came to the market. Autumn 1993 saw the all-new Saab 900 Convertible arrive. This second generation model and its Saab 9-3 evolution in 1998 became an icon, with more stylish design, and a move to a hydraulically –powered soft top to save your fingernails.

2003 brought a whole host of innovations to the Saab Convertible with the launch of the third and current generation.

21^st Century Saab

Saab celebrated the first anniversary of its rebirth as an independent company in February 2011 by launching an exclusive Independence Edition of its 9-3 Convertible.

The 1.9-litre TTiD Independence Edition Convertible (catchy eh?) is based on the top-of the-range Aero specification with a 180hp engine, six-speed automatic transmission and unique Amber Orange metallic paint finish, a limited edition serial number etched into the rear side windows, distinctive interior trim and comprehensive equipment. Sounds like it’ll get you noticed then, as if driving around in a convertible won’t draw enough attention…

If you’re flush with cash and fancy a new summer runabout, visit www.media.saab.co.uk

I was so excited to see another RCZ on the road – it pulled out right in front of us. I wanted to shout and wave to let them know that I too had one (albeit for only seven wonderful days) but they ignored me. I felt as if we should have had an immediate bond – the only other time I’ve seem one was at its launch last year.

To me, this only makes the car more desirable. As it is, every time I get out of it, I fall in love all over again. It still shocks me as to just how beautiful it is.

So when I finally did draw up alongside the RCZ with my ready smile, all I got was a cold glare! Was it the two eager faces of my kids in the rear, or the fact that my RCZ was even more stunning than his with our amber red paintwork, contrasting silver aluminum roof arches, black 19” alloys with black-painted brake calipers and ’11′ registration plate?

Some people are just so shallow! Unlike me, of course.

So here we have a stunning car, one of the most beautiful cars on the road today I think. It does have a masculine yet feline look to it, but as I wear the trousers in our family then it’s eminently suited to me.
This is a sports car that is so easy to live with, not only due to the practical boot space or the fact that up front is a regular Peugeot engine with decent CO2 emissions and fuel consumption, but also because the performance it offers is enough to bring a smile to your face without scaring the living daylights out of you! It takes corners briskly and excitingly, hugs the road and zooms along effortlessly so certainly feels the part as well as looking it!
So, for me, being so shallow, having a car that turns heads, performs well and looks exceedingly good in front of my house ticks all of my alter-ego boxes (having forgotten the need for a people-carrier at my stage in life). I have found my perfect car. You can get kids in the rear should you choose to and mine didn’t complain even after our mini weekend tour of the south coast. They were kept amused by their vertical view through the double-bubble glass roof and I was kept happy by the sheer thrill of driving such a gorgeous car and all for the princely sum of £25,395 (ours has some options such as Satnav and those wheels, but you can buy an RCZ for £21,245)!
Mid life crisis – look no further…

Fords all-new C-max has many improvements on the old one – a great 1.6-litre Ecoboost petrol engine which gives you the pulling power of a diesel and is a joy to drive, not even taking into account its efficiency, great performance and modest outpouring of CO2 (159 g/km). There’s also an array of diesel engines on offer emitting even less CO2.

The Ecoboost petrol engine is amazingly quiet – I have to say that was one of the first things that struck me about this car – even when revved hard. Not because I’m a boy-racer, but just because it always take a bit of time for me to settle into a car. Goodness knows what my co-driver thought .

So there are a great many things going for this C-Max as well as the fact it would certainly enhance the appearance of your driveway. But it’s always the interior which I feel clinches the deal because, lets face it, that’s what you are going to be seeing and touching rather alot of. And it’s good!

Ford say they have put a huge amount of effort into the styling and quality on the inside, and I can’t disagree with them. The materials all have a high premium feel, especially the plastics and the look of the piano-black highlights, which also features rather heavily on the exterior. Ford pride themselves in using authentic material so the chrome is metal and not plastic. It does seem to be rather popular these days to have a “cockpit” style of cabin, and while this is the case here, it is not just limited to the drivers area but extends to the passenger side, so there is a balanced, equal feel to it which is set off so well with the stunning central console. Ford have teamed up with Sony to create a rather stunning looking audio system with hints of the Fiesta about it and so neatly placed from the steering wheel so that you don’t have to go searching for the controls.

The same can be said the for the ergonomically-placed gearstick. Very comfortable to use.

I think you can tell I like this car. Not just the looks and the feel, but the drive. We took the C-Max on some roads on the hills around Nice in the south of France which left me wishing I was home on the flat, featureless M25 rather than tearing round hairpin bends at speed. But despite any fears, it clung on with confidence and was definitely up to the challenge. It also went at a slower, more moderate pace by yours truly, just to prove that it could!

It is certainly more spacious than it looks with generous head room and five seats. Although I wouldn’t advise five people and luggage to try and all squeeze in at once. The seats are easy to adjust and I particularly approve of the driver’s arm rest which moves with the seat. And to me this is one of the many ‘extras’ that take you by surprise in such a compact city car. It was a delight to find a satnav, blue tooth, cruise control and steering wheel controls for the radio. Nissan describe the Micra as ‘simple but not basic” which I feel is very apt. The circular controls are very eye catching and then unfortunately you notice the box housing the audio controls which is visually very disappointing.

Storage is rather clever and I got quite excited upon hearing about the storage under the passenger seat cushion which lifts up to reveal a space beneath. I don’t think this is aimed at hiding huge amounts of stuff, but it’s very good for wedging a shopping bag or handbag in with he cushion in the upright position. The only downside being that a handbag would be very much on display.

There are two engines available, the first we sampled was their CVT (Continuous Variable Transmission) which was smooth and perfect for city driving or an older driver who no longer needs the oomph that manual cars can offer (that together with this car’s ability to help you park with its parking space measuring system would be perfect for my aging yet very active mother). I was rather taken by surprise with the 1.2 petrol manual which has a throaty three cylinder engine which provides, when floored enough engine noise to satisfy the racing driver in any of us. This could be a good or bad thing of course. The gears were smooth, even with me driving and glided into place as we zoomed around the Danish countryside.

The new Micra is agile, compact, comfortable and not only is it very competitively priced ( just under £9,000) against it’s rivals (whose entry level cars all have three doors against this 5-door car) its running costs are low and it’s CO2 emissions would satisfy the greenest amongst us. It’s also sturdy despite being lighter than it’s predecessor –  as we found out!

So while I won’t forget this car in a hurry, it might not necessarily be for the right reasons!

The Abarth is one of those things I’ve been trying to get my head around for some time. Now motoring enthusiasts amongst you can be forgiven for thinking me a tad slow, but maybe a tad uninterested is closer to the mark. That is, up until I got to experience the full might of the Abarth in two quite different forms.

Travelling up to the Abarth event through the beautiful countryside of North Yorkshire in the gorgeous Fiat 500c (sadly didn’t get to experience it in cabriolet form due the rain after weeks of sunshine), I wondered why anyone would require or need anything more than this. It’s cute, stylish, pelts alone very nicely on the motor way, is a delight along the country roads and is utterly stunning to look at. Mine was glowing white with a maroon top.

I sat through the chats about the Abarth, both the 500C and the Punto Evo. My interest was slightly prodded as the UK head of the Abarth waxed lyrically about its attributes – 1.4 Turbo T-Jet engine, 140 bhp, MTA gearbox with gear shift paddles, high specs, electric hood, striking alloys and the Abarth philosophy of making the ordinary extraordinary. I was getting rather hot and just wanted a bite to eat and my bed.

So when I finally got into the Abarth 500C and my co-driver allowed me to go first, I popped it into the automatic mode, put down the roof and off we went along roads slicing through quite breathe-taking scenary. I didn’t want to go too fast as I always get slightly self-conscious driving with someone new and he was white haired and I felt that was reason enough to go at a modest pace.

It was then my white-haired friend’s turn at the wheel. We’ll call him Mr R. Having already told me that his wild driving days were far behind him, now that he was a man of more mature years with nothing to prove, I assumed that our pottering ride would continue.
Never judge a book by it’s cover! I have never had so much fun as a passenger that during the next hour as Mr R put the car through its paces along the wide, open country roads. Paddles all the way as we flew along at rather an alarming but exhilerating rate with the wind in my hair (despite the wind shield). Overtaking was a doddle, with this little car having so much to give. Of course it helped that the sun was shining, no police cars in sight and only the poor sheep to occasionally dodge.

How could I have missed the opportunity to drive as if the vehicle was stolen, which by the end, I felt like doing!?

I still don’t get paddle shifts and prefer a gear stick every time (there is talk of producing a manual one but for the moment they seem to want to show off their technolgy). The automatic gearbox in automatic mode felt jerky, but this can be reduced by playing with the accelerator pedal and anticipating the gear changes I was told – not something I managed to achieve. And all this fun will cost you £17,500.

I still can’t equate the look of the 500C with a hot hatch although it certainly behaves like one, having further proof of this on a track with a professional driver at the wheel. But apart from having great fun, why would you want to throw this gorgeous car around a track – I’d much rather be seen on the open road where it leaves other cars standing as you stylishly zoom past in a cloud of cheeky, Italian elegance!

I bet if you asked a group of woman what they thought about Volvos, safety would be the first thing they came up with.

Now while Volvo has moved forward in leaps and bounds with their styling (think about the very sexy looking C30), having left their boxy image far behind, one image they don’t want to change is their world-renowned reputation for safety.

So their all new S60 is not only stylish – a coupe with sporty overtones, extremely comfortable and a joy to drive, it also has some amazing safety features. So even if you might not be able to afford one for yourself,  you’ll be hoping that other people might.

Pedestrian detection: In the ideal world, people would actually adhere to speed limits, especially around town, but should the unthinkable happen and a child runs out in your path then often our reactions are too slow. This is when pedestrian detection comes into play.

I was given the opportunity to experience this first-hand, the pedestrian thankfully being a dummy. At 15 mph, the car detected the ‘pedestrian’ and slammed on the brakes for me, stopping inches away from the dummy. I had been given a warning light and noise immediately beforehand, at which point it is hoped that a driver would react.

All this is achieved by a radar at the front of the car detecting distance and a camera at the top of the windscreen which detects a pedestrian’s pattern of movement.

If you are going faster the same thing happens, the brakes are applied, the car has been slowed dramatically and now a certain death becomes more likely an injury (the poor dummy did get thrown at this point).

The S60, an executive saloon, is more than likely to have a family man or woman behind the wheel so to me this would be a very appealing optional extra despite the £1,250 price tag (for which you also get blind spot and lane departure warning, a driver alert control which warns the driver if their driving patterns change perhaps due to tiredness or distraction, and active bi-xenon lights) on top of the basic price of £23, 295.

So apart from these very special options, why might your exec choose this over the more traditional saloons of this class such as the Audi A4 or BMW 3 Series? Well it’s different for a start, great to drive, stylish, has a lovely rear window and every one seems to come with a work of art as standard in the form of the central console.

My only gripe? Where is the foot rest for the left foot?

So, if you want to stand out from the crowd in one of the world’s safest cars but which now also has the style to match the S60 might just fit the bill. All they need to do now is make the Wallander ring-tone more easily available…

I can only now fully appreciate the sheer space provided by Kia’s new mini MPV, the Venga, after watching it being driven away and me getting into our next test car (it’s a tough life). Lovely though the new one is, it felt rather dark and claustrophobic inside in comparison to the high ceiling of the Kia with its amazing panoramic roof and enough head room for a gorilla – or indeed my husband!

Watching Doctor Who with the kids, I saw the similarities to his faithful Tardis. Rather innocent but intriguing on the outside, and surprisingly spacious on the inside with delightful nooks and crannies, sliding seats, hidden compartments and space, space, space! Has the Tardis got sliding seats? Oh well…

It’s not a luxurious car like its also-recently-launched big brother the Sorento (video review coming soon), but has many redeeming features. One of the models (the diesel, the one on test here) proudly displays the Ecodynamics badge which it has earned through its low fuel consumption (over 62 mpg on a combine cycle) with CO2 emissions of only 117g/km. This model doesn’t come cheap however, but the gains over the course of its life would soon add up. This, together with the seven year warranty offered by Kia do make it a very attractive proposition.

But what I might be inclined to do is to wait a bit until a few second hand ones come on the market, so that I could take advantage of Kia’s used car programme. This tops the depleted warranty back up to seven years if the car is less that 18 months old or with less that 18,000 miles on the clock. Then a Kia Venga would really be excellent value. Or you could take the view that this makes buying a new one less of a risk because you wouldn’t have much trouble selling it after 18,000 miles?

Either way Kia seem hell-bent on taking the worry out of buying a new car, and with products coming along so much better than their predecessors they’re starting to appeal to our hearts as well.

That was the situation I found myself in last night where Ford had kindly invited me to join them at the Mojo Honours List awards in EC1. I arrived at Moorgate tube station with hand-drawn map only to find that none of the road names coincided with what I had confidently sketched earlier.

Help was at hand in the form of a street map and a guy minding his own business standing next to it, who, when asked, took out his phone and searched the address for me. Not only was I struck at how kind and helpful this guy was, but the fact that when the map appeared on his phone he did the girlie thing (or at least I’m told it’s girlie, whereas I just think it’s the obvious thing to do) and turned his phone around so the map was pointing in the right direction!

Two myths in one thrown out the window. People are amazingly kind and helpful (I’m a great believer that what goes around comes around), and reading maps up-side-down is for those people just trying to be clever.

I walked up the red carpet into the awards with a spring in my step and not a care that all the paparazzi never even glanced in my direction!

And as for the awards evening? All rather bemusing but great fun with lots of oldies up there getting their awards. Made me feel young again. And my kids started today off well with a gift from Ford in the form of one of their iconic transit vans – scaled down of course!

A beautiful, sports car that has a practical side? Now that’s just being silly. And quite frankly when I actually first set eyes on the extraordinary Peugeot RCZ, any thoughts of a practical nature went straight out of the window. Except that is, what could I do to own one!

Often photos can give a false impression, so that you end up being slightly disappointed and let down when you see the real thing. But although the RCZ looks stunning in the press photos it doesn’t flatter to deceive: it’s even better looking in the flesh, trust me.

It is gorgeous, and while I wasn’t quite as taken with the interior as I was with the 308 CC (they’re very similar so perhaps it just looked slightly familiar) it couldn’t fail to impress.

I did eventually get to see the boot and realised that you could get a family in there should you want to, and if not, you could fill it with all manner of shopping, and even a bike should the urge take you.

Sitting in the RCZ felt fantastic; I felt as if my legs had elongated as I got comfortable in the low driving position with my legs stretched out to connect with the shiny alloy pedals. I suppose I’m so used to sitting up high in a rigid, tense position in the family car full of kids, that I had got to the point where I thought that was the only driving position possible. The large sculpted rear window allows great visibility and lets in a lot of light, so that driving becomes a more relaxed experience.

So not only is the RCZ a joy to drive, but it’s also very frugal. Peugeot, like all manufacturers, have the health of the planet on their conscience and are constantly making strides towards reducing the carbon footprint of their products. And Peugeot’s diesel engines (the petrol engines aren’t that far behind either) are famously good.

But surely the most satisfying feeling is being in a car that really turns heads. Another RCZ came hurtling towards us as we were driving along and it made you realise what an impression they make. It may be shallow, but this car really does have rather a lot of road presence, and by default, as a driver you can’t help but feel some of it rubbing off on you.

Trouble is, they’re not making many of these so I’m going to have to be quick trying to persuade the family that the RCZ would be an ideal replacement for our ancient Corsa as a second car…