RoadTestReports.co.uk launches iPhone app

The UK’s favourite consumer car review website, RoadTestReports.co.uk has now launched an iPhone App to ensure its users can get all the latest reviews on the go.

Users will now be able to read and write reviews, making full use of the website’s database of car and van reviews from consumers as well as get the latest verdict from the website’s team of professional motoring journalists.

RoadTestReports.co.uk’s new App is now available to download for free on Apple’s App store and is compatible with iPhones, iPads and iPod Touch devices*.

The new App will make it easier and more convenient users to make use of the website-the fastest growing resource in the UK for consumer car reviews**.

“RoadTestReports.co.uk is a great motoring research website and we have seen its popularity grow hugely over the years. The new App will mean that customers can continue to make the most of the website on the go,” says the website’s spokesperson, Faye Sunderland.

“We believe the route to its success is its informal approach and consumer focus. Motorists enjoy the chance to share their verdict and enthusiasm for their cars. The website has traditionally been a forum for car buyers find unbiased advice among each, empowering the consumer. We are now pleased to say that this is now available anywhere, at anytime,” she adds.

For more information on new App, go to: http://bit.ly/roadtestreportsapp

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Notes for Editors:

1. * Requires iPhone OS 4.2 or later.

About RoadTestReports.co.uk: Launched in June 2007, RoadTestReports.co.uk offers road tests on all the major cars and vans plus consumer reviews. The website provides “featured” reviews written by motoring journalists and reviews from consumers who tell us exactly what it is like to drive the vehicles day-in and day-out and the real practical implications of buying them. Anyone can submit a review, which gives it great appeal to website visitors and vehicle manufacturers. **The website now attracts over 280,000 monthly users and over 600,000 monthly page views; these statistics have improved month in, month out and will continue to improve as more feature and consumer vehicle reviews are added.

RoadTestReports.co.uk is owned and maintained by Really Good Domains Ltd, which runs more motoring websites than any other company in the UK. As the UK’s largest internet advertising and marketing company for the motor industry, Really Good Domains also run the popular websites ContractHireAndLeasing.com, TheVanWebsite.co.uk, TheGreenCarWebsite.co.uk, CarSupermarkets.co.uk, SaveMoneyOnCars.co.uk and FleetDirectory.co.uk to name a few.

RoadTestReports.co.uk’s new app is available to download for free on the Apple app store and is compatible with iPhones, iPads, and iPod touch devices.

Features include:

• Read motoring journalist reviews of all the latest cars. Reviews are broken down into easy-to-read categories: Performance, Ride & Handling, Build Quality & Reliability, Safety & Security, Space & Practicality, and Ownership & Value.
• Read real opinions – thousands of consumer reviews on all major car and van models, updated daily.
• Make your voice heard – submit your own consumer review about the car or van you drive.
• Links to popular new, used and leasing websites showcasing the latest car and van deals on that model.

Coming soon:

• All the latest motoring news.
• Question & Answers section.
• Photo Galleries.

If you are a driver looking to buy or lease a vehicle and need help deciding which vehicle to go for, RoadTestReports.co.uk is the iPhone App for you!

Job Type: Permanent, Full Time, Office Based

Location: Hazel Grove, Stockport

Established in 1999 and widely recognised as one of the most successful internet advertising companies in the UK, Really Good Domains Ltd owns and maintains a portfolio of award-winning automotive websites. Each website is developed to cater for a specific sector of the UK motoring industry and attract market leading numbers of users and page views, while being independently recognised as the most effective form of advertising in each sector. All of our websites are positioned at the top of natural search engine results for almost any phrase of relevance and are developed around memorable, generic domain names that people do not forget.

The company has expanded at a rapid rate over recent years and has recently undergone an extension of premises to accommodate this growth. As a fairly small, yet effective and supportive team, we maintain a friendly and pleasant working atmosphere at Really Good Domains.

Role and responsibilities:

This role involves supporting the marketing team with daily content related jobs, such as rewriting and publishing news stories, adding related content to the sites (including guides, vehicle road test reports and reviews), editing website content and expanding the Company’s social media coverage (specifically on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn).

Although the role will consist of day to day, fairly repetitive tasks initially, there will be future opportunities for the successful applicant to get involved with marketing, PR and/or SEO activities for the Company, should they be interested in furthering their career and skill set.

Essential skills required:

• An excellent command of the English language
• High levels of creative writing abilities and skills
• Education to A Level standard or above
• Proficiency in using Microsoft Office
• Experience and understanding of using social media sites
• An ability to research
• Good communication skills
• A proactive approach
• Strong attention to detail
• An ability to work to deadlines

Desirable skills:

• A Levels or a degree in English, or a journalism related subject
• A genuine interest in motors and the motoring industry

If you feel you are the person we are searching for and would like to work for one of the most successful internet advertising companies in the UK – we would like to talk to you!

If you feel you can fulfil these requirements, please contact Nikki Geldard on 0161 482 7650, or email your CV and covering letter to jobs@reallygooddomains.com with ‘Web Content Writer’ written in the subject line.

The investigation by the motoring magazine compared the number of endorsable offences dished out in each police region across the UK to reveal Northamptonshire topped the prosecutions league table for England and Wales, doling out a fixed penalty notice to nearly one in every six cars! The Scottish region of Dumfries and Galloway was even tougher, ticketing the equivalent of one-fifth of all cars within its boundaries.

Speeding
Tickets for speeding topped the list of offences, with 1.46 million registered in 2007, helping to net the Government well over £1.2billion for the year. Of those, a whopping 86 per cent were captured by speed traps.

Worst of the bunch south of Scotland was North Wales, which has the highest speeding prosecution rate in England and Wales, at one in every eight cars in the region. It also has the highest camera per car rate for the UK. With only 15 fixed traps, the force relies on inventive use of mobile cameras, including even hiding one in a horsebox last year!

Dumfries and Galloway Police doesn’t boast a single fixed Gatso or Truvelo – instead relying on only two camera vans to catch drivers unaware – but the force still took first place in our Scottish league table, with 16 per cent of cars receiving tickets for speeding in 2008/9.

Also working its mobile fleet to the full is Cumbria; it’s at the top of the English police force league for speeding tickets, despite having only 12 fixed cameras. While at the bottom of England’s list is Durham, which has only two fixed speed cameras and one camera van operating at 80 sites.

Rural forces in the bottom 10 for all points-earning tickets included Gloucestershire (fifth from bottom) and North Yorkshire (fourth), but urban police forces came low down, too. Despite 1,314 camera sites in the capital, the car-weighted results put London seventh from bottom for all endorsable offences, with the West Midlands (including Birmingham) just below it.

The investigation also revealed the counties who were tough on illegal mobile phone use, uninsured drivers and red-light jumping, too. While these figures were not available for Scotland, in our England and Wales database, they promoted Merseyside, Hertfordshire and Nottinghamshire to the top spots respectively.

Red lights
The stand-out prosecutor for red-light jumpers is Nottinghamshire, with the force’s traffic-light cameras claiming over 50 per cent more prosecutions than the next most vigilant force, which is Leicestershire. The results show that its 41 mainly city-based red light cameras claimed one prosecution for every 42 cars in the county. By contrast, London’s 301 traffic light cameras only snapped enough of the capital’s 2.6 million cars to net it seventh place.

Insurance
According to the Home Office, police prosecuted 12,960 motorists for driving without insurance in 2007. In our car-weighted research, it was Hertfordshire that snared the most offenders in England and Wales, followed by North Wales, Lancashire and London.

Mobile phones
Merseyside topped the chart for prosecutions in England and Wales, netting just under one per cent of total cars within the police region at 4,547. South Yorkshire was second, followed by the West Mercia region of Herefordshire, Shropshire and Worcestershire.

Auto Express News and Features Editor Julie Sinclair said: “Our investigation reveals the shocking truth behind the Police penalty points system in the UK; that it’s a postcode lottery. The extent to which your driving licence is at risk, simply depends on where you live.”

The AA agreed the findings made shocking reading. Its spokesman said: “The Auto Express figures clearly demonstrate that police strategies vary enormously. It is unfair that what you’re doing in one place might not get you a penalty, whereas it might in another. But it’s never been consistent. It does mean drivers are a bit cynical about what goes on, because it clearly is a lottery.”

Peugeot 207 CC consumer car reviews

Peugeot 207 CC lease prices
Peugeot 207 CC new and nearly new

Cabriolets by their very nature a prone to a seasonal wax and wane in demand and as such you would be well advised to be careful when you decide to part with your 207 CC as the price you get will likely vary. That said there is no reason to think that the 207 CC will particularly suffer from depreciation. With a starting price of £16,695, the 207 CC compares favourably with competitors such Mazda MX-5. Although the MX-5 just undercuts the 207 CC, starting from £16,345, for this you lose a lot of space and everyday practicality. As a true roadster, the MX-5 outclasses the 207 CC on performance, so choosing between the two really comes to want you really need from your car. If you want something fun yet functional, opt for the 207 CC. Elsewhere in the market, the likes of the Ford Focus CC and Vauxhall Astra TwinTop sit well above the 207 CC, costing around £20,000 each so here there is just no comparison. The 207 CC is a sensible choice. The basic sport models sit in insurance group eight, rising to nine for the GT models and an eye-watering 12 for the GT THP as test drove here. The diesel variants offer the best fuel efficiency, at 56.4 miles to the gallon (combined) and CO2 of 130g/km meaning they sit in tax band C at £120 a year road tax. The GT THP is much less efficient thanks to its powerful petrol engine, returning just 39.2 miles to the gallon and pumping out 171g/km of CO2. This means it is in tax band H at £175. If you don’t want to be constantly disappointed at how little you get to the gallon, I would opt for a diesel model, you won’t lose out too much in the power stakes, but you will find it keeps its value well and won’t make your eyes smart every time you visit the pump.

Read the full Peugeot 207 CC road test

RoadTestReports.co.uk provides road tests reports written by members of the Guild of Motoring Writers. These reports are complemented by car reviews submitted by the members of the public who drive the vehicles day in day out.

Vauxhall Astra 5-Door Hatch consumer car reviews
Vauxhall Astra 5-Door Hatch lease prices
Vauxhall Astra 5-Door Hatch new and nearly new

On the basis of my short test drive and subsequent poke around, the Astra is hard to fault. Everything seems to fit, everything’s securely screwed together, the exterior paintwork is lustrous, while the interior’s plastics, upholstery and ‘piano black’ trim all look good and feel right. The only fly in the ointment is Vauxhall’s performance in the 2009 JD Power UK Vehicle Ownership Study where the maker finished a lowly 26th out of 29 manufacturers with a score of 760 against an industry average of 781. I suspect this result may have more to do with the perceived shortcomings of other models and dealerships than the Astra itself.

Read the full Vauxhall Astra 1.7 ecoFLEX Design road test

Audi S3 lease prices

Audi S3 new and nearly new car prices

Audi is certainly working hard to improve the efficiency of its engines, with improvements to CO2 levels in the new S3: the 261bhp 2.0-litre TFSI now emits 18g/km less carbon dioxide, taking its figure down to 199g/km. This is hardly planet-saving, but then eco warriors tend not to drive hot hatches. Engine tweaks also mean that fuel consumption has also improved, with the S3 now returning 33.2mpg on the combined cycle. However, this figure is likely to be much lower in real-world driving, especially in the hands of a hot hatch owner. The S3 is a desirable car and, with the price of a brand new car being so high, there will always be plenty of buyers looking to save some cash and pick one up for more reasonable money. As such, the S3 has very good residuals, holding on to 58% of its value after 3 years and 30,000 miles.

Read the full Audi S3 Sportback road test

Alfa Romeo Spider lease prices

Alfa Romeo new and nearly new car prices

For maximum fuel economy the 41.5mpg (combined) of the 2.4 JTD (diesel) scores highly (see separate test). The £26,895 2.2 petrol model manages 30.7mpg, while the V6 Q4 is somewhat juicier at 24.6mpg. The £32,395 V6 model offers all the equipment you’d expect, including climate control and leather upholstery, although it’s an extra £500 for metallic paint and a substantial £1,615 for Alfa’s satnav. The Spider also boasts a long list of hi-tech audio and communications options, but such details seem insignificant when you’re bombing along in a sweet-sounding, Pininfarina-styled roadster on a warm Summer’s evening.

Read the full Alfa Romeo 2.2 JTS & 3.2 JTS V6 Q4 road tests

Suzuki Swift lease prices
Suzuki Swift new and nearly new car prices

There is no question that the Swift makes for high value motoring , in a vehicle which will keep going year after year and will provide you with an entertaining drive. The diesel engine we drove delivered 56.4 MPG although we were ‘testing’ the vehicle, so not exactly pottering around in an attempt to achieve a certain threshold. The official mpg figure stands at 62.8mpg on a combined cycle for the 1.3 diesel model. There is the more potent 1.5 petrol engine although this does mean a compromise when it comes to economy.

Read the full Suzuki Swift 1.3 DDI-S road test

Lexus RX lease prices

Lexus RX new and nearly new prices

The new 450h has 10% more power than the outgoing 400h, but it uses 28% less fuel – a best-in-class 44.8mpg combined. Careful real-world driving should yield 50mpg or more. CO2 at 148g/km means annual road tax of just £105 (Band F). This RX also qualifies for a Benefit-in-Kind tax rate for company car drivers of 14% – way below that for all other similarly-sized SUVs. Insurance groupings are 17E (out of 20) or 40E (out of 50). OTR prices start at £41,600 for the SE model, rising to £55,505 for the SE-L Premium. Too good to be true? If it weren’t for the lousy coil suspension and borderline bootdspace (seats up) it would be.

Read the full Lexus RX 450h SE-L Premium road test