Trumpet-blow of the week: I’ve been bleating on for longer than is strictly healthy about how the Audi A2 was a car ahead of its time.
So when the editor wanted to run a feature a few months ago about cars that should be reborn, a new A2 was the obvious choice for me. Any new A2 would have to be on the VW Group’s new MEB all-electric platform, I reckoned at the time, but there’d be a lot to like about a small, spacious, posh Audi.
We had some industry experts assess our wares. “We think selling it would be the problem,” they said. To say I was ‘crushed’ hardly does my feelings justice. But what’s this from the Shanghai motor show? It’s only the flipping AI:ME concept: a compact, spacious, posh Audi based on the MEB all-electric platform – so perhaps other industry experts don’t think it’s such a bad idea after all.
Our correspondent asked about visual and engineering similarities to the A2. “If there are parts of our heritage like this, it’s not bad, because it makes it recognisable,” he was told, but he was assured that really the AI:ME’s similarity of ethos to the A2 was “a coincidence”.
I say you heard it here first. And if my premonitions keep going well, you’re going to love it when somebody gets around to making a new Matra-Simca Rancho.
Time spent = money saved
Spring, surely, is the biggest season of the year for browsing classified car adverts. And if you are doing so online, it’s worth knowing about a service that has been around for a while, but is, I think, less known than it should be.
As well as checking a car’s tax status, you can now also check its MOT history since 2005 – and not just whether it passed or failed, but the reasons for failing, or what the advisories were when it passed.
Which, I think, can give you some kind of indication of how the owner has treated a car. Early Porsche Boxsters strike me as quite tempting, but I’d worry about one that keeps turning up to an MOT on bald tyres.
The check shows the respective mileage, too. One Range Rover I looked at went from 210,000 miles one year to 85,000 the next. So arm yourself with questions, raise alarm bells or reassure yourself – and waste less time and money either way.
Just head to check-mot.service. gov.uk and sling in a reg number.
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I've been using the MOT
I've been using the MOT checker for ages and have found it particlurly useful, especially when choosing first cars for my kids. To choose their respective cars I first used an insurance comparison site to narrow down affordable models, then checked they were at least 4star ncap cars when tested, then chose the particular car by MOT history and all the usual considerations. There is a lot of info out there to play with to try and ensure you get, in my case, a safe and affordable car that will hopefully prove reliable.
Regarding the A2 I always thought it was the original A class that was ahead of it's time and should be repeated, here was a small car that had as much room inside as a larger car and was crash safe and also ideal for making electric. Really speaking an A class should have been the perfect family car, easy access to slightly raised driving position and easy rear access for loading kids, small on the road so easy to manoeuvre and park, as much space if not more than a focus whilst being the size of a ka. Surely if they made one now, they could style it to make it look xover-esq, and it would be a perfect family car.
MOT Check Address
Useful site - the correct link seems to be https://www.check-mot.service.gov.uk/