WorldSkills Gold medal winner Andrew Blair received a tribute award at the Bodyshop Magazine Industry Event in London, 15th September 2005. The award was presented by Phil Hope, Minister for Vocational Skills and Damon Hill, former F1 World Champion.
Peugeot boss, Jean-Pierre Nicolas has predicted that they will have a ‘real chance’ to win in Argentina next weekend – and has announced that the team will introduce a new tyre at the Rally Finland in August.
The winner and the two runners up of this year’s European Custom Bike Building Championships all used Avon tyres.
A total of 64 top class builders from Europe and beyond entered 71 bikes in the AMD ProShow, held at the Phoenixhalle in Mainz, Germany.
The winner was Thomas Hebermann of Habermann-Performance in Germany with his S&S shovelhead-engined chopper named ‘Caligo’. The machine was fitted with an Avon Venom AM42 300/35R18 88V rear and 100/90-19 57V Supervenom front.
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Andrew Blair, 22, from County Antrim, has scooped the UK’s only gold medal at the 2005 WorldSkills Competition in Helsinki, Finland. He won the medal in Autobody Repair, competing against 14 other countries including Japan, Korea, France, Germany and the US.
Mr Blair, who works for Mallusk Accident Repair Centre in Belfast, also achieved 7th place in the overall Competition (almost 700 competitors competed in total), which took place over four days at the end of May.
The first round of the 2005 Asia Pacific Rally Championship (APRC) that was run as the Subaru Rally, Canberra, Australia kicked up plenty of dust in more ways than one. When the dust and din settled, debutant Jussi Valimaki (co-driver Jarkko Kalliolepo) from Finland, driving a Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution VIII for Team MRF Tyres (India), emerged as the winner. However, the 30-year old Finn, nicknamed “Fast Jussi” had to wait for the several hours that it took the Stewards to conduct scrutiny and then exclude first placed Toshi Arai of Japan.
An obviously elated Valimaki said: “This was a good first rally with a new team, new car and new tyres and I’m very happy with the result. I am sure with some more time we can get faster – it’s the biggest win of my career.”
Nordic buying group Dekk Partner has reported that its network is growing at a rapid rate. Dekk Partner now has 110 workshops in Norway, close to 90 in Sweden, 60 in Finland and one in Estonia. On top of this group managing director, Leif Kristiansen, predicts that total turnover could peak at 215 million euros this year.
Following the San Marino Grand Prix last weeked, Bridgestone has announced thenames of the seven finalists of its e-reporter competition. The pan-European contest for aspiring young journalists has received an “overwhelming” response from students across Europe, according to Bridgestone.
The European Union Commission has said it is probing four car makers on suspicion that they restricted access to technical information required for vehicle maintenance in a way that may contravene EU competition law, Tire Review reports.
Sibur Russian Tyres is in talks with a Czech unit of German tyremaker Continental AG and with Finland’s Nokian Renkaat to cooperate in the tyre business, the Reuters news agency has reported. Sibur spokeswoman Anna Stepanova said Sibur’s possible partnership with the Continental unit might include production of tyres at a Sibur plant in Russia.
She also said Sibur was in talks with Nokian, which is already building a tyre plant of its own near St Petersburg. “There will be (partnership) with Nokian, but it’s unclear of what kind,” she said. Nokian declined to comment and Continental was not available for comment. A previous move by Nokian to cooperate with a Russian tyre manufacturer ended in a dispute with Russian partner Amtel over how to expand their cooperation. Production at the joint venture stopped last year, and it is now dissolved.
The Russian tyre company is part of petrochemical giant Sibur, which controls about half of Russia’s tyre industry. Sibur in turn is controlled by Russian gas monopoly Gazprom.
Western European passenger car registrations totalled 14,516,879 units in 2004 representing a growth of 2.1 per cent. ACEA figures show that 1,043,669 units were recorded in December, a 7.7 per cent increase compared to 2003 figures.
Four of the five main markets posted increases for December, however the UK showed a decrease of (-0.5) per cent with 2,567,269 units registered in ’04 compared to 2,579,050 in ’03. Germany led those countries posting an increase, with a 21.5 per cent rise ahead of France, Italy and Spain.
Belgium, Finland, Greece, Ireland and Portugal also posted decreases.
The former Prime Minister of the Netherlands, Wim Kok, has presented an interim report to the European Union, pursuing the goal of making the EU the strongest economic power in the world, by 2010. The report found that Luxembourg fares well, already in an “above average” position. The research summarised a countries potential to grow based on the number of scientists per thousand. With a European average of 5.7 per thousand, Luxembourg was found to have the second largest proportion in Europe, with 8.78 researchers per thousand. Only Finland has a higher number of research scientists. Luxembourg was less successful in other categories.
The reason for Luxembourg’s impressive standing is because of the number of private research centres based within its borders. Luxembourg is the home of a number of significant research centres including, Goodyear, DuPont and Delphi.
Currently the Lisbon Strategy is a long way away from its goal of making Europe the strongest developed economy in the world.
High-speed action on gravel roads was the order of the day, at this weekend’s WRC race in Finland. The double world champion Marcus Grönholm and his new Peugeot 307 CC drove in a league of their own, won, and putting Grönholm back in contention for the title.
Michelin, as one of the race series’ two tyre suppliers, occupied the further places with Ford driver Markko Märtin and Citroën star Carlo Sainz. The victory Champagne must have tasted particularly sweet, since it was the seventh season victory for Michelin. The win also represents the first World Rally Championship triumph for the new Peugeot. Current champion, Petter Solberg and his Subaru (on Pirelli tyres) fell at the first hurdle, having an accident on the first day.
Shigeo Watanabe, head of Bridgestone Corp., has categorically stated that the company was not discussing a production deal with Russia’s Amtel, which has threatened to dump partner Nokian Renkaat. Russian tyre maker Amtel told Reuters last week that relations between it and Finland’s Nokian were frozen and their venture could end. Nokian, in which Bridgestone owns about 20 per cent, has said its 50-50 joint venture with Amtel was still intact. Amtel Vice President Anatoly Volnov, however, has stated Amtel and Bridgestone plan to produce a quarter of a million tyres this year under the Bridgestone brand at the Kirov plant.
ACEA figures for 2003 passenger car sales hardly make good reading for European car manufacturers. The only country to show significant sales increases in 2003 was Finland, with an increase of around 30,000 units. Portugal’s drop in sales though of almost 27,000 almost wipes out that gain. Despite claims in the UK of a good year for car sales, the actual figure shows only a 0.6 per cent increase. Overall the market in Western Europe shows a fall of 1.3 per. Looking at vehicle manufacturer sales the only western manufacturer to make any gains has been BMW with a meagre 1.4 per cent increase in sales, largely generated by sales of the Mini. For all the other groups it is bad news, with sales down between 1.3 and 10.2 per cent (the latter at the long ailing Fiat Group). Japanese and Korean manufacturers though can smile as sales for all bar Suzuki and Mitsubishi are all on the increase, with Nissan and Mazda performing particularly well, and Korean manufacturer Kia making an incredible comeback from the brink of extinction.
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Western Europe new passenger car registrations for October 2003 amounted to 1.179.024 units, representing a decrease of 0.3 per cent with respect to October 2002. The number of working days in October 2003 was the same as in October 2002. This basically flat result seems to point towards a stabilisation of the market, in line with most economic indicators. National figures show increases in 7 out of 15 EU countries, ranging from +5.4 per cent in Luxembourg to +33.9 per cent in Finland. Spain was the best performer among the 5 bigger markets. Decreases ranged from -0.3 per cent in Italy to -11.6 per cent in the Netherlands and Denmark. Cumulative figures for the first ten months of the year show a closing up of the overall decrease, now -1.3 per cent. Five countries post positive figures, ranging from +0.3 per cent in the U.K. to +25 per cent in Finland. All other countries report decreases, ranging from -0.6 per cent in Luxembourg to -20.2 per cent in Portugal.
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