Pirelli has launched a new initiative based around the operating temperature of winter tyres. Customers who purchase the manufacturer’s winter products are being offered a 50 per cent refund should the average UK daily temperature remain higher than seven degrees Celsius for more than 30 days between 1 January 2014 and 28 February 2014.
ATS Euromaster says the cold weather tyre sales have continued to grow in the UK nearly four years after becoming the first national tyre retailer to launch a dedicated winter tyre service for UK fleets. Demand for car, SUV and van winter products increased by 14 per cent in 2012 according to the tyre service provider, and this figure is on track for further double-digit growth in 2013. With a particularly cold late autumn forecast, ATS-E says demand could climb even more sharply. Were this to happen, the UK could see its stock of winter tyres depleted quicker, even ahead of the winter months.
Visit Lidl for your groceries? What about for tyres? You could – if you live in Germany. The discount supermarket has introduced winter tyres to its online shop, and motorists can choose between a range that includes products from Goodyear, Hankook and Fulda.
The Petrol Retailers’ Association (PRA), the trade body representing independent forecourts in the UK, welcomes new legal guidelines from the Crown Prosecution Service calling for fuel thieves to be prosecuted.
Managing director of Milton Keynes based Just Tyres, Ian Grant has embarked on a journey to bring education and aid to thousands of youngsters in Uganda. Grant hopes to provide a comprehensive education programme that will train adults to teach youngsters basic numeracy and literacy skills in Kampala. Having visited in September, Grant pursued plans to create a partnership between Just Tyres and the Kampala Children’s Centre, which provides clothing, food and housing to disadvantaged children.
The annual Labour Rates Survey carried out by Warranty Direct, suggests that garages are charging an average of £8.16 an hour less than last year to carry out service or repair work. The average hourly labour rate in 2013 of both franchised and non-franchised workshops is £74.70, down 9.84 per cent from £82.86 in 2012. Data from more than 12,000 cases were analysed in the study.
David Millward, transport editor of the Daily Telegraph, has been looking into the growing number of people who have difficulty in parking. He says: "Drivers who find that parking only seems to get harder may attribute it to their increasing age, or perhaps harbour suspicions that slots are getting smaller. However, the problem most likely lies in their car just being too big.
The Bosch Car Service network is celebrating a decade of existing and scoring 99.5 per cent customer satisfaction for its car servicing and repairs. Originally launched in 2003, the network of independent garages has gone from strength to strength. The latest independent customer satisfaction survey results show that an amazing 99.5 per cent of Bosch Car Service customers would use the network again, based on their overall experience. The scheme was also the first car repair code to achieve key accreditation, helping ensure that customers get a fair deal – first with the Office of Fair Trading and more recently with the Trading Standards Institute.
The weekly e-bulletin from the Independent Automotive Aftermarket Federation quotes a worldwide cost survey commissioned by This is Money from Looking4Parking.com which says that British motorists are being hit with the world's fourth most expensive diesel prices.
Motorists in Brazil, host country for next year’s World Cup, now have the chance to buy an officially-endorsed commemorative tyre. Continental has launched a World Cup edition of its ContiPowerContact, complete with footballs and FIFI World Cup logo on the sidewall. The tyre’s release is being supplemented by an extensive advertising campaign in print and electronic media, radio and television.
An analysis of 515,248 UK police force records obtained by consumer motoring champion, HonestJohn.co.uk, has revealed that cities in the North of England are the worst affected by car crime, with Manchester topping the league table. Between October 2011 and September 2012, 505 offences per 10,000 registered vehicles were reported in central Manchester. This figure is four times the national average for car crime, which HonestJohn.co.uk calculated as 121 offences per 10,000 vehicles. Even taking into account the higher levels of car crimes in urban areas, in part associated with the greater influx of vehicles entering city centres, the rate of reported offences was still 2.1 times the national 'urban' average of 242 offences per 10,000 vehicles.
Thousands of motorists are driving potentially dangerous cars as the number of vehicles on the road that have previously been written off increases. The National Association of Bodyshops (NAB) has previously called on the Competition Commission to review their position on write-offs during an investigation into the private motor insurance market.
However the Competition Commission say that they have no plans to review this further stating that despite the evidence they received during the investigation, they judged that write-offs were an issue relating to the supply of used cars and not related to the provision of Private Motor Insurance and related goods and services.
The cost to motorists of putting biofuels into petrol will be as much as £224 million more each year than the government estimated, says ActionAid. According to ActionAid-commissioned research by the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), the government has underestimated the additional costs of biofuels due to inadequate price projection models used by various departments to calculate costs. This extra cost is in addition to the £1-£1.8 billion extra cost to motorists as a result of the UK's biofuels policies that IISD already documented in 2012.
Shocking new findings show that a third of motorists have driven a car knowing it has no MOT. The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) surveyed 1,000 UK motorists and found that, of those that have driven a car without a valid MOT, 67 per cent admitted driving for up to a week before the retest, 24 per cent for up to a month, 7 per cent for up to six months and 2 per cent for more than six months.
Halfords Autocentres has become the latest member of TyreSafe in a move that is seen as something of boost for the growing organisation. With more than 290 Autocentres across the UK, the leading independent garage network offers car owners a greater choice of locations offering a free tyre safety check as part of the month-long safety campaign. A list of all the tyre retailers, all TyreSafe members, offering free tyre health checks can be found by visiting www.tyresafe.org.
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