Donal Lawless, Author at Cars On Demand Official Blog - Page 2 of 3

 

Driven- Hyundai i30 1.6dci- Auto

We had the tourer body version which is a bit ugly to be honest.

For:

  • Loads of space
  • 4 electric windows
  • ipod connection
  • bluetooth

Against:

  • Fuel economy- pretty poor for a car this size
  • Wires everywhere- you have to plug your media player into the front fascia of the radio and your phone into the usb connection in front of the gear stick so there are wires everywhere

Driving: It’s a slow front drive diesel car………perfect for most families in today’s world

Ed.

 
Mass Market Car Design: Where will it end up?

The problems car designers have as far as we can see are twofold;

1) Budget

2) Packaging

The first one is self explanatory, the second though is where the real issue lies. You see at the end of the day if you are designing a saloon it needs to be able to take two people in the front and 3 people in the back and have lots of boot space. It’s the same really with most other mass market cars- Hatchback- 2+2/3, bigger boot. City car- 2+2 small boot, SUV 2+3+2 etc.

You see they have to have this bit in the middle where the people fit. That’s why cars of today have these striking fronts and funky rear designs, yet in the middle is basically a box. There’s no getting away from this. Yes they have cars like the Passat CC , Mercedes CLS, Audi A7 etc. which attempt to overcome this, but in actual fact what the car manufacturers have done is make the cars smaller and charge more for them, which is clever on their part. BUT they can’t do that with the mass market sellers because in the real world people need the space and so we will always be left with cars the look cool at the front and back and a bit boxy in the middle……….

Ed.

Driven- A quick review of what the cars of today are like to live with

Each month we will review a car we have driven recently,and to start we are going to look back on the cars we have driven over the last 9 months. The cars will have been used for a full month and so we’ll know what they are like to live with. They will also be basic spec cars, which means they will be the ones 90% of people buy/lease. There will be no long preamble about what we had for breakfast or how the flight was or what we did ‘back in the day’, just simple honest opinions about the cars we drive and sometimes how they compare to others.

And one other thing, we pay for the cars we use, so our reports are completely independent, watch this space…….

Ed.

 
Hitting the Headlines

We featured in today’s The Herald business section.

Thanks to Philip Hederman for the piece

Ed.

 

 
Launch

Cars on Demand launched in Ireland in March 2014. While flexible short term car leasing is a well known offering in the UK it is relatively unknown here in Ireland.

Short term car leasing bridges the gap that exists between short term car rental and traditional long term leasing and is ideal for;

  • Employees on temporary contracts
  • New recruits (qualifying/probation period)
  • Start-up businesses
  • Supplementing a larger fleet
  • Employee recognition and reward

The Key benefits of it are:

  • No long term commitments
  • Low deposits & monthly payments
  • Flexible terms
  • Tax, maintenance & 24 hour
  • breakdown service included