6 minute read
MOTORING
Everyone is at it - that being the production of large, medium and small SUV’s - a horrible American acronym meaning Sport Utility Vehicle. SUV’s account for a whopping 21.2% of all UK cars sales last year, up 6.6% from 2009 and 13.5% from 2015 - that’s 1.8 million of them.
The delicious irony of this is the main reason given is the high driving position, allowing a far better view out of the car. But - if we all buy them, as it seems, we will again all be at the same height!
The Volkswagen T-Cross is a cute and chunky car and l quite like it. There are three variants - the S, SE and SEL, all with the normal varying amount of kit, with prices starting at £19,245 up to £23,070.
They have delivered me the 1-litre SE model and although as a dedicated petrol head, a 1-litre engine always fills me with horror, it does the job very well. It’s a turbocharged three-pot engine with two states of tune popping out either 113bhp or 95bhp - l have the 95bhp with a 5-speed manual, while the more powerful variant comes with a 6-speed manual or a 7-speed twinclutch auto. The major effort here is to prevent the T-Cross from straying into the T-Roc territory and damaging sales. They are right, of course, and I really liked the T-Roc when I reviewed it for Platinum (www.platinumpublishing.co.uk/platinum-business-magazine/issues/46/).
The T-Cross is very well put together, drives well, is solid and pretty much fixed to the road and, as it is regarded as a cross-over, that being almost a car, it does not suffer from too much body roll in the corners thanks to its low(ish) centre of gravity, efficient chassis and excellent Germanic engineering.
The SE will likely be the most popular and the extras such as roof rails, adaptive cruise control, variable-heigh boot floor and App-Connect infotainment system just about justifies the £1,810 lift over the base model.
Inside, it is well put together with plenty of room for 4 adults without too much need to fiddle with every knob you can find. The variable boot floor really maximises the boot space and uses every centimetre of the available space. The interior design layouts have never been startling in VW’s but there are Design Packs you can chose that liven it all up and for the price, you get a lot for your money. The seats are well plumped where they should be and everything is well put together.
On the road, the ride is reasonably
VW T-CROSS By Maarten Hoffmann To read all motoring reviews go to www.platinumpublishing.co.uk/features/motoring/
quiet and there is enough oomph to get along at a good lick, although it is a tag sluggish when pulling away under 2000rpm but that just means a tad more use of those five gears. For overtaking, it will spin up to 6000rpm with ease and at no point did l feel that it was lacking in power - considering it’s only a 1-litre power plant.
Many call it a beefed up Polo but that’s unfair - it's much more than that. It feels bigger than it is, feels grown up and, personally, l would think this a perfect first car for a new driver. So many of us buy our kids a cheap, small runaround car for that exciting present after passing their test but this is not the safest thing to do. They are far more likely to have an accident in their first year yet we put them into older cheap small cars that fold on impact and when new, probably came with a substandard safety rating. I digress...
This is not an off-road car as it is 2x2 only but that’s ok, and that slight roll in corners is acceptable too as a sacrifice for the increased height. I would certainly go for the 113bhp as the 95 feels just a little too slow (1.3 seconds slower to be precise). The 1.6-litre version is on its way. In all, a good car with great looks, a three year/60,000 mile warranty from a company known for making sturdy well-put together cars. The competition comes in the shape of the Seat Arona, Renault Captur, Mazda CX-3 and the Audi Q2 - with the exception of the Audi, it knocks all the others into a cocked hat.
TECH STUFF
Model tested: T-Cross SE 1.0 TSI
Engine: 1-litre turbocharged
Power: 95 bhp
Speed: 0-62 11.5 seconds
Top: 112 mph
Economy: 47.4 mpg
Price from: £19,245
As tested: £21,210
Virtual Expos
In a topsy-turvy world, like our current economic environment, having a clear niche is more important than ever. Network Xpress’ niche is tradeshows and so we are excited to announce we are launching Sussex’s first ever virtual tradeshow and conference!
On the 18th June, the West Sussex Tech Expo was set to roll into Chichester for its second expo of the year. COVID-19 had other ideas. Net XP has gone back to the drawing board and completely re-thought its marketing and sales strategies for its 2020 events as Net XP had two very clear, stark choices! Adapt to changes and work through it, or go bust! Net XP has always been a business disrupter and as such is at the forefront of B2B expos and conferences; to make these radical changes to better serve our clients was a challenge we were excited to get our teeth into to stay in the game. Face-to-face meetings and mass gatherings are not an option, so we are turning our heads to the virtual technology on offer – fitting for our
Tech Expo. Setting up initially was a different story. Whilst we loved to jump straight into a challenge, having not used any cloud-based video marketing services before, other than VR at our tradeshows and Zoom for The Director’s Hub, it was a big step to transform our events business in such
a short space of time. Our clients were using Zoom for video conferencing, so we started to look at this platform to see if it could be utilised into our events. At first, we didn’t think that this software would be the platform to use, until we found an additional feature which enabled us as hosts to have breakout rooms (up to 50 in total) which meant we could run many different elements of the show: the Early Bird Virtual Speakers Conference, Virtual Networking Rooms, The Tiger’s Pen and the Virtual Speed Networking. Suddenly the pieces came together and in under a week, we had an actionable plan to execute a cutting-edge tradeshow and conference virtually. We hear you – how can a virtual tradeshow be any good? There are multiple benefits to hosting online: • Anyone with an Internet connection can participate in a virtual tradeshow. No travel required. • The virtual platform lends itself to a broad range of applications beyond tradeshows such as workshops and training sessions. • A major benefit of virtual tradeshows is cost. There is no travel, hotel and meal expenses are eliminated. Our conclusion is that as technology advances, virtual tradeshows may be able to provide the same “experience” as traditional shows. Some traditional tradeshows offer a virtual component like streaming presentations online, but in today’s climate, we must think outside the box. Virtual shows offer a cost-effective alternative and potential to reach people that cannot for whatever reason attend a traditional tradeshow, be it distance geographically, the weather or office meetings preventing entire days off. We’re now virtually networking on the internet 24/7, so why should tradeshows be any different?
