MOTOR-BLOG from Coventry

Yep, I’ve seen another one. This one was parked up at my local shops as I was driving past on Friday. Usually when I see these cars they are on the move, so this one was too good an opportunity to pass up. I parked the car, grabbed my camera and bounded over to the car to get some close up pics.

This kinda worked. Rear three quarters - check. Rear shot - check. Then I made my mistake - I went for an interior shot before grabbing a front picture - big mistake. The test driver inside spotted me as I made my move to grab a pic of the interior architecture and promptly drove off.

So there we are - I’ll be doing it differently next time and make sure I get a frontal pic (although it was pretty heavily disguised anyway). So what is it? Well having recently had a Hyundai test car myself, I’d say that it was one of this ever-improving breed - perhaps an i-30. But it also sort of looked like a Mitsubishi.

I’d be interested to know what you think and I am already preparing to stand corrected!

My work Colleague Keith Adams, spotted this in Coventry by the Ricoh arena last Friday. It appears to be a LHD Vauxhall Corsa so why the secrecy? Had it been undisguised no one would probably given it a second glance.

All I can think of is that these are cars being roadtested at MIRA. The brother of a friend of mine is a test driver up at MIRA, so I’ll have to pop around for a chat… I know that they were recently intensively testing the new MGTF and Rover 75 models there too.

Thanks to Keith for the picture, go to his website at  http://www.aronline.co.uk for more excellent car related joy. 

Corsa or not? Those wheels look more Renault than Vauxhall to me - what do you think it is?

Thanks for all of your comments, most interesting indeed. They could well be extended wheelbase Qashqai’s - hard to tell without seeing another beside it. I too have seen the Infiniti buzzing around Bedworth/Foleshill/Holbrooks areas too, plus on the 19th of June last year I snapped these disguised Nissans in Cheylesmore.

How do I know they were Nissans you ask? Well I kept on seeing them all over the place when I was working as a van driver. As such I was higher up than them and could clearly see the Nissan badge on the steering wheel…! Plus they were followed closely by a couple of Qashqai’s.

Could this be something to do with a local design studio or Coventry Prototype Panels (who amongst others built the first couple of bonkers Spyker road cars?) I could understand if this was Sunderland, but as far as I’m aware, Nissan doesn’t have much in the way of links with Coventry, so what is going on?

I really thought I was going mad, but now I have photographic evidence to prove that I’m not. For the last few days or so, I’ve been seeing mysterious soft roaders tooling around the streets of Coventry.

Well I say mysterious, but they’re not at all really. They are Nissan Qashqai’s but the mysterious thing about them are, all of the badges are covered by black tape. Why?

I really thought I was going barmy until I managed to snap one at the lights the other morning. Then I thought maybe I had simply seen the same bizarre car a few times - but I saw another one this morning - a Black one, so a different colur to the other. What is going on?

The only badge that wasn’t taped was the DCi badge, and I’ve DVLA checked the numberplates and it lists them as Nissans. Strange.

Plus Helen saw the disguised 4×4 yesterday that has been on test around Coventry for the last year or so. It was still heavily covered by all of the black stuff that the manufacturers like to use to disguise prototypes. What is it? It was travelling up the A46 coming from the direction of Jaguar’s Engineering centre and heading out in the direction of the M40 - and Gaydon.

I have to ask the question yet again - is this a Jaguar SUV? I’ll try to snap it next time it passes me by.

Strange a-happenings indeed…