Northern Group

Northern Group of Motoring Writers’ Spring 2024 Newsletter

The latest Northern Group of Motoring Writers’ Newsletter is now arriving in inboxes around the motoring industry, bringing the latest news, opinion, features, and information from across the Group as we chronicle what we’ve been up to over the past few months.

Compiled by our newsletter editor, David Whinyates, this periodical doesn’t just look at what we’ve been driving at manufacturer events (although there’s some of that too!) but our thoughts on motoring in general and what we’ve been doing with cars in our time off. Well, such that time off exists.

Our tech-loving chair and website editor Andrew Evans sounds off about advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) technology after a frustrating experience with the equivocal bonging of a new car, while social media manager Andrew Harris takes aim at everyone’s favourite middle-lane hogs.

There’s a bit of a theme of a love of classics in the newsletter too, as Andrew Harris also talks about the foibles of his BMW 3 Series, George Loveridge picks up a bright yellow MX-5 Mk2, and Graham King has a chance encounter with a road-driven Bentley 4.5-litre and blags a ride.

Steve Howarth is also on the classics love-in as he’s picked up an MGB GT to restore. Remarkably, Steve has actually already restored this exact car once before, back in the 1990s, and has had to start all over again following some less than ideal storage by an interim owner.

Vice chair Annabelle Quirk and Ben Quirk, who manage our YouTube channel, talk about how they’ve developed their own channel — PlanetAuto — over the past seven years, which started with a borrowed camera and a Vauxhall Corsa.

Life member Bill Duckworth relates a tale to which many of us can relate, as he made a spectacle of himself twice in two weeks on the same flight to Lisbon, while Malcolm Bobbitt has a report of a wonderful treasure trove of printed materials from an autojumble event.

Our members continue to head to far flung corners of the world as Frederic Manby tours the Kruger National Park, the iSimangaliso Wetland Park, and Eswatini in a 2019 Mahindra Scorpio.

There’s sadder news too, as our members pay tribute to fellow writers Iain Robertson and Ray Potter, as well as Pam Wearing from the British Leyland/Austin Rover PR operation over 30 years.

Of course there’s more besides and if the newsletter isn’t already in your inbox, you can read it in the sidebar on the right or click here!