Hakeem Jeffries has already made it clear how Democrats feel about Donald Trump’s desire to invade Greenland
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The post David Wright names only Mets honor greater than having jersey retired appeared first on ClutchPoints.
Keegan Bradley reveals PGA Championship regret, creating enemies
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The post Keegan Bradley reveals PGA Championship regret, creating enemies appeared first on ClutchPoints.
Nnamdi Madubuike celebrates Ravens ‘football guru’ amid career-best season
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The post Nnamdi Madubuike celebrates Ravens ‘football guru’ amid career-best season appeared first on ClutchPoints.
Retro Renault 5 is a cool, cheap EV that makes me happy… I’m convinced it will be European Car of the Year
THE gorgeous Renault 5 will be crowned 2025 European Car of the Year tomorrow.
I’m utterly convinced of it.
Sixty jurors from 23 countries, including yours truly, will award points to seven finalists in Brussels. Think Eurovision Song Contest for cars.
The contenders are:
- Alfa Romeo Junior
- Citroen C3/e-C3
- Cupra Terramar
- Dacia Duster
- Hyundai Inster
- Kia EV3
- Renault 5/Alpine A290
I’m not allowed to tell you how I divided my 25 votes just yet.
People bet on these things, apparently. But I can tell you my rankings. So, here goes.
Renault 5. Just a cool car. The coolest car. For not a lot of money. If you asked me which car I’d spend my money on from this list, it’d be the R5.
Although I might wait for the new Clio hybrid coming this summer.
Those retro R5 looks make me happy. The way this car drives makes me happy. The £23k price tag makes me happy.
If any car is going to convince ordinary drivers to switch to electric, it’s the R5. Surely Renault will go back-to-back after Scenic’s triumph last year?
Dacia Duster. Close second in my book. Very close second. Brilliant family SUV priced like a supermini – and more capable than you might think.
Proper mechanical 4WD, high ground clearance and attack angles, chunky tyres, five drive modes, all for £24k.
Or there’s a hybrid auto with front-wheel drive for similar money. The mid-spec Expression trim unlocks 10in touchscreen, reversing camera and wireless Apple CarPlay. Boom.
Cupra Terramar. This is the third time Cupra has been shortlisted in five years so the Spanish are obviously doing something right.
Terramar looks great, drives sweetly and has an excellent menu of petrol engines, hybrids and plug-in hybrids, as well as a spicy VZ version.
As for build quality, Terramar is made by the same hands that put the Audi Q3 and Volkswagen Tiguan together.
Another plus-point.
It feels fresh and expensive inside with cool copper detailing. Prices from £37k.
I actually awarded the Kia EV3 the same points as Terramar. So, joint third if you like.
The junior SUV costs much the same as a mid-range Volkswagen Golf at £36k and nudges 372 miles on a charge. Impressive.
You might need to recharge it once a fortnight. Lots of space, lots of Kia goodness.
Then I ranked the Citroen C3/e-C3 fifth, Alfa Romeo Junior sixth and the Hyundai Inster seventh.
To be fair, all seven motors have to be good to be shortlisted from dozens of cars launched in the last year.
I’m just miffed the wicked Mini Cooper petrol didn’t make the cut.
Rachel Reeves’ tax raid on business sparks sharp decline in job vacancies
Rachel Reeves’ tax raid on business is already flattening job opportunities, with the sharpest fall in vacancies since the Covid pandemic.
The Chancellor was warned her Budget had made employees more expensive and businesses would have no choice but to cut staff and stop hiring.
And fresh figures today show bosses have wasted no time in pulling permanent recruitment adverts, with December seeing the steepest drop in job vacancies in well over four years.
A closely watched report by KPMG and REC, compiled by S&P Global, shows the job market is already shrinking, with companies explicitly blaming the rise in employer national insurance contributions.
Some have been making redundancies in December, according to its survey of 400 recruiters.
The figures come a day after stats showed the services industry was shedding jobs at the fastest pace in 15 years, excluding lockdowns.
It risks making a mockery of Ms Reeves’ claims that her Budget protects the pounds in workers’ pockets — as they only have money if they can get a job.
The REC/KPMG figures are all the more important as the UK’s official stats body has said that it will take another two years to fix its dodgy jobs data.
Economists warn that the Bank of England is having to fly blind because of unreliable labour market information from the Office for National Statistics and it could be keeping rates high for too long when the economy is already in pain.
Neil Carberry, REC chief executive, said that the signs reflected a “weak mood in some businesses.”
Jon Holt, KPMG boss, said it was the biggest fall in vacancies since August 2020, coupled with hiring intention declining at a pace not seen for 16 months.
It comes a day after Next, Britain’s biggest clothing retailer, announced it would not be replacing staff who left or hiring as many people as it might have as it faced an extra £73million wage bill from the Budget.
We are railing…with Rod
Model miniature firm Hornby says it is turning the business around after a boost from new customers in the run-up to Christmas.
The 125-year-old firm counts music legend Rod Stewart, pictured above with his railway set, as a fan.
It said sales rose almost a quarter in December. Overall sales were up 7 per cent in the last three months of 2024. Hornby said almost half of Black Friday sales came from new customers.
Chief Olly Raeburn said: “We are pleased to be able to report growth in revenues, margins and gross profits through the critical quarter.”
Frasers Group boss Mike Ashley owns an almost 9 per cent stake in Hornby.
After struggling with losses last year, Hornby shares rose by almost 10 per cent yesterday, valuing the company at £47.5million.
Tile boss exit amid ‘misstep’
The boss of Topps Tiles is retiring after 18 years — and just a month after an activist investor renewed calls for a management shake-up.
Rob Parker, 52, who joined the flooring retailer in 2007, had been chief executive since 2019. He will leave once a replacement has been found towards the end of this year.
A spokesman said that his exit was unrelated to calls by Austrian investors MS Galleon, who had accused Topps Tiles of “strategic missteps.”
Topps Tiles suffered slumping like-for-like sales last year but yesterday highlighted an overhaul was already under way with like-for-like sales up 3.5 per cent in the last three months of 2024.
It said online trading helped drive all sales by 12.5 per cent in the festive five-week period.
Chairman Paul Forman said that Mr Parker was leaving the “group well-positioned” and highlighted that he had steered the firm through the pandemic.
Gas flow is halted
Shell is warning profits in its gas business will take a big hit in the fourth quarter.
The energy giant said a slew of hedging contracts it took out in 2022 to protect itself against a supply shortage after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had now expired.
Shell had been accused of profiteering during the energy crisis, when prices of gas and oil soared.
Its shares dropped by 1.3 per cent yesterday to £2,583.
Bookie’s pain over NFL blow
Paddy Power owner Flutter has warned of a hit to profits as favourites landed the odds in US sports.
The gambling group said it had suffered “very unfavourable” results in the American football season.
In 2024, there were 184 winning favourites out of 256 NFL games, the highest rate in nearly two decades.
The Detroit Lions’ win over the San Francisco 49ers alone cost Flutter £59million.
Kansas City Chiefs star Travis Kelce, who is Taylor Swift’s boyfriend, also drove a flurry of bets.
As a result the group, which shifted its listing from London to New York last year to reflect its growing US business, says it expects its revenues to fall by £313million and earnings to be £209million lower.
Meanwhile, football fans have had less luck — with results going in favour of the bookie last year.
Investors pulled £9.56billion from UK funds last year, data shows.
It marked the ninth year in a row of heavy withdrawals, leaving London behind its global peers.
The loss was lower than 2023’s £12.1billion — but £45billion has leached away since 2015.
Royce is on a roll with £300m
Car maker Rolls-Royce is investing £300million expanding its Goodwood factory as super wealthy drivers splash out for its luxury motors.
The BMW-owned company said that some super-rich drivers are willing to spend more than £500,000 on its cars. Bespoke embellishments include LED lights to mimic the night sky and gold bonnet sculptures.
The boost for the West Sussex factory is welcome at a time when mass market car rivals including Vauxhall owner Stellantis and Ford have shut sites and cut jobs in recent years.
Rolls-Royce has grown from 300 employees to more than 2,500 at Goodwood in the 22 years since BMW’s takeover.
SHARES
- Barclays down 0.70 to 265.00
- BP down 1.60 to 420.40
- Centrica down 1.90 to 136.25
- HSBC down 15.20 to 791.20
- Lloyds down 1.48 to 53.86
- M&S down 4.00 to 376.80
- NatWest down 2.60 to 392.60
- Royal Mail down 0.40 to 363.60
- Sainsbury’s down 0.40 to 272.00
- Shell down 37.50 to 2579.50
- Tesco down 0.60 to 370.00
Inside Dacia’s £1m desert buggy taking on big boys at the Dakar Rally – with juicy V6 engine and aerospace roll cage
THIS is my kind of dry January – caked in sand and sun cream watching the legendary Dakar Rally.
I’m here with Dacia.
That’s right, Dacia.
The people who make Britain’s cheapest new car. The £14k Sandero supermini.
Only they’ve built a £1million desert buggy (Dacia Sandhero?) to conquer the world’s toughest off-road race.
For those of you who don’t know, Dakar is a punishing 3,200-mile speed test across the breathtaking dunes of Saudi Arabia.
Basically, the entire WRC season in 13 days.
Add the non-competitive road sections between each timed stage and it’s the equivalent of a full year of Formula 1. In less than two weeks.
Quite a challenge, then.
So why is a budget brand spending upwards of £25million to go off-road racing against the might of Ford and Toyota when it doesn’t really need to?
Sandero is the No1-selling motor across Europe. Dacia is No2 for people who buy a car with their own money. The brilliant £24k Duster 4×4 is a contender for 2025 European Car of the Year.
Life is good.
The answer is, Dacia is about to launch a bigger SUV called Bigster.
Think Nissan Qashqai rival. So it needs to make a noise to get noticed in such a competitive segment — and Dakar is marketing gold.
Boss Denis Le Vot said: “When we relaunched the brand, we asked ourselves what a Dacia should be, and we wrote, ‘robust and outdoor, essential but cool’.
“Once we had that we said, ‘F***, this is the Dakar!’ So we stopped everything we did before. Like football in Italy, rugby in England, and said we would do one thing big and do it properly.
“Dakar is a new adventure for Dacia and will bring it to the next level.”
The desert racer is powered by a 3-litre V6 twin-turbo sending 360hp to all four wheels. The suspension travel is hilarious. The tyres are 37 INCHES. The roll cage is aerospace steel.
This thing has more wires and software code than a SpaceX rocket. Probably.
The fuel tank is 520 litres. Ten times bigger than a Sandero.
British team Prodrive has an army of 62 engineers out here in Saudi as support crew.
Obviously, Dacia doesn’t sell a car with a juicy V6 in it, so they tapped up their friends at Nissan and transplanted engines from the Nissan Z sports car.
Today is day six of this remarkable race and Dacia is still in the mix.
Superstar driver Nasser al-Attiyah dropped from second to seventh after a puncture on yesterday’s 258-mile stage.
But there’s still a long, long way to go.
Five-time champ Nasser told me: “Anything can happen on Dakar. We’ll keep pushing. We have the tools to win.”
Team-mate Sebastien Loeb flipped his buggy on stage three and was forced to retire with a damaged roll cage.
Last year’s winner Carlos Sainz rolled his Ford M-Sport Raptor the day before.
Like I said, toughest race in the world.
The team in numbers
3 rally cars
2 race trucks
(carrying spares)
3 crew vans
5 support trucks
9 motorhomes
37 tents
62 personnel
Magic dust
THE millionaire boss of Prodrive has bought a £24k Dacia Duster.
David Richards, the motorsport guru behind Dacia’s Dakar project, said: “At the farm we have a Subaru that’s 17 years old. That’s out. The Duster arrives next week.
“I will use it some days. My wife will use it. The people around the farm will use it. When the kids come home at weekends, they will use it. We just need a couple of baby seats for the grandchildren.
“I’ve followed the Dacia brand for a few years now, I’ve seen the product they are delivering, and the popularity of it.
“It’s a value for money product. So many cars nowadays keep adding items on to them that are possibly unnecessary and you don’t want to pay for them. Duster seemed to be a practical car to have.”
Prodrive famously turned Subaru into the darling of performance car fans, steering Colin McRae, Richard Burns and Petter Solberg to world rally glory. Can history repeat itself with Dacia?
Richards said: “I think there is a very similar potential here with Dacia. If we can do what we did with Subaru back in those days, we had the marketing support around it, and then we can expand it beyond Dakar.
“Dacia has all the ingredients for an incredible future – and hopefully motorsport can play a strong part in that.”
Snag Pamela Anderson’s Classic Winter Coat Look for Just $60!
Not only has Pamela Anderson led the charge on taking a minimalist approach to beauty, she’s taking that same aesthetic into her fashion as well. In the Baywatch star’s most recent years, she’s taken a less-is-more approach to her overall style, which is translated into her winter wardrobe as well. Classic and timeless trench coats […]
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