#BrownCarGuy – News, Views & Reviews!
The 2026 Salon Privé London served up a heady mix of million-pound classics, modern hypercars, and boutique builders. I spent the day there capturing the spectacle, the engineering, and the honest conversations that happen when petrolheads find themselves surrounded by awesome cars.
A relentless chase. A deadly secret. No way out. That’s the promise at the heart of Silent Ruin, my brand-new international spy thriller and the first in a new series featuring Jamshed Khan. This is a character I originally created over three decades ago, now reborn into a far more grown-up, high-stakes world of espionage, danger, and consequence.
There was a time when if someone asked you what car to buy, the answer was almost automatic – get a Toyota, get a Honda, and sleep easy at night. These were the brands that built their reputations not on hype or gimmicks, but on something far more powerful: trust. Cars that started every morning, ran forever, and asked very little in return. They weren’t just manufacturers, they were institutions. Which is why hearing senior figures from these companies openly express concern about their future feels less like industry chatter and more like a tremor beneath the foundations of the automotive world itself.
You don’t expect to stumble across £100 million worth of machinery on an ordinary London street… but then again, Sloane Street isn’t exactly ordinary, and Salon Privé doesn’t do things by halves. Ahead of the main concours event, Salon Privé Sloane Street London delivered a spectacular preview, transforming one of the capital’s most exclusive shopping destinations into a rolling showcase of hypercars, rare classics, and cutting-edge automotive art. For a few fleeting hours, Central London felt less like SW1 and more like a curated slice of Monaco during Grand Prix
Fuel prices are on the move again – and not in the direction anyone wants. With global tensions flaring and supply chains under pressure, motorists across the UK are once again being warned about rising pump prices and even the possibility of shortages. Whether that happens or not is still up for debate, but one thing is absolutely certain: driving is getting more expensive again. The increase doesn’t look dramatic at first glance. We’re talking about just 3 to 4 pence per mile more than before. Doesn’t sound like much, does it? But over a year, it adds up alarmingly quickly.
For years, we’ve been told that driving is becoming safer, smarter, and more regulated, but what if the next phase isn’t about enforcement at all, at least not in the traditional sense, and instead marks a shift towards something far more pervasive, far more subtle, and arguably far more consequential for the everyday motorist?
So, I recently did what many EV evangelists will tell you is absolutely fine, totally normal, and nothing to worry about… I drove an electric vehicle from London to Bristol and back. Now before anyone sharpens their pitchforks or plugs in their keyboards to type an angry comment, let me say this upfront: this is not an anti-EV rant.
I like EVs. I really do. Around town, they’re brilliant – smooth, quiet, effortless, and occasionally smug. But take them out of their natural habitat and onto the open motorway, and suddenly things get… interesting. Let me walk you through what actually happens.
Our roads right now look like grey apple crumble. I’m not exaggerating. There are more craters on a typical UK high street than on the entire surface of the moon, and yet we – the long-suffering, tax-paying, suspension-replacing motorists of this sceptred isle – are shelling out a small nation’s GDP just for the privilege of driving across them.
For what feels like a decade, Euro 7 has existed in that strange automotive limbo between prophecy and panic. Depending on which headline you read, it was either the final nail in the coffin of the internal combustion engine or a bureaucratic overreach that would make new cars unaffordable and wipe diesel off the map overnight. Now, however, the speculation phase is over. The final Euro 7 emissions regulations are confirmed, the implementation dates are set, and November 2026 is no longer some distant abstraction. It is eight months away.
Tomorrow, something unusual happens. Lent begins for Christians. Ramadan begins for Muslims. Two great traditions, drawn from different scriptures, different histories, different spiritual traditions – and yet arriving on our calendars almost side by side. Both are seasons of restraint. Of discipline. Of reflection. Of giving something up. And so I want to suggest something radical.