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Charis Whitcombe writes the She Drives section of NEW CAR NET, and also contributes to Auto Italia, Classic Driver, Classic Cars, Motoring and Leisure and the fleet trade press. She’s passionate about new cars, classic cars, and competition cars, and works half the week in historic motorsport… not as a driver, but as a marketing manager and race organiser. She is also frequently to be found under the bonnets of classic cars, “enthusiastically fiddling with the oily bits despite a sad lack of mechanical training”.
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| The OCD model comes with hygienic wipes and an array of small soaps |
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I found myself stuck in an airport hotel room the other week, watching daytime TV. On offer was an American cop series based on, of all things, an obsessive-compulsive detective.
Talk about scraping the bottom of the genre barrel. Since the 1970s we’ve had every conceivable variation on the theme: fat detective, dirty detective, racial minority detective, sexy female detective, detective-in-a-wheelchair and alcoholic detective. What’s left? Gluten-allergy detective?
Now I hear that Ford has been given an award for its cars, not on the basis of performance or economy or styling or low carbon footprint – but for their ‘allergy-friendly’ interiors. Before you get all uppity and tell me that, for allergy sufferers, this is mould-breaking stuff, let me point out that I suffer from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder but I don’t see anyone designing cars with hand-washing facilities and little objects to count, adjust and straighten. And what about cars for fat people? Or dirty people? Or alcoholics?
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That recent news item – about the Mafia-run factory in Sicily building fake Ferraris – made me laugh. Surely a potential buyer would hear the difference between an American V4 and a full-blooded Ferrari V8? Even the Police said the fakes were easily spotted because they have ‘narrower chassis and thinner wheels’.
There was a fake 250 GTO which used to come to Italian classic car events – the last place on earth the ill-advised owner should have shown his face. A collective shudder would go up from the other participants when the car tippy-toed, all tall and deformed, into the display area. People would look away, embarrassed. Except for one chap next to me who muttered, “What a terrible waste of a perfectly good Datsun 240Z.”
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Why, oh why, oh WHY did Alfa Romeo gives its gorgeous new sporty supermini such a silly name? First, it was going to be the Alfa Junior, which is bland but inoffensive. Then they decided they didn’t like it, so they held an online poll, asking Alfisti to choose between a list of names which Alfa had come up with. And ‘Furiosa’ won.
But Alfa decided they didn’t like that, either (so why hold a poll?) and called the new car the Mi.To – a name which wasn’t even on the list. And if it had been, it certainly wouldn’t have won. I mean, nobody’s going to vote for My.Toe, are they (which is certainly how all the British punters are going to pronounce it)? Is this toe thing some sort of April Fool’s joke? Sadly, it seems not.
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It was the loss of the sensuous styling and sheer good taste of the 1950s and ’60s that fuelled the rise of the classic car movement; but don’t get too misty-eyed.
Here is an advert from Motor magazine, 50 years ago, for the Styla “Western” Spotlight.
Yes, it’s a gun with a bulb instead of a barrel. The advertisement asks: “Are you one of those car owners who like their accessories to have that touch of individuality?”
Indeed, what an individual addition it would make to your Mercedes Gullwing or Ferrari 250 GTO.
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| Fiat 500: the car so light it floats. Honest. |
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The Nationwide Building Society is “proud to be different”. I know this, because I’ve seen the adverts on telly. What I don’t know is what it means.
I like adverts that tell you something about the product: it tastes nice, or you’ll lose weight, or Action Man’s eyes swivel back and forth.
Which is why I’m so surprised that I love the Fiat 500’s marketing. It tells you absolutely nothing about the car but I love the fact that you can buy a computer mouse in the shape of a Fiat 500 with lit headlights and a split bonnet for the right- and left-click buttons and everything. I love the ‘video configurator’ on the Fiat 500 website. I love the thought of the little Italian going round and round in the London Eye. It’s fun. And the main thing, the best thing, about the little car itself is that it’s fun. So maybe the marketing is not so nonsensical, after all.
Incidentally, I’ve just looked on Northern Rock’s website to see whether they have the stomach for an irritating platitude and do you know what it says on the home page? “Catch it while you can.” Ha ha ha ha ha…
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| Economic indicators suggest... we're buggered |
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As the world economy spirals into a black hole, there are all sorts of economic indicators which apparently herald financial boom or bust. Well, let’s face it, bust. When did you ever see a headline foretelling an imminent boom?
Pictured here is an indicator more accurate than any of yer FT statistics. It’s one small cross-section of my (sad this, I know) motoring magazine archive: the main weekly motoring magazines dating back to about 1940, stacked year by year. You will notice that the piles vary hugely in height. Since the pagination of motoring mags depends solely on advertising revenue, it’s no surprise that there are very small piles corresponding to WWII, and the 1970s oil crisis; huge tomes as we trip merrily through the 1980s before descending to mere pamphlets by the end of the decade…
And what about 2008? Well, a leading weekly motoring mag recently went from ‘perfect bound’ to ‘saddle-stitched’. In non-publishing terms: oh dear.
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| Modus Tinnitus: instant irritation at the press of a button |
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A car can be almost perfect, and then some miserable journalist spends a big chunk of his (and it usually is ‘his’) review criticising some tiny detail. Such as the lack of a footrest in the Fiat Stilo. Or the ‘vibrating’ seatbelt when the window is open on the Chevrolet Matiz. I once read a lengthy rant about a ‘bogey’ smeared on the inside of a rev-counter’s transparent cover. Honestly.
Well, here’s mine. I’ve been driving the Renault Modus, an excellent small MPV with all sorts of commendable features but it gives me tinnitus. Or so I thought, till I worked out that the faint, high-pitched ringing is coming from the heater fan. Is it just this car, I wonder, or a standard feature on every Modus? Maybe it’s a selling point of the Modus Tinnitus limited-edition model. I don’t know but it’s spoiling my enjoyment of an otherwise desirable car. Still, at least there’s no bogey.
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| If your car runs on petrol, be sure not to fill it up with Ackroyd Stuart by mistake |
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An alert reader recently pointed out my error in claiming that Fiat was the first to develop commonrail diesel engines. In about 1918, apparently, Doxfords – a British shipbuilder based in Sunderland – developed the Doxford two-stroke marine diesel engine and yes, it operated on a commonrail system.
I can only apologise – but what does the reader mean by ‘diesel’ engines? Rudolph Diesel didn’t patent his version of the technology till 1892 and, at the time, Rudolph favoured coal dust as fuel. However, Herbert Ackroyd Stuart had already invented the compression ignition oil-burning engine, in England, two years before.
But I accept the point that Fiat was not the first to use commonrail technology in its Ackroyd Stuart engines.
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| Another Swedish design classic |
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While I’m having a go at the Swedes (see last blog), I’d like to return to my rant about the nasty Ikea-esque plywood centre stack on the refreshed Volvo S40. It was (they tell us) inspired by that ‘Swedish design classic’, the plywood chair. That’s the hideous plywood chair you’d typically find languishing in the bargain basement of Ikea, near the check-out.
I’d like to pretend I’ve never stooped to buying an Ikea bargain myself, but that would be a lie. I bought a lamp there, for about £15, took it home and assembled it. It was very straightforward except for the warning about how NOT to assemble it. Presumably it would be dangerous to do it that way; but I couldn’t for the life of me see what I wasn’t supposed to do. There was a black-and-white drawing of the misassembled lamp and above it – in the sort of bold typeface which suggests your life is at risk – the word NOT.
There was really only a stand, a bulb and a plug: there aren’t many ways to get it wrong. I showed the diagram to several friends, and none of them could see the lurking danger of which Ikea was warning me. It was about a week before I realised that the lamp was called a NOT. Of all the stupid, irritating, idiotic…
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Saab has issued a press release to tell us that people don’t understand green issues. It says, “consumers are unaware that biofuel cars such as the Saab BioPower, which runs on bioethanol E85, can reduce fossil fuel emissions by up to 70%”.
Eh? If you’re not using fossil fuels, of course you’re going to reduce ‘fossil fuel emissions’. E85 has a splash of petrol in it, but let’s imagine you were running your car on pure bioethanol, derived from wheat. You could then claim you had “reduced fossil fuel emissions by 100%” – hurrah – while ignoring any wheat fuel emissions. And that would be the case even if the wheat fuel were, in fact, emitting 10 times the CO2 (and other greenhouse gases) of normal petrol.
I am not saying this is the case. I am merely saying that Saab should be a little less smug about claiming that “36% of respondents don’t know anything about Biofuel technology” and then writing a load of balls which suggests that neither do they.
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