Ford gets a bargain

Those of you who were worried that Ford’s sale of Jaguar and Land Rover to Mr Tata was an act of desperation, necessary to keep the company afloat, need worry no more.

Instead, ‘Out with the old, in with the new’ seems to be Ford’s remedy for its cashflow crisis. Even though the Indian take away deal has yet to be delivered, Ford has already announced its intention to spend a fistful of rupees in Romania, where it plans to buy the old Daewoo factory.

But because the factory at Craiova is largely owned by the Romanian government, 1,600,700,000 rupees (give or take) will go straight into its coffers in order to satisfy complex EU rules on state aid. I won’t bore you with the details, but suffice to say that this corporate back-hander  will in due course enable Ford to build cars in Romania that it didn’t want to build in Britain.

Given the wheels within deals nature of the globalised automotive industry, I can see the headlines a year from now: “Tata outsources X-Type production to old Daewoo plant. Extra shed needed’.

The hidden extra on every Volkswagen

The former Volkswagen labour boss, Klaus Volkert, is about to be banged up for nearly three years for using his influence to obtain sex and bribes. And the company’s former personnel chief, Klaus-Joachim Gebauer, has received a suspended sentence for handing over customers’ hard-earned money for that purpose.

Every Volkswagen sold in the past few years has cost a few cents more thanks to the antics of these two men, who between them pissed away some three million dollars on booze, sex and riotous living.

If Volkswagen had any decency, it would issue a public apology and consider some form of reparation. Maybe it could donate an equivalent sum to aid famine victims in Africa; at least those few extra cents you paid for your car would eventually serve a good cause.

If Kevin Rudd can apologise to the Aborigines, the least Volkswagen can do is say sorry to you and me.

Meanwhile from the comfort and sanctity of old age, Ferdinand Piech, the former Volkswagen CEO, and the grandson of Ferdinand Porsche, denies all knowledge of the slush fund. “He’s lying,” claims Volkert. There were “only a few things” Piech did not know, said 65-year-old Volkert, who is appealing his jail term.

Fiat 500: the car so light it floats. Honest.

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…

Volkswagen Outrage

Whispers of a naming crisis at Volkswagen are doing the rounds. Apparently all the decent range names have gone so they’ve asked Des O’Connor and Carol Vorderman of Channel 4’s Countdown to help them come up with new ones based on anagrams of existing VW cars.

Hence the Routan (from Touran) which has just been launched at the Chicago Show.

Watch out for the forthcoming VW Flog and Loop. I think it’s an outrage….or is that a Touareg?

Two toners (from top): Granada Ghia, Ford Ka, MINI, Skoda Fabia, Audi TT Quattro Sport, Alfa SZ

As the BBC wheels out another classic car (Audi Quattro) to co-star in yet another retro cop show (Ashes to Ashes), I wanted to take a little look at another trend which has been making a comeback of late - ‘two tone’.

No, I don’t mean the Ska-style of music purveyed by some great bands in the late seventies and early eighties including The Beat and The Specials, I’m referring quite simply to paintwork.

The first applications of contrasting paint colours to automotive bodywork probably date back to the turn of the 20th Century, but I recall that in the late 1970s and early ’80s , Ford was offering the Granada Ghia X in a blue over silver two tone finish. A similar graphic effect was also achieved with a popular extra-cost option of the time - the vinyl roof. Cortinas, Granadas, Capris , Escorts and even Fiestas, were offered with a choice of black or (if memory serves) a fetching speckled brown known as Tobacco. Some of you may even recall that in LWT’s The Professionals, Martin Shaw’s character, ‘Doyle’, drove a white RS2000 fitted with a black vinyl roof.

Recently, the blue oval has been promoting a limited edition Ka known, unashamedly, as the Two Tone, but it’s surely MINI that has really made the contrasting paint finish (and bold stripes) fashionable once again since the launch of the ‘new’ model in 2001.

That car’s tremendous sales figures have clearly inspired others to follow suit: Audi’s first generation TT in Quattro Sport guise featured a special black roof; Skoda offers the new Fabia with a contrasting white one (icing sugar?) while Alfa Romeo’s Limited Edition 147 Collezione may be specified with a gloss black version (prefer my SZ’s personally).

And now the encumbent Car of the Year, the Fiat 500, looks set to continue the trend with a vast array of graphics and stripework available to allow you to customise and personalise the car to your taste.

Have I missed out any of your favourite two tone cars?

Johnny. Remember me?

I hear through the grapevine that Top Gear is to have its wings clipped. Trips to the North Pole are on hold, trashing caravans is now verbotten, and there’s to be no more splashing out on power boat trips up the Thames.

Worse still. I hear that Stig is to be replaced. There’s no longer enough money to pay a professional racing driver, so the rumour goes, and therefore the Top Gear producers are casting around for a member of the public who will fit into a small Nomex suit and look lively round Dunsfold. I would like to suggest my Uncle Charlie. As a market trader, he’s used to cutting corners, and the bends are no problem - he hasn’t been on the straight and narrow for years.

Perhaps when the present Stig leaves, we shall find out who he is (or she?). I have my own theory based on Stig’s size and the apparent fact that he is available all the year round and so is unlikely to be involved in F1 testing. Having met him a few times, my instinct tells me it’s Johnny Herbert. If you have a better idea, why not air it here?

Economic indicators suggest... we're buggered

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.