Seeing one of these is something of an event so I went to town with the photography. This is very probably the same one I saw last time, in another part of town.
As well as its brief life, the iQ is famous for being a latter day Cadillac Cimarron. Aston Martin smothered iQs in leather and sold them as posh city runabouts. Aston Martin understandably don’t want to disown their heritage, yes. When you read this kind of text you feel they might have overdone it though: “Cygnet was conceived, designed and built as a true Aston Martin. Including the many synonymous design cues featured across our model range including authentic zinc side-strakes, distinctive bonnet meshes, iconic grille and the legendary badge”.
The UK’s relationship with Citroën has traditionally not been vastly dissimilar to Britain’s somewhat ambivalent relations with the French nation itself. Especially so in the 1950s, when the motorists of Blighty, secure in the assumed and unchallenged superiority of their domestic Gods, snorted derisively at the 2CV’s rational asceticism.
Assembled, like its (equally shocking to British sensibilities) DS sibling by Citroën’s UK concessionaires, the 2CV was offered in the UK market throughout the 1950s, to ever decreasing circles of Continue reading “Gilded Snail”
I really ought to begin with an apology. Yes, him again…
Image credit: (c) motorauthority
Today’s reissue began life in another (now defunct) sphere, one where a good proportion of Driven to Write’s readers and (virtually) all of its editorial team took their initial steps. It was then titled, ‘Oh Dear God, Not Bangle Again!’ and one can readily imagine a similar exclamation from the combined DTW readership in light of this.
One of DTW’s very first articles, and at the time, something more of a hagiography, its subject remains as polarising a figure now as he was when it was first written. However, since then, not only has Mr. Bangle returned to the automotive fold (for better or worse), but perhaps sufficient time has now elapsed and perspective gained to Continue reading “Summer Reissue: The Vision Thing”
Slowly but surely, Driventowrite is advancing up to the top of the list of Great European cars like a mountaineer inching up the Eiger. Today, the French get their turn as another piton is hammered home.
Today. Today we have the car embodying the essential key elements of French car design and it was a strong seller too rather than being merely some much admired, often repaired, seldom driven garage queen. You won’t be surprised to Continue reading “Great European Cars Number 4”
Autocar’s 23 December 1960 issue contained a comprehensive road test of a technically advanced offering from Bremen – the Borgward 2.3. What did they make of it?
Image credit: (c) Borgward.nl
Something of a technical novelty in the 1950s, air suspension had been offered by a number of US carmakers, including Buick, Rambler and Cadillac at the tail-end of the decade, before cost and complication saw its withdrawal, yet it remained a largely theoretical concept for European car buyers.
Across the Atlantic, while Mercedes-Benz were developing an air suspended system, the Swabians were comprehensively pipped to the market by Hanseatic upstarts, Carl F.W. Borgward GmbH in 1960. Having debuted their largest and most ambitious saloon at the previous year’s Frankfurt motor show, the P100 (or 2.3) was offered with the option of air suspension the following April, which later that year became standard equipment. Continue reading “Road Test Retrospective – The Grosse Borgward”
Ever the fan of underdogs, DTW reminds readers that in 1998 Hyundai was not the Hyundai we know today. It made cars like the Sonata. And you know what? This article does not end the way you’d expect.
The automotive universe reels as a giant leaves the stage.
Image credit: (c) toledoblade
It wasn’t supposed to end like this. The plan had been to anoint a successor in 2019, perhaps even bow out having secured the deal to end all deals. For almost a decade and a half, FCA’s Sergio Marchionne has been the master of the unexpected, but the sudden news regarding his deteriorating medical condition has brought a controversial reign to a premature, troubling and somewhat ambivalent end.
From his appointment as Fiat CEO in 2004, Marchionne appeared not to have bothered to read, never mind adopt the auto-business-CEO handbook. Arguably the first post-factual auto boss, Marchionne’s stock in trade has been to Continue reading “End Too Soon”
There are other websites with better photos than the ones I take. I gave up taking arty photos of cars ages ago because I am simply no good at making a good car look any better than it might be.
Some cars are easier than others to work off though and this Saab is one of them. It also helps that the owner has chosen to give the car some steam-punk charisma. Is there a small vogue for this in my little area I wonder because if I Continue reading “Manchester, second arrest in”
This weekend sees our editor in-chief in celebratory mood…
Image credit: The Telegraph
I’m pleased to inform our regular readers that no hats were lost in the creation of this article. However, what millinery there was to hand has been at least metaphorically cast skywards in honour of my erstwhile fellow-DTW antagonist’s departure earlier this week across the Irish Sea. He means well, but our Mr. Doyle I find, is best appreciated from the distance of several hundred nautical miles.
As the motor industry presses towards widespread adaptation of electric vehicles, a notable voice sounds a cautious note.
Image credit: (c) insideevs
As a rule, the motor industry prefers to speak with a unified voice on the wider issues which affect its interests. Certainly, when it comes to the subject of electric vehicles, the direction of current can probably be best described as direct. Or to put it another way, on this subject at least, most automotive CEOs are broadly speaking, on board.
We take a moment to reflect on the short career of the Opel Cascada, a glamorous under-achiever, conceived in the most parlous of times for its maker.
Its names were once legion, but the Cascada is no more. Production ended at Gliwice not long into 2018, but Vauxhall and Opel Ireland have only gone public on the matter in the last week. All over Europe, Opel’s national sales operations are Continue reading “By the calm Kłodnica, a Waterfall Runs Dry”
In this fourth part of our look at the Triumph Acclaim, we dwell on what at times seemed to be a bitter-sweet truth for BL; everyone knew the latest car from Cowley had a heart made in Tokyo.
Ah, 1981, wasn’t it so … androgynous! It’s Duran Duran, for those too young or old to remember or care.
“We shouldn’t call this car British. When BL took over the standard of their cars went down. There’s no pride left in their work, only pride in opening their pay packets”; a quote in an article in Autocar from its survey of 200 members of the British public at the time of the launch of the Acclaim.
The best known and remembered aspect of the Triumph Acclaim was that it was originally designed, engineered and manufactured by Honda as the Ballade. Indeed practically every written reference to the Acclaim that can be researched from that time makes early, direct reference to the fact, for example: Continue reading “Cowley’s Japanese Boy”
You wouldn’t call the 1998 Skoda Octavia an interesting car. From any other manufacturer at any other time it would have been damned as finally as the last Escort or legendary Mitsubishi Carisma.
Continuing our Longer Read series with DTW’s XJ40 opus magnum.
Image: (c) Auto-Didakt
This I’m forced to admit is somewhat off the meta scale: A repeat of a repeat of a series, entitled History Repeating.
The lengthiest of our Longer Reads, this piece began taking form as far back as 2009. Over that (close to) ten year period, it has probably been subject to nearly as many changes and midnight-oil revisions as the car itself during its even more protracted and strife-ridden gestation.
Writers occasionally speak of falling in love with their characters; certainly XJ40 was a car I approached with a degree of ambivalence, swayed by a post-production and media-led reading of failure and dashed hopes. However, through a combination of archaeology, study and reasoned evaluation, I found myself reaching what was for me at the time a surprisingly emphatic resolution.
Having arrived at this conclusion, the account evolved into something of a an impassioned elegy, for the car itself, yes, but also for the type of broadly accessible, engineer-led motor car which has become largely-extinct. A opportunity furthermore, to honour the people who not only created it, but imbued both it and all true Jaguars with qualities which were somewhat unique and sadly absent from the modern cars bearing the storied name.
It also resulted in a number of hitherto unexpected outcomes; firstly an audience with Professor Jim Randle, the car’s architect, and furthermore to elements of this series forming part of a book, published in 2016 to commemorate XJ40’s 30th anniversary.
So with little further ado or indeed much by way of apology, I present DTW’s XJ40 saga which debuts a new opening chapter, and a revised text, to reflect more recent insights. I must warn you however that it does run to nearly 14,000 words, so I’d recommend finding a comfortable chair to perch (and perhaps a wee dram). If the story of Jaguar’s last stand captures your imagination, you can continue reading by clicking here.
This weekend finds Simon in less peevish form. Well, only slightly…
Image credit: Partsopen
I love the smell of floor polish in the morning. Floor polish is an excellent product for cleaning the wood trim in Jaguars. I don’t own a Jaguar incidentally – in my experience, one really ought not. Like all examples of the treacherous genus Felis, it owns you, and one might reasonably add, one’s bank balance.
Today, We enter the medios, and recall one of Lamborghini’s better efforts.
Image credit: (c) classiccarsforsale
Automotive exotica are not what they were. Traditionally selfish devices, aimed at those who preferred to enjoy their pleasures in isolated splendour. Hence the requirement for additional perches not being terribly high on the exotic carmakers’ priority list. However, a gap in any market simply begs to be filled and Ferruccio Lamborghini was not an individual to Continue reading “Toro de Lidia”
I don’t want to talk about it. It was the second worst time of my life. Times weren’t good at Mercedes either. The A-Class had been moosed and that took some of the attention from its revolutionary cheapening of the Mercedes name and its quite hideous styling.
VW’s staple supermini proves that too much of a good thing is still too much.
The Volkswagen Polo may never have matched its bigger brother, the quintessential Golf, in terms of significance or profit margins. And yet it was the previous generation of this car, the Polo V, that proved how serious VW’s then new management under (now) notorious CEO, Martin Winterkorn, was about redefining the brand.
Pininfarina’s 1973 take on the seminal Jaguar saloon wasn’t their finest hour. But while it served to highlight a fundamental weakness in the Italian carrozzieri’s business model, it did lead to something more worthwhile.
For Italian coachbuilding firms it was a matter of intense pride that no manufacturer was creatively off limits, even one with as strong and universally lauded a design tradition as Jaguar. Predominantly the result of one man’s exceptional taste and unswerving vision, the craftsmen of Piedmont would time and again Continue reading “The Cambiano Connection”
I know we’ve talked about this car before but the theme is summer 1998 and around then, a worrying two-decades back, this car was fresh and new.
1998 Volvo S80.
“Volvo S80 takes the fight to BMW,” roared What Car in 72 point lettering. “It may be unmistakably Volvo but the all-new S80 has enough style and appeal to give rival luxury saloons a fright. And it won’t cost the earth either,” they continued. This claim x or y car will frighten BMW et al is a constant.
Aviation’s loss was very much UK motorsport’s gain in the case of Frank Costin and Malcolm Sayer, twin pioneers of applied aerodynamic theory.
photo credit: (c) motortrend
Britain’s motor industry may now be a pale shadow of its heyday, but it remains a centre of excellence in motorsport research, development and manufacture. Once derided by Enzo Ferrari as a collection of ‘garagistas’, the UK motorsport business rose to dominance by the ingenuity of visionaries like John Cooper and Colin Chapman, aided by gifted engineers, who could Continue reading “A Longer Read – The Great Curve”
I seldom like to visibly intervene in the daily activities of DTW since I find such matters rather unbecoming. Furthermore, the hostility from various embittered car clubs (step forward the Albanian Morris Minor Club) is often too much to bear. However, now that the annual exodus of Driven to Write’s editorial staff is upon us, I find myself once more cast into this distasteful role.
While the vain Herriott disports himself (en famille) across Northern Europe in an Opel Astra F Landaulet commissioned for this express purpose, and the deluded Gorfe has Continue reading “Summer Reissue – La Cinq”
The summer is here and DTW’s offices become ferociously stuffy, a maelstrom of dandruff, cigar ash and wine-label dust dancing in the shafts of half-light.
Simon Kearne, the editor, moves his collection of sherry and cooking marsala to his summer residence (location: secret) and Myles Gorfe’s padded rally jacket disappears off his swivel chair. We never see him, or him taking it. He has gone, like a swallow in September.
So, this writer is also fleeing DTW’s dusty, cramped, byzantine, magazine-clogged rooms on the ninth floor for a summer pause. However, I am not going to display complete dereliction of duty and so have left a trove of articles on automotive life in 1998. which I have tagged Re-1998. They will appear over the coming weeks.
In this third chapter, we find out more about the fruit of the Bounty, and review some of the prose written by esteemed journalists on the cuckoo Triumph.
What came before – a very nice example of a 1972 Dolomite
“The Triumph Acclaim is a good replacement for the aging Dolomite. It is fast, comfortable, economical, and should be very reliable. Providing that the self-imposed restrictions of Japanese imports remain, the car should produce a handsome return for BL, but if cars like the excellent four door Accord become readily available, will people be prepared to accept less Honda for about the same price?” AutoTEST, Autocar, w/e 24 October 1981 (BC – Before Cropley!).
A review of technical specifications reveals that there is little that is remarkable about the three box, four door, saloon that was launched as the Triumph Acclaim on the 7th of October 1981. It had a modern, 1,335cc, four cylinder engine with eight valves and a single overhead camshaft, driving the front wheels via a 5 speed all synchromesh gearbox. The chassis was a steel monocoque, with a suspension system of coil springs over independent MacPherson struts and an anti-roll bar at the front.
We’ve been here before I know, but somewhat akin to the crossover CUV itself, this one simply refuses to go away.
2017 Peugeot 3008: Image Credit: cars.co.za
Everything has a shelf-life, none more so than fashion items. Given their popularity with the buying public and the margins to be made upon their sale, compact crossovers have proliferated to an unsettling degree. So much so, it feels as though we are drowning in a CUV sea, whereas in fact they represent just a quarter of European new car sales.
2019 might seem so very far away now. Who knows what the world will be like then. One thing we do know now is that Ford won’t be present at the 2019 Geneva motor show.
Ideal for the streets of London, Berlin and Dublin! Source
“Ford said the decision was made because the show’s timing didn’t fit its launch schedule and therefore wouldn’t represent good value,” wrote Automotive News Europe. Not launching enough cars, then Ford, eh? Furthermore, we need double quote marks for this next bit: “‘It costs a sizeable amount of money,’ a Ford of Europe spokesman said. ‘If you’re not going make a return on the investment in terms of media attention or people on the stand, why do it?’”.
Sizeable is relative. It costs lots of money in relation to my annual salary, yes, but a few million euros for some wooden stands and pretty ladies in Lycra is a rounding error in Ford’s turn-over, no?
We return to a fine retrospective of an automotive monument.
Image credit: (c) Benzworld
We have over the years at Driven to Write, presented long-form essays and articles in serialised form, partly in deference to our more time-poor readers, and from our own perspective, to help even out the schedule. However, we concluded that it might be pleasant to have the opportunity to revisit these pieces in the format to which they were intended – in full and unexpurgated form.
Over the coming weeks, we will be re-running selected long-form pieces from a recently created section of the site designated ‘A Longer Read‘; the first of which being this superbly researched and well-told analysis of the 1979 W126 Mercedes-Benz S-Class, which you can Continue reading “A Longer Read – First of Its Kind : Last of Its Kind”
Driven To Write 