With mere hours to go before the announcement of the winner in Brussels, the author finds little to cheer or celebrate in the 2023 ECoTY shortlist.
Image: Irish Times
2022 was a hard year. Pestilence was far from conquered when war added to the world’s tribulations. An energy crisis followed and, for almost every human endeavour, raw materials shortages and supply chain problems. Europe’s automotive industry was particularly hard-hit, with the continent’s carmaking conglomerates pleading to governments and the EU to Continue reading “That it Should Have Come to This: European Car of The Year 2023”
In May 1974, the little sports car we all still called the Spridget reached its sixteenth birthday. Its presents were belated by a few months, not arriving until October, and were of the sort that a polite mid-teenager might outwardly welcome with smiling gratitude, while being internally aghast.
Its in-house rival – perhaps, in teenage-speak, its frenemy – gifted a new engine. Newness was a relative term in this case. The Triumph SC engine originated with the 1953 Standard 8, Standard-Triumph’s deservedly successful response to the Austin A30 and Morris Minor. Like the completely unrelated Austin A series, it had started out with a mere 803cc, but had the space to Continue reading “Elemental Spirit Part 7: Molestam Senectutem”
British soul, Italian heart. Image: britishcarforum.com
The most prolific period for Spridget engine transplants was the 1970s. By then there was a good supply of second-hand Midgets and Sprites cheap enough for experimentation, and a far broader range of suitable engines. Fiat twin-cams were a popular choice, available cheaply from rotten or written-off 124s and 125s, and often with the added attraction of a five speed gearbox. In the USA and Australia, some Japanese engines found favour, including the twin rotor Mazda 12A. In Britain, the Ford Kent variants were the default choice, plentiful and easily fitted, with far more power than could be cheaply and reliably extracted from an A-series.
From the moment the Austin-Healey Sprite met the world in Monte Carlo in May 1958, there was a widespread and urgent demand for much more power than the 42.5 bhp at 5000rpm delivered by its Healey-fettled 948cc A-series engine. Professional and amateur racing drivers, and road car owners who just wanted to Continue reading “Elemental Spirit Part 5: Building the Perfect Beast”
The Spridget turned out to be a difficult product to replace. We look at a diverse selection of proposals developed through the 1960s.
Image: MG Cheshire Owners Club
Far from perfect, and never very advanced in its design or engineering, replacing the Spridget became one of several long-running displacement activities within BMC and pre-Edwardes BLMC, although in a far lower league than The New Mini, and ‘The Little Engine That Could’ (replace the A Series). All turned out to be as pointless and unproductive as parlour games, with the participants’ abundant creativity never rewarded with a tangible prize.
When Leonard Lord and Donald Healey first imagined the low-budget car which would become the Austin-Healey Sprite, they probably envisaged a production life of possibly 3-4 years before technology and fashion left it behind. Within MG a ‘New Midget based on Sputnik FWD’, was registered in the experimental department register as EX 220, four months before Sputnik (better known as the ADO15 Mini) went on sale in August 1959. The project was given a proper Longbridge code, ADO34, despite the strong disproval of Alec Issigonis[a], and progressed for some time with competing design teams from Abingdon and Longbridge. Continue reading “Elemental Spirit Part 4: The Sisyphus Game”
In his biography My World of Cars, Donald Healey recalled a meeting with Sir Donald Stokes in the first few weeks of British Leyland’s existence:
“I was summoned to Donald Stokes’s office at the Standard works in Coventry, he told me he was going to discontinue MG, together with the payment of royalties to the names associated with what were BLMC cars. This included John Cooper and myself, together with Harry Weslake, and John Thornley (MG General Manager) too, was eventually to be retired. He explained that he didn’t need the help of all of us people to Continue reading “Elemental Spirit Part 3: When Donald Met Donald”
The final years of the 1950s were a time of advancement and renewal for the automobile industry. Fashions changed rapidly as American influence waned, and the European carmakers forged their own visual identities. Model replacement cycles were short, and consumers gravitated to whatever was new and progressive. The Austin-Healey Sprite’s designers never expected the expedient Frogeye design to have a long life, and not long after its launch, the designers at Donald Healey Motor Company in Warwick were working on a facelift, scheduled for production in 1961.
Even before this date, BMC’s Italian licensees had shocked their British supplier and delighted the world with their own version of the little Austin-Healey, presented at the 1960 Turin Motor Show in November 1960. Continue reading “Elemental Spirit Part 2: Metamorphosis”
From Sprite to Midget – profiling BMC’s diminutive sportsters.
Image: The Austin Motor Company
Who would have imagined that the joyful, cartoonish little sports car introduced to the motoring media at Monaco on 20 May 1958, two days after the Grand Prix, was born out of the anguish and self-doubt of the most powerful man in the British automobile industry?
Leonard Percy Lord (1896-1967) was a brilliant production engineer whose breadth of ability led him to rapid promotion at Morris Motors, and then, after crossing sides, a fast-track path to Chairmanship of Austin in the early post-WW2 years. He had a consistent ability to Continue reading “Elemental Spirit Part 1: A Power Partnership”
We look at Dodge’s 2023 Hornet, a compact CUV with muscle-car ambitions, newly arrived from Pomigliano d’Arco.
The Dodge Hornet R/T makes its debut. Image: Stellantis Media
After a year of rumours, renderings and speculation, the Dodge Hornet was presented to the eagerly-awaiting world on 16th August 2022. As was already widely known, it is the Alfa Romeo Tonale’s re-branded twin. Of that, more later. There is rather more interest in the company it will keep, and the future of Brand Dodge, now a very small component of the Stellantis machine, but one with a unique proposition and a home market fan-base almost religious in its devotion.
With 2021 USA sales of 215,724, and a market share of 1.43%, Dodge still counts as a mass-market nameplate, in number but certainly not in its breadth of sector coverage[1]. Even before the 2008 reshuffle which saw the creation of RAM as a stand-alone division for commercial vehicles, Dodge was on the road to Continue reading “Hived Off”
We recall the extraordinary career of Walter Schätzle, a former Borgward dealer whose dedication to the marque briefly made him West Germany’s smallest carmaker.
Image: Borgward Presseabteilung
The collapse of any large manufacturing business is a traumatic and far-reaching event. Lawyers quibble, accountants audit, suppliers stumble, vultures gather. When the collapse involves an automaker, loyal customers feel that their prized vehicles are like orphans and may find that their only support and solace is the dealer who sold and maintained their cars. Many of those dealers will have moved on to other franchises – they have to make a living – but some remain in the thrall of the defunct marque, with a dedication that far transcends vulgar commerce.
The collapse of Bremen-based Carl F W Borgward GmbH in 1961 shook the assuredness of Wirtschaftswunder West Germany, but the controversial story of that event is beyond the scope of this article. One former Borgward dealer, Walter Schätzle (1928-2021), not only went above and beyond expectations to Continue reading “Walter Schätzle – Resurrection Man”
Paying tribute to visionary engineer and supercar designer Bob Henderson, who died in February aged 89.
Image: Sunday Times
“If you accept, as I do, that the internal combustion engine will be with us for some time yet, in either reciprocating or rotary form, then it is sensible to assume that even after all of this time it can still be developed further. In my view it is only in the wide field of pressure or forced induction that any worthwhile steps can be taken, as all others will be mere hair-splitting improvements to meet the long overdue pollution regulations. These are already showing signs of producing less power for more weight, a situation which must get worse.”
“The only long term saviour will be the blown engine which can double or treble the power output for only 10-20% increase in weight, and since cost and complexity could be less than the much-vaunted fuel injection systems, which only marginally improve efficiency, this is obviously the way to go.”Continue reading “The Seer of Loch Gilp : Bob Henderson 1932-2022”
In less than a couple of months we have witnessed the arrival of two new SUVs from the auto conglomerate’s revered Italian high-performance marques. We have, however, previously expressed reservations about the distinctly mass-market componentry underpinning the Alfa Romeo Tonale. As with the Alfa, this month’s debutant, the Maserati Grecale, represents a move downmarket for the marque, but the ingredients are rather more original and appetising this time around.
At its world premiere in the Alfa Romeo Museum, the Tonale featured two F1 racing drivers and brand CEO Jean-Philippe Imparato as presenter and host. In marked contrast, the Grecale had a duo of Italian actors in a film studio; Matilda de Angelis and Alessandro Borghi, with Maserati Design VP Klaus Busse[1] cast in the straight man role, an unwitting butt of jokes, in the manner of a two-metre tall Ernie Wise. It’s either rather charming or just excruciating, like an overplayed piece of drama school coursework: are these actors really so beguiled by this overtly boastful, but ultimately rather shallow machine? Continue reading “Maserati Grecale – The Passion of St. Giorgio”
Now in its 59th year, the earnestly intentioned but often derided European Car of the Year contest has been a hostage to fortune over the past three years. This time pestilence has yet again denied the media attendance at the live announcement on the eve of the Geneva Salon, but minds have been far more concentrated on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, rightly described by the ECotY organisation as “this terrible war.”
In a darkened arena in Geneva, ECotY president Frank Janssen stated his organisation’s response to the invasion: no Russian flag on display at the presentation and the two Russian jurors’ votes would be excluded from the count. I’m sure Vadim Ovsiankin and Sergey Znaemsky are decent fellows, but needs must in these times. Their votes won’t count this year, but they retain their jury places. Continue reading “In the Full Current of Human Life: European Car of the Year 2022”
The arrival of a new mass-market Alfa Romeo is always an important event, and the Tonale CUV arrives with heavy responsibilities upon its evocatively styled shoulders. Nearly three years have passed since the Tonale Concept showed its SZ-inspired face at the last Geneva Salon of the decade. I had been deeply impressed by Fiat’s Centoventi concept, unveiled at the same venue, but the Tonale seemed like a needless distraction; no certainty of production in the post-Marchionne paralysis, very little technical information other than that it would be electric, or at least electrified. The video presentation was fabulously impressive, the red show car rather less convincing. Continue reading “The Alfa Romeo Tonale – a Pass with Advisories”
In the recent series on the Nissan Qashqai, I mentioned that the latest generation will have a third powertrain option that is so left-field it deserves its own chapter. We are told that the e-POWER version will arrive sometime in 2022 and that nothing comparable has previously been offered in a mass-produced vehicle sold in Europe. What makes it unique is that the powertrain has true petrol-electric drive, a series hybrid system with no mechanical gearbox and electric-only traction. The internal combustion engine drives a generator which charges a buffer battery. This in turn delivers power to the electric traction motor. Continue reading “I Can Explain Everything. Actually, No, I Can’t.”
England made the Nissan Qashqai, in both the design and manufacturing sense. Appearing from an unexpected quarter and disregarded by the industry media’s chattering classes, it not only became a European top-ten seller within three years, but also defined the parameters of its own sector for fourteen years and two generations. There was no doubt that there would be a third generation, but the world around the Qashqai was changing rapidly. To put rest to uncertainty arising from the UK’s vote to leave the European Union, Nissan confirmed in October 2016 that there would be an all-new, third-generation Qashqai, and it would Continue reading “And Now We Rise, and We Are Everywhere – (Part Three)”
Notwithstanding its phenomenal impact on the market, the Nissan Qashqai’s continuing success was dependent on staying ahead of a growing battalion of rivals, and evolution was necessary to maintain its dominant market position. The next generation Qashqai, codenamed J11, was presented in November 2013, and sales commenced in February 2014. With the J10’s success, Nissan Europe had already entered an new era of design and business confidence, evidenced by the bold and controversial design of the 2010 London-styled Juke[1], a pioneering B-segment SUV.
The new Qashqai was far less adventurous than the wilfully quirky Juke, carrying over some cues from the J10 original to a more angular and rugged form. The articulation of the flanks, a clamshell bonnet, and a more aggressive face, hinted at Nissan’s upcoming ‘athletic’ global design vocabulary, soon to Continue reading “And Now We Rise, and We Are Everywhere – (Part Two)”
What do we think of when we think of the Nissan Qashqai? The promising 2004 concept which introduced not only the name, but also the talents of Nissan’s London design studio? The worthy but visually underwhelming crossover which made its debut in Paris two and a half years later? The sales phenomenon which led to Nissan’s Sunderland factory producing more vehicles per annum than Italy’s entire automotive industry?
For this writer, the conclusion of the fieldwork element of a four week crash-course in Qashqai Studies is that it is Europe’s incognito car champion. Once I had set the radar on the self-effacing crossover, I suddenly found them everywhere, in all generations (they seem to last well) and trim levels. Before this, I would have more readily paid attention to items of street furniture.
The season of enforced merriment is once again upon us and DTW offers an opportunity to test your knowledge of all things automotive. There’s something for everyone – if all else fails, try lateral thinking…
European Car of the Year shortlist 2022: Consumers’ companion or cleverly controlled chauvinism?
archyewsy
The worth of the European Car of the Year contest has often been questioned, but at least it gives a regular snapshot of what’s been happening in the automotive world over the preceding 12 months. 2021 has been surprisingly fecund, despite Covid-19 and the chip crisis, but has not been without casualties.
The earnest ECotY jurors were presented with a provisional list of 65 vehicles, reduced to 39 for the longlist, despite the late inclusion of three Chinese EVs (Aiways U5, MG EHS and Marvel R). Most drop-outs were the result of delayed launches, but for the provisional listed Jaguar XJ and J-Pace it was the end of the road, with both projects terminated and – it would seem – erased from JLR’s corporate memory.
Bostelbek’s resourceful and determined Kleinlaster manufacturer reached the mid-1950s in a state of existential crisis, with their promising Matador range in desperate need of a suitably powerful, efficient, and dependable engine. The smaller Wiking truck was selling satisfactorily, but the Land Rover joint venture had no future, and the once-staple Hanseat Dreirad was a vehicle type soon to Continue reading “Strict Tempo – Part 2. The Unassailable Matador”
A chance sighting in a Hamburg suburb prompts a DTW writer to contemplate the life and times of one of Germany’s lesser known automotive dynasties.
Tempo showroom on Ballindamm, Hamburg Image: ndr.de
For me, this story starts on a quiet street in a south-western suburb of Hamburg almost exactly two years ago, although the times we have lived through since make the experience feel far more distant. I had based myself in an apartment in west Harburg, close to the A7 autobahn, and on my first morning, set out further west in search of breakfast, and found myself on a street called Tempoweg, close to the Neuwiedenthal S-Bahn station.
With the death of Graham Robson on 5 August 2021, the world of automotive history has lost an extraordinary and prolific chronicler.
Graham Robson. Image: TR Register
Graham Robson was born and schooled in Skipton, a North Yorkshire market town. His family, middle-class but certainly not moneyed, had no connection with the motor industry other than his father’s interest in motorcycle racing. His interest in cars and engineering evolved from his early years, and the clever and motivated grammar-school boy was awarded a place at Lincoln College, Oxford, where he studied Engineering Science.
On graduation in 1957, the young Robson joined Jaguar as a graduate engineering trainee. Without doubt, Coventry shaped him, and in his free time from Jaguar, he was active in club rallying, making important contacts which led to co-driving opportunities with the Rootes factory team, and in 1961 a new job at Standard-Triumph, first as a development engineer, and in due course taking on the role of Competition Secretary.
In 1974, Ford at last gave serious consideration to a Transit replacement, instigating “Project Triton” by employing a French consultancy to produce studies for a new van to go on sale towards the end of the decade. The timing was inauspicious, in the midst of a global oil crisis and industrial and political turmoil in the UK.
Within the narrower confines of Ford of Britain, development of the strategically important Cargo medium sized truck range was running behind programme and over budget. Integration of the German and British operations was proceeding rapidly with priority for all resources going to the Fiesta supermini, the most expensive project in the history of the Ford Motor Company.
Let us move on to 1972, a momentous year for the Transit in the UK and Europe. Despite a house move, British production reached a new high at just over 55,000 units. Genk managed 37,000. Rival manufacturers had yet to follow Bedford’s example with a serious Transit challenger, although British Leyland were, shall we say, working on it.[1] The Toyota Hi-Ace had recently arrived in the UK, finding favour with small businesses and motor-caravanners, but was not selling in the sort of numbers which would concern Ford.
By the beginning of 1968, one in three medium sized vans sold in the UK was a Transit, and Ford could easily have increased this number had there been more production capacity at Langley. In just over two years their share of the market sector had increased by 64% compared with that of the preceding Thames 400E. Ford’s description of their vehicle as a phenomenon was hard to dispute, also claiming that it had become “the most wanted vehicle in Europe”.
Ford’s success in the sector was won with hard work and inspired thinking. Their product had class-leading power and loadspace, seemingly infinite versatility, and a rugged build able to Continue reading “Fanfare for the Common Van – (Part 3)”
In the second part of our Transit story, we look at its unusual power units and the impact the van made on the British market following its October 1965 launch.
Image: Ford of Britain
Ruggedness and simplicity were at the heart of the Project Redcap’s engineering, but the engines used to power the Transit were strangely at odds with these design principles. The choice of power was a foregone conclusion – Ford’s European operations had been guided to meet their over-1600cc needs with a range of 60 degree V4 and V6 engines for use in passenger cars and light commercial vehicles.
The decision is possibly understandable given the popularity of V8 engines in the USA, but the V-configuration made a far weaker case with half the number of cylinders. Despite this, Ford’s European satellites were producing two different V4s by the end of 1965, with German production exclusively using the V-configuration, while the largest capacity(1) British in-line four was the 1500cc version of the versatile, stretchable and tuneable ohv engine first seen in the 1959 Anglia 105E, with V4s covering the 1.7 to 2.0 litre range. Continue reading “Fanfare for the Common Van (Part 2) – Power and Glory”
We look at Ford’s most enduring European product, the clever and versatile van which not only became an instant best-seller, but shaped the future of Ford’s operations across the entire continent.
Image: Ford of Britain
Henry Ford II’s whole life had been turbulent, and he never shied from aggressive intervention. Hank the Deuce had been President and CEO of the Ford Motor Company from 1945, and by the late 1950s was becoming increasingly troubled by the fragmented nature of the firm’s European operations. Viewed from Dearborn, the absurdity and inefficiency of two factories less than 500 kilometres apart designing and producing separate, unrelated ranges of vehicles with few, if any parts in common could no longer be sustained.
It is early spring 2009, and Central Scotland is in the grip of an unexpected invasion. They came by the transporter load, unfamiliar little saloons and hatchbacks, unacknowledged by their Japanese maker. As I pounded the M8, M9, M90, and M74, I was briefly mystified – were they merely passing through, bound for another country? Nissan UK was glorying in a Qashqai-led purple patch – they had gambled the farm on an SUV for Focus / Astra money and hit the jackpot. What place was there for a nondescript and regressive basic transport tool?
If I’d been a keener reader of the nation’s red-top dailies, the mystery would have been solved sooner. Scotland’s largest car dealership chain had secured a job-lot of Nissan C11 Tiidas, originally intended for the Republic of Ireland, and now offered exclusively at tempting prices with an impressive equipment specification.
Had it been any other dealership, I’d have expected that a rap on the knuckles and a reminder of the terms of their franchise contract would have been delivered forthwith. In Arnold Clark’s case, I suspect complicity with Nissan to Continue reading “Look What the Tide Brought In – A Caledonian Curiosity”
Once again the Geneva Salon is a no-show, but in the depths of the empty halls of Palexpo, the 57th European Car of the Year announcement goes out to the world. Robertas Parazitas reports, from a virtual Grand-Saconnex.
Image: ECotY
Last year’s hasty but not unexpected cancellation of the Geneva International Motor Show established the template for the virtual ECotY presentation. No free fizz, no famous faces, but it worked, so why change?
Swiss television presenter Mélanie Freymond opened the proceedings, introducing GIMS CEO Sandro Mesquita. He almost answers everyone’s inevitable question. Will there be a show in 2022? The answer is that negotiations with their partner are nearing conclusion and he is hopeful of some “good news” in the next few weeks. Continue reading “European Car of the Year 2021: Worthy, But a Worthy Winner?”
Another year, another car of the year contest. Try to care.
(c) Haymarket Publishing
Who would be be a European Car of the Year Juror? This time round there was not even the customary Danish beach jamboree last October to reward their earnest efforts. There will however be the usual accusations of national partisanism, bias towards those manufacturers who Continue reading “Car of the Year 2021. A Bleak Reflection”
DTW wishes you all a very Happy New Year and offers you another opportunity to test out your knowledge of all things automotive. Good luck and no Googling!
An actor, a small city in Wisconsin, and an item of bespoke door furniture. Together they link to a well-regarded luxury car which spanned three decades of the 20th century.
Throughout the 20th century, Britain produced many remarkable – in some cases world-changing – internal combustion piston engines. Unfortunately for the everyday motorist on the street, most of them were to be found in aircraft, ships, railway locomotives, motorcycles and even a few racing or luxury cars.
Even in the post-WW2 era, all-iron in-line engines were the staple offering for the British Big Six, side valves were still commonplace, and the RAC horsepower rating system cast a long (stroke) shadow over cylinder proportions even after Britain introduced a flat tax rate. Such engines were not particularly powerful, nor even efficient, but were trusted by the motor trade and buying public, and were forgiving of unsophisticated and imprecise casting, machining and assembly methods.
In September 1950 Jowett announced British prices for the Javelin-Jupiter. The factory bodied drophead coupe, although effectively unobtainable, was priced at £1087 (£850 before tax) and the rolling chassis was offered at £672 (£525 before tax). The blank canvas chassis was in fact a comprehensive kit, with a wiring loom, switches and instruments, and a set of grilles which coachbuilders were expected to use in a way which would Continue reading “Beautiful Vision – Evolution of the Jowett Javelin (Part 9)”
The Jupiter performed far better on the track than on the company’s balance sheets.
Jupiter R1 at Le Mans 1952 Image: drive-my
Had the Jowett-E.R.A. sports car alliance endured, Reg Korner’s frenzied work through the autumn and winter of 1949-50 may not have been necessary. In parallel with his Chief Engineer Dr. Ing. Robert Eberan-Eberhorst’s chassis development, E.R.A owner Leslie Johnson commissioned Seary and McCready, a small coachbuilder noted for high quality work, to develop an aerodynamic body with distinctly transalpine influences.
The design was presented to the media as the ‘E.R.A Javelin’ at Jowett’s London showroom on 27 September 1949, rising on a lift from the building’s undercroft with its paint scarcely dry. Motor Sport of November 1949 described the three seater coupe thus: “so trim, so refreshingly different did the car look, prompting thoughts of Simca, Cisitalia, F.I.A.T., that those privileged to Continue reading “Beautiful Vision – Evolution of the Jowett Javelin (Part 8)”
We take a brief detour and look at the other Javelin, the glamorous Jupiter.
Image: crowood
You’re part of the plan.
At the 1949 London Motor Show, Jowett exhibited a low-slung tubular steel chassis featuring the Javelin flat-four engine and a modified form of the saloon’s torsion-bar suspension. It was the culmination of months of frenzied activity by a distinguished Austrian designer and four other engineers at Five Lane Ends, in pursuit of a promising but haphazard joint venture between the Yorkshire car firm and the revived ERA (English Racing Automobiles) company.
By early 1949, it was becoming clear that the Javelin was not meeting sales expectations in the USA. Ordinarily, this would have not been a concern, with production of around 6000 per year, and plenty of interest from the home market and from Jowett’s traditional sales territories in Europe and the former British colonies and dominions. However, the UK’s trade strategy was asymmetrical. The US dollar was the post WW2 world’s paramount currency, and British manufacturers who could bring in hard currency would Continue reading “Beautiful Vision – Evolution of the Jowett Javelin (Part 7)”
Stepping back fifty years, we return to the Salone dell’Automobile di Torino for a second day for a feast of stylistic flair and bright hopes for the future.
Tjaarda-Giacobbi Sinthesis Image: Hemmings
As with neutral Geneva in the spring, Piedmont-centric Turin was a showplace for the industry’s fringe performers. In Italy fantasists and dreamers exhibited beside perfectly worthy but little-known Carrozzieri. In 1970, the sideshows were still rich in interest, although my IPC Business Press Cicerone, Anthony Curtis gave them only a sideways glance.
Fifty years from the day it opened, we look back at the 1970 Salone dell’Automobile di Torino.
Italdesign Porsche 914 Tapiro Image: viaretro.com
In late 1970 much of Europe was in the grip of a pandemic, but not one which hindered the annual motor show round which had started in neutral Amsterdam and closed in Turin with a high-art extravaganza where function took a distant third place after form and fashion.
The pandemic was not biological but ideological, manifesting itself in social, political and industrial turmoil, and acts of terrorism by far-left, far-right and nationalist elements. In Italy the phenomenon was given a name – Anni di piombo – ‘The Leaden Years’, and was to Continue reading “The Labour and the Wounds Are Vain – Turin Motor Show 1970 Part 1”
Continuing our Foundation Course in Dacia Studies, a DTW writer examines the outgoing model’s textual significances through a year and a half of real-life experience of a Sandero 1.0 Sce75.
Gérard Detourbet 1946-2019. Image: The Hindu Business Line
I have so far yet to drive a Logan or Duster, but over the last eighteen months I’ve run up lots of Sandero miles. Does it keep Louis Schweitzer and Gérard Detourbet’s vision alive?
Our Sandero was a collegiate purchase, and democratic principles applied. My favoured choice of car is made in the factory which gave us the Alfasud, but I was outvoted. FCA’s lack of regard for EuroNCAP ratings did not help my cause. Grim commerce and rules of procurement prevailed and we were treated to this ageing star of the developing world’s carmaking industry. Continue reading “Driven, Written: Work Conquers All”
Is the real-world automotive success of the 21st century the ingenious and ubiquitous Dacia family? DTW’s Sandero-driving Dacia-agnostic analyses the all-new Sandero and Logan. Can they sustain the irresistible rise of the Franco-Romanian phenomenon?
Image: Automobile Dacia S.A
Have eight years really passed since Dacia launched the second generation Sandero at the Paris Mondial in 2012? It must be so. My calendar still has the show dates marked in, a vain act of hope in The Year That Was Cancelled.
In 2012 we not only saw the new Sandero, but also an unannounced and unexpected New Logan, effectively a Sandero with a 45mm wheelbase stretch and a capacious boot. The Logan made rational sense but had none of the original’s characterful presentation. Eight years on some Dacia assembly locations still Continue reading “Sandero Luminoso: Dacia’s 2021 Debutants”
To the bright side of the road – The Jowett Javelin meets the world
Image: Jowett Car Company
In little more than a year, the Javelin emerged as a production debutante and established itself as one of the brightest stars of a reawakening British motor industry. Charles Callcott Reilly, Jowett’s swashbuckling joint Managing Director, had made an extraordinary effort to Continue reading “Beautiful Vision – Evolution of the Jowett Javelin (Part 6)”
Fifteen years ago today LJK Setright departed this life at the age of 74. Bereft of his guide, one DTW writer looks at the years which followed, and considers how this extraordinary man might have viewed them.
Image: The author’s collection
Firstly, I will assume that the reader has some level of familiarity with Setright’s work. He was best known as a writer on automotive and engineering matters, but that scarcely defines him; polymath, autodidact, wordsmith, bebop clarinettist, classicist, libertarian, controversialist, modern-day Jehu, dandy, Ba’al teshuvah. I could go on…
His description of Frederick Lanchester: “The most accomplished gentleman ever wasted on the motor industry” could equally apply to Setright himself.
Even for those of us well into middle-age, the day in September 2005 when this other-worldly man proved to be as mortal as the rest of us seems long in the past, more so since Setright’s last column in CAR* appeared in February 1999**, and afterwards his output was sporadic and thinly spread. Throughout his time as a writer, Setright viewed the world with scant regard for the preoccupations and fashions of the day, and was never afraid to Continue reading “Fifteen Years after LJKS”
In the face of extraordinary challenges, Gerald Palmer’s vision becomes reality.
Happy days ahead Image: Jowett Car Club
As the hand-built prototype Jowetts pounded the roads of Eastern England and war ended, the intrepid Yorkshire company faced new challenges of recovery and reconstruction. In March 1945 the entrepreneur Charles Clore bought out the Jowett brothers’ holdings and thereby took control of the business. The new capital was welcome, but Jowett was no longer a family firm, and the new master would soon Continue reading “Beautiful Vision – Evolution of the Jowett Javelin (Part 5)”
Driven To Write 