Getting a handle on Peugeot’s 1007.
“Peugeot plants seeds for the future,” wrote Car magazine in November 2002. The accompanying CAD image they used shared its colour with today’s hard copy. The CAD model in Car’s article posed as a concept car and bore the name Sesame. The vehicle appeared on sale two years later bearing a striking resemblance to the thing billed as a concept car. What Peugeot did was to Continue reading “Why the Mountain Argus Hovers in the Mist”
S.V . Robinson concludes his lament for the MPV.
I have spent 4/5ths of my life growing up with the MPV. Over 40 years, we have seen some memorable cars. In the main, they have stood out for either their styling (the pioneering, TGV-aping Espace, the ovoid Xsara Picasso, the lovably grotesque Multipla, to name a few), or the innovation of their packaging – the latter really being the point and purpose of the genre.
We have had MPVs which have front seats that can turn around to face passengers in the rear to create a mobile meeting space. Rear seats which can fold, tumble, be removed entirely, or disappear into the rear floor. There have been five seaters which enable the middle rear perch to Continue reading “The New Untouchables (2)”
On DTW, we have touched upon the slow and largely un-mourned death of the MPV recently, but a small footnote in Autocropley caught my eye and leads me to consider how things got so bad for the ‘people carrier’.
Forgive me Father, for I have sinned. I have owned two MPVs in the last 20 years, both of which served me well – in one case, as I have written before, all too well. Both were purchased to carry my family and their stuff around in their day-to-day lives without taking up too much space on the road or on our driveway.
Interestingly, when it finally came to finding a replacement for our Xsara Picasso, I bit the bullet and bought a considerably longer estate car (Octavia). I did this mainly on the basis that I wanted a larger boot, but, if I am honest, I think a narcissistic piece of me couldn’t Continue reading “The New Untouchables (1)”
Often described in ‘social death’ terms by the more hyperbolic members of the media, the MPV itself is now fading out before our eyes.
An oft-spoken cry from the more dogmatic end of the automotive spectrum came closer to coming true yesterday, following Ford’s announcement that production of B-Max, C-Max and Grand C-Max MPVs will cease at its Saarlouis plant in Germany at the end of June.
Of course, nobody is likely to (a) be poleaxed to the spot in shock, or (b) possessed by a frenzy of bathetic fervour at the news, given that sales of what are termed Minivans by our US friends have been in freefall for some time now, as carbuyers increasingly Continue reading “Death to the Minivan”
For those of you who remember Car’s now lost Forum pages, we make no apologies if we sometimes revive themes from them.
THE COMPACT MPV
One day you wake up and notice how much everything has changed. Did they do it whilst you were asleep? Likely not, you just weren’t paying attention. So it is with automotive design – changes happen, genres appear and a simple history is confected. But often the actual genesis is more complex, and credit, or otherwise, is given to the wrong people. Continue reading “Theme : Evolution – The Missing Links 1”
Driven To Write 