Steve Cropley: Toy cars for fun, SUVs for business
This week, our columnist adds to his car collection (sort of) and considers what would be the best investment for sheer ride comfort
This week, our columnist sneaks a fun-sized classic into his car collection, ponders a smooth-riding SUV and remembers a titan of motoring.
*Monday*
There’s a new Citroën in our stable, but the bank manager is happy, because it cost only £50.
This superb 1:18 scale model of a DS is by the French firm Norev and, like just about everything else in life, it was delivered this week by a man in a white van. Even the Steering Committee, now seriously concerned as model cars fill the crannies of our house, reckons this one is special for its beautiful, sculptural shape and tasteful colours. Were I to own a real DS, it would have to be just like this.
On that note, I enjoyed last week’s fascinating chat with Citroën head of design Pierre Leclercq, who impressed me with his deep awareness of the brand’s heritage. I started researching his distinguished predecessors Robert Opron (CX, GS and SM) and especially Flaminio Bertoni (Traction Avant, 2CV, Ami, DS and H Van), the Italian sculptor who literally shaped Citroën.
As Jaguar’s Julian Thomson told us recently, referencing the E-Type, it’s a big responsibility to bear the weight of such predecessors’ brilliant achievements as you set out, in a much more crowded and rules-filled world, to do as well.
*Tuesday*
If you own five cars, one of them always seems to need tyres, which is how I have come across the killer fact that any Bridgestone car tyre you buy nowadays has a built-in property called DriveGuard, which means it can cover 50 miles at up to 50mph when it has been holed and is dead flat.
According to my local tyre dealer, these hoops don’t have the disastrous effect on ride quality as classic run-flats. It’s just a quality that a responsible firm chooses to build into every tyre. After a recent reminder of the awfulness of being marooned miles from home with no spare, I know this will affect my future tyre-buying decisions.
*Wednesday*
I’m obsessing about ride comfort, mainly because even my favourite roads around the Cotswolds are in a parlous state at present, riddled with huge, shallow potholes, because large parts of the surfaces have lost their first skin, as it were.
All we have to drive are our Mazda MX-5 (flat-riding but necessarily stiff), Fiat 500 (a 15-year-old design that wasn’t even a class leader when new), Volkswagen California (decently supple but essentially a delivery van) and Vauxhall Corsa (modern body control but poor secondary ride). Oh yes, and our 17-year-old Citroën Berlingo, which still rides with sweet-damped suppleness if you don’t mind the surround-sound trim rattles.
I kept wondering what would work best and have concluded that if I can’t have a Bentley (they took back my Flying Spur), it has to be an SUV (plenty of suspension travel, big wheels with tall tyres) – probably a Range Rover. Maybe it’s time to spend £30k to celebrate an old friend’s 50th birthday.
*Friday*
Heartening to see Volkswagen marking the 75th anniversary of the British Army’s 1945 takeover of its factories, through the management of Major Ivan Hirst, which led to the rebuilding of the business and eventually to the rise of today’s behemoth. Hirst ran the business more or less as a benevolent dictator for three years, restoring many jobs and helping Volkswagen build its enduring reputation for durability.
He later had various jobs promoting cooperation among European countries, but I’ve often regretted that he didn’t move into the British car industry. If we could have substituted him for Lord Donald Stokes in 1968, say, perhaps the sorriest phase in British car history would have been different.
*And another thing...*
Need reassurance that cars get better? Take a peep at this 1950s Morris Minor advert, boasting about a 0-60mph time of 28sec. The small print says it can hold its own against bigger cars “in the hands of a good driver”. How slow does that make them?
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