Mercedes-Benz Simulator

It looks as though Mercedes-Benz wanted its simulator to be run-in, as it were, before inviting Ray Hutton and me to drive it. Inaugurated 25 years ago, on 10 May 1985 at the Daimler-Benz Research Centre in Berlin Marienfelde, we flew there, my diaries tell me, via Bremen, between 14 and 16 August. The Sunday Times Magazine published the feature on 10 November 1985 headed GOING FOR A SPIN, BUT ONLY THE FEEL IS REAL. The Walt Disney animation would be passé nowadays. You would get Avatar in three dimensions but it felt realistic enough at the time, when Berlin still had a wall and Checkpoint Charlie was a bit more than a sandbagged memento of a divided city. For some reason the BBC's royal correspondent Michael Cole was included among Mercedes-Benz's guests and we saw Checkpoint Charliefrom "our" side. Flight back was diverted to Bremen, where the flight crew regretfully ran out of flying hours. Mr Cole drew himself up to his full six foot three and remonstrated with BA that we, the passengers, had run out of passenger hours. We remained in Bremen overnight while Elizabeth, who knew Ray had been visiting East Berlin and had not heard from him, fretted, sure that he was somehow locked away behind an Iron Curtain. Who would have thought that 25 years later, with Ruth, Jane and Alex we would have a multi-duck dinner in the Reichstag roof. See view.

Young Drivers

I can only vouch personally for maybe a couple of dozen young people who have driven safely for years, following experience at the wheel before 17. Like my brothers I was driving from about 11. By 13 I was driving on quiet roads. Our children, except perhaps Charlotte, were all desperate to get into the driving seat as soon as they could reach the pedals. They are now exemplary drivers. It can’t be coincidence.

Today the Association of British Drivers has drawn attention to dismal Jimmies at the BBC, ROSPA and the police, critical of Young Driver training sponsored by SEAT, Admiral Insurance and Pirelli. No surprise the PC BBC fretting, but ROSPA was not always so negative. The police really ought to know better. When I wrote The Sunday Times column on Earlydrive it had support among others from Cheshire Road Safety Unit. Charlotte and Anne have both had nearly 20 years without accidents, Anne’s mileage rather higher than Charlotte’s, Joanna and Jane likewise. Number One son Craig drives across Continents. He has also navigated large yachts safely across oceans but that is something else.

I nearly got The Sunday Times into promoting a nationwide Earlydrive scheme in the 1990s with sponsorship from a major manufacturer, which took fright over worries about instructors’ proximity to young female drivers. Let us hear support for the SEAT Admiral Pirelli Young Drivers initiative. Earlydrive and others set a fine example. Note to Craig, etc. Don’t break the safety spell now…

Find the Association of British Drivers on Facebook and Twitter.

BBC Story - "Fears as children aged 11 take driving lessons"

Young Driver

Fabia GreenLine

I am probably not the first to compare the plain interior of the Fabia GreenLine to that of the eponymous coach. You wouldn’t call a car Bakerloo without expecting some kind of comment. It is upholstered and trimmed to be hard wearing, like a GreenLine bus. I suppose they took in ‘Green’ to appease tree huggers, even if it doesn’t quite get down to the 100g/km C02 mark they all think is going to save the planet.

Astonishing, is it not, how BBC presenters and the like, continue parroting all the mantras about global warming as though it was Gospel, forgetting the discrediting of the IPCC, the Met Office, the University of East Anglia and all that dogma about carbon.

Enough of that. The little Fabia is well made, feels safe and stable and although not quite in the bargain basement at £12,555, the low depreciation Skodas attract nowadays should more than compensate. What a change there has been since 11 October 1997, when I had been to Mlada Boleslav and found the biggest transformation in a European car factory for a generation.

It was still necessary to explain to readers of The Daily Telegraph how profound the change was. They were so accustomed to treating Skoda as a joke that it was necessary to remind them that it had had a glorious past and looked like having a glorious future under VW.

Skoda remains a credit to the German management, who took a shabby run-down name and reputation and transformed it, although oddly enough it seems to do better with up-market models such as the Octavia and Superb. The Fabia is more worthy than great. There are four trim levels, 1,2,3, Sport and GreenLine. The 1 is fairly basic. It has ABS and electric windows but steel wheels and a tyre repair kit in lieu of a spare wheel at well under £10,000. The 2s, 3s and Sport get better at up to £14,000 and GreenLine is somewhere in between with manual air conditioning.

The GreenLine’s drawback is a rather noisy 3-cylinder diesel. It may be the most fuel efficient Skoda ever, sharing its engine with the VW Polo Bluemotion and Seat Ibiza ECOmotive, but it is harsh compared with other diesels. Still with the prospect of 53mpg urban, 83mpg extra urban and 69mpg combined, what’s a little engine vibration between friends, and the Fabia is roomier than either. I used it in the snow. They fit skinny tyres to reduce rolling resistance but it didn’t seem to matter. Still, if I have to go by bus I’d like a little more luxury.

Four Wheel Steer

Four wheel steering has been reinvented for the BMW 5-series. Below 60kph (37mph) the rear wheels turn the opposite way to the fronts, making parking easier. Going faster they turn in the same direction, which makes the car turn in quicker. What Car? was lukewarm about “active” steering, although felt it had quite a profound effect. There was, “rarely a corner or roundabout that requires more than a quarter turn of the wheel. The 5-series remains utterly stable throughout. However we found that the car fitted with the standard electrically powered steering rack offered significantly more feedback, and although requiring a bit more arm-twirling more satisfying. We’d forgo the option of active steering.”

Nothing new about four wheel steering for cars. See my feature from The Sunday Times magazine of 8 December 1985. I liked Honda’s described in The Sunday Times column of 6 September 1987. Honda did a slalom test at the press launch I thought convincing.

BMW Z3 and Shoemakers' Bairns

Beyond starring in jokey thrillers, Cary Grant and Pierce Brosnan had not much in common, yet both made a sports car famous. In 'To Catch a Thief' (Hitchcock, Paramount, 1955) Grant and Grace Kelly raced through the Riviera in a Sunbeam Alpine. In 'Goldeneye' (United Artists 1995) Brosnan forsook James Bond's Aston Martin and pursued baddies in a BMW Z3.

Both had the underpinnings of production saloons, the Alpine the Sunbeam-Talbot 90, the Z3 the BMW Compact 318i. They had 'retro' styling. The Alpine was aimed at North America. Stirling Moss won Coupes des Alpes in it, yet production ones were not quite up to scratch as road-going sports cars. Triumph TR2s were faster, MGAs more precise, Austin-Healeys lower and racier. All borrowed bits from mass-production, TR from the Standard Vanguard, MG from BMC, Austin-Healey from the A90.

The BMW Z3 was not only aimed at North America, it was made in South Carolina. Quick, lively, it handled well, with a smooth-revving 4-cylinder in front, driving the rear wheels as a sports car's should. The recipe was right, it was well put together, and when I drove one in California, on a visit to the Pebble Beach concours, where streets seemed thronged with Ferraris, it drew admiring whoops of 'Nice car...'

The 4-cylinder was feeble but BMW already had plans for a six and I bought a 2 litre 6-cylinder. Was it a sports car or a born-again roadster like the Alpine? I suppose it is about as fast as an early XK120. It looked a thoroughbred. It was not large, the cockpit close-fitting, the boot big enough for a week-end. The hood was fine for 1996, folding away after undoing a couple of clips, it was draught-free although California may not have been the best place to try out its weatherproofing.

Mine had 2000 miles on the clock and it has been a delight. However, “Shoemakers’ bairns,” as the old saying has it, “Are aye the worst shod,” and it’s the same with motoring authors’ cars. They get neglected. My Z3 was deeply cherished by me but ill-served by BMW dealers. Up till now that is. Glasgow Giffnock's Harry Fairbairn was useless, expensive and inefficient. Visit after visit failed to cure trifling faults. And when the faults grew big, once out of warranty, the cost of fixing them was eye-watering. New brake callipers and discs were needed before 35,000 miles. They seized apparently through lack of use and corroded because, said Fairbairn, I lived near the sea. My Nissan Terrano and Ruth’s Ford Puma didn’t suffer but there you are.

There was paintwork trouble and a failed repaint. “You’ve got an adhesion problem,” said Fairbairn without a trace of irony. The new paint wasn’t adhering. Douglas Park in Glasgow was better, but now Soper of Lincoln look after it, I get a courtesy Ford Fiesta when it goes in for service and to have some neglected bits put right. The cost seems about right for a car that is still relatively low mileage and runs beautifully.

Guinness Car Facts and Feats

I look things up in books a lot. How frustrating it must have been to the compilers of the Guinness Book of Car Facts and Feats (1994), to find their collective wisdom was not better served by a comprehensive index in a better-organised book. I relegate it to a distant bookshelf instead of beside-the-desk works of reference, like the invaluable Beaulieu Encyclopǣdia of the Automobile, Anthony Harding’s Classic Car Profiles and any book by Graham Robson. Maddeningly you hardly ever seem to find what you are looking for in Guinness despite being the work of four celebrated motoring historians. Anything of such browsing and argument-settling merit should have more than thirteen pages of index to lead one round an engaging selection of information embracing the origins of motoring, cars, people, racing and rallying. Best of all is a collection of motoring miscellany such as: “The right hand rule of the road - like the metric system (and an extremely silly calendar which was fortunately abandoned) - sprang out of a desire by French revolutionaries to prove that they could order the universe better than God. Because the left-hand rule had been sanctioned by Pope Boniface in the middle ages, they decreed that the opposite should henceforth prevail. Revolutionary republics like the United States followed suit and other countries gradually switched over. But many, including the United Kingdom, Ireland, Japan, and much of the former British Empire still observe the left-hand rule. In Britain it was believed to be a legacy of passing approaching horsemen right side to right side, to facilitate right-armed defence against sudden attack. Oddly enough in 1911 France's Commission du Code de la Route (Highway Code) proposed that France should drive on the left, ‘..because it is instinctive’.” This is indexed as ‘left-hand rule of the road’, but not ‘right hand rule of the road’, nor even ‘rule of the road.’ The ‘miscellany’ is the work of the inimitable Burgess-Wise.

Throttle Sticking

BMW Z4 Coupe on test I photographed at the Charles Rennie Mackintosh Art Lover's House, Glasgow.
What on earth was the unfortunate family killed in the Lexus doing, calling the emergency services on a mobile phone, saying we’re in a Lexus and the throttle has stuck open, before they were killed? Had nobody the presence of mind to shift into neutral, use the handbrake, do anything? “Hold on and pray,” the unfortunate Mark Saylor, an off-duty California highway patrolman, is reported as saying. Don’t they teach highway patrolmen to deal with emergencies?

Now The Times has gone sanctimonious over Toyota, rushing round like Private Fraser in Dad’s Army saying “Everybody’s in danger, we’re a’ doomed.”

The IAM (Institute of Advanced Motorists) offers sounder advice on what to do with an engineering malfunction. Keep calm and carry on. Stephen Mead, Assistant Chief Examiner, says “Surprisingly the perception with a stuck accelerator is that the driver can’t brake either. This is a misconception brought on by panic. Press the brake firmly, then the clutch to disengage the power. In an automatic, drivers should brake, wait for a reaction and then put the car into neutral. You can still steer, so a stuck accelerator isn’t actually the disaster it sounds.”

Quite right. Let the engine rev its head off. “You will probably be in a state of shock, but if you remain calm you can avoid serious danger.”

Poor Toyota. Well, up to a point. It’s all very well saying that we have all had to deal with emergencies, like brake fade or a stuck throttle, at some time. But that is the experience of a million miles, maybe two million miles, talking. I could still drive out today into a crisis. Mustn’t be complacent.

I was once driving a test car on the twisty road alongside Loch Lomond. My nearest and dearest were on board, when I noticed a cloud of smoke in the rear view mirror. It went away. There were no alarming noises. Nothing was obviously wrong, until I braked and there it was again. A white cloud behind. I concluded that brake fluid was leaking on to the exhaust and in due course there would be none left. I drove on for about 30 miles up the A82, braking seldom, driving smoothly, slowing surreptitiously with the handbrake, until I figured out what to do. Nobody in the car noticed anything wrong. I eventually sought help at the AA box just north of Crianlarich. I could then explain to the family why we were stopping. I did not want to be stranded in the wilds.

Nobody was in danger and we completed the journey on a low loader. The AA box is long gone. Emergencies? I once put a rod through the side of a Chevrolet Sting Ray V8 doing maximum speed runs on the M1, at something like 130, still legal then. I destroyed a front wheel and tyre of a big Peugeot, on a rock at about the same speed, in Egypt. My regular driving companion, Michael Scarlett with whom I shared many an adventure, said a little stiffly I thought, “Don’t brake,” which I wasn’t. We came safely to a halt.

Two million miles? That’s 32,258 a year. Between the ages of 30 and 60 I was doing 40,000 a year on test and in my own cars, without accidents beyond minor traffic abrasions.
Dove Publishing is one of the sponsors of Scottish Car of the Year. Here Mike Roberts, Publishing Director presents a quiach to Ian Callum Jaguar design director, with Miss Scotland and me, editorial director