Anniversary for Kia

Twenty years ago this week, The Sunday Times motoring column was wide-ranging. Porsche and Volkswagen featured, Kia making it at bottom left on its introduction to Britain, selling 1,786 cars in its first year. Last year it sold 56,114 and has become an international giant making more than 2 million vehicles. Kia Motors Corporation, which celebrated its 67th anniversary in May, began in South Korea manufacturing bicycles, growing to be part of the world’s fourth largest automotive group. Its splendid Scottish Car of the Year Sportage crossover and Sedona MPV are great value for money and recent models such as the European designed and manufactured (if curiously named) cee’d have secured a reputation for quality and reliability.

Yet it is probably Kia's seven year warranty that has been the most distinguished contribution to its success. Peter Schreyer’s appointment as chief designer in 2006 brought the products up to the mark, bringing popularity to new models such as the Soul urban crossover, Venga mini-MPV and new Picanto. Kia has graduated into the mainstream of style; you no longer look on it as a sort of bargain basement car.

Commenting on the anniversary, Michael Cole, Managing Director, Kia Motors (UK) Ltd, said: "Kia has been on quite a phenomenal journey in recent years. In less than two decades we've certainly lived up to our 'Power to Surprise' slogan by growing from a relatively small importer to challenging the best and most established brands in the industry. We think we have a fantastic range of cars and, judging by our growth over the last few years, it seems our customers think so too. 2011 is set to be our busiest year yet and I'm confident it'll be one where we challenge perceptions more than ever as we launch three superb new products in the UK - new Picanto, new Rio and, later in the year, new Kia Optima".

SUNDAY TIMES: Motoring, Eric Dymock
7 July 1991
KIA-PENZA
Two new bargain makes on sale this month offer a practical alternative to buying second-hand. The Escort-sized 1.3 litre Sao Penza will cost under £7,700 and the Metro-sized Kia Pride range is all below £6,800. Both are former Mazdas, the Penza is the old 323 now made in South Africa, and the Kia is the obsolete 121 made in Korea.
This week's price cuts by manufacturers provide new baselines to try and stem disorderly discounting. Kia and Sao Penza start cheap because they use old technology, yet still come with competitive new-car warranties. They are being imported by MCL Group which sells Mazdas in Britain. Group chairman John Ebenezer, who used to import inexpensive brands from east Europe such as FSO, is optimistic about the new arrivals.
"We are constantly looking for opportunities for new products for the UK market and the improved political situation in South Africa has allowed us to import the Sao Penza." Kia is one of the world's top twenty motor manufacturers although quite a lot of the cars it makes do not carry the Kia brand name. The Pride sells as the Ford Festiva in the Far East.
The most expensive Kia is £1,885 cheaper than the current Mazda 121. The Pride 1.1L 3-door at £5,799, the 1.3LX at £6,399 and the 5-door LX at £6,799 will be among the cheapest superminis on the market.
It hardly matters that Kia's technology is not quite 1991 and the ride and refinement not as good as the Fiat Uno or Nissan Micra. The cars have a useful turn of speed, good economy, an agreeable appearance and seem strongly built.
The two Sao Penza models to be sold here are made by the South African Motor Corporation (Samcor) created in 1985 by the amalgamation of South Africa's Ford and Chrysler operations. Samcor is 76 per cent owned by the Anglo American Corporation and the 5,000 workers own 24 per cent of the shares.
The 1.3 litre five door hatchback will be priced at £7,549 and the four door saloon is £7,695 with metallic paintwork.

The Zandvoort Four

Jim Clark, Lotus-Ford, 1968
You don’t meet many geniuses. On June 4 1967 I watched four write motor racing history. The death of Keith Duckworth at the age of 72, extinguished the light of the quartet who shone so brilliantly that day at Zandvoort. The others were Jim Clark, Colin Chapman and Walter Hayes.

The Dutch Grand Prix was third race into the 1967 world championship calendar. The British teams had been having difficulty finding a suitable engine and now with the first race of the Lotus 49 they thought they might have one in its new Ford-Cosworth. You couldn’t expect it to win first time out but astonishingly it did, the first of a record-breaking 155 grand prix victories, for what would be the greatest racing engine of all time.

The winning driver Jim Clark was affable, the car’s creator Colin Chapman admirable, Walter Hayes thoroughly likeable, but Duckworth, the engine designer, was perhaps the one you could say was truly lovable.

Colin Chapman (left) with Jim Clark
Shy reserved Jim Clark did not much care for journalists, although he put up with those like me who had known him from before he ever raced. He knew I was unlikely to rush into print with confidences. They were carefully respected even though it meant subduing an urge to tell the world. If I had, I knew I would quickly turn from being a motor racing insider to an outsider.

Colin Chapman was founder of Lotus, and the most innovative racing car designer of his generation. He had not been first to put the engine behind the driver, but he had done it better than anybody else, and understood perfectly why. He exploited every nook and cranny of the regulations, invoking anything not expressly forbidden. He made a driver lie almost on his back to reduce a racing car’s height. Chapman’s pursuit of lightness was obsessive, to the point where everybody knew his cars were fragile, yet everybody wanted to drive them because they were winners. Chapman would give a lucid one-to-one press conference, telling you what he thought you ought to know about racing car design, while looking over your shoulder for somebody more important.

Walter Hayes, head of its public affairs, arranged for Ford Motor Company to pay for an engine that would win the world championship for Jim Clark. A former editor of the Sunday Dispatch, Hayes was a sage. He knew Clark was the world’s greatest driver; he knew Chapman was best car designer. He also knew that he, Hayes, was the world’s best publicist. All he had needed was to find the world’s best engine engineer and inspire him. Hayes did the one-to-one press conference without looking over your shoulder. You got his full attention, eye contact, first name; he knew what you wrote for. He would steer you to the best story. Thoughtful, articulate and utterly in command, he stage-managed designers, racing drivers, teams and was the best spin-doctor the car industry ever had.

Walter Hayes, Ford Public Affairs
Walter’s world collapsed ten months after Zandvoort when Clark died at Hockenheim. Like the rest of us, it had probably never entered his head that Jim Clark would die in a racing car. It was a blow to Chapman too, but he recovered and carried on designing the ground breaking inventive racing cars, taking the rules of motor racing to the brink, pioneering advances like aerodynamic down-force and ground-effect. Unfortunately he took his brinkmanship into business. A court would hear how John DeLorean, Chapman, and Lotus accountant Fred Bushell siphoned off taxpayers’ money intended for DeLorean's ill-fated Belfast car company, when in 1978 Lotus was paid $17.65 million to develop the absurd backbone-framed stainless-steel roadster.

The loot was laundered in a Panamanian registered, Geneva based company. None of it got anywhere near the car and, in the words of the Delorean receiver Sir Kenneth Cork, “went walkabout”. A House of Commons Public Accounts Committee reported in July 1984 that the money was “misappropriated”. A three way payout gave DeLorean $8.5 million, while Chapman and Bushell divided $8,390,000 between them in numbered Swiss bank accounts. Chapman took 90 per cent, but the bulk of the missing millions was never recovered.

By the time of the settlement Chapman was dead. The unfortunate Bushell was jailed for three years and fined £2.25m. Lord Justice Murray told Belfast Crown Court that Bushell had been the brains behind a “bare faced, outrageous and massive fraud”. He also said that had DeLorean not been American and Chapman alive, they would have been given ten year prison terms.

David Keith Duckworth was born in Blackburn Lancashire, went to Giggleswick School and studied engineering at Imperial College, “scraping through” his BSc as he put it. This may have been due in some measure to his dissertation being critical of the course, its organisation, and its methodology. It was not the only time his frankness led to trouble. “I don’t compromise easily. I won’t accept theories that are wrong. I can spot bullshit at 100 yards and I have to say so.”

Keith Duckworth (left) explains an FVA to Ford vice president of engineering, Harley Copp
A deeply analytical engineer, he joined the fledgling Lotus company in 1957 as a gearbox development engineer, but soon recognized Chapman’s shortcomings and left, telling the proprietor that he was not prepared to waste his life developing something that would never work. Instead he set up an engineering company with his friend Mike Costin calling it, a little bleakly perhaps, Cos-worth. They adapted the Ford Anglia 105E engine for Formula junior and swept the board.

The DFVThis led to a four-valve version called FVA (for Four Valve Type A) and when Ford put up £100,000 for a V8 they called it the DFV (for Double Four Valve). It set new standards of power and reliability. Duckworth did press conferences too, scattering aphorisms like confetti: “It is better to be uninformed than ill-informed.” He laughed a lot and pontificated, but would never patronise, beyond perhaps a cheerful “That’s a bloody silly question Eric. You can do better than that,” delivered in rich Lancastrian.

He found it better to be truthful. “If you lie you’ve always got to remember what yesterday’s lie was.” His warmth was genuine, although if he wanted to be evasive over some technicality, he would smile benignly. “Very few straight answers are ever possible. The decisive man is a simple-minded man.” Keith trained as a pilot in the Royal Air Force, but whenever he flew me in his Brantly helicopter, it was always with an injunction that, “This thing is put together by engineers and engineering things always break in the end.” It never did, although a heart attack in 1973 forced him to give it up.

When, seven years later, he relinquished his 85 per cent stake in Cosworth Engineering, its success was already assured. It had reached well beyond motor racing and produced a range of brilliant engines for production cars of Ford, GM, and perhaps as its ultimate accolade, Mercedes-Benz.

The Zandvoort Four were supremely gifted, Keith Duckworth the acme of the articulate engineer. His laughter was the happiest sound ever in a pit lane.
From: The Scotsman, published following the death of Keith Duckworth, aged 72, in December 2005.

Lancia by Chrysler

Lancia Beta Spider. Blighted by subframe troubles
Brand names have downsides. Take Lancia. They are going to bring the fetching Ypsilon into Britain as a Chrysler. It will be a Lancia everywhere else. Poor Vincenzo (1881-1937) will spin in his grave at the thought of his progeny being sold in Britain as a Chrysler.

Well proportioned premium small car. New Ypsilon 4-door with coupe style concealed rear door
Fiat-Chrysler is scared of relaunching Lancia in Britain after disasters in the early 1970s over what apologists called ‘quality issues’. Lancia Betas got so rusty that the importer (Britain was one of its biggest export markets) was obliged to buy lots of them back in an effort to hush things up. Ask Andrew Andersz, who had to go on The World at One to defend the indefensible. Subframes rusted so horribly engines could work loose on their mountings and while tales of them actually falling out were probably exaggerated, it was a bad problem. Beta saloons were worst affected and while Coupes and the splendid Montecarlo did not suffer as severely, they did decay much too quickly and Lancia in Britain collapsed and died.

Apocrypha abounded. It was widely supposed that Russian steel imported as part of Fiat’s deal with the Soviets was to blame.

One of the most advanced small saloons of the 1930s, the Lancia Aprilia had all-round independent suspension, V4 engine and hydraulic brakes.
Well, it’s not like that now. Ultra high and high tensile steel makes up 78 per cent of the Ypsilon’s body weight and at 965kg it is one of the lightest cars in its class. It is made on the Fiat small platform at the Tychy plant in Poland. Sales of the current model peaked at 85,000 in 2004; it’s now down to 50,000 and Lancia expects to sell 120,000 a year of the new extremely pretty version once it becomes less reliant on its home market and starts to export. There will be a choice of three engines a 2-cylinder 0.9 litre petrol TwinAir, and two 4-cylinders, a 1.2 petrol and 1.3 diesel. The TwinAir and the diesel with have sub 100 grams per kilometre CO2 emissions. It sells for €12,400 in Italy.

Italian style; Lancia Ypsilon.
So, if you want a premium priced and really stylish small car would you go for a classic make, like Lancia, or a tired plain old Chrysler, which has more skeletons in its cupboard than Lancia. Chysler 180, Talbot Horizon anybody?

Rally Classic: Lancia Stratos

Lofty England; Tony Rudd

FRW (Lofty) England of Jaguar
“My most memorable character” used to be a feature in Reader’s Digest. My “most memorables” tended to be engineers or in motor racing. Some were both, like Tony Rudd of BRM, the archetypal articulate engineer. Winning world championships with BRM and becoming Colin Chapman’s trusted adviser were outstanding accomplishments. He managed to convince BRM to flatten out two of its successful V8s, put them on top of one another, gear the crankshafts together and make the H16. Articulate? Read his book, “It was fun!”, published by Haynes in 1993. Great man. Great host. Great family. Jackie Stewart’s tribute at his memorial service was a masterpiece.

FRW England was another “memorable”. I treasure a print of Terence Cuneo’s painting, Pit Stop Le Mans 1953, on which he wrote “Eric – a memento of our good relations. Lofty”. Jaguar was replete with memorable individuals in the 1960s. Sir William Lyons created a unique company culture of loyalty and respect, which included my most frequent point of contact, the press office, under Bob Berry and the irreplaceable Andrew Whyte. I have dedicated our new ebook to the memory of Andrew John Appleton Whyte. It could not have been compiled without him.

Lofty England
Frank Raymond Wilton England (1911-1995) joined as service manager at Swallow Road aged 35. At 6ft 5in “Lofty” England was an apprentice at Daimler’s London service depot in 1927, until his enthusiasm for motor racing took him as mechanic to some outstanding teams. He worked on Sir Tim Birkin’s Bentleys, Whitney Straight’s Maseratis, ERAs at Bourne Lincolnshire and Richard Seaman’s Delage. When Seaman went off to drive for Mercedes-Benz, FRWE, or Lofty, as he was known, joined Prince Bira of Siam who had two ERAs, a Delage, Delahaye and a Maserati. Impressed with how the team was run by Bira’s cousin Prince Chula, Lofty remained until March 1938, joining Alvis as service superintendent. The war took him into the Royal Air Force in which he served as a Lancaster pilot bombing Germany. Afterwards, uncertain of Alvis’s future, he got in touch with Walter Hassan, a friend from Brooklands and ERA days, securing the appointment at Jaguar. His responsibilities as service manager were cautiously understated, since they included responsibility for Jaguar’s motor racing programme. Lofty England’s rationale was that cars with works backing were expected to do well, so he carefully maintained a sub rosa affiliation with private teams and drivers. Goldie Gardner’s 1948 record car with its experimental 4-cylinder engine, Tommy Wisdom’s XK120 and William Lyons’s son-in-law Ian Appleyard’s XK 120 were prepared either by the factory or under its tutelage. While the practice was not wholly secret, it was not made public either. Recipients of advice or practical assistance understood the system. They could acknowledge Jaguar’s polite interest, but they had better not brag about how substantial it was or it would be quickly and quietly withdrawn. England’s department provided this covert support to ostensibly private XK120s at Le Mans in 1950; aluminium-bodied cars sold in the ordinary way and expected to give a good account of themselves. William Lyons ostentatiously maintained his custom of attending the TT motorcycle races in the Isle of Man, lest the firm’s interest in Le Mans was betrayed. It was a clever rehearsal for participation with a works team the following year when the C-type won. Aged 60, Lofty England succeeded Sir William Lyons as chairman and chief executive, but the upheavals of the British Leyland days were far from over and in January 1974 he announced his retirement. He moved to Austria from where he continued to take a keen interest in everything Jaguar.
Text from JAGUAR: All models since 1922 www.amazon.co.uk for Kindles and http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/products/eric+dymock/Jaguar.

Nick Scheele: Former chief executive of Jaguar, in the Lyons mould.

WO Bentley's aero engines

Walter Owen (WO) Bentley was into aero engines and railway locomotives long before he gave his name to cars. The Bentley BR2 was described by aviation authority Bill Gunston as the pinnacle of the rotary aircraft engine and the Sopwith Snipe and Camel, which used it, as the best Allied fighter aircraft. Nearly 500 Snipes were built in 1918, a total of 1,567 were delivered to the Royal Air Force, as well as a ground attack version, the Sopwith Salamander. Snipes with Bentley rotaries remained in service until November 1926.

Known first as the Admiralty Rotary (AR1), then BR for Bentley Rotary it used similar valvegear to the troublesome French Clerget it replaced, but little else, and WO was upset by allegations that his engine was no more than an imitation. “These (claims) originated from people who glanced only at the cam mechanism, which was the first thing they saw and, for ease of production, was the only similar feature. The crankcase, crankshaft, method of securing the cylinders as well as their heads were all fundamentally different.”

1915-1919 BENTLEY AERO ENGINES

Commander Wilfred Briggs RN took charge of relations between aircraft engine manufacturers and the Royal Navy during the First World War. He created a department for the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS), and in 1915 appointed Lieutenant WO Bentley RNVR to its Technical Board looking into troubles with rotary engines. Rotaries, in which the cylinders spun round the crankshaft, had been developed by the Société des Moteurs Gnome in 1908. Carefully made in nickel steel they were expensive, but they were also light, and since the entire engine spun like a flywheel behind the propeller they ran smoothly. The cylinders of a rotary, to which the propeller was attached, rotated around a fixed crankshaft so the leading edge of the cylinder barrel was invariably better cooled than the trailing edge. As a result the bores went oval, the piston rings broke and the engines suffered catastrophic seizures. Gwynnes Pumps of Chiswick, which was making them was unhappy with WO’s suggestions to deal with the difficulties so Briggs suggested trying them out on a single sample cylinder with encouraging results. Gwynnes was worried about making changes, in case they compromised its licensing agreement with Clerget, and turned them down.

Other drawbacks included overhauls after only 20 hours and heavy oil consumption. Designed by Pierre Clerget in 1911, his Chiswick-made 9B had a better cylinder than the Gnome with deep cooling fins, and took mixture to the inlet valves through pipes instead of through the crankcase. It had dual ignition and was effective in Sopwith Camel and Nieuport fighters, notwithstanding the gyroscopic effects of the rotary engine. Each cost £907 10/-, but suffered failures of the obturator ring, an artillery term for the sealing ring of a gun breech, describing a flexible piston ring of thin bronze or light alloy, providing a seal when the 0.06in (1.5mm) thick cylinder wall distorted. The flimsy cylinders were stressed to the utmost as the tips reached 150mph (241kph) whirling round. The turbulent airstream cooled cylinders asymmetrically and failures were frequent. WO Bentley’s modifications increased power from 110bhp (82kW) to 130bhp (96.9kW) and improved reliability for a new version of the engine, which went into production as the AR (for Admiralty Rotary) and later BR (Bentley Rotary) made by Humber and Daimler. Bentley specified aluminium air-cooled cylinders with shrunk-in iron liners, redesigned the steel cylinder heads, secured them by four long bolts and to the Admirals’ delight made the engine for £605. The stroke was increased from the Clerget’s 6.7in (170.2mm), bringing the capacity to 1,055cu in (17,288cc). Some 150bhp (112kW) @ 1250rpm could be sustained for 100 hours between overhauls. Bentley made further improvements, then in April 1917 three prototypes of a fresh design were ordered, weighing only 93lb (42kg) more, yet with bigger cylinders and giving 200bhp (149kW) @ 1300rpm. Some 1,500 a month were planned, at £880 still well below the price of the troublesome Clerget. The new engine was designated BR2, and although it used similar valvegear, was a complete reincarnation of the old French engine, and the most powerful rotary in service.

Walter Owen Bentley (1888-1971)

INTRODUCTION BR1 1917; BR2 1917-1920s. weight 475lb (215.5kg) .
ENGINE 9-cylinders, radial rotary; 5.5in (140mm) x 7.1in (180mm), 1522cu.in (24,961cc); compr 5.3:1; 238bhp (177.5kW) @ 1300rpm; 9.56bhp (7.13kW)/l.
ENGINE STRUCTURE 2 overhead valves per cylinder operated by pushrods from epicyclic gears at front of crankcase; finned aluminium cylinders with cast iron liners, screwed into crankcase; forged steel cylinder heads; carburettor, dual ignition, fuel system; circular main bearing, master connecting rod on ball bearings, and eight slave rods wrist-pinned; air-cooled.
TRANSMISSION direct.
PERFORMANCE maximum speed 121mph (195.7kph) in Sopwith Snipe.
PRICE £880.
PRODUCTION WO claimed 30,000 were ordered. BR1 production started June 1917, Humber delivered 600, Vickers 523, total 1123. BR2 first ran October 1917, Crossley delivered 83, Daimler 1415, Gwynnes 82, Humber 391, Ruston & Proctor 596, total 2567

From: The Complete Bentley, by Eric Dymock

Electrickery

Ford Comuta electric 1967
Legislators in California and their eager apostles in Westminster and Brussels cannot reverse a tide of events by passing a law. Los Angeles tackled photo-chemical smog by regulation and now nothing turns politicians’ heads so much, especially on America’s West Coast, by proposing (according to Automotive News and the Wall Street Journal) new rules that 5.5 per cent of cars must be zero emission by 2018.

They have said all this before. The accompanying Sunday Times column of 17 November 1991 said California was insisting on seven cars out of ten being battery powered by 2010. Legislators have had to back-track several times. Demanding 1.7 million electric cars by 2000 proved absurd. Even now there are only some 5,000 on the roads of the Sunshine State.

Ford Comuta chassis (batteries not included)
We are still not much better at storing electricity than Camille Jenatzy was in 1899 and Jacques Calvet’s plea for on-street battery charging remains as piously optimistic now as it was in 1991. And as Ben Webster the Environment Editor of The Times pointed out last week, the Low Carbon Vehicle Partnership has admitted that electric cars could produce higher emissions over their lifetimes than petrol equivalents owing to the energy consumed in making batteries. An electric car would have to drive at least 80,000 miles before producing a saving in CO2. Many will not travel that far in their lifetime because they typically have a range of less than 90 miles and are unsuitable for long trips.
Even those driven 100,000 miles would save only about a tonne of CO2. Emissions made by manufacture, driving and disposal of electric cars, does nothing for tackling doom-laden environmentalists’ belief in climate change. The government Committee on Climate Change has called for them to be increased from a few hundred to 1.7 million by 2020. The Department for Transport is spending £43 million over the next year giving up to 8,600 buyers of electric cars a grant from taxpayers of £5,000.
Sounds like California. Perhaps the environment lobby will shut up and Our Leaders will back-track. Let practicalities prevail.


Sunday Times: Motoring, Eric Dymock 17 November 1991
Stand by for the charge of the battery brigade
The Californian legislation that obliges car manufacturers to offer electric alternatives is spreading. Nine other US states have announced they will follow California's lead, and with three more thinking about it, the electric car now seems likely to become big business.
This week Citroën announced the promising battery-powered Citela in Paris, and the Worthing-based International Automotive Design (IAD) launched in Los Angeles the production version of the car it revealed at the Frankfurt motor show in September. Its LA 301 has a tiny petrol engine providing the energy for a 32 kw (43 bhp) electric motor.
Electric cars have seen false dawns before. In 1874 Sir David Salomons of Tunbridge Wells built a 1 horse power three wheeler powered from Bunsen cells. In 1899 Camille Jenatzy set a world speed record with an electric car, covering a kilometre at 65.79 mph. But hardly anything more practical than a milk float has ever gone into production. Electric cars have been frustrated by heavy expensive batteries, long recharging cycles, and short range.
Jenatzy's car had to have its batteries charged before it could do the return kilometre, and there has been little real progress in terms of speed and range. Even with modern sodium-sulphur or nickel-cadmium technology, a 4 ton battery the size of a 550 gallon petrol tank would be needed to provide a family car's 400 mile range and 100 mph performance.
Until Californian air pollution provided the incentive, electric cars seemed destined to occupy the margins of motoring. But now any manufacturer who wants to sell cars on the rich market of the American west coast has to answer California's call for 1.7 million electric cars by the year 2000. The state will demand a proportion of the cars sold must be TLEVs (transitional low emission vehicles), followed by ULEVs (ultra low emission vehicles) in phases up to 1995.
By 2010 seven cars in every ten will need to be electrically powered or, in the legislative jargon, ZEVs (zero emission vehicles). When I asked a senior General Motors executive what would happen if nobody bought the electric cars it had to offer, he said flatly, "We have to sell them."
The law will demand that the quota is sold, at a loss if necessary, on pain of not being allowed to sell anything else on the territory until they are.
Manufacturers the world over, including Renault, Fiat, BMW, Peugeot and Volkswagen are pressing forward with electric developments. General Motors has revealed the unfortunately named Impact, which is designed to keep up with the speed of urban traffic. It can reach 60 mph as quickly as a Jaguar XJ6, has a maximum of 100 mph, and a range of 124 miles. But like Jenatzy's record-breaker of 1899, it still can not do both at once.
GM is reticent about how often its heavyweight batteries would have to be recharged after sprinting to 100 mph. BMW has found that its sodium sulphur batteries are more responsive but they are also more expensive. They need replacing after about 30,000 miles at a cost of £30,000.
Audi has a hybrid full-sized 100 estate which does shopping trips on electricity, and uses its ordinary engine on the motorway. It would not meet California's requirements, but it would do for congested town centres closed off to petrol or diesel vehicles.
Its nickel-cadmium batteries occupy the space normally taken by the spare wheel, last ten years, and provide sufficient energy to drive the car at 30 mph and accelerate to 20 mph in 8 seconds - adequate for town driving. A small auxiliary electric motor drives the power steering and there is a petrol-fed water heater. Audi says the extra cost would be under £10,000, and its operating range at town speeds would be about 20 miles.
The combustion engine takes 45 minutes of main road running to recharge the batteries, and Audi awaits encouragement from local authorities, delivery services, and residents in noisy and smoky streets before making production plans.
The British-designed IAD LA 301, with a 660cc Subaru engine, is ready for production under an arrangement with the Los Angeles department of water and power. Some 10,000 are expected to be built, with a range of 60 miles on a dollar's worth of subsidised off-peak electricity. The most likely price is £15,000.
The Citroen Citela, like the Audi, uses nickel-cadmium batteries with a long life expectancy, giving a range of up to 70 miles. Recharging takes two hours from a standard three-pin plug, or half as long from a specially transformed power supply.
There is space for three adults and a child, in a vehicle the size and weight of the Citroen AX on which it is based. When it goes into production in 1995, Citroen expects it to cost no more than a basic AX, around £6,000 excluding the batteries which account for a further £2,400.
What is needed now, according to PSA chairman Jacques Calvet, is for electricity authorities to start making provision for on-street battery recharging. A pilot scheme is to be run at La Rochelle in 1993, in which 50 Citelas will show their paces, and try out a recharging network of power points installed by EDF the French electricity undertaking. EDF plans a national programme of recharging outlets in French cities by 1995, ready for the start of Citella production if the La Rochelle experiment proves a success.

Boris johnson hopes... Nissan Leaf and charging for London

Le Mans and Canada

What a weekend’s motor racing; a close finish at Le Mans and an epic drive by Jenson Button from 21st place to win the Grand Prix of Canada. Eurosport’s TV commentators cheerfully admitted they weren’t born the last time Le Mans was that close. Well, it was 1969 and it was 1.5sec or so, against a yawning 14sec this year. It was not quite the first time a driver has come from last to first in a grand prix. Jim Clark did not win the Italian Grand Prix of 1967 but like Button’s drive yesterday, it was perhaps his best race ever. Button won on almost the last corner. Clark lost.


Ickx and Oliver snatch victory in tight finish

From ERIC DYMOCK : Le Mans, June 15: The Guardian

Amid scenes of excitement almost unprecedented in motor racing, Jacky Ickx of Belgium and Jackie Oliver of England won the Le Mans 24 hour race today on the Circuit of the Sarthe. In the final hours they raced neck-and-neck with the survivor of the German Porsche team, driven by Herrman and Larrouse, for one of the most prestigious wins in the whole 47-year history of the race.

Incredibly, the two cars battled wheel-to-wheel for the final two hours, the Slough-based, Gulf-sponsored Ford snatching victory through reliability in the face of the German team’s superior speed. Porsche led until 11 o’clock this morning and with 21 hours of high speed running behind them, the car driven by by Vic Elford and Richard Attwood looked sure to win, with its team-mate, the German-crewed Lins-Kauhsen car, in second place. Then, within the space of 20 minutes, both cars failed with transmission trouble.

Porsche still take the annual world manufacturers’ championship, but the Ford GT 40, the same car with which Pedro Rodriguez and the late Lucien Bianchi won this race last year, battled to the finish against the remaining fragment of Porsche s most determined effort to win Le Mans…

With the final refuelling stops between midday and the end of the race at 2 p.m., the Porsche and the Ford closed on each other. When the Ford called at its pit, the Porsche passed. Then the Porsche refuelled for the last time and, with Herrman and Ickx driving, the two cars went round the 8½mile course with first one in front, then the other.

Two cars still racing after 23 hours is like extra time in a Cup Final or winning the Open on the last green. The enclosures were packed to capacity and the crowd in a ferment as the two cars sped round, cropping fractions from their lap times, out-braking each other for the corners. They caught up momentarily on Mike Hailwood in the second GT 40, who was fighting off the Beltoise-Courage Matra for third place and might have detained the Porsche to take pressure off Ickx.

Victory in the tyre war was at stake, with the Porsche Dunlop and the Ford on Firestone, and the fuel giants battled it out with the Porsche on Shell, and the Ford on Gulf. The Ford won virtually by a decimal place - a tenth of a kilometre, or a second-and-a-half - after 5,000 kilomctres of racing.


I took this picture of the start at Monza from the press tribune at the top of the grandstand. Clark (Lotus-Ford 49) is on pole on this side of the track, Brabham (Brabham Repco V8) in the middle, Bruce McLaren (McLaren BRM V12) on the outside. (Chris Amon (Ferrari V12) and Dan Gurney (Eagle-Weslake V12) are on the second row. Eventual winner John Surtees (Honda V12) is on row 4.

Jim Clark led the Italian Grand Prix of 1967, lost a lap in the pits, then caught up the entire field by overtaking every other car, some twice. It was an unimaginable accomplishment unique in modern grand prix racing. Effectively he raced a full lap ahead of everyone else up till the last lap when his car faltered for lack of fuel. It was an astounding display in an era when cars were closely matched and races decided in terms of a few seconds, on a circuit famous for close racing and yards-apart finishes. Once again Clark displayed that enormous faculty he had for self-control: outwardly calm, inwardly burning with a source of energy that improved his performance with every peak on the graph of indignation or frustration or whatever his motivation was. These were the occasions when he was able to show the world just how much ability he held in reserve, to the despair of his competitors.


Monza was nearly a famous victory, but his fuel pumps failed to collect the final few gallons in the bottom of the tanks. At first he blamed Colin Chapman, and after the crowds had stopped mobbing the winner, John Surtees in a Honda, and himself as the moral victor, he rounded on Chapman for miscalculating the fuel required for the race.

His soaring adrenalin level left Chapman the victim of a tongue-lashing that revealed a side of Clark rarely seen in public. Ten years before when the Berwick and District Motor Club had, as he saw it, cheated him out of a proper acknowledgement of his skill, he had had to defer to its authority. Now the authority was his and Jim Clark was very, very cross.

from: Jim Clark, Tribute to a Champion Now available as an ebook from Waterstones or on Amazon Kindle

Safety Fast

1940's reminder: Second World War Jeep at Goodwood
Speeding has become a scapegoat. Myth and folklore has led to it being blamed for every accident while real causes are neglected. Police, local authorities, safety campaigners and shrill lobbyists erect flashing signals and create camera partnerships to persuade voters something is being done about safety. It is a fraud. Speed laws provide every self-righteous roundhead and fretting dirgiste with political capital.

Populist polls would restore hanging. The Mob would dance round the guillotine. It is the same with speeding. When I was a parish councillor, pushing for a 20mph speed limit through the village would have made me popular. There was always agitation about, “accidents waiting to happen.” They never did of course. The street was perfectly safe; police did checks showing nearly everybody drove well within the limit and accidents were unknown.

Where I live now is being similarly lobbied and I can see why. Enormous trucks coming through at 50mph is scary, I hate them. Yet not many accidents are caused by driving too fast. Some 57% are due to drivers, 27% to combinations of roadway and driver, 6% to combined vehicle and driver, 3% solely to roadways. Combined roadway, driver and vehicle accounts for 3%, which leaves 2% solely to vehicles. The last 1% is down to combined roadway and vehicles. The drivers’ 57% is down to inattention, bad judgement at junctions, distraction, fatigue, losing control in bad weather and other causes. Excessive speed scarcely features. The money, time and effort expended on speeders is largely wasted. It would be far better devoted to driver training and testing to IAM standards.

Speeding is not the first safety myth. In 1992 even Rospa challenged a hoary old legend.
Sunday Times: Motoring, 30 August 1992
Blaming the rise in road deaths during 1941 on the blackout is wrong, according to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (ROSPA). New research shows it was fewer traffic police and a withdrawal of safety propaganda that led to 9,169 fatalities on British roads in the second year of war.
The historian A D Harvey claims in the current issue of ROSPA's magazine Care on the Road, that the casualty rate slowed in 1942 and 1943, when the black-out with its dimly-lit streets and hooded headlights was still in force.
Harvey's research reveals that the only changes were more policing, and better safety propaganda. Similar remedies applied now could have telling effects.
The carnage of the 1930s, with over 7,000 deaths a year led to the introduction of The Highway Code, but even this failed to stem the destruction. In desperation the Minister of Transport Leslie Hore-Belisha, imposed the 30mph speed limit, set up pedestrian crossings, and brought in the driving test.
Fatal casualties reached a peacetime peak of 7,343 in 1934, before Hore-Belisha's Road Traffic Act checked the rise. There were 6,648 fatal accidents on British roads in 1938. But after the street lights were switched off in September 1939, the toll rose dramatically. The total for the year was 8,272. Newspapers complained during the 'phoney war' that the blackout was killing more civilians than the enemy.
The Birmingham Post blamed drivers' exasperation at the absence of road direction signs, which had been painted over or taken down to confuse invaders. The Manchester Guardian's explanation for so many accidents was, 'the psychological effect of living dangerously,' in war-time. The Home Office took this to mean, 'War-dangers have caused road-dangers to be taken lightly.' Among other explanations was the inexperience of service drivers. Yet military vehicles did not show up as the culprits.
Pedestrians suffered worst in the early months of the black-out, but by 1941 they were keeping well out of the way.
The slaughter prompted a conference at the Home Office in 1941. The Home Office took the view that the biggest single cause was diminished police supervision, a conviction shared by chief constables. Young policemen had been called up, and those left were busy enforcing black-out regulations and taking part in civil defence.
'The Police War Reserve has not the same interest as the regular police,' according to the chief constable of Manchester. There was a failure to prepare the reservists for traffic policing, and road safety publicity campaigns, developed in the 1930s were run down.
The chief constable of Lancashire complained that, 'The instructions to school children which had largely fallen off during the war were worth continuing'.
Following the conference, policing was stricter, and road safety publicity was revived. The result was a reduction in the number of deaths in 1942 to 6,926, and in 1943 to 5,796. The figure continued downwards to its peace-time low point of 4,513 in 1948.
The toll increased again in the 1960s, but the trend is now downwards. Despite huge increases in traffic, speed, and annual mileage, road deaths last year were once again at the 1948 level, at 4,520.

That was 1992. By last year road deaths in the UK were less than half that, at 2,222 following road improvements, better cars with better handling, roadholding, steering, brakes, seatbelts, airbags, better visibility and better driving. More motorways have reduced casualties, drink-driving has diminished. It is not because of what we are paying to speed cameras. We are driving every bit as fast as we were in 1992.

Automatics

"No thanks. I prefer to change gear myself." Some people still look down on automatic transmissions. They probably prefer a dishwasher and a vacuum cleaner to standing over a sink or beating carpets with a stick. Yet there is something about being clever enough to select one's own gear. It's manly to change gear. Automatics are for girls or the elderly.
E-Type Jaguar started with a crunchy difficult gearbox.
Now no car with sporting pretensions can afford to miss out on little paddles beside the rim of the steering wheel so you can change gear looking like a racing driver. How pretentious can you get? This is only an automatic with manual over-ride. Leave the thing to itself. It probably knows better than the driver.
This year marks 70 years since the introduction of the automatic. I wrote this Sunday Times motoring column in December 1990.FIFTY YEARS OF AUTOMATICS
The first mass-produced fully automatic transmission was introduced fifty years ago for the 1941 Oldsmobile and Cadillac. General Motors called it Hydra-matic (the hyphen kept quips about Hi-dramatic at bay).
It was an innovative era. As America entered the Second World War, production cars were furnished with air conditioning for the first time. The first two-speed windscreen wipers appeared and the first Jeep, and the first large-scale production four wheel drive car, a Russian GAZ-61.
The hydra of Hydra-matic stood for hydraulic. The heart of the automatic transmission was an oil-filled turbine pump rather like the "fluid flywheel" used by Daimler in 1930 with a preselector gearbox. General Motors used a gearbox with the gear trains in-line so that they could be changed by means of internal clutches, activated by the speed of the car and the position of the accelerator pedal.
The first automatics were jerky and tended to leak oil, but they were better than the self-changing electric and mechanical systems they replaced. General Motors added another element to the pump to make it more responsive, and the hydraulic gearchanges have been augmented by electronics, which take account of gradients and fuel flow.
The original Hydra-matic cost only 57 dollars and by the 1950s, automatics were the rule rather than the exception in America. They still absorbed too much power to make them viable for small European cars and no practical alternative has ever emerged with the smooth running of the torque converter which evolved from the early "fluid flywheel".
Semi-automatics such as the short-lived Manumatic which had a gear-lever actuated electric clutch and appeared on Hillmans and Wolseleys of the 1950s were short-lived. The Daf Variomatic and its descendents on Fiats and Fords have not caught on. The AP Mini automatic in the sump of the engine was a masterpiece of miniaturisation, but was deeply flawed.
Despite its shortcomings, the manual gearchange will be with us for some time. Its sliding pinions and clashing gears was an arrangement of which the 19th century pioneer Rene Panhard once remarked, "C'est brutal, mais ça marche."

A Car Fit For a King

The Palace bought a La Salle in 1938, but where is it?
Mystery of the ‘missing’ royal car

BUCKINGHAM PALACE is tight-lipped about a beautiful coupe it bought from Czechoslovakia in 1938, writes Eric Dymock. It was discovered during research into a new book on Skoda by the authors Ivan Margolius and Charles Meisl, but their requests for information from the royal mews met with no response. The car was ordered from Carrosserie Sodomka in Czechoslovakia, but its recipient and subsequent history remain a mystery.
“It is possible that it was bought for the Duke of Windsor,” Meisl said. “Or it may have been a gift for another royal family. Either way the palace isn’t saying.”
Sodomka constructed bodies for other makes besides Skoda, and the stylish royal convertible was built on an American La Salle chassis. The shape followed contemporary French coachbuilders’ style with faired-in headlights, flowing wings and chrome “streamline” decoration.
The Windsors’ preference for large American cars, instead of the rather staid Daimlers in which the royal family had ridden since the turn of the century, may explain the palace’s reticence. As Edward VIII, the duke took delivery of two Buicks, built in a Canadian factory, within a month of George V’s death. The break with Daimler was explained by the king’s wish to encourage empire trade.
Skoda Laurin & Klement, by Ivan Margolius and Charles Meisl. Osprey Publishing, £25.
The Sunday Times 15 November 1992