XE Launch

YouGov’s poll in the Scottish referendum destroyed any hope Jaguar might have had about front pages and TV news channels. Exploits on or above the Thames presupposed Monday would be a slow news day and it was not. Spectaculars may be great for a management’s morale but good cars don’t need them. Three E-types at Geneva and lunch for press at a lakeside restaurant were enough in 1961. More attainable than a Ferrari, more charismatic than a Rolls-Royce, racier than a Mercedes-Benz the E-type stamped its image on a generation. The Mini made it big with a day’s press testing on a military test track at Chobham.

To be fair it’s not easy nowadays to make much of a new car. You can’t break a story in style. They are so conformist. The new XE looks so much like the XF and XJ it may pass un-noticed. As a family rendition it’s great. It is what the X-type should have been, yet perfectly good though it was, failed at. With a starting price of £27,000 XE takes on the 3-series BMW. It has advantages including being largely aluminium (Jaguar is careful to call it “aluminium-intensive”) and the F-type’s wishbone front suspension and integral link rear promise good handling. It is the most aerodynamic production Jaguar, with a Cd of 0.26. The quick S has an 8-speed automatic.

Unfortunately there is not much new about XE that you can see unless you count “The signature J-Blade running lights; another instantly recognisable Jaguar design element. In the rear lights, a horizontal line intersecting a roundel is a powerful styling feature inherited from the iconic E-type.” The aluminium and the Ingenium engines will be great but the helicoptering and the costly VIP endorsements reveal a collapse of confidence. Winning Le Mans used to be enough to get attention and reassure customers. Now Jaguar puts on stunts and made a great deal of working with “multi-platinum” (whatever that is) singer songwriter Emeli Sandé to create what it called a FEEL XE track, inspired through social media. Fans were asked “What makes you feel Exhilarated?”

Emeli premiered the new track live on the Thames as part of what Jaguar called an exclusive 45-minute set on a floating stage in the middle of the river. Three hundred guests watched from another boat and there was a projection-mapping spectacle on County Hall. “To create a truly stunning setting The London Eye, County Hall and Shell Building were turned red, while a series of red flares were launched along the river to turn the skyline red during the performance.”

BMW and Mercedes-Benz introductions are by comparison low-key. Audi would think it inappropriate. Their cars speak for themselves.

There’s nothing new. Jaguar flew the XE to Earls Court by way of Tower Bridge (left). Ford did the same 44 years ago (right) celebrating its millionth Cortina with a 2-hour flight to a new owner in Ostend.

From next week it's a whole new Dove Publishing. http://www.dovepublishing.co.uk

Doubts on Diesels

We should have known better. Take politicians’ encouragement for diesels, then about-facing to say no diesels are really bad. They never say oh we’ve changed our mind or anything and Very Sorry. Boris and the rest of them are quite impenitent, They are going to charge diesels more whenever they get the chance.

It was so predictable. It’s not simply that politicians are self-serving, we can all be self-serving, but they just look so stupid. There seemed to be votes in going along with diesels in the 1990s when they could sell them on the back of “environmental” opinion. They may even have thought they were doing the “right” thing. People voting for them maybe believed it too. We in the media told them, quite often as it happens 25-30 years ago, that they were barking up a wrong tree. I liked diesels. They didn’t need sparks and electricity, which always gave trouble in the cars I could afford but they were never clean. Diesel was a byword for soot and smoke.

We, and I mean in this case me and many others, were far more convinced about the merit of lean-burn petrol engines rather than the catalytic converters about which lobbyists had convinced the politicos. It was the same with diesels. They’re sooty, we told them. Particulates are bad and you’ll be sorry, which they now are of course even though they can’t use the word. They listened to noble metals lobbyists and “environmentalists” panicking about global warming and CO2.

The “greenhouse effect” had been scary for years. In the 1960s I suppose, I had read a cautionary paper about it written by somebody I respected. I half-believed in it myself. There were motor industry people I trusted who apparently believed in it as well. I felt obliged to take it seriously and it was years before it became apparent that it was the greatest scientific fraud in the history of the planet.

It wasn’t so much that I was in denial about global warming, as increasingly sceptical about the alarmist messages over its cause. In the 1980s I remained open-minded. But what the reality was, as revealed to me years later by the head of research at Mercedes-Benz, was that industry engineers were only acknowledging a movement bound to enrapture politicians, much as they had in the Los Angeles smogs of the 1950s. The motor industry knew it would have to pay lip-service to greenery and for decades it was forced to continually reinvent “solutions” to appease political vanity. Engineers, it turns out, were more concerned with meeting the demands of legislatures than ever they were about man-made global panic-mongering.

Dr Thomas Weber was a member of the Board of Management of Daimler AG, and responsible for Group Research & Mercedes-Benz cars’ development. He told me Daimler was spending €4.4 billion every year guessing what wheeze the politicians would decide on next. Throughout Europe they were obsessed with climate change or safety or whatever cause celebre lobbyists were coming up with.

And now, with diesels, they have changed their mind. Why am I not surprised?

Pictures (top): Not a diesel 1. 1940 BMW 328, tall 2 litre with three downdraught carburettors. OZ80 on cam cover denotes racing engine of Mille Miglia car I drove on Scottish event. (right)

First production diesel car, Mercedes-Benz 260D 1936-1939. (left) And its engine. (Below) Not a diesel 2 Mercedes-Benz test track, Unterturkheim, not as scary as it looks, I drove identical car here with test driver instructing precisely on speed and place on the banking.

Bentley Azure

Returning Bentley CEO Wolfgang Dürheimer, it seems, waxes nostalgic for a convertible. He’d like to build a 2-seater but he’ll most likely follow Royce’s example and go for a 4-seater. He liked the 1995 Azure, which continued in various iterations for years. His options now, with W12, V8 and V10s available from stock, as it were, are wide and the Continental is a fine platform.

The Complete Bentley

recalled the first Azure (left).

By 1995, after the best part of a quarter-century, the Corniche-Continental’s time was up. When they drew up Project 90 in 1985, THE COMPLETE BENTLEY ebook

(below)

which had evolved into the Continental R, Heffernan and Greenley conceived a convertible which as a result had been waiting ten years. Despite a good deal of strengthening and reinforcement, scuttle shake was endemic in the old Corniche, so it had to be done away with for the Azure. Basing it on the Continental R instead of the old Corniche brought a 25 per cent improvement in torsional stiffness.

Manufacture however was not straightforward. A joint project was arranged between Crewe and Pininfarina in Turin under which Park Sheet Metal in Coventry, which made Continental R body shells, sent sub-assemblies to Italy for completed bodies to be painted and have the intricate power-operated hood mechanism fitted by specialist Opac before being shipped back to Crewe for completion. Bodybuilding was done at Pininfarina’s San Giorgio Canavese factory, where Cadillac Allantes had been put together. The unitary hulls still had to be strengthened to make up for the absence of a roof, with an additional 190kg (418.9lb) of reinforcement under the rear floor, deeper door sills, thicker A-posts and screen top rail.

All that remained of the Corniche’s shivers, I recall from a 1995 road test, were tremors that could still be seen in the rear-view mirror and vibrations felt through the steering column. Door sill plates proclaimed Bentley Motors’ and Pininfarina credit for the structure, in particular the power hood designed to close in 30sec, although one famously failed on the Cote d’Azur press launch. The Azure’s interior was furnished like the Continental R with traditional veneers and leather, woollen fleeces on the floor and, by virtue of a 1992 co-operative agreement with BMW, electrically operated front seats with integral seat belts from the 8-series coupe.

Final Azure 2005

Several generations of fast turbocharged Bentleys had transformed road behaviour, from the early tentative 1970s when Bentleys carried the legacy of Rolls-Royce town carriages, to the dawn of the 21st century when they were more able to compete with fast rivals. Steering was now 2.9 turns from lock to lock, faster, sharper, with more feel; braking more progressive with ever-bigger discs, and body roll, although by no means eliminated was less pronounced.

INTRODUCTION Geneva 1995.BODY Convertible; 2-doors, 4 -seats; weight 2610kg (5754lb);

ENGINE V8-cylinders, in-line; front; 104.1mm x 99.1mm, 6750cc; compr 8:1; 286kW (383.53bhp) @ 4000rpm; 42.4kW (56.86bhp)/l; 750Nm (553lbft) @ 2000rpm. ENGINE STRUCTURE pushrod overhead valves; hydraulic tappets; gear-driven central cast iron camshaft; aluminium silicon cylinder head; steel valve seats, aluminium-silicon block; cast iron wet cylinder liners; Garrett AiResearch TO4 turbocharger .5bar (7.25psi); intercooler; Zytek EMS3 motormanagement; 5-bearing chrome molybdenum crankshaft. TRANSMISSION rear wheel drive; GM turbo Hydramatic 4-speed; final drive 2.69:1

CHASSIS steel monocoque, front and rear sub-frames; independent front suspension by coil springs and wishbones; anti roll bar; independent rear suspension by coil springs and semi-trailing arms; Panhard rod stiffener; anti roll bar; three-stage electronically controlled telescopic dampers and Boge pressure hydraulic self-levelling; hydraulic servo brakes, 27.94cm (11in) dia discs front ventilated; twin circuit; Bosch ABS; rack and pinion PAS; l08l (23.75gal) fuel tank; 255/55-WR 17 tyres, 7.6in rims, cast alloy wheels DIMENSIONS wheelbase 306cm (120.47in); track 155cm (61.02in); length 534cm (210.24in); width 188cm (74.02in); height 146cm (57.48in); ground clearance 14cm (5.5in); turning circle 13.1m (42.98ft).EQUIPMENT 2-level air conditioning, leather upholstery, pile carpet, 8-way electric seat adjustment, galvanised underbody PERFORMANCE maximum speed 249kph (155.1mph); 64kph (39.87mph) @ 1000rpm; 0-100kph (62mph) 6.0sec; fuel consumption 19.3l/100km (14.64mpg) PRICE £215,000 PRODUCTION 1311

PICTURES above right 2003 Limited Azure edition. Left Road test GTC chez nous

Another COTY winner

COTY jurors aren’t voting for Car of the Year. They are voting to look Green. Why else would they have elected the Ampera in 2012? They surely can’t have expected it to sell more than a handful. They’re not that stupid. No, they are spooked, along with governments round the world, by what WS Gilbert called greenery yallery Grosvenor Gallery foot-in-the-grave young men. Or women.

Opel and Vauxhall dealers, who hadn’t a lot of choice perhaps, accounted for the first year’s 5,000 or so Amperas. That sank to 3,184 last year and collapsed to 332 in the first five months of this, of which only 46 were in its German home market. GM Vice Chairman Steve Girsky vented frustration at Geneva: “All the governments in Europe said, ‘We want EVs, we want EVs.’ We show up with one, and where is everybody?” The answer is that they were off buying something else, real cars mostly.

COTY jurors are like governments appeasing Green voters with inglorious wind farms and wasteful subsidies. By any standards the Ampera was a disaster. Production is stopping and although GM will redesign the broadly similar Volt next year it won’t come to Europe.

There wasn’t much wrong with the Ampera. It was sensibly-sized and quite handsome, drove smoothly and quietly and as a hybrid didn’t have the range anxieties of milk-floaty plug-in electric cars, attracting complaints now about how costly they are to top-up. Apparently charging stations take money by the hour, without knowing how much electricity is actually being used. The cost can be just as much for a battery flat or near full.

I have said before that there is a FIFA flavour about Car of the Year. In 50 years COTY has never elected a Jaguar, Range Rover or Land Rover. It can’t be anti-British-ness. Munich doesn’t come off well either. There has been no BMW; a range that goes from Rolls-Royce to Mini has never made the grade except for second last year for the i3. It elected an electric Nissan yet COTY doesn’t do safety. Volvo and Saab never featured. Engineering excellence? Bentley has never made it. Production quality? There have been no Hondas. Value for money? No Skodas, no Seats but 9 Fiats, 6 Renaults and 5 Fords. I can’t understand why manufacturers get so excited by it.

Rufus J Flywheel

It has taken me a long time to read Rufus J Flywheel on car names 19 January 2012 if you must know. He meditates, if that is the word for someone with a monicker that smacks of casually made up, on names. How easily the Dacia Lodgy could become Dodgy. Volkswagen’s Sharan Carat was close to Sharon Carrot and Mitsubishi’s Carisma didn’t have much.
Nothing’s new. Does he not remember Singer Vague and Humber Septic? Hillman Scavenger, Ford Crappi, Cretin (Cortina), Angular and Coarser (Corsair), or should Coarser be a Vauxhall? Rolls-Royce’s first idea for the Silver Shadow was Silver Mist until somebody told them Mist in German was something like MR2 in French.
CARkeys is a treasure-house. Well-written, well presented, up-to-date it has obscure material seldom found elsewhere, like David Finlay’s feature on a BMW based on the 1940 Mille Miglia 328. Shown as a Concept at scrutineering for the 2006 Mille Miglia, it was a bit like the real thing I drove in 1992 (left). I had it on good authority that the replica was a serious project at a time when quirky “future classics” were fetching silly prices, and BMW was tempted to follow Porsche with the 959 and make a few 328s. It didn’t last; Jaguar was among those that got into a muddle with the XJ220 and lived to regret it.

The 1940 BMW I drove to John o’Groats was insured for £2million even then, but what an exemplar it was. Lightweight, precise, stiff and quick I could have won the Mille Miglia in it. In 1940 it had been up against ponderous underpowered 2500cc Alfa Romeos, gaggles of Fiats and a couple of 815s cobbled-up by Enzo Ferrari, forbidden by his end-of-contract with Alfa to call them Ferraris. In 1938 Count Giovanni Lurani (an Anglophile, he affected the nickname Johnny Lurani and drove MGs) had suggested the race should move to Libya, Cyrenaica and Tripolitania having been taken from the Ottomans by Italy in 1912.
By1940 Libya was no longer an option so the April 28 race was truncated to nine times round a 104-mile circuit Brescia-Cremona-Brescia. Italy was still officially a non-belligerant but Germany had already invaded Poland and was busy assaulting Norway yet the race went ahead. BMW recruited Lurani (he ran with the hare and hunted with whatever hounds would let him drive racing cars), who acted as go-between in the Hotel Vittoria, where both German and French teams were staying but forbidden to meet because their nations were at war.

BMW won the race at a canter and all three roadsters survived the war. In 1945 H J Aldington of AFN in Isleworth, which imported BMWs (as Frazer Nash-BMWs) in the 1930s, went over ostensibly to reclaim a 328 he had left in Munich in 1939. He came back instead with one of the Mille Miglia cars to save it from the depredations of the occupying forces.
It was converted to right hand drive, equipped with a Frazer Nash radiator and displayed as a prototype. Production never prospered, it was sold to racing driver Gilbert Tyrer, and I saw it racing at Turnberry in 1952 and took it back there for the picture (left). In the 1960s, very down-at-heel, it was bought by my colleague on the road test staff of The Motor, Michael Bowler who restored it and sold it back to the BMW museum in the 1980s.

By the time it had been reconstructed by BMW it felt thoroughly modern. It was roomy and the gear lever was a bit long and springy - not quite the short stubby lever of contemporary sports cars - but the change was slick and precise. Steering was surprisingly light and although the springing was firm it probably felt luxurious in 1940 when sports cars were generally rough and ill-mannered. The classic tall 328 engine (above right)revved to 5,000rpm, with an emphatic crackle from the exhaust at 4,500.



The main disadvantage driving it round Scotland (that’s Ackergill Tower near Wick, above) was that you looked over, rather than through the windscreen and there was no hood. All very well in the sunshine of an Italian spring, but venturesome on the Lecht road by the ski-slopes in wintry May.

Biggles knew what he was about. Goggles and a leather helmet are necessary when your head is in the slipstream. A BMW motorcycle suit made a difference. Rain trickled onto my lap but an inner layer of Gore-tex and zips and studs made it all-of-a-piece, kept me dry in six hours' downpour but it did not protect my face. Snow and then hailstones evoked sympathy for grouse dodging grapeshot in August. Rufus J Flywheel would have a word for it.

BMW Z4M Coupe

What I thought about the BMW Z4M Coupe in 2006

The BMW Z3 Coupe had seemed something of an afterthought. A roof was added later to the original 2-seater, which cost a lot and ruined the proportions. It was not well thought through, although the steel top made the structure stiffer so it handled better than the open car and earned glowing reviews. Introduced at the 1997 Frankfurt Motor Show, it was distinctive, a bit quirky, very fast and ought to have had resonance yet it never really caught on.

The main reason was price. It cost twice as much as an entry level Z3. By 2006 BMW was determined not to fumble the Z4, so despite what Adrian van Hooydonk head of design said about the roof being done in the design office’s spare moments, this time it looked as though it was designed from the outset. Van Hooydonk called the Z4 Coupe a GT car shrink wrapped round two people to be “the smallest possible package that can accommodate occupants and luggage, while retaining the strong muscular stance of the roadster.” He described it as a Pocket GT.

Contentious perhaps from the country that gave us the Pocket Battleship.

The Z4 Coupe was certainly small, cramped, and except for the agile, not easy to get in and out. You could find yourself leaving a leg outside because the door did not open wide enough. “Shrink wrapping” extended to a double-bubble in the roof and while it looked pretty, the Chris Bangle origami remained contentious.

The Z4 of 2006 was a bit wide of the mark. While the Z3 Coupe was a better car for driving than the open one, the Z4 Coupe sadly never was, even with a bodyshell twice as stiff. A Z4M was fine for track days on a smooth classic racing circuit like glorious Goodwood, but in the real world of an average highway it was harsh and uncompromising. Bumps unsettled it; cambers threw it off course. Supple modern sports cars should not be so demanding.

The Z4 came from Spartanburg South Carolina, and while every bit as well made as a BMW from Munich, maybe it was designed for the wrong sort of customer. Americans expected sporty cars to be “difficult”, which was why they liked Porsches with engines overhanging the back wheels. Americans did not feel fulfilled unless they were fighting oversteer; not getting their money’s worth unless a car felt dangerous. They wanted to be James Dean fighting it out (and ultimately losing) his Porsche Speedster.

The Z4 was nothing like that, but it was not very compliant and a BMW with such a turbulent ride was an historical anomaly. In 1936 when sports cars were uncomfortable, noisy, draughty, stiffly sprung and had a chassis that twisted, BMW came out with the 328. Softly sprung, the 328 had a chassis frame of strong tubes that did not flex and bend, and was, as they would have said then, streamlined. Enthusiasts thought it effete until they tried keeping up with one. It outpaced everything. The splendid 6-cylinder engine survived into the 1960s as the Bristol, gave 100mph performance, and touring-car refinement. Even the sleek shape survived. The 1948 Jaguar XK120 of William Lyons was inspired by the 1940 Mille Miglia BMW 328.

In BMW-speak M means Motorsport and in the case of the Z4M engine it meant Magnificent. The Bavarian Motor Works has always been best at engines and this one was a masterpiece in magnesium alloy, the lightest production 6-cylinder in the world, revving to a glorious 7,900rpm, thrilling to drive. Achieving 100bhp per litre took it into the realms of racing engines, with the pistons moving at a mind-bending 24 metres per second. Those on BMW’s Formula 1 engine did 25 metres a second, although it only had to last two race weekends, while the Z4 straight-6 was expected to last something approaching a lifetime.

Alas behind this paragon of power units was a pedestrian transmission. Its long-throw 6-speed gearshift made driving a series of leaps and bounds, instead of a smooth seamless progress. It needed a shorter travel lever, less obstructive synchromesh and a quicker clutch. Perhaps Americans knew no better.

BMW said it would only bring 200 Z4Ms to Britain in a year. It was probably well advised. The ordinary non-M Z4 suffered similarly from road reverberations, making long journeys tiresome, for which the high cornering power was some recompense. The huge brakes were strong; just as well with all that power. Porsches, on balance, were better.

SPEC: Engine 6 cylinders in line, magnesium alloy, 3246 cc @ 7900rpm; 343bhp (255.8kW); 6-speed manual gearbox, Variable M differential; price £41,285; Coupe; 2-doors, 2-seats; weight 29.2cwt (1485kg); maximum speed 155mph; 0-60mph (96kph) 5.0sec; fuel consumption 12.2mpg. (Below) Test Z4M by Charles Rennie Mackintosh masterpiece, the Glasgow Art Lover's House.