Bribery and Confusion

You cannot hope to bribe or twist, Thank God! the British journalist
But, seeing what the man will do unbribed, there's no occasion to.

Humbert Wolfe (1885-1940) was probably right and now the Guild of Motoring Writers is solemnly providing advice to members on how to avoid falling foul of the Bribery Act. Nothing’s new. I was briefly on the Guild Committee about 30 years ago, when motoring journalists came under suspicion.
(top) BMW Z4M Coupe
One Christmas, The Guardian’s Ian Breach published a list of the gifts that came the way of national newspaper motoring correspondents. The implication was clear: “Here I am displaying all the bribes, which I am returning, showing I am above that sort of thing.” He was a competent motoring correspondent, a bit self-serving perhaps, but he raised the hackles of contemporaries. Quite senior members of the Guild were incensed. One responded with a memorable: “Once more into your friends, dear Breach.”

Dear Breach did, alas, have a point. The relationship between the industry and the press had become cosy – a bit like that between politicians, some press barons, and the Metropolitan police into which Lord Leveson is trying to shine some light. And the notion that lavish car launches could be classed as bribery has resurfaced. In the eyes of the law, it seems, a bribe is giving or receiving of a financial or other advantage in connection with the ‘improper performance’ of a position of trust, or a function that is expected to be performed impartially or in good faith. So, essentially pretty well anything that could influence the way one writes about a company or its products could be construed as a bribe.


Key words; “advantage”, and “improper performance”. And while the popular notion is that a few days in the sun at a posh hotel is an “advantage”, absence from hearth and home has disadvantages too. One reason for relinquishing my Guild committee-ship was a domestic hiatus resulting from frequent absence on press launches but not before, aware of Breach’s allusions, I suggested setting up an ethics panel. Senior members huffed and puffed. There were still some who thought they were on a gravy train and didn’t want to get off.

Bribing journalists is only successful if it affects what they write. “Improper performance” would presumably mean saying in print that cars were good when they were not. There are journalists who wouldn’t know a good car from a bad one if it ran over them, and some tyre-smoking hooligans incapable of objectivity. But bribery? I don’t believe it. I happily accepted largesse for years and the industry accepted, mostly with equanimity, that it wouldn’t make a jot of difference to what I told readers. Re-issuing some of my old motoring columns as e-books now I add comments. Hindsight puts right misjudgements. Perhaps I was harsh on a 3-series BMW, too kind about a Metro from the dog days of British Leyland.

I don’t think I was ever even offered a bribe. Either nobody attached any importance to what I wrote or they believed my price beyond reach.

Saab - 1989

Vultures, apparently, are hovering round Trollhättan. Saab liquidators are selling cars from the Saab museum, 131 of them plus one caravan. The museum has lots of archives where I spent happy hours researching for Dove Publishing’s Saab Half a Century of achievement 1947-1997. They haven’t found somebody to buy the lot so Peter Bäckström is allowing serious vultures to bid for individual cars. They range from 1946 prototypes to the last ones built and include a 1981 Turbo 900 got up as the James Bond car featured in three post-Fleming novels.

Sad end. Yet Saab had been in trouble for years. Regular bloggists know I am researching 1989 Sunday Times columns. This one of 22 October pre-dates the GM takeover of Saab.

A MANUFACTURER strapped for cash has to find cheap ways to bring out a new model, and Saab, with a car division balance sheet that tells its own story, has done so with characteristic vigour. The Carlsson 9000CD has a spectacular appearance, vivid performance, and might have been regarded as a good special edition of a successful model. But given Saab’s embattled stance, it has the sound and the feel of a swansong.
New cars are the lifeblood of the industry. Henry Ford’s only mistake was to carry on making the Model T too long. By the time Ford introduced the Model A, General Motors was overtaking it and never looked back.
Saab is under siege, which means a completely new car is forbidden new body pressings or major mechanical changes that are costly, but may have new cosmetics and small mechanical changes that are not. Raise the quality, raise the price, and the Carlsson CD is not cheap at £25,995 (without the estimable Scottish Bridge of Weir leather upholstery at £945, or the curiously titled “comfort pack” that includes the leather, air conditioning, and electric seats for an all-in £2,195).
Proscribing new body metalwork, however, does not mean it has to look plain, and the Carlsson CD has appliqué panels in plastic that make it every inch a high-quality high-performance car. It is named after one of Sweden’s best-ever rally drivers, the gentlemanly Saab promoter, Eric Carlsson.

Young Carlsson in happier times
He is not the sort of individual likely to give it his name for a consideration; happily he has not only the integrity, but also the clout to apply his standards, as well as his autograph, to a car.
Firm springing, a great deal of power and robust strength are traditional Saab ingredients, and the CD has them in generous measure. This is a roomy car, long-legged and high-geared, with rather a sombre interior, the customary well laid-out fascia enhanced with burr walnut.
Unfortunately, its rivals have come a long way since l984, when Saab announced the 9000 as a co-production with Lancia, with front-wheel drive without the option of four-wheel drive. A 16-valve, two-litre turbocharged engine putting the best part of 200 horsepower through the front wheels alone, demands some circumspection in the wet to avoid wheelspin.

The Saab Carlsson was based on the great 9000 - a booted version to make it stiffer.
Nor is it altogether quiet It has a lusty four-cylinder engine with a steady surge of speed, and a good gearbox, but although splendidly engineered, it is less smooth than, say, a BMW, and there is not enough cash-flow now at Saab to make it better. Nobody can write a requiem for Saab yet, but time and money are clearly running short.

Well, they can write a requiem now. Above: Last Saab, the 9-5.

Blackout blunder

Blaming the rise in road deaths on the blackout could be wrong. The notion that road accidents killed more people than the Luftwaffe in 1941 was challenged by research suggesting it was down to fewer traffic police and withdrawal of safety propaganda. Unlit streets and cars with hooded headlights (like those on this 1940 Ford Anglia) coincided with 9,169 fatalities on British roads in the second year of war.

Yet in work done for the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (ROSPA), historian A D Harvey pointed out that the casualty rate slowed in 1942 and 1943, when the black-out was still in force. His study claimed it was the result of more policing, and better safety publicity.

When records began in 1926, 4,886 were killed on British roads. It got worse in the 1930s, with over 7,000 deaths a year before the introduction of The Highway Code. Even this failed to stem the destruction and the Minister of Transport, Leslie Hore-Belisha, imposed the 30mph speed limit. He set up pedestrian crossings (Belisha Beacons), and brought in the driving test. Fatal casualties reached 7,343 in 1934, before his Road Traffic Acts checked the rise.

In 1938 there were still 6,648 fatal accidents, but after the street lights were switched off in September 1939, the toll rose to 8,272. The Birmingham Post blamed drivers' exasperation at the absence of road direction signs, painted over or taken down to confuse invaders. The Manchester Guardian's explanation was, ‘the psychological effect of living dangerously in war-time’.

Jaguar advertising in The Autocar of 5 March 1943 relied on promises of better times to come.
Among other explanations was the inexperience of service drivers, yet military vehicles did not show up as culprits. Most of the accidents involved private drivers still at the wheel despite the privations of petrol rationing. Pedestrians suffered worst in the early months, although by 1941 seem to have been keeping out of the way, or wearing light-coloured clothing as suggested by Air Raid Precations (ARP).

The Jaguar factory was given over to manufacture and servicing of Whitley twin-engined bombers.
The Home Office thought, 'War-dangers have caused road-dangers to be taken lightly,' and called a conference in 1941. It was attended by the Ministry of Transport, the Ministry of Home Security, eight chief constables, an assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan police, the War Office provost marshal, and representatives of the Admiralty and the Air Ministry. The Home Secretary and the chief constables decided that the biggest problem was diminished police supervision. Young policemen had been called up. 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 said, 'Instructions to school children, which had largely fallen off, were worth continuing'.

Mark V Bentley of 1939-1940 with headlamp mask. Wings and bumpers were painted white to beat the blackout. Policing became stricter and safety publicity revived. Deaths came down in 1942 to 6,926, and in 1943 to 5,796. The trend continued to a low point of 4,513 in 1948 then, with increased traffic, got worse again. In 1966 7,985 died. Improvements came slowly. By 2008 the figure was down to 2,538, in 2009 2,222 and 2010 1,857.

Hore-Belisha's Highway Code stemmed fatal the tide in 1934.

Phantom Phantastic

Rolls-Royce sold more cars last year than ever; 3538, a third more than in 2010. The previous best was 3347 in 1978,which makes 2011 the best in 107 years. Great achievement. Scarcely expected in times of hardship. More surprising for cars with the aerodynamics of a house-brick costing between £200,000 and £300,000.
Anybody shopping for a Rolls-Royce should go for a 1998-2002 Silver Seraph. You could probably get a decent one under £50,000. By the 1990s the V8 felt lumpy and the first fruit of the BMW relationship was a V12 as silent as a Rolls-Royce should be. Well proportioned and dignified, the Seraph was the last Crewe Rolls-Royce. Only 1,570 were made.

But where the Seraph was graceful and sleek, the Phantom is big and square, with mean-looking rectangular headlights. The 6.8litre V12 is supremely quiet, immensely powerful, the interior magnificent as ever it was under the old regime at Crewe. Yet old Rolls-Royce made a virtue of understatement and there is nothing understated about the Phantom. It is big, slightly vulgar, with trick features like rear-hinged rear doors emplying electronics to prevent them being opened into the path of oncoming cars. Why would you want rear-hinged doors? They allow Phantom owners to make graceful exits on to red carpets, displaying limbs or whatever else to paparazzis’ flash bulbs.

Chairman and chief executive Ian Roberston shares a rear door with new owner of the 3000th Phantom.
Rolls-Royce thought it smart to have the RR logo on wheel hubs made so it was always upright. They didn’t whirl round when the car was moving and always stopped right way up. I thought them tasteless even though perhaps they suggested Rolls-Royce still had a sense of humour.

Graham Biggs’s sense of humour failed when he read Scotland on Sunday on 28 May 2006. He was Rolls-Royce PRO and got po-faced when I compared them with a flash kids’ fad for big shiny wheel discs. These were aftermarket stick-on accessories that didn’t rotate when the car was moving. They made it look as though the wheels were stopped. Once the car did stop the plates kept spinning so it then looked stationary with the wheels still going round. Most people thought it funny.

Rolls-Royce kept 100LG for the press car. The first one I drove was Silver Cloud III in The Motor road test of August 21, 1963 (above). There was trouble when I almost set the brakes on fire: “both fade tests showed the brakes in a poorish light,” was all I was allowed to write. Rolls-Royce was very sensitive about its brakes. Below is a later 100LG, a Silver Shadow with a young Mrs Dymock at the wheel.

Stephen Bayley - The Truth At Last

“Motoring journalists have elaborate expectations often at odds with those of the public. They exist in a world of privileged isolation from the humdrum realities of doing the school run or moving a wheelbarrow to Wales. Instead, they jet business class to Andalucia or the Côte d’Azur to test immaculately fettled and valeted, top-specification new cars in ideal conditions between absurdly expensive restaurants.” There. Somebody had to say it and Stephen Bayley just has in The Telegraph.
He decently admitted to having often been a beneficiary of these indulgencies. So have we all. Stephen’s point was not so much a criticism of motoring journalists as the expected announcement of what I suppose we must now call European Car of the Year (COTY). It would like to be called Everywhere Car of the Year but there are now so many of them it can’t. The Range Rover Evoque recently chalked up its fiftieth award, which included Car of the Year in the UK Auto Express New Car Honours, Scottish Car of the Year, US Motor Trend's SUV of the Year, BBC Top Gear's Car of the Year, Car and Driver Spain Car of the Year, the Design Trophy from l'Automobile in France and a host of cars of the year in China.
There was some logic in motoring journalists electing cars of the year simply because they drive everything and can compare. Yet any self-selecting jury has shortcomings. As Stephen points out it can include a minority of hairy-bottomed examples of the caste, who still believe that the true test of a car is its ability to respond to the throttle in the power oversteer of a four-wheel-drift, as exemplified in the tyre-smoking antics of Top Gear presenters.
This blog has dealt with the anomalies of COTY before, and I agree with Stephen on its errors of judgement like the 1979 Chrysler Horizon, and the fact that Rover has won twice and Renault many more times than Porsche deserves scrutiny. “With six accolades, Renault is second only to Fiat, which has nine. In some ways that is fair because Renault has a fine tradition of innovation in design. But the statistic fails to acknowledge that very few people go to sleep at night dreaming One day I will own a Mégane.”
I also agree that last year’s COTY, the electric Nissan Leaf, is a bold, but misfired, experiment. My views on COTY have been challenged on the grounds that I was never a member of the jury. Fred van der Vlugt invited me soon after creating the award in the 1960s. I was British correspondent of his Autovisie magazine for many years when he took the initiative to consolidate the multiple international awards, but it was before I wrote for anything as influential as The Sunday Times, which he wanted. I joined his panel on Car of the Century many years later.
Rumour suggests yet another UKCOTY initiative is mooted. Not wise. The coinage is not wholly debased. But proliferation would reduce it to small change.

Best chance for another Car of the Year; Range Rover Evoque at Eastnor Castle

Velocette Viper

Number One daughter with stepfather’s Velocette. The Velocette Owners’ Club magazine thought it a bit racy for elderly members, so here it is in Dddy’s Blog. Stepdad Roger has a collection of good motorcycles and his 350cc Velocette Viper, first registered in the West Riding of Yorkshire on 12 June 1961, is restored to original specification. It has the larger and shapelier Clubmans’ fuel tank and Hagon shock absorbers. Charlotte’s crash helmet (below) is Roger’s 1979 Griffin Mark II Clubmans and the riding jacket and trousers are original Lewis Leathers (for women) which R believes are becoming collectable, “ but then isn't everything?!”

She looks better in leathers than he does.

Velocette, says Roger, was the first to manage 24 hours at 100mph on a production machine with a 500cc Venom, beating BMW to it at Montlhéry. http://velobanjogent.blogspot.com/2008/10/velocettes-24-hours-at-10005mph.html. The Viper was less successful and failed due to mechanical trouble. In 2001 Roger went to Montlhéry for the 40th anniversary of the occasion, riding another Velocette, and watched the record breaking 1961 machine race round at the top of the banking, - breathtaking he says. It was destroyed in the fire at the National Motorcycle Museum in Birmingham a few months later, although it has since been restored.

Montlhéry had a very tall banking. I drove there a few times at Paris Motor Show test days and while I was accustomed to the modest bankings at MIRA, this was something else. It was not as steep as the Mercedes-Benz one at Stuttgart-Unterturkheim, built in 1956, where you can find yourself sharing the space with a large bus. There wasn’t room for a long track in the space available so they built the 90 degree banking at one end. Provided you stay above the yellow line and get the speed exactly right (it’s only about 80mph) you can take your hands off the steering. Scary the first time you do it though.

Charlotte was here at New Year, and I rehearsed her young man’s approaching Institute of Advanced Motorists’ (IAM) observed drive. He drives nicely and shouldn’t have any trouble but it set me thinking there is nothing like riding a motorcycle for teaching road observation. Riders see cambers, surface joins, manhole covers, oil spills, standing water and catseyes when their life depends on it. Car drivers scarcely notice.