Bentley at Windsor

If the hallmark is cars you’ve never seen before, Windsor’s Concours matched Pebble Beach. Nobody knows who commissioned the Art Deco body on the Jonckheere Rolls-Royce Phantom I, with its circular doors, because the Belgian coachbuilders’ records were lost in the War. I’m not sure it is entirely successful, despite winning the 1935 Prix de Cannes at the Riviera Concours. The judges must have loved the huge fin, but as a period piece with a puzzling past it is exquisite. I do not recall ever even seeing a photograph of it, yet Thorough Events managed to include it in an astonishing array in an inner courtyard of Windsor Castle. Once the morning mists have blown off the beach and the Pacific is a shimmering blue, the 18th fairway at Pebble Beach is splendid, but the battlements of Windsor have their own grandeur.

Lalique splendour on a Bentley prow? The catalogue made no mention of the Lalique-style mascot on the Maharajah of Jaipur's 1930 Speed Six. THE COMLETE BENTLEY ebook

Sloping cliff on the Jonckheere Art Deco created by who knows whom? Rolls-Royce probably did not like the  lean-back of its famous radiator shell. An astonishing car.

I don't think I have ever seen a Fiat 8V outside an Italian museum and this 1953 Ghia 'supersonic' (it probably wasn't) was a star exhibit at Windsor. The BMW 507 (opposite) was the same as one Ruth and I took on a Guild of Motoring Writers Classic. TOP PHOTO: The history of the 1938 Embiricos Pourtout Coupe is well documented in

The Complete Bentley

(Dove Publishing).

Requiem for a Puma

Suddenly at 71 years... Well, 71 thousand miles in this case. Obituary for a well-liked car. 71,000 miles at an average speed of, say, 30mph means Ruth or I spent 2,366.666 hours at the wheel of the Puma. That is 98.61 days. Fourteen weeks, day and night, or three and a half months. First registered in 2001, one of the last Puma Thunders, R50DOV had been on show in the foyer of Ford’s Brentford office and came to us with 4 miles on the clock. It was brought on a transporter from Essex to Wemyss Bay, so by the time it reached Duncan, the Ford dealer on the Isle of Bute, it had gone further by sea than it had on its own wheels.

What a pretty car. Silver. It may have been only a Fiesta underneath, but designed by Ian Callum (Jaguars, Aston Martin DB7, RS200, Mondeo) it was well proportioned and beautifully detailed. Ruth liked it from the start. It only did around 6,500 miles a year because we had other cars and a throughput of test cars. Ruth used it for commuting and going out saving lives, so I suppose most of the 14 weeks’ day-and-night in it was down to her. We used it surprisingly often for long distances between the north of Scotland and the south of England. Her friend Iona liked the Puma’s style so much she bought one too.

R50DOV had distinguished company from time to time

Buying R50DOV’s replacement was an unedifying experience. What with the time it took and the rigmarole. “The Financial Services Authority insists I read out the following…” Rubbish of course. Car salesmen try to sell you policies for this and policies for that and the FSA would only insist on you sitting down to listen if you were actually going to buy one, which we were not. It was all a ploy to get your attention and after a couple of boring read-outs we got wise and said Shut Up We Are Not Going To Buy That. One stupid salesman, trying to sell Ruth a car too noisy by half, told her that Nobody Drives Nowadays Without The Radio On, so she wouldn’t be aware of the racket. He didn’t stand a chance. An Audi A1 was a possibility but to get a decent one you have to add on this and add on that.

So fatigue was setting in by the time we came to several choices of Ford or a Honda Jazz. Sales lady at Ford did a good professional job – she will go far – but the Honda won despite a salesman blundering over things one would have expected expunged by Honda main dealer salesmens’ school. The Jazz is not as stylish as the Puma and Ruth will miss the heated windscreen this winter – what a boon that was. She already misses the pert Callum styling. The Jazz doesn’t cut as much of a dash, but it’s bigger and we can use it for journeys for which the Puma was really too small. The Jazz will hold more, it could even hold two Labadors, and it is quiet. Ruth hardly needs to turn the radio up beyond Quite Normal.

Room for a couple of Labradors in here?

Les Camions Plus Vite

M Bugatti’s jibe about Mr Bentley making the fastest lorries in the world may turn out about right. A Bentley SUV, and a diesel to boot, says Autocar, is a foregone conclusion. Nothing wrong with that. They should have done it years ago. The Bentley Countryman was a sort of estate car, built by Harold Radford on Mark VIs in the 1950s, with a back that opened up for picnics or carrying Labradors. Now it will be the EXP 9F based on the next generation Audi Q7, and it will share underpinnings with the Porsche Cayenne. It is likely to be built on bodies made in Germany and then finished in Crewe. The result will be a splendid posh estate car, something Bentley owners coveted for years, since days when they built huge formal saloons on 3 Litres and 4½ Litres to WO's chagrin. He thought he was making sports cars and was so put out at the stuffy bodywork his customers were imposing on them, that he brought out the 8 Litre to compensate. Which led, in turn, to M Bugatti’s taunt about “Le camions plus vite du monde.” It is a long way from EXP 2.

French Protectionism

You can tell the wheels are coming off the French car industry when a government minister complains. Renault and Peugeot-Citroën are losing sales because Hyundai and Kia are dumping cars below market price, says Industry Minister Arnaud Montebourg. Automotive News Europe, which usually knows what it’s talking about, says he wants the European Commission to question a trade agreement between Europe and South Korea. “Hyundai and Kia are unfairly competing against [French carmakers] by engaging in dumping, which is unacceptable,” Montebourg told the French Socialist Party.

PSA’s and Renault’s sales have collapsed in France while Hyundai and Kia have flourished. Hyundai Europe CEO Allan Rushforth pointed out that the company was doing well because of quality and price. “The success of Hyundai in Europe is based on products designed, engineered and built in Europe. Our most popular, and fuel-efficient, models sold in France are built in the Czech Republic and Turkey. In fact, nearly 90 percent of the Hyundai cars registered in Europe during the first half of 2012 were built outside Korea.”

It is a Europe-wide problem created by trade unions inflating car-makers’ wage bills. At Ford’s Saarlouis factory workers get about €480 ($600) to make each Focus. That compares with €207 for the Hyundai i30 at its Czech plant near Nosovice. This allows Hyundai to offer the i30 at €15,990, €960 below the cheapest Focus. Discounting in Europe makes things worse. Ford European sales dropped nearly 10 percent to 532,819 in the first half of the year, while Hyundai grew 12 percent to 232,454, and Kia jumped 25 percent to 173,232.

It takes Hyundai 19.5 man-hours to build a car in Nosovice. Ford is faster, at around 11 hours, but that is not enough to offset German labour costs, at €43.85 per hour, four times the €10.62 rate for workers in the Czech Republic, according to Automotive News Europe. Alongside the Nosovice plant the company has built a factory producing 600,000 transmissions a year. Kia 56kms (35 miles) away in Zilina, Slovakia, makes the same number of engines. Trucks shuttle between them, transmissions one way, engines in return.

Industry Minister Arnaud Montebourg, to say nothing of Renault and Peugeot-Citroën, could never keep up. Peugeot may be over the hill.

Road Casualties

It’s motorcyclists we need to control. Overall deaths and injuries are up, car victims down. “Vulnerable road users” are suffering. Cyclists – dead and injured up 13 per cent. Motorcyclists – up 8 per cent. Child pedestrians – up 14 per cent. Car users killed or badly injured – down 4 per cent. Loose talk about 40mph limits on country roads looks like political window dressing. It is born-again bikers, with not enough training or experience, and not regularly riding on their immensely fast and extremely noisy machines that are worsening the figures. Cars are getting safer. Brakes, handling, airbags and increasing use of safety belts have all helped, and although there is scope for improvement, and IAM-style qualifications should be encouraged, let’s scrutinise the figures before drawing sweeping conclusions and imposing a whole set of restrictions that won’t work.

Eric Dymock on Cars: 1989

Eric Dymock on Cars: 1989, now available.

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Remember when petrol cost 38.4p a litre? Recall the year Ford unveiled the Fiesta hatchback and Austin Rover became the Rover Group with its new 200. A brand new compilation of columns, features and road tests by award-winning motoring writer Eric Dymock has just been published.

For the first time Eric’s extensive archives from 1989 are available to download as an e-book, titled Eric Dymock on Cars 1989. The e-book highlights the 100 Best Cars, motoring columns, features on automotive developments, road tests and topical reports from the final year of the 1980s.

This new e-book provides a unique insight into motoring history as Eric has provided modern comments on his reflections from 1989. Highlights of Eric Dymock on Cars 1989 include:

• Accounts from motor shows across the globe in 1989, including Geneva, Tokyo, London and Frankfurt.
• Golden Boy of the track whose legend lives on; the 30th anniversary of the accident that claimed the life of 1959 World Champion Mike Hawthorn.
• Safety campaigners and environmentalists tried to prohibit sales of fast cars. France and California debated laws suggesting cars should be designed with speed restrictors.
• An automatic pilot for cars is practical. “Driving along motorways without electronic controls will be seen in years to come as savage and dangerous,” said Sir Clive Sinclair.

Buy now from Amazon
This full-length anthology is available to download to Kindles from Amazon for an introductory £1.31, or on to ipads and androids as well as other reading tablets from itunes or online bookstores. Eric Dymock on Cars 1989 can also be viewed on PCs, Macs, ipods or iphones by downloading the free Kindles app from Amazon.