Land Rover

I wish I had thought of LXV for the 65th anniversary edition of our Land Rover File. Land Rover thought of it first, for a 65th anniversary special edition Defender. If you haven’t driven a Defender for a long time you will be astonished how refined they are now. Short of elbow room maybe, but with the 2.2 diesel and not the old Ford Transit 2.4, along with an improved NVH package introduced in 2011, they are quite acceptably quiet. Drove one at Packington Estate, testing ground for the original 1948 Land Rovers, where they had 130 heritage Land Rovers with which to compare it. Certainly it’s nothing like the rest of the modern range with automatic electronic gizmos, hill descent control and air suspension. Yet it is perfectly civilized, with 6-speed manual transmission and a decent turn of speed. Nought to 60 in 14.5sec and 90mph isn’t bad and the LVX has 16in Sawtooth alloy wheels and Santorini Black paintwork with Corris Grey roof, grille, headlight surrounds and facia. There are leather seats, upright but perfectly comfortable and practical, with LXV embossed headrests and orange contrast stitching, extending to the steering wheel and centre cubby compartment. Even the ride is quite smooth; maybe something short of serene, but nothing like the spine-jarring turbulence once associated with Defenders. There is a union flag on the back. Be prepared for a surprise at the price. It now starts at £28,765. They hadn’t thought of variable-vane turbochargers and high pressure fuel injection on Land Rovers in 1948, but there is a lot in the LXV with which Wilks family members, present for the celebrations, were perfectly familiar. Shown a copy of the new Land Rover 65th anniversary book, Stephen Wilks, president of the Land Rover Series One Club pointed to the family Anglesey beach picture on page 15 and said gleefully, “That’s me, aged 7.” Land Rover milestones. Packington.

Grand Prix Grauniad

Jack Brabham “finished the race on half-pistons”, should have read “half-distance”, but phoning race reports to The Grauniad was always problematical. And copy-takers would laugh if you told them that Jack Brabham failed to finish because he had run out of petrol. The notion that the world’s best cars had not enough in the tank to see them through was jokey. If they had a puncture it was worse. Punctures were something that happened to ordinary people. Copy-takers never quite grasped the finer points of motor racing.

It would be just as bad now if you phoned on a crackly line from Monza that Lewis Hamilton’s tyres wore out after five laps. Decent tyres last 25,000 miles. Truly, racing has gone unrealistic, with regulations that have everybody diving into the pits and changing one tyre compound for another. Grands Prix were always something of a circus but what with DRS zones and obscure kinetic energy devices nowadays, they look bizarre.

Innocent lottery-winner interviewed the other day said he’d always fancied a drive in a Formula 1 car. Chances are he would never understand the game-station buttons on the steering wheel. The last kind of Formula 1 car that related to anything in his understanding would probably be something in the pre-wobbly wing era when drivers changed gear with a gear-lever and worked a clutch with the left foot. Back in Jack Brabham’s day.

(Top picture Brabham biplane, bottom Repco engine on the grid, Brabham golden helmet, Maxwell Boyd of The Sunday Times out of focus in the white jacket. Can’t tell which Hewland gearbox this is. Brabham began by upgrading a Formula 2 car with no more than an F2 Hewland, but had to change it for a Hewland DG. Gurney Eagle used to claim this meant Dan Gurney; Brabham said DG only meant Different Gearbox, so as not to confuse it with HD (Heavy Duty) and LG (Large Gearbox. They had simpler nomenclature then, like Cosworth FVA, which meant Four Valve type A, and DFV - Double Four Valve)).

Back to the Future

Drivers in cars will seem bizarre. Future generations will never understand why we put up with the congestion, danger and inconvenience of cars driven by people. Allister Heath, editor of City AM points out presciently that the £35 billion HS2 will be obsolescent almost as soon as it is built in 2032 or so, as driverless cars develop. Driving as we know it will be relegated to a leisure pursuit rather like riding or carriage driving with horses. Motor racing? It has already become so far removed from the real world of cars that, like the Grand National or the Derby, it will survive in its own anachronistic way. (Above: Fisker had the vision)

Nothing’s new. On 30 April 1989 I wrote in The Sunday Times: An automatic pilot for cars is practical. Prometheus, a pan European research and development programme now in its third year looks like getting into the driving seat by the end of the Century. "Driving along motorways without electronic controls will be seen, in years to come, as savage and dangerous," according to Sir Clive Sinclair in a report on traffic published last week by the Adam Smith Institute. "Fighter aircraft perform in ways which would be inconceivable if a human brain had to regulate them. Cars under electronic control could travel at 100 miles per hour, closer together and in great safety. I envisage motorways where the control of the vehicles is taken over by the road," says the inventive Sir Clive.

One of the pioneers of Prometheus (PROgramme for a European Traffic with Highest Efficiency and Unprecedented Safety, not a catchy title), Dr Ferdinand Panik of Daimler Benz agrees. "Present day traffic with individual elements will evolve into an integral system of co operating partners." He regards the electronic revolution in cars as analogous to typewriters. "Twenty years ago, as a purely mechanical product, the typewriter had reached a very advanced state of development. Everyone was satisfied with it. Yet within a short time, computers and communication systems had brought about a change from independent typewriters to interlinked word processors, and conquered the market."

Jerome Rivard, former chief of electronics at Ford, now Vice President of Bendix Electronics in the United States believes we are entering the final phase of handing over control of the car to electronics. "Phase 1 was from the mid 60s to the late 70s, when we saw the solid state radio, electronic ignition, and digital clocks. Phase 2 brought integrated circuits and microprocessors which started to link components together. This included electronic engine controls, instruments, and anti lock brakes, now familiar to many drivers. Phase 3 began in the mid 1980s, in which we will see the total integration of vehicle electrical and electronic systems."
(Jensen and successors will survive)
What this means is that with developments such as anti lock brakes, and its corollary, electronic traction control for preventing loss of grip through wheelspin, coming into use, the stage is set for electronics to take the wheel. "We shall drive on to motorways, but once we are there, control of the vehicle will be taken over by the road," says Sir Clive. Rivard puts it another way, "The skills required in handling an automobile are, in some cases, beyond the capacity of the average driver. The advances in steering, braking, and suspension technology during Phase 3 will allow him to employ the full performance potential of the vehicle even in exceptional situations like avoiding accidents." The immediate safety related task of the new systems will be to create an electronic field round the car with ultrasonic, radar, or infrared beams, to measure the distances and speeds to other vehicles. Approaching a parked lorry at night or in fog, the driver will be alerted to the danger of collision. Before the invention of anti lock brakes (ABS) he would have put the brakes on, or swerved by himself. Now the car can do the job better than the most skilled driver, and on the Sinclair motorway, will apply its own brakes. The same applies to unwise overtaking. The on board computers calculate the speed of the lorry ahead, the speed of the car overtaking, decide there is danger of an accident, and over rules the driver's decision to pull out. Research chiefs such as Professor Dr Ing. Ulrich Seiffert of VW see measures of this sort as a solution to the problem of congestion on motorways. "With electronic controls regulating the cars, you could double or treble the capacity of a motorway," he told me during a meeting at this year's Geneva Motor Show. "And automatic traffic will also be more fuel efficient, and so less polluting."

At the inception of Prometheus in 1986, Professor Werner Breitschwerdt, Chairman of the Daimler Benz board of management defined its target as cutting road traffic casualties by half before the year 2000. At a meeting in Munich earlier this year by the participating companies which include most of Europe's principal car manufacturers (Jaguar, Rolls Royce, Renault, Peugeot Citroën, Fiat, Volvo, Saab Scania, VW, BMW, Volkswagen Audi, and Daimler Benz), the research and development phase of the programme was officially inaugurated. "It was a meeting to provide the project's board of management with a progress report," according to Daimler Benz, the prime mover and still the principal co ordinator of Prometheus. "The first year, 1987, was taken up with defining the programme, in 1988 the participating companies were discussing how to do it, and research proper starts this year."

I rode in road trains of vehicles on test tracks 25 years ago. (Below - Nissan Leafs at a Silverstone demonstration - imagine them driving like this on the motorway at 100mph without drivers) I marvel now at Google’s vehicles that have covered 400,000 miles without an accident. With 360degree sensors, lasers, GPS and learning algorithms everything is in place to make driverless cars practical. Public transport, except in close-packed cities, is doomed. People will travel by night, dozing off and waking up at journey’s end. Commuting, along with everything else, will be transformed.

Motor racing history.

Charterhall 1958. Researching revisions to Dove Publishing’s book on Jim Clark, I came across the race programme with his Border Reivers’ entry in the Aston Martin DBR1 (pictured below). It’s at number 14. At number 16 is the Ecurie Ecosse Cooper Monaco and at 27 Barry Filer’s Marcos GT, both to be driven by a mysterious A.N.Other. This was an unsubtle subterfuge for Jackie Stewart to conceal the early stages of his motor racing career. Apprehensive following the injuries Jackie’s brother, Jimmy, sustained at Le Mans in 1954 driving a works Aston Martin their mother forbade racing. Jimmy also inverted a D-type Jaguar at the Nürburgring but his talent was so outstanding that Lofty England wanted him to co-drive with Mike Hawthorn at Le Mans in 1955. In deference to his nervous mother Jimmy turned it down. He would probably have been every bit as good as Jackie, although in retrospect it might have been just as well not to drive at Le Mans in 1955. It was the Hawthorn-Macklin misunderstanding that set off the chain of event that led to the worst accident ever in motor racing. Pictured by me at the hairpin before the Charterhall straight, Jimmy Stewart on left, Graham Birrell also racing at Charterhall, Gordon Hunter Glasgow motor trade entrepreneur, and Jackie in a trendy hat.

Historical anomaly

Speculation again over Jaguar reviving Daimler. Cars UK says the Chinese prefer something three-boxier than the XJ. Mandarins apparently like to sit in the back and the XJ rear is too cosy. Makes sense. Jaguar acquired Daimler in 1951 on being forbidden to extend its old factory at Foleshill, leased Browns Lane a wartime shadow factory still making Ferret armoured cars, so the move occupied most of 1951. This is me on the turret of 8 (Alma) Field Battery Royal Artillery's Ferret some time ago.

Daimler was an historical anomaly. Set up in England in 1893 by FR Simms to develop designs by Gottlieb Daimler, its Coventry Radford factory made Panhards based on Daimler’s patents, so British and German Daimler companies had little in common except Gottlieb Daimler as a director until 1898. After the Prince of Wales bought one in 1900, British-made Daimlers remained the choice of royals for the best part of half a century, despite the smokiness of Knight sleeve-valve engines. The Knight licence and overreaching itself financially were Daimler’s downfall and in 1910 it had to be rescued by Birmingham Small Arms (BSA), among whose directors was F Dudley Docker. One of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s sponsors (an upturned lifeboat named after him housed the expedition’s survivors), Docker’s interests ranged from firearms and motorcycles to railway rolling stock.

Daimlers of the 1930s were staid and not very fast but easy to drive, thanks to Wilson pre-selector gearboxes. Post-1945 the Conquest Century gave a good account of itself in saloon car races, a tribute to chassis engineering rather than power. The royal connection foundered following BSA chairman Dudley’s son Sir Bernard’s behaviour, and the gaudiness of Lady Docker’s limousines (Golden Zabra below) at Earls Court Motor Shows of the 1950s. The last straw was plastic-bodied SP250 sports cars of the 1960s, with a V8 designed by Edward Turner of Triumph motorcycles. He nearly developed an association with William Lyons in 1942, but the cars were not very good and renounced after the Jaguar takeover. Only the V8 engine survived.

Daimler independent production ended in 1968, lingering as Daimler versions of Jaguar saloons until the 1990s. Only the splendid DS420 limousine, based on a stretched Mark X remained, styled like the Docker Daimlers and a 1950s Empress Hooper. (Saloon below)

Browns Lane was given over to making Jaguars, the Radford factory survived until the 1990s but now both are gone and Jaguar is at another ex-wartime shadow factory, Castle Bromwich. Set up alongside an aerodrome by Morris Motors’ Nuffield Group in 1936 it made Spitfires and Lancasters. Control was quickly passed to Vickers-Armstrong and after the war it was taken over by Fisher and Ludlow, bombed-out of its own factory in Coventry. As Pressed Steel Fisher it became part of British Leyland, making bodies for Jaguar, which took it over completely in 1977. The aluminium XK is made there and it wouldn’t take much to make it a bit more upright, with a crinkly grille and a woody interior to match anything coming out of Stuttgart. The Chinese like their Deutsches Daimlers, so there is every reason to suppose they would take with equal enthusiasm to latter-day Dockery Daimlers.

Skoda Octavia

You can’t get away from class. We were a Wolseley family. The Vanden Plas Princess and the Armstrong Siddeley came later. We slipped downmarket with the Austin Sixteen in which I passed my driving test, but that was bought in 1948 or so, when cars were hard to come by. It was replaced by a Wolseley Six-Eighty. Not a notable success; its single ohc was unhappy with teenage over-revving but it looked classy with an upright radiator and wood facia. Wasn’t up to next-door’s Rover 14 maybe, but it was better than Austins, which were, by and large, bought by people who believed the Dependable slogan and were NQOC. Austins weren’t stylish but they were well made. Father was in steel and his metallurgist chums said Longbridge was fussy about the steel it was buying for gearboxes. He found that convincing.

Austin, Armstrong Siddeley, Vanden Plas and Wolseley; all, alas, gone. Yet class distinctions in cars remain. When I was road testing it helped make up your mind about cars once you had identified likely buyers - easy with BMWs. People who bought BMWs buyers got other BMW owners (like me) a bad name. Racy and aggressive they demanded cars that were fast and handled well. BMW buyers were fusspots so you set the road-holding bar higher for BMWs.

Ford buyers – difficult to avoid stereotyping. They were always cost-conscious high-mileage reps. Jaguar buyers went for style, refinement and prestige. They are no longer the same as the Jaguar buyers of our Wolseley years – Jaguars then were much too, well flashy really, like Uncle Bob, who had had Vauxhalls and then a black Jaguar with huge headlights and too much, so my mother thought, voluptuous curves and showy chrome.

Hyundai and Kia buyers now are connoisseurs of the long-distance warranty and born-again Austin buyers, looking for good metallurgy and unpretentious quality, buy Skodas. Dependable, regular, no nonsense solid worth, Skoda’s styling is derivative but the customers want it like that. Nothing radical; good proportions are more important than pretendy avant garde.

Skodas look modest just like Austins looked modest. They were styled by the unlikely Dick Burzi. Born in Buenos Aires, Ricardo Burzi joined Lancia in the 1920s. “Styling” was only beginning and he augmented his income drawing cartoons for newspapers, only to get into trouble for drawing some of the emerging Duce, Benito Mussolini. You couldn’t do that in Italy and Burzi had to flee.

Fortunately Vincenzo Lancia chanced to meet Herbert Austin on a liner, recommended him, and so the Italian-Argentinian joined Longbridge in 1929. His reponse to challenges proved variable. He was partly responsible for the splendid 1940s Sheerline and Princess, based on chief executive Leonard Lord’s Bentley, but he made 1945 Austins look like 1930s Chevrolets. His big solo effort, under instructions from Lord, was the ill-starred Austin A90 Atlantic.

Skoda (Octavia press launch above - my BMW behind) has avoided such flights of fancy. It knows its place, unlike the flagship VW Passat, which has got longer and sleeker. The cards in the Skoda pack have been shuffled, taking the Octavia a bit up-market and making it bigger, to accommodate the Rapid in a lower slot. Octavia is on VW’s MQB platform along with the Audi A3, Seat León and Mark 7 Golf and is temptingly priced at around £20,000, unless you specify lots of bells and whistles. It rides, handles and drives well. It isn’t fast, 11.5sec to 60mph, it is quite economical at about 45mpg without being super-frugal and qualifies as thoroughly worthy. Not faint praise for those old solid sensible dependable Austin customers.