Vauxhall 2015 SCOTY

Mark Adams, Vice President, Vauxhall/Opel Design, accepted Scottish Car of the Year (SCOTY) from Alasdair Suttie, President of the Association of Scottish Motoring Writers (ASMW). Astra won the family car category, the diesel Astra the Eco award and Viva was named best compact car. Corsa and Corsa VXR were runners-up in SCOTY’s Supermini and Hot-Hatch categories.

Scotland is important to Vauxhall. It has been the biggest-selling manufacturer in the country for seven years, Corsa the best-seller for six so it’s no coincidence to find Vauxhall sponsoring the national football team. Adams said, “We’re extremely proud that the Astra is the 2015 Scottish Car of the Year, glad we’ve been able to repay its loyalty by delivering a car that will appeal in so many ways.”

Left to right with the winning cars’ quaichs: Mike Thomas, Assistant Plant Director Ellesmere Port, Nancy Thomas, Beth Katuszka Vauxhall Product Affairs, Melanie Adams, Mark Adams, Leon Caruso Vauxhall Retail Sales Director, Denis Chick Director Communications, Simon Hucknall Manager Product Communications, and Zoe Peacock Press Fleet Manager. Caruso said, “Winning SCOTY gives us a huge boost and our retailers in the region will be delighted with the success this will bring.”

SCOTY is a highlight of the Dove Publishing calendar, strikingly last year with the ASMW’s generous honour of the President’s Trophy to the Editorial Director. This year’s event, organised by Ally and Lorraine Ballingall, was another ringing success with industry bigwigs flocking to the Marriott Dalmahoy, Edinburgh for a party that went on until the wee sma’ hours. Until, in fact, men arrived to dismantle the elaborate set into which the winning Astra drove at the height of the evening’s ceremony. (Below: Caruso, Suttie and Dalmahoy)

Top guide to top prices

It seems I sold my BMW too cheaply. Classic Car Auction Yearbook quotes a 1995 light blue Z3 making £15,962 $24,200 €22,201 at last year’s Bonham’s Greenwich auction. Certainly it had done only 5,700 miles and was one of 100 James Bond edition cars from the Evergreen Collection so that must be the top end of the spectrum. A blue 1998 Z3M Spider “in good condition” with 80,000 on the clock made £7,416 $11,866 €9,418 at H&H Duxford in 2014. Either way son Craig is now driving a bargain. And his has a hardtop, for which I paid £1200 $1829.34 €1712.50 in 1999.

Credit Suisse is big in classic cars. A partner at Pebble Beach, Monaco Historique and Goodwood this is its seventh year sponsoring surely the essential guide to collectors’ car prices. The substantial €70 tome, about the size of an Automobile Year book, covers sales between 1 September 2014 and 31 August 2015 and indispensable to anybody buying, selling, or even owning classic cars. Besides page upon page detailing what 5,152 cars of 318 makes sold for (or if they didn’t what they were expected to sell for) it is packed with fascinating information from compilers Adolfo Orsi and Raffaele Gazzi. They tell us that for the first time leading auction houses turned over more than a billion Euros in a year and have now twice exceeded a billion dollars. That puts the trade in the big league.

Representing more than 34 per cent of its turnover largely through the high prices they command, Ferraris lead the market. The United States does two-thirds of the business, yet according to Orsi historian, specialist, co-author and president of publisher Historica Selecta of Modena, “Younger collectors have entered the game so ‘younger’ classics are rising in value with increased demand.”

At the book’s launch in October Historica Selecta gave auction house Artcurial Motorcars of Paris an award for the record £12,172,022 $18,644,874 €16,288,000 obtained for a Ferrari 250GT Spyder California on 6 February. A Scaglietti-bodied short wheelbase covered-headlamp one in dark blue with hardtop and leatherette interior, shown at the 1961 Paris Salon it had been owned by actors Gerard Blain and then Alain Delon, and was bought by Jacques Baillon in 1971 for his collection. It was described at auction as, “In original condition,” but “Requires some restoration work.”

Twelve million for a tatty and probably not one of the best Ferraris doesn’t sound tempting. My first Paris Salon was 1963 and I’ve just looked up my report where I describe the new Ferrari 250LM as graceless. Maybe a little harsh but I thought the reverse-rake rear window, like a Ford Anglia, infra dig. I wasn’t much into Ferraris, which always seemed over-rated against the lithe, superb-riding Jaguar E-types I was driving a lot at the time. It was not a good judgement on the 250LM. One sold in 2013 for $14,300,000, another in 2015 for $17,600,000 so it’s probably just as well I am not buying or selling classic Ferraris.

Back then I was more into Austin-Healey Sprites (callow youth, me, Turnberry, about 1960, above) but £25,200 $38,634 €34,483 seems a lot for a 1959 Mark 1 frogeye, even fully restored in Historics at Brooklands on 6 June 2015. Great cars, precise, inspired even and the best possible entry-level to sports cars but essentially cheap and cheerful and really not very quick. I had two and loved them but MGs were more grown-up.

It’s fun looking up memorable test cars. On 14 August 2015 RM Sotheby’s sold a 1998 McLaren F1 for £8,795,875 $13,750,000 €12,377,750 at Monterey. Orange with magnolia leather and alcantara wouldn’t be my first choice for a McLaren; this one had an LM engine fitted later, which would seem a little unnecessary. Surprisingly the book describes a McLaren F1 as LHD. See picture below of the driving seat in the middle.

Aston Martin snobs sniff at the Vantage I tested in 2007 because under Ford stewardship it only had a 4.3 Jaguar V8 of 380bhp. I thought it was great and a bargain at £40,680 $63,123 €56,453 on 11 July 2015 at H&H Chateau Impney. This was for a Coupe with 19,000 miles on the clock and less than half its price new but what an exquisite car. An open one like this (below, pictured same spot as the Z3) might cost more.

Great book. Endless browsing. credit-suisse.com/classiccars and classiccarauctionyearbook.com/en/historica-selecta.

Daughter Joanna with her £8.8 million pound school run.

120 Years of Skoda

Skoda is celebrating 120 years since its foundation by Václav Laurin and Václav Klement. It is half a century since I first visited AND A lot has changed.

THE MOTOR March 20 1963

CAPTION SAYS: Skodas leaving the works at Mláda Boleslav. The banner above the gate is the nearest thing to advertising in Czechoslovakia. It publicizes the Twelfth Party Conference.

THE Czechs have words for it. Most of them are unpro­nounceable and not all of them polite, but the English which sums up Czech motoring (for the Czechs, that is) is Drab. Petrol is expensive and poor, roads are indifferent although compara­tively traffic-free and if you can’t afford a Skoda (nobody can afford a Tatra) and haven't the influence to get a foreign car, the only alternative is one of the miracles Czechs keep running years after they would have found an honourable resting-place in a Western motor museum. An old car movement would have splendid material in Czechoslovakia, but little enthusiasm; keeping antiques running is only fun if you don’t actually have to.

            One of the proudest men I met in Prague runs a Mini. He claims it is the only one in the country and brought it out of its garage specially for our visit. He has to get all his spares straight from Longbridge and pay for them in British currency, and he only uses his car at week-ends or during the summer. Heavy tax on petrol and no annual car licence encourages this sort of “week-end” motoring and his enthusiasm for his car was prodigious.

            As a government official dealing with foreign journalists, he whisked us about Prague in a chauffeured Tatra when we weren't using the Standard Vanguard Six which had taken us there. Requests to drive a Tatra were repeatedly turned down because these cars, I was told, were not for export so couldn’t possibly be of any interest to me. The only ones in Britain belong to the Czechoslovak Embassy in London and even in Prague, they are exclusively for Top People. Judging by the number I saw in the streets of Prague however, I would reckon the “classless society” to be in severe imbalance. The ratio of Tatras to other cars suggests a Top Heaviness of Top People.

            It took a Top Person and (I fancy) a hefty bribe to persuade the taxi insignia off the side of a Tatra 603 and let me drive it down the new motor road south from Prague beside the Vltava River. This is one of the network of roads planned to cover Czechoslovakia although so far the only one to have struggled off the drawing board.

            In the end I drove two Tatras, the second one belonging to a government department but both, unfortunately rather long in the tooth. The specification is the best thing about them, including coil spring independent suspension ail round and an air-cooled V-8 engine at the rear. The monocoque body is extremely roomy but the styling, even in its latest form is now rather old-hat.

            The wheel arches intrude on the front compartment quite a lot and the driving position is therefore offset. Although the Czechs call it a luxury car, the trim is somewhat Spartan to cosseted Westerners but it looks robust enough and is certainly practical. Even allowing for the suspension, which had taken a long beating from the local pavé, the ride is a bit soft and wallowy, and a pronounced oversteer limited cornering speeds and ob­viously inhibited the official driver who accompanied me on my second outing. My interpreter could barely keep pace with his voluble Czech, and translated about three minutes of non-stop instruction with, “I think he wants you to go slower”.

            The rather wretched petrol curtailed the car’s performance and produced loud pinking from the 2,545 c.c. (75x72) V8. A Czech motoring paper claims a top speed of 105 mph, which seemed a little optimistic after driving the car which has a claimed power output of only 100 net bhp at 4,800 rpm, and an all-up weight of 29.75 cwt. I would doubt its ability to out­perform our Vanguard Six which certainly handled better. Understandably, with linkage which has to go down the steering column then find its way to the very back of the car, the gear- change is rather sloppy. Describing the synchromesh, which is applied to all four speeds was nearly beyond a non-technical interpreter who concluded that, “the gears change but are not demolished.” I had to agree that they changed and they certainly had not been demolished in the course of 160,000 km. (around 100,000 miles), which one of the cars had covered.

            Standard equipment on the Tatra includes a radio and heater and there is a large, deep luggage compartment in the front. It is generally quiet but the gears whine and the fans circulating air past the cast-iron cylinders (which have machined fins) whirr quite noisily. Valve operation is by pushrods, there are two carburetters, and light alloy is used for the cylinder heads and manifolds. The rack-and-pinion steering is light considering the weight of the car but rather lifeless. Stopping the Tatras from speed was something of an adventure which took a heavy pedal pressure and most of the width (and a good deal of the length) of motor road, although both cars were due for overhaul.

            The Czechs quite sincerely believe that the Tatra 603 is at least as good as anything in its class in the world. While it seems strongly built, and overcomes some of the drawbacks of earlier models, which had poor rearward visibility and meagre luggage space, the mountainous oversteer persists. With decent petrol and a little more youth than the ones I diove it would probably be quite fast but still rather stolid and ungainly. I enjoyed Czech food (the Moskva Restaurant is a “must” for visitors) and Prague Ham is excellent, but the rather indigestible, heavy dumplings on which the workers grow portly, always made me think of Tatras.

            The general isolation from international motoring thought makes the Skoda quite acceptable in Czechoslovakia. It also has independent suspension all round but is something of a relic too. The ride is stiff and bouncy and the interior cramped. More progressive ideas will not prevail at Skoda until 1964 when the new factory opens alongside the present one at Mláda Boleslav. Hampered by scattered buildings and (surprisingly in a country with a famous machine tool industry) a great deal of antiquated plant, production is laborious. But the shape of prototypes I saw at the works would indicate that after 1964, Skodas will matter more. [They showed me a rear-engined car duly introduced in April 1964 with the engine at the back, swing-axle suspension, certainly inspired by the Renault 8 and perhaps developed with French advice. Editorial policy of The Motor in the 1960s permitted me to drop hints but not break confidences about forthcoming models like the 1000MB (below).]

            Personifying the more liberal thought in the second generation Skoda executive, was the man who showed me the factory. He has worked as a Skoda service representative in Burma and Australia and was one of the few Czechs I met (and they included several prominent motoring writers) who knew foreign motor cars at first hand. There is apparently a tendency for promotions to result from personal worth nowadays rather than party or idealogical prowess. Like any motor industry executive anywhere in the world he is very proud of a slightly non-standard car from his own factory, but unlike a Western counterpart, his car spends most of its time in its garage at home. Private motoring, even by people connected with the industry, is officially con­sidered something of a nuisance.

            A large number of the 10,000 workers who produce some 200 Skoda cars every day are women. Everybody works without fear of sacking; even gross dereliction of duty can only result in demotion which, as Skoda executives themselves admit, makes difficulties. The factory is dominated by pictures of President Novotny, Lenin, and rather idealistic Workers clutching spanners and marching Shoulder to Shoulder. Red Starred exhortations to work harder for the Glory of the C.S.S.R. might all have been so much wallpaper compared with the galvanizing effect my guide had, appropriate to his position in the local world of ice-hockey.

Payment by Czechs

            If you were a Czech with enough Crowns for a new car, you would go along to Mototechna, the state car sales organization and have your name added to those of several thousand of your countrymen who have had the idea (or the Crowns) first. Mototechna would offer you a Skoda for 38,000 Crowns (£1,900) or a Tatra for 75,000 Crowns (£3,750), looking for a deposit on the first named of 20,000 Crowns (£1,000) with the balance when the car is delivered in something like a year or eighteen months’ time.

            If your taste were to run to a foreign car, there are limited numbers of Wartburgs (East German) Warsawas (Polish-built versions of the old Russian Pobiedas) Moskvitches or Volgas (both Soviet but the latter imported only for the nebulous upper class). Your smelly petrol at about eighteen shillings a gallon is brought from Russia by pipeline but a compression ratio is the same in any language. You might also buy a Hillman Minx, Renault Dauphine, Fiat 600, or Simca Etoile out of the import quota at a price inflated about five times from that in its country of origin. The surprising thing is that there are enough Czechs with the kind of money to produce such long waiting lists. Clever ones can by-pass the waiting list by managing some hard currency to pay for the car, so once again the upper class wins over the poor worker with his own, home-grown cash.

Changed days (below) celebration of 2014's millionth sale.

            Mototechna also handle quality used cars. Second hand cars (which include those well-used antiques) can be sold privately after three years and Mototechna guarantee new and used vehicles. Enlistment in the state-run insurance organization, which is compulsory takes a premium of around £12 per year.

            Official estimates put 25 per cent of car-owners into motoring clubs where the emphasis is not so much on sport, but collective servicing at home. Interest in sport centres on motorcycling but there was a good deal of speculation when I was there in Decem­ber, before the South African Grand Prix, on the destination of the World Drivers Championship. Graham Hill and Jim Clark mean something to the Czech enthusiast and my opinion was frequently sought on the future of Stirling Moss.

            Several Formula Junior racing cars have been built recently and there have even been some meetings at Brno, scene of several “Internationals" since the war. The Juniors have been mostly Skoda-based but some, like the space-frame, rear-engined car built by a Prague team under Eng. Hausman, editor of Svet Motoru, use a Wartburg gearbox and differential. Clubs, rather than individuals build the cars but sport is another aspect of domestic motoring which leads rather a threadbare existence.

            The Czech motorist is pitifully isolated but burning with curiosity. A Belgian drove into Prague when I was there with a Mark X Jaguar and as soon as it was parked it immediately became invisible behind a crowd at the kerbside. Government planning insists that a traffic problem will not be allowed to develop and that roads must come before cars but this is scant comfort to the would-be motorist. Particularly since road development is so obviously slow. But there is plenty of interest and even enthusiasm for motoring as the Czech reputation in the two-wheeled world indicates. Although the production part of the Czech motor industry looks like dragging its feet for some time to come, the development of new models at Skoda is along promising lines. Isolation from the rest of the world's motor cars will remain something of a problem to the enthusiast, the motoring press, and even the industry itself, but more progressive ideas may well prevail in the future.

            Last December, a British firm of consulting engineers were being employed to dismantle an enormous statue of Stalin which, for nearly ten years dominated the Prague skyline. And after de-Stalinization . . . ?

The rest, as they say, is history. Captions to The Motor pictures below...

Crossed Czech. Prague policemen became very angry with the Vanguard Six when it failed to observe a local crossroads custom. Traffic turning left at cross­roads wait in the right-hand lane until all is clear, then cross. We had re-written half the rule book before discovering this and had altercations with some formidable pointsmen.

Dated Czech. A pre-war Aero climbs a snowy Prague street. This is typical of the carefully-preserved “oldies” with which Czechs often have to make do.

The headlights of the Tatra 603 are behind a glass panel in the front. Later models have four. Intakes at the back gulp in air to cool the 2.5-litre V8 engine. The roomy and practical interior takes six people easily, but Tatra drivers have to sit offset because of the large front wheel arches. The gearchange is on the right of the steering column.

Disillusioned: BMW, Honda, Halfords

It scarcely matters how good your brand name is. In the end it all depends on people.

During the 12 years or so I was motoring correspondent of The Sunday Times, about once a month a fat parcel would arrive. Readers sent reams of complaining correspondence, detailed bills and unfulfilled warranties on their cars. They wanted me to investigate tyres, steering, water leaks, all manner of faults, yet it turned out there was nothing wrong with the cars. Almost always they had fallen out with a service manager.

The cars were fine. It was the people. Motor trade front desks were failing.

Mostly all went well with my own cars. There were exceptions; my rebuilding project with an ambitious MG all went wrong. I never did a great mileage. I was mostly driving other peoples’ cars, which was just as well because I didn’t much trust the car trade. I had worked there and knew its tricks.

In 2000 I bought a BMW (above) off the Bracknell press car fleet. There was some trouble with paintwork, fixed under warranty, a bit reluctantly I thought. I found service managers oleaginous and unreliable and I disliked cloying post-service enquiries asking me how I was and if I’d been satisfied. Once the BMW’s warranty expired and it didn’t look as though I was often going to buy new ones, things deteriorated. Servicing was expensive. Replacing road springs broken on potholes or brake discs was costly, still I returned faithfully to main dealer after main dealer.

The seat belt warning light was “fixed” expensively several times but I stuck to the proper franchised dealer, getting cross only when it became an MoT issue. Weeks passed waiting for spares. When the power steering leaked on to the garage floor the BMW languished in the main dealer in Lincoln so long I had it towed out and fixed elsewhere. Front desks were polite but useless. I grew more irritated by the post-service enquiry and when I told the tick-box girl it had gone badly she promised BMW Customer Relations would get in touch.

It never did. The service relationship collapsed.

I cycle sometimes. This is my space-frame Moulton

I thought it might be better with Honda. Not so high-falutin. We bought two; well-made and reliable. I always liked the finish on the outside of Honda engines; made you think they must be well-finished inside as well. I’ve written books on BMW and Honda but could have dispensed with gratuitous calls thanking me for booking services.

The dealer made a mess of arranging a loan car and apologised. Still, I went back the other week with a noisy exhaust.

“That will be £240 for a new one plus fitting. It is on back-order so we couldn’t do it for a month. We’ll let you know and meantime can we please have a 20% deposit in case you don’t come back – we can’t be stuck with a spare exhaust.” A dread term I knew from my BMW days, “back order” but the 20% was the last straw. I said no I will try elsewhere, went up the road to an exhaust workshop, which put the car up on a ramp. We looked underneath. “There’s nothing wrong with your exhaust. It’s perfectly good. You have merely detached one bit from another bit. See, here is some grass on the end of the pipe where you have reversed. We can put it together easily.”

So they did. Right away. For £50. I didn’t reply to the Honda follow-up call.

Halfords? Bought a new bicycle (above) last year for my birthday. Took it back recently for a minor fixing. Bicycle department told me it was the wrong size. It was too big and unless I could put my feet down properly it was dangerous. I told them they had measured me up for it in the first place. Bicycle man said sorry but since Halfords owed me a duty of care it would replace it. “Bring the receipt and we’ll take this one back.” I hadn’t done many miles. I thought, “Nice chap.”

Wrong again. I’ve been going to Halfords since it advertised in my Meccano Magazines for “Every Accessory that’s Necessary.” When I went back the shop manager repudiated his bicycle expert. He called Customer Relations. Bah, they said, offering me 10% off a new bike. I recalled a conversation when I bought my Carrera Crossfire (disc brakes and plunger front suspension) that I would have liked to try one round the yard but been told it was impossible. Take mine back against a new bike? Flat No.

Dealing with brands can be bothersome. The story of my life is believing people when they tell me things. Car service managers. And now even Halfords. It’s a great disappointment. I now know what these Sunday Times readers were driving at.

Here's where the BMW is now. Craig has it.

And I do have other bicycles. A Revell on  my Strida.

Blame the Lobbyists

Revenue inspectors are always a step behind smart accountants; legislation can’t keep up with clever engineers. Only this week vacuum cleaner James Dyson is challenging Bosch for outflanking EU energy strictures. Bosch? There’s a coincidence. It supplies VW with engine control systems and is among founders of a 2007 lobby group bent on laundering diesel’s dirty linen. Colin Chapman outwitted the FIA’s draftees on Formula 1 rules, by inventing go-faster gambits they had never thought of arguing that if something wasn’t specifically forbidden then it must be permitted. (see the spindly wings on the grid of the South African Grand Prix, above)

Dieselgate isn’t entirely Volkswagen’s fault. Rules drawn up by governments’ draftsmen were always anomalous and open to interpretation by motivated technicians.

Go back to the 1960s when Green campaigners cleared photo-chemical smog from Los Angeles. London had banished pea-soupers by legislating against coal fires so, since prohibitions seemed to work, the Green lobbyists got down to it. Unfortunately they were not very bright, muddling carbon emissions with worries about unleaded petrol, and became so over-heated about global warming they rushed through calls to ban this and outlaw that. Nervy politicians saw votes and decided Something Had to be Done. And At Once. The Greens were obsessively Urgent.

Beware what you wish for. Without thinking it through, some Greenies ended up lobbying for more diesels and, egged on by industrialists like Johnson Matthey, grew preoccupied with catalytic converters. As my former technical editor at The Motor, the late Joe Lowrey put it, “The truly green way to minimise pollution is to burn less fuel.”

Under ‘environmental’ pressure administrations rushed through legislation bringing in catalytic converters because they didn’t know any better. Research on 'lean burn' engines that reduced exhaust fumes by cutting fuel consumption was diverted. The costly rhodium and platinum equipment that turned exhaust gases into water carbon dioxide and nitrogen were a crude stop-gap that increased fuel consumption and slowed cars down. Widespread adoption fostered the idea that pollution was dealt with and engines with far lower toxic emissions were neglected.

Engineers had to be tasked instead with meeting US and European statutes on catalytic converters. Car manufacturers were obliged to meet hastily drawn-up legal requirements, providing essentially a second-best to burning less hydrocarbon fuel. Governmental ‘Scientific experts’ should have contradicted the muddled Greenies but were coerced into drawing up what politicians, also convinced by Johnson Matthey, thought was the only solution. Meanwhile the Greenies continued to lobby for more diesels.

What the ‘experts’ either failed to pass on or, in their anxiety to please the politicos ignored, was that ‘clean’ diesels came with side-effects. “Don’t worry,” their masters told them, “fix a test that will satisfy the greens.” They were told to devise a trial that diesel engines had to pass. Laws were once again laid down and it scarcely mattered that engineers could spot anomalies and to make tests fair and repeatable they were going to be complicated. VW had already cheated on emissions tests in 1973 with engines that turned off smog controls when cold; GM was fined for much the same on Cadillacs; Ford and Honda paid Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) fines in 1995. Tests had to be the same for everybody; so they had to be done in a laboratory. (Petrol-engined VWs - above)

The solution was the New European Driving Cycle (NEDC), dating from the 1970s when cars were smaller although modified in 1997 to reflect European driving. Ideally a test would be on a long straight road with no weather, but for practicality had to be relegated to roller tests with a fan blowing to simulate speed. A tester at the wheel follows a stopwatch pattern of gear shifting and speed limits to achieve results recalculated for different models. There is no motorway driving, economy settings drivers rarely use are allowed, air conditioning and heated windows are switched off and there is a 1.2mph speed tolerance. Roof rails and passenger door mirrors are removed, tyres inflated to reduce rolling resistance and there are no officials present. Car companies can adjust their own results by 4% to make things look better still.

In their anxiety to create a fair test ‘experts’ and politicos between them created a completely unrealistic test. It is scarcely surprising that bright-eyed engineers spotted an extra tweak that, like Colin Chapman with his flaky inventions of aerodynamic downforce could be brought in, because green-tinted boffins hadn’t thought of prohibiting them. So let us step back a moment from the shrill condemnation, repeated in the current issue of Which? about manufacturers’ fuel consumption ‘claims’ against what cars do in the real world. Let us remind ourselves that these ‘claims’ are a spin-off from the imposition of Official Fuel Consumption figures many years ago. They too are based on the NEDC roller test-bed charade that the cars makers did not much like in the first place but illustrates perfectly the confusion that comes with lobby groups of every shade from green-hued pinkos to true blues leading politicians up garden paths.

Did we see this mess coming? Of course we did. Here’s what I wrote for The Sunday Times of 16 June 1991.

Pollution ‘quick fix’ creates a motoring myth

Legislation on catalytic converters may be delaying 'lean burn' engines which reduce exhaust fumes by cutting fuel consumption. Enthusiasm for the expensive rhodium and platinum equipment being built into the exhaust pipes of new cars has delayed something better - reducing pollution by more efficient engines.

            The expensive stainless steel canisters which turn exhaust gases into water, carbon dioxide and nitrogen are a relatively crude stop-gap. They increase fuel consumption, and foster the notion that pollution is being dealt with, while research into engines with far lower toxic emissions remains in abeyance.

            Researchers have not lost sight of the 'lean-burn' goal, but having been preoccupied with meeting US and European statutes demanding catalytic converters, there has been little progress. Car manufacturers have had to meet hastily drawn-up legal requirements which may turn out second-best to a global policy of burning smaller quantities of hydrocarbon fuel.

            "Catalytic converters were no more than a 'quick fix'," according to one senior motor industry engineer. "They were adopted by environmentalists when there was little else available and laws were pushed through before anybody had a chance to develop an alternative. Now they are mandatory and better solutions are not coming forward. Everybody was in such a hurry to be seen to be doing something that we have ended up with a second-best by law."

            Joseph Lowrey BSc (Eng) a notable technical writer on the motor industry, describes the sort of engineering that conceals symptoms rather than curing fundamental faults as, "Inventing rubber gloves as a cure for leaky fountain pens. The truly green way to minimise pollution is to burn less fuel."

            Catalytic converters do not filter impurities from car exhausts. They change the nature of the gases by chemical reaction as they pass through a honeycomb coated with the precious platinum and rhodium. This removes oxygen from the offensive oxides of nitrogen, and uses it to turn hydrogen and carbon into carbon dioxide and water. The water is fine, but too much carbon dioxide gives the world's plant life a lot of photo-synthesising to do.

            The converters need to be hot to work properly, together with an engine running on a strictly chemically correct air/fuel mixture. Gas going through it must contain exactly the right proportions of oxygen molecules to burn all the hydrogen and carbon atoms.

            If the mixture is rich in petrol the device will lack the necessary oxygen; if it is weak excess oxygen will remain bonded to the nitrogen as oxides of nitrogen.

            Unfortunately the chemically correct mixture is not always what the engine works best on. For the highest power output it needs more fuel at full throttle, and for best economy it needs more air at part-throttle, so catalyst-equipped engines lose two ways - less power and heavier fuel consumption. They also demand expensive back-up systems to ensure they meet the regulations reliably for large mileages.

            The motor industry's response has been to increase engine capacity to make up for power losses and ignore the fuel consumption penalty. Small economical engines of 1.0 litre and under have virtually disappeared. The British government's initiative to encourage small cars by imposing less stringent exhaust purity was overruled, with the result that more fuel will continue to be burned in larger engines producing more unwanted carbon dioxide.

            The introduction of lead-free fuel was a necessary prerequisite for catalytic converters, whose action can be destroyed by a tankful of leaded. But removing the lead and fitting converters has done nothing to make the world less profligate with fuel. "The environmentalists had a fixation with them," remains the engineer's view. "They were encouraged by the rhodium and platinum mining lobby. Together they have delayed small efficient engines by ten years."

Make that 25.

Underrated MGFs

When car collectors agree there must be a reason. The week I buy an MGF, nephew in Newton Mearns bought one too. No collusion. But coincidence? I don’t think so. An MGF reappraisal is overdue. Prices are in a trough; people look disbelievingly, mutter darkly about head gaskets, K-series, badly made and leaks. I remember the press launch and re-reading Ian Adcock’s book on the MGF, when its designer had long hair and a rebellious streak. Nephew Michael, whose collection has included Mercedes-Benz, Jaguar, BMW and classic rally cars called me. “I drove it home with a smile on my face.”

It’s true. I saw my MGF (above) at an MG Car Club Concours. It may have won only a grudging third from expert judges but at 45,000 miles with a full service history it was too tempting. I drove it back on Saturday with a smile on my face too. I now have a car that won’t depreciate, has been looked after by multiple concours award-winners Dean and Wendy Smith and feels fresh as paint. It’s a 1.8 VVC, its cylinder head properly named Variable Valve Control but according to Adcock its engineers called it Very Very Complicated.

VVC provided an additional 25bhp (18.6kW) and would rev to 7000 although I haven’t tried that yet. It would be an exaggeration to say (as I wrote at the time), that the extra power made a huge difference. Top speed went up from 120 or so to 130 (193kph to 209kph) and 0-60 was actually slower (the VVC was heavier and the gearing was different) but VVC cars had anti-lock brakes included in the price of £18,875.

The first MG I drove was a TA, the first I owned was an MGA, my last an MGB. It’s nice to be back. See more in featured ebook The Classic MG File.