Dependable or exotica?

Two visitors this month. One, the latest iteration of the VW Polo, now in its fifth generation and with ten million Polo ancestors. The other, a 1968 Bristol 410 whose ancestors can probably be numbered in the hundreds and siblings in scores, maybe dozens. The first was for a week, courtesy of VW, the second is for a few months, courtesy of a friend who wants to sell but wants it used while he’s away.

Think Polo and you think smaller Golf, runabout, district nurses, retired primary- school teachers, reliable, sensible choice for modest budgets. That’s still largely true, except...

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Ride with the devil

If Milton had owned a Land Rover he’d never have vanquished Satan and his fallen angels to nether regions of rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens and shades of death. He’d have known that they could have had too much fun with the right wheels, as I did recently among the rocks, lakes, fens etc. of the 54,000 acre Roxburgh estate. Along with, I should add, 679 other motoring hacks, between 60 to 80 Land Rover staff and 80 vehicles.

Car launches vary from the exotic — Land Rover in Argentina, Bentley in Venice — to the domestic — Renault...

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On the driving range

The Golf GTI was unveiled in Frankfurt 34 years ago this month. If the ordinary Golf saved VW — ailing because Beetle sales were in long-term decline — then the GTI was the icing that made millions more want the cake. Planned as a limited edition of 5,000, it has gone on to sell 1.7 million worldwide (217,214 in the UK). Its effects spread well beyond itself. It wasn’t only that there were numerous buyers for the fashionable sporty version of what might otherwise have been seen as a humdrum hatchback (unpromisingly called ‘Rabbit’ in the US), but that the...

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Hooked on classics

Our monsoon season brings not only cricket delays but also a flowering of local classic-car shows. Testimony to nostalgic enthusiasm, they prompt the reflection that man is never more innocently engaged than when he values something for what it is, rather than for what he can get out of it. Not that the classic-car world has ever been immune to investors seeking to translate value in the usual way. Indeed, now may be a good time if you’ve a few thousand earning no interest somewhere.

Judging by record auction prices at Brightwells, Leominster, classic cars have held up pretty...

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Age concerns

Driving means manipulating a dangerous piece of machinery at speeds beyond anything for which evolution has prepared you, reacting to a multitude of visual signals and warnings, calibrating and recalibrating velocity, distance, direction and stability, all the time guessing the intentions and anticipating the possible actions of unnumbered others performing the same tasks in the same places at the same times. And this while talking, listening, daydreaming, trying to work out where you are and where you should be. Yet we know that as we get older we get worse at most things. Surely age affects this too?

It does,...

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Out of control

The elderly lady in the little Skoda reversed cautiously in the supermarket car park, then sharply accelerated into the car behind. Next she accelerated sharply forwards into the car adjacent to the space she had left. She repeated her reverse manoeuvre into a third car, then her forward manoeuvre — this time while trying to turn — into a fourth. Bouncing off that, she maintained forward momentum until finally halted by collision with a passing Discovery.

The Discovery was mine, under temporary command of my wife who, hearing bangs and seeing people running for cover, slowed and looked round in...

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