A roof on a scooter? Volvo sorting itself out. A-Class vs A2.

Hello, welcome to the AutoCard podcast, my weekend cast with Pryer, croppie there, Monique

Steven.

Morning to you, mate.

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I'm sure I'm on the wrong one, but they'll tell me, won't they?

Well let's hope so.

I look forward to this week, you becoming too busy to have done it at this time next week.

You have a letter, we have letters.

You can write to us at AutoCard at haymarket.com.

Thanks for your correspondence.

Thanks for, because we've run a couple of podcast episodes where we read your questions.

Thank you for sending in even more questions than ever.

We will get round to them.

We've got two pods coming up.

We've just had one where I've interviewed James Cameron, the founder and CEO of Mission

Motorsport and coming up this weekend, Felix Page talks to the design director of Datsia.

But I think beyond that, we may have another Q&A episode with Stephen Lee, but AutoCard

at haymarket.com, Calle writes to us from Finland to say, as a massive Top Gear fan,

your latest Jeremy Clarkson podcast, that's last week's episode, was such a great listen

to hear from man himself, which proves you don't need to be a massive car nerd or all

that interested in the technical side to be a proper enthusiast.

But Jerry says the engine is the soul of the car and that makes electric cars soulless.

Calle says, that's just absolute.

Not true.

Yeah.

He doesn't use that word.

I see.

I have as a company car at the moment, a grey Golf diesel that is as soulless as it gets.

And it will be replaced by a brand new scenic with Alpine trim.

And after driving that, it has way more character and soul than the Golf because it has a more

lively driving experience and fungier looks inside.

And you don't have to listen to the diesel rattle misery anymore.

As another example, the original Subaru Impressor or the first WRX, the soul of that car is

the driving experience and the fact that you can max it out as a bonus.

Yes, you get the boxer sound, but that's not what the car is about.

The soul is a car's capability, not the engine in my mind.

Do you agree or disagree with this?

Well, I think it's more complicated than to say that the engine is the soul of the car

because I'm starting to enjoy the EV experience a lot and, you know, not least because of

what I did this week, having been driven around the place in the new Volvo EX60.

But just coming over here in my Ford Capri, I enjoyed it.

It was nice.

And there's so much more to the car than just the motor.

In any case, the power delivery is great.

Yeah.

But I enjoyed the steering.

I enjoyed the work.

I sort of enjoy the ride.

It's, you know, it's good and bad, but there's more to it than that.

You know, he's right, Clarkson, but, you know, V12 is a wonderful thing.

And there's a song of the engine and all that.

Nobody's going to make that go away, but there's more to a car than just the engine, I think.

Yeah.

My Audi A2 would be no worse off if it had an electric motor instead of an engine.

There you are.

Because that TDI is a pretty badly old thing.

Yeah.

But I like the fact that I feel it and I don't have to feel it for another 700 miles.

That's quite nice.

But, you know, but it wouldn't hurt it if it did not have an engine.

It wouldn't feel any more or less soulful without an engine, I don't think.

No, no, it's getting more complicated because I think people, people who create cars are

getting better at finding other reasons for enjoyment.

Yeah.

They just are.

Yeah.

Don Waters asks, I'm greatly, my wife and I are greatly enjoying our Renault 5 and Alpine A110,

both bought last summer due in no small part to your recommendations.

Steve, Don lives just outside Newbury and if you would like to try his car, which has had

some David Poock remaps and geometry settings, you're very welcome.

Yeah, keep thinking about it.

Yeah, but he says, quick question for the pod.

Is there a car in hindsight you reviewed too harshly at the time?

That's a good question.

It is a good question.

There are some that I think there have been cars whose significance we've missed.

But I'm just, I wish I'd sort of thought more deeply.

I saw this question come in and I, and I immediately started thinking of cars that

I've ever praised, which I've done a lot.

You know, starting with the, you know, back in the annals of history, you know,

there was a version of the Ford Cortina that was still around.

And I remember liking that far more than it deserved.

Just trying to think, I don't know, what about you?

Any thoughts?

Have I been 100% right all the time for the last 28 years?

No, maybe not.

But not, well, you know, Jeremy said last week that he thought the Lexus LFA had been

underappreciated at its time.

Well, I read our road test of it earlier.

The magazine shop.com, if you'd like, full access to the 131 year AutoCar archive.

We gave it four stars.

But it was 330 grand when everything else was 150.

And we said it's got an extraordinary engine, but actually the chassis is just a,

and the steering's a bit oversharp and the chassis is a bit clumsy

on some British roads.

And I don't think those things were unfair at the time.

But it is.

And we said, you know, it's a car that would fit amazingly well into somebody's large collection

where they drive it occasionally.

I think that's still largely true as well.

I wouldn't like to say that we misunderstood it.

I think the road test verdict was pretty fair.

I was worried I'd been the harshest I've been on anything is probably a BMW C1 scooter.

Oh, mate, yeah.

Which my problems with it were, oh, no, I'll tell you what.

I also, no, I'll come onto it in a minute.

So it's a, it's a, it was a scooter with a roof.

A lid, yeah.

We had two long termers, yeah.

Really?

Yeah.

But it has a, but it's a scooter underneath fundamentally.

So it's got small wheels, which doesn't give it very good rotational stability.

You know, they're sort of, what do you call it, when a wheel spins and that gives you

an amount of speed.

You know what I mean?

I do.

Yeah.

But you don't get a lot of it because it doesn't have very big wheels.

And yet at the same time, it's got this enormously heavy body over the top of it.

When you mist up the inside of your helmet, you can kind of focus through a bit.

If it's drizzling out, you can kind of focus through the drizzle on your helmet.

That's difficult because the windscreen is further away.

It has a windscreen wiper on the outside.

But the mist would whip round to the inside.

And it was far enough away that you couldn't easily look through it.

And yet also you couldn't reach it to wipe it because you were seat belted into this

ridiculous upright seat.

So it was not very stable.

The proportions were box kite.

So it didn't react well to crosswinds.

Yeah, I remember it.

I despised it.

And I thought maybe I've been too kind.

Then the other day I re-watched a film called Spy,

which is a Melissa McCarthy comedy from 2015.

And in the way that some spy films do, somebody will commandeer a vehicle.

So some vehicle breaks.

She jumps on this scooter.

It's a BMW C1.

It goes about five yards.

It topples over.

And she goes, who puts a roof on a scooter?

What are you, the Pope?

And I thought maybe I was spawn after all.

Oh, I think you were.

I think you were.

We had two long termers, one, two, five, and then the later 200.

Oh, yeah.

And the thing that I remember is that the noise was immense

because they had a surface that faced you,

even though the sides were open.

The noise was caught in this circle around your head.

So whenever you gave it a little bit of something,

it used to shout at you.

It was so noisy.

But the thing I remember most was stopping next to a stop light.

And there are these three blokes in a transit,

a little bit of slight profanity warning coming.

These three heads came out and there were three blokes looking at me

and the one nearest to me rolled down the window

and he said, you don't half look like a tit, mate.

Yeah, I was probably also too harsh on the Audi A2.

Well, you really?

Yeah, probably.

Because it didn't ride very well.

The visibility was bad.

Visibility is bad.

Because it's got enormous A-pillars because it's aluminium.

And the ride was and remains harsh.

And it is harsh.

Is it harsh?

Well, it was by the standards of the late 90s, early 2000s.

But also they probably would have launched it on bigger wheels

than was strictly necessary.

Yeah, and you've changed yours a little bit.

Yeah, and now the ride doesn't bother me at all

because actually only in the last couple of years

has ride been starting to improve again.

Went through a poor phase, didn't it?

I think visibility is very thick A-pillars,

half a rear window to look through.

And I don't think I was that harsh on it,

but I think AutoCar gave it five stars in the road test.

And I thought that was too much.

Yeah, I was a bit hard to impress about the Mini, the BMW Mini.

Just because I was obsessed with Issa Gonus in 10 foot long cars

and just how well the original was packaged and stuff.

So when, you know, our bigger car came along that looked different,

I was, I mean, I was aware that it was going to be a good car,

but I was hard to convince.

Yeah.

I gave the Volvo EX30 a bit of a...

Yeah, you did.

What's the word for it?

That was about the software and I don't think I was wrong on that road.

But I really like the car.

But this brings me on to the subject of this week's podcast,

which is what we've been up to in our respective columns this week.

And Steve, where have you been?

I've been to Gothenburg, which is the Volvo capital of the world.

They make cars there, they develop them there,

they design them there, they do all the stuff.

It's remarkably, although owned by Geely in China,

there is no evidence of that at all.

It's still no, it just seems to be a nice Swedish company,

in fact, even more Swedish than it used to be.

There were two points of going to Gothenburg.

One was to be driven around a place in the new EX60 SUV,

which is a car that challenges the Neuer-class BMW iX3.

So it's a really serious battle going on.

Is it sort of one of those proper ones

where they'll be right against each other on price and size

and everything else?

Yeah, they've got it right in their sights.

But the other thing we saw was a 250 million pound

so-called software factory, which is a place where they

not so much right, but develop software into cars,

put it in, make sure it works, build the car up on rigs,

even moving rigs, so that the issues that they've had recently

were the EX40, sorry,

and the EX90, they're telling us a thing of the past.

What they've just done in this last week

is to update the software in two and a half million Volvos.

Apparently Volvos, a lot of Volvos have been connected since 2020.

And the other day, a couple of days ago as we speak,

they just pressed the button and 2.5 million cars got updated.

So they're really, really serious about this stuff

and they're doing it all themselves.

They still buy in battery cells, but they

now construct the battery themselves on their premises

and they develop their own software.

The Swedes are fantastic people in that they,

nobody made the slightest attempt to make an excuse.

They just thought, somebody said to me,

we hope that the customers will understand,

we're trying hard to fix it and we hope the customers will stay with us.

And I thought that just the candor and the straightforwardness was admirable.

Hawkins Samuelson is now back in temporary still charge.

He was the CEO until around 2018, 19, 20 maybe or maybe a bit later.

And then somebody else came in, is there a feeling

or is there an admission or do you get a vibe

that at some point they let somebody else

who doesn't understand exactly Volvo takeover

and now they've come back and gone, look, we need to remind people that we make,

we need to remind ourselves how to make sensible, reliable.

I think so, yeah, I think the tech pros have left the building.

Yeah, and there's a lot of concentration now on heritage

because they're very proud of their, both their safety and their,

remember they had this huge durability story

that they used to tell as well where everything lasted for 25 years.

And it's all sort of back, I was, I mean, as you know, easily persuaded into anything.

But the fact is, I tried to, you know, I try and cool it

and I did definitely try to cool it this time and they were,

they had a good answer for everything. I was really impressed.

I think both those of the future are going to be worth watching.

That's good because I have felt that they have lost their way a bit.

Well, it'll be very interesting. I mean, you are likely to participate,

I'm sure in the IX3 versus EX60 versus probably Mercedes-Benz,

which will be what, GLA?

GLA, I guess, yeah.

And I've said in the RAG that in the column that I,

I hope we give that a lot of space.

I think that's going to be a really important story because the cars are all new.

Yeah.

You know, along comes the Neuer class, which is a total rethink.

This EX60 is a total rethink and the same for the Benz.

You know, it's not very often that so many new cars aren't exactly new

because there's all this legacy stuff underneath, you know,

we have to use such and such a black morm or we have to use such and such an engine

and all that's gone and these three cars are new.

And it feels because of the way the market is these days that

that would have been effectively three series versus C-class versus yeah.

Yeah, whatever, whatever.

Yeah, something else from days gone by because,

yeah, because that was those were the compact executive class was the big class at the time.

And now this is probably the biggest class at the time.

The thing I find quite interesting also is that the platform that's under this Volvo is

Spa 3, they call it.

Right.

There's the SPA stands for something that I've temporarily,

if not permanently forgotten.

But it's apparently the car can be made lower,

which means that this EX60 for all its excellence is still a SUV.

Yeah.

Not absolutely not my absolute favorite format of car.

But if they I said to them, you know, what's what's a chance of of

doing a modern electric P 1800?

And of course they said,

well, I spoke to the to the to Anders Bell, the chief engineer who said,

I can't confirm anything, but I'm definitely up for it.

Oh, so the SPA Scalable Product Architecture 3,

we ran a story at the start of February saying it could allow traditional low riding as saloons

and estates like the S60 and V90 because SPA 3 has been developed for dramatically enhanced

engineering flexibility, allowing EVs to sit closer to the ground and giving it flexibility

of demand changes in future.

Battery capacity does not dictate the height of the vehicle.

No, it's good.

We said that is good.

Yeah.

Actually, this is my column this week.

We could come onto it before my job going to run out of well,

we'll run out of things to say if I'm not careful.

But yeah, it's exciting times.

Oh, hang on.

I've got an auto play on it.

Oh, be quiet.

Why is it?

Sorry.

And a video has started auto playing, irritating me in the way that they do.

Leave it in.

Leave it in, Jamie.

Leave that in.

Crikey for heaven's sake.

I don't even know what it was.

What was I saying before I was distracted by some annoying view on the internet?

Oh, yeah.

The flexibility.

Yes, the flexibility thing.

So the IX3 BMW, which I've driven overseas, not in the UK yet,

I think people are driving it this week, has a new platform,

which is all battery underneath.

And so the battery, the top of the battery casing is the cabin floor, effectively.

So you sit in an IX3 in a higher driving position than you would have done in,

say, a typical three series saloon, which is fine because it's a crossover.

And then also they've got this new display at the bottom of the instrument panel.

It's kind of across the bottom of the windscreen.

So to give yourself, we give themselves room for that,

so you don't have to be looking through the steering wheel.

The steering was mounted a little bit lower.

Yeah.

So it's not a trad BMW low bum, high wheel driving position.

Yeah, look through the wheel, yeah.

But that, of course, will translate to the I1 imagines, to the I3,

which is the saloon based off of that platform as well,

which is a three series derivative.

And that means that if you go to the electric version of the BMW 3 series,

which is going to be called I3, you'll still be sitting on top of the batteries.

Yeah.

Right on top of the batteries with a driving position.

It's a bit more perjury, isn't it?

You sit with a lower steering wheel and you look over the wheel rather than through the wheel.

Yeah.

So it depends whether you like that sporty driving position.

But actually, for a lot of people,

a car at the right height is probably higher than a traditional saloon was.

Yes, I think so.

It does help the, I mean, I'm aware of this myself, but I must say,

the impression I got was that the battery positioning and so on in the Volvo

is a bit more flexible than that.

And they are going to be able to deliver a low driving position,

a classic low driving position.

It was, they're impressive people.

But the battery is still one pack underneath the floor, is it?

Or is it divvied up?

I think it's kind of divvied up.

Oh, OK.

Because they, and they'll divvied up in different ways according to what the car is.

Yeah, because that's what the new Jaguar Type 00.

Yeah.

Actually, the Peugeot 208 does, doesn't it?

They arrange the battery in an L shape or whatever.

The reason, Volvo's reason for making their own battery packs is so they can suit all the

different cars.

This Spa 3 platform is going to go very big and very small.

And the battery is going to be bunged here and there, I think, and perhaps broken up.

It's, there were a number of things going on.

What they seem to be saying is this is the beginning of the rest of our lives, this car.

They're proud of the bigger cars that they built quite recently.

But this is where it's going to be.

And the other thing is that they, I said, well, is this a redemption car?

Are you, you know, is this where you, you admit to a few mistakes recently?

But is, is this now the perfect car?

They did, they were a bit reluctant to say, oh, yes.

But, but there is that feeling.

Yeah.

I'm looking forward to it.

I think it's going to be a damn good car.

Does it have more buttons inside?

Yes, it's got a beautiful, they're full of the excellence of the Hi-Fi, which in one

version has got 28 speakers.

And there's a beautiful roller volume button.

It's a joy just to touch it.

They're also talking about lots of AI in the car, Gemini and so on.

And they're pretty good demonstrations of what it can do for you.

I find it a bit bamboozling.

But I, I tend to get on terms with it because it is pretty good.

And you've had a passenger ride in the car.

Yeah.

So we were hurled around the test track on three different, in three different places.

And it was, it was impressive in all of them.

You know, the character of the car seems to be low road, low road noise, very keen on

a low road noise.

Good damping, but fairly supple.

Nice suit of me.

That's my kind of car.

Yeah.

Volvo person, you see.

Well, that's all right.

If they make it, I do think the tide has turned on everything on screens.

Isn't it?

I drove the Audi RS5 last week and Audi C.

The story's out now.

Story's out now.

Yeah.

And by surprise, Audi CEO, Gernet Donner, just turned up.

They just said that.

So we were having, you know, we were, we'd got there one night, we'd done a bit of driving

and everything else.

They're like, oh yeah, by the way, Gernet's going to be here in the morning.

And there he was, there he was, came down in the morning and went, we was doing some driving,

had engineers next to us and stuff like that.

And he just went, oh, I'll jump in with you.

That's right.

Half an hour.

Wow.

Really great.

But he was saying that customers have told them they don't like everything on a touch screen.

So he's been there two and a half years.

So his influence, I suppose, is starting to come in.

I think he's undone that naming thing where they gave different cars, different numbers

based on the power output they had, which was ridiculously confusing.

Also the bit where they separated A4 and A5 where the four was going to be

electric and odd numbers were going to be combusted.

He's done away with that because he's like, that's just silly.

And then there's other rationalization as well.

He said, howdy has a hundred steering wheels, different kinds of steering.

I mean, it might not be that many, but you know, that's what he's saying.

We've got a hundred steering wheels.

Wow.

And they've got a lot.

He said, none of them is any good.

Excellent work.

None of them are round.

All right.

And he said, we've got to rationalize it because the only way we can do that is,

and also with light clusters, he said, we've got like 20 different headlight units.

I'm sure.

He said, we need two and we need five steering wheels.

By 2030, we'll have that because there are so many other competitors.

We can't build cars as cheaply as the Chinese.

So we have to rationalize what we do.

Still make it feel different for customers.

But why would you have 20 headlight?

He says, sometimes companies need to go through these simplification phases.

And then of course, as time goes, it gets a bit.

It's happened before at this place.

Yeah.

And he just says, we just need to drag it all back in.

And the concept C, the TT-ish looking concept, I think it's bigger than a TT.

It's probably.

Yeah.

The one they say isn't a TT.

Not a TT.

And I don't know if it's a two plus two or a four C to a lot, but it's bigger than a TT.

Yeah.

And I think that will be a bit of a reset in terms of interior functionality.

But yeah, he likes having buttons and he says, I like, you know, I like,

he used to work for Porsche.

He developed the 918 Spider.

I think some of the remote steering wheel.

Sorry.

So he likes round steering wheels.

Oh, good luck.

Yeah.

Is that, he's round the round steering wheel.

Were you about to say that that's a sort of passport to having fewer steering wheels?

Well, I think he just, no, I think, I think they just, there's an acceptance they need

fewer and they will be different functionality because different cars will need different

buttons for different things.

But I think fundamentally he wants five base things for the engineers.

Sounds exciting to me.

Yeah.

And the roundness I'm excited by because round wheels work best and the RS5 has got a

not entirely round wheel.

I reckon, you know, this, this move back towards things being more controllable,

more human, you know, Volvo were full of, you know, doing things for humans.

I think that the sort of remoteness of the screen era,

which seems to have coincided with the arrival of EVs, you know, that may have reflected

badly on the first EVs, if you get me, you know, when in the next era that we're just

starting to see where, you know, there are nicer controls in cars.

You know, I think people just feel warmer about the car.

I did.

I just like this set of controls in this.

There's still a lot going on with the screen, but it was.

Because you've got to have them, haven't you?

Because there's so much, there's so much they're all connected.

And the clarity is great.

Yeah.

And, you know, you need all that computer power, don't you?

But anyway, I think, I think an era of greater sort of intimacy with the car is going.

Yeah.

I'm forward.

Yeah, I'm forward.

And I think we'll look back on this sort of phase and just go,

that was a misstep by the industry.

Probably Tesla inspired because they were quite successful with buttonless cabins,

weren't they effectively?

And I think the rest of the industry went, well, why don't we do a bit of that?

But actually we can do it better.

Yeah.

But maybe the appeal of the Tesla wasn't

about its buttonless screen interior.

It represented something that wasn't the trad industry.

Some people.

There's a lot of novelty, wasn't there?

Yeah.

You know, all that stuff of being able to drive down the road and see the traffic around you

depicted on the screen.

You know, that was totally foreign to me.

I thought it was magic.

Yeah.

Still do.

And also, but as screens go, Tesla's is one of the best.

Yeah.

Still, I mean, probably still in some functionality terms, still is.

And they've, they did a lot of things, didn't they?

You know, cracked lightness that were,

I never get over the fact that the Tesla Model 3 was,

was something like 400 kilograms lighter than a BMW i5.

Yeah.

And, you know, boots front and rear.

It's a lot to give away.

Yeah.

Lot of packaging advantages in a lot of Tesla's big, big boot at the front and a big boot at the rear.

Yeah.

Let's take a quick break.

While I tell you this now, this podcast is sponsored by Anderson.

Search Anderson-EV.com and you will find their full range of design-led premium home chargers.

What else have I been in the archive for this week?

I haven't been there at all.

I've been in the bleeding airport.

Yeah.

Go on.

Do you want to tell us about it or not?

Oh, well, I just got into some immigration strife.

I've got the wrong passport.

I failed to get make proper preparations.

I was rightly picked up for it.

I did a lot of whinging and I'm out of it now.

But it kept me, I wrote this bit in my column about how fantastic it would have been compared

with my experience of getting home from Trullhatton, from Gothenburg, Trullhatton.

There's an echo from the past.

Headquarters of Saab.

Compared with that, just getting in a nice car, anything that I like and driving back

via, you know, on nice roads in 15 hours and being at my gaff with the car out the front

would have been better.

I don't care if it was even if an air trip was shorter.

Yeah, I'm the same for a job in a...

And actually, in a few weeks time, I've got to take a, I've got to start a job in Paris.

But we're picking up a car from the airport, which means we're flying to Paris.

Actually, I think from here, I would more happily one drive or two go on the train

than get on an airplane to do that, I think.

And go on the same.

I've got some interviews scheduled a couple of weeks time in France and that is going to

involve driving over and I'm looking forward to it.

Oh, good.

Oh, brilliant.

Have you got any holiday road trips or anything planned or are you just...

Well, we keep talking about it.

My wife has been away on a job, oh, you know, work trips, let's say.

But we, one of the things where she reappears in a couple of days and one of the things we're

going to do is organize a decent holiday trip.

I fancy a trip in the Alpine to La Rochelle down on the French coast where we have had

some nice holidays.

Also, Cornwall is always a welcoming Cornwall in Scotland.

Yeah.

But anyway, I think this is going to be a year for road trips for us.

Oh, good.

Chris Britton writes from North Yorkshire to say he's looking to change his Audi S3 for

something more engaging after four years.

He wrote to us autocarathaymarket.com or to Stephen Me.

Our email addresses are at the end of our columns if you subscribe to the magazine

or find it on the newsstands.

Anyway, Chris, fancy something more engaging than his Audi S3.

It's been a great commuter, an occasional second family car.

And while it's a great all-rounder, it's never truly excited me.

Our two children are still young, but past the point of prams and the like.

So I'm wondering if now is the time to move to something more focused and realistically,

probably less practical.

My most fondly-remembered cars have been four MR2s, Mark IIs and IIIs.

Good cars.

Yeah, Mark III, MR2.

They are.

Jack, have you, you know, Jack Harrison, our photographer's got one.

Yes, in fact, you told me.

Yeah.

Here's what you've not, you've not seen it.

No, it looks good.

Yeah, it looks nice.

Yeah, I haven't tried it, but it looks great.

I enjoy them a lot at the time.

He's going to do a prodigious mileage, isn't he?

Because he's a real, he's everywhere.

Because we give him a, yeah, we give him,

he runs a car for the magazine and writes about it.

But I think sometimes he just turns up in the Toyota because he just wants to.

Yeah.

And that's which is cool.

And a Supercharged Mini R53 Cooper S says,

Chris, all cars I would take for a drive just for the fun of it.

Since its release in 2012, I've loved the idea of a Toyota GT86.

I'm yet to drive one, but it gives me similar vibes to those cars I mentioned.

Raw old school driver focused and with the benefit of two snug rear seats,

which could be used for occasional school runs as needed.

I've considered all the usual hot hatches,

but feel there's something about a car that's designed from the start to be a sports car.

I know you've talked about an 86 being on your shortlist map.

If you were looking for such a car, but I'm in a potential,

I'm potentially in a position to make the move.

So I'm seeking some final encouragement to see if I can get this over the line.

Budget of up to £15,000 must be engaging, but seat four if not in much comfort.

Should he buy a Toyota GT86?

I think it's false to you to push him over the line.

Well, I think you should, Chris.

Yes.

But do you agree?

I agree with you.

Absolutely do.

And the more you see him just bowling about, you think, gosh,

it's a good looking car, interesting format.

Not many cars look like that, do they?

Pretty practical sort of, you know, depends on the kids, I think.

Well, I used to do, I ran one as a long timer in about 2015, 14, 15.

And sorry, mate, do I need to give you more room there?

No, no, no.

It's just that my gummy nears plan.

Oh, okay.

Sorry, Steve's just kicked the heater out the way.

And is it warm enough because I turned it off earlier?

No, no, I'm not.

It's fine.

It's wonderful.

So I'm out there.

Well, yeah, sun is shining.

It is not in 2014, 2015.

So my children would have been teenagers, young teenagers at the time,

maybe 12, 13 and 13, probably 12 or 13, 15.

Yeah, I used to do the school run often in it.

And one in the front, one with the front passenger seat

scooched a bit forwards and the one sitting behind them.

But we used to go four up to a couple of places as well.

This is a, honestly, this is the car he needs, isn't it?

Yeah.

And the rear seat folds and or maybe it doesn't fold, but it's,

but it, sorry, it may not split, but it does fold.

So I got a few lengths of four by two in it.

Yeah, two, I think two meter long bits of wood that I needed.

And you can squeeze those through.

So it said, I think it's a much more practical car

than people give it credit.

What, 15 grams plenty, isn't it?

Yeah, get you a good one, I think.

Would that get you a GR?

Might do.

Might be a leggy one.

But I think, depending on the mileage I did,

GR's a nicer car, feels a bit more polished, a bit more poised.

Same size?

Yeah, very similar.

They're both like 1215 to 30 kilos or something like that.

So I think the GR's a bit, steering's a bit slicker,

maybe a bit less granally involving, but I think a better chassis all around.

But both really good.

Thing is, I think there's a number of things that work out there.

You know, it looks different.

It's a, yeah, there's a bit more of an imaginative choice than an Audi.

And now, you know, the S3, not a bad car.

No, good car, but yeah, good car.

I was going to, I forgot about the kids, I was going to say,

MX-5 because, you know, I just like, I had a good experience with,

every time I see an MX-5 or the vintage of car I had, I feel a bit stupid about selling it.

Do the school run twice.

Yeah, good, good idea.

But yeah, there's not much else.

There's not much else.

That's a nice choice.

Yeah, I think that's a really good choice, Chris.

So yes, it gets the auto pass stack of approval.

If you do it, give us a, get back to us.

Will, you would love to know, you know, what cars you saw.

Oh yeah, do let us know.

Yeah, because I really like this when people get in touch and then they stay in touch.

Because we've got a reader who is in touch with us, who's ordered a Morgan Super 3,

on the back of what we talked about that, well, he may have done anyway,

but I think we maybe just tipped him over the balance and I get little notes from him

because it's approaching delivery time and everything else.

Is he about to get, gosh, what a perfect time to pick it up?

I think gets it in April, I think, which is pretty much spot on.

They build Super 3s in batches down at Morvan.

And I think it's coming through.

And I think they're, unlike the, you can do a Morgan factory tour, which is great,

but unlike the four-wheeled cars, the three-wheelers tend to be built in a batch in one workshop,

rather than moving from place to place to place.

And they tend to have kind of one technician who assembles.

Yeah, who will do the, a bit like, I suppose, a bit like Aerial.

The car will stay in one place and get built up,

rather than traveling from station to station.

Exciting time.

Exciting time, yeah, really exciting.

Oh, I want to hear from him too.

Yeah, well, yes, he ordered the Super 3 and bought an L322, is that right?

I think, right?

Oh, yes, yes.

You remember?

I was picking to yesterday.

I went to Classic Collective yesterday, which is a sort of one-stop-shop classic car.

No, I don't know what you call it.

They'll restore, but they will maintain service, whatever you want.

Do they sell stuff?

So they sell stuff?

Less so, I think.

But they kind of, yeah, I think, I mean, I think they would if you said,

can you help me sell my X or buy me an X?

Because the bloke went in with a Land Rover and said,

I want to do an interior restoration on this Land Rover.

And they said, look, you can do it, but this Land Rover is a bit of a shed.

Why don't we help you buy a better one?

So they did that.

That's the advice you wanted, isn't it?

Yeah, so I went to get the BMW 330 CR that I'm running, so I'm serviced in there.

Anyway, though, we were chatting about old Range Rovers and Dom,

one of the co-directors has got a P38, which is just restored.

And it's really nice.

Yeah.

Really, really nice.

And he says they don't, they don't, they don't really rot.

Everything comes home, doesn't it?

Everything comes, you know, remember,

people used to stand in line to whinge about the P38, and remember Stormy's dad had one?

Yeah, because wasn't he involved?

That's Matt Saunders, the road test editor.

Wasn't his dad involved in developing it or doing something with it?

Yeah, that's right.

Yeah.

But he always swore by it.

And they look nice now.

Yeah.

I went on the launch.

Did you?

That memorable for the fact that they spent fantastic amount of money on the launch, too,

to the point of having, you know, table napkins with Range Rover launch,

written on them and special cup lary and all kinds of nonsense.

They do.

I know we're talking shop here, but JLR do still

extraordinarily good vehicle launches with amazingly good routes.

That's what I think is the test route that we get to drive their cars on.

There's a bloke called David Sneeth, isn't there?

Yeah, who runs the kind of experience.

Sorts all that out, yeah.

Yeah.

And he's been doing it a long time.

And he, in fact, he helped one of my sons to a brief Land Rover career.

It was good.

Oh, really?

Shall I tell this story?

I'm going to tell this story.

Go on, mate.

Go on.

The launch, I think, of the original Range Rover Sport, 2004, 2005,

my last job before I started at Auto Car.

So I'd signed the paperwork and I was working at my notice period.

And it was in Italy, I think, and the off-road route was really special.

And what they'd arranged was special permission to drive through this

nature reserve.

What's the better word than a nature reserve?

Like a big, you know, like a national park.

So to arrange special permission to do this route particularly,

and it crossed a river a few times on the way to the top of a hill,

where they'd set up an off-road demonstration,

where this car would drive up an impossibly steep rock face,

which you could barely walk up.

I walked up it to try and get some pictures while the car was driving up.

And they said, look, we've attached a rope to the front,

because just in case anything goes wrong,

but you can see the amount of slack in it.

We're just driving up, but if anything fails,

it will not come back down.

Anyway, this was back in the days of route maps,

route books, where you have a little tulip diagram.

And you know, it says you go this way, then you go that way,

then you go this way.

So we go into this national park,

and we cross the river a couple of times,

get to the top, get out, mooching around, have a cup of tea.

And all of a sudden, there was this massive consternation.

And a load of people, a load of the support drivers,

just jumped in their cars, started heading back down to the front.

What happened is somebody had come in,

and the instructions on the route book were,

enter the river, cross the river, then turn right.

This driver had entered the river, cross the river,

between him and his co-driver.

They decided that actually turning right meant

you turned right and went up the riverbed.

However, there was this sort of rock ledge to drive across,

but there was a massive, probably four-foot deep pool in front of it.

So they turned right and just dropped it straight into this four-foot deep pool,

up to the windows, basically.

At which point, it wouldn't go any further.

So this massive panic, they all went down anyway.

Off air, and I will tell you who it was.

Yeah, I'm not telling you that.

Was it somebody that you might expect to do such a thing?

No, no, absolutely not.

No, 100% not.

So somebody was afraid?

No, no, no, no.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Very much so.

Yeah, very much so.

But it was just that photos do exist.

I can tell you that because I've seen them on the back of a camera,

but I think they will never see the light of day.

What else should we talk?

Maybe 43 minutes, we've been yakking on four of them.

We talked my column a bit, I think, which is...

Well, I was just talking about batteries under the floor.

Oh, yes.

Versus having batteries in packs.

That's...

Which allows the...

Like the Jaguar does, and the upcoming Jaguar does,

and the Purgeo does.

This four-foot is the same.

Yeah, so you sit on the battery,

and your foot goes in between the batteries.

That's it.

Allowing you to sit lower, which is good for...

If you want a low drawing position,

if you want a small frontal area, it's good for that.

Relativity to the cow height and the windowsch level.

Yeah, it just provides flexibility again.

I think the designers have had a bit of a hard time

these last few years with skateboards.

Yes, so that's why it's weird

that BMW has opted for a skateboard

with a new-classer platform

and made such a big song and dance about it.

Yeah, but it's a pretty clever skateboard.

It's quite a low...

It's quite a thin battery pack, I think,

in the scheme of things.

There's not much space above and below the cells.

Shall we talk the Wells Fatige?

Oh, yeah, yeah.

We went...

You remember I was going on about how we...

We're going to interview Mike Cross, the former...

You know, dynamic...

Oh, yeah, you're speaking to him.

Yeah, you're speaking to him at...

At a...

Jokes nearby.

Jokes Cafe, Garage Cafe.

Yeah.

Former Roots dealership turned into a cafe.

Yeah.

Just off the Fosway.

It's in our sort of...

...area, not far from Gaiden.

Anyway, Mike Cross came over

and we just had a conversation in front of about 40 people

who were nice enough to come along and listen to us.

And he was really interesting, Mike, just talking about...

In fact, one of the things we touched on was...

You know, the joys of passenger rides for testing.

Oh, interesting.

But I've lost the point now.

What are we talking about?

Oh, Wells Fatige.

Oh, yes, yes.

Well, one of the guests was Robin Wells,

the bloke who dreamed up the idea of the Vertige,

designed it pretty much, or, you know, the keep on.

Certainly styled it.

Yeah, and it's a two-seater coupé.

Yeah.

Mid-engined.

Yeah, with a transverse mid-engined Ford 2.0-litre.

Nice car.

The, you know, compact looks lovely.

You've driven a prototype, haven't you?

Yeah.

Well, at that stage worked to do it clearly.

And Robin knew that.

He set up a little factory nearby.

Has built about 10, I think.

This car is where, that he brought to the thing,

was all covered on the vulnerable bits of the body

to protect it against, you know, pebble, gravel rash, you know.

And this is going to be the auto car test car in a couple of weeks.

Oh.

And he took pleasure in telling me

that the reason it was all bagged up

is because they wanted to look nice in the pics.

Oh, brilliant.

So it was good to see it.

Yeah.

And, you know, he's amazing bloke, really,

because he just wants to build his own car.

He doesn't want to build them in huge numbers.

You know, if he does a dozen a year, he'll be happy.

Yeah, that's the way it should be.

Yeah.

Because you can probably, you don't employ loads of people

and you make some money, don't you?

Yeah, I think.

And he always looks as though it's going well.

He's got a big smile on his face.

He's just one of those people that reflects the sort of certainty.

You know how lots of us, you know,

when we're doing something we haven't done before,

we sort of think, God, I hope it's all right, you know.

But he just has a sense of direction.

He's great bloke, really nice guy to talk to.

Anyway, that's all going to break.

I think it'll probably be a month,

by the time we get it together.

But the car looked nice, lovely, beautiful color.

What color is it?

I think it was a sort of, underneath the disguising,

it was a sort of metallic red color.

Oh, nice.

Looked nice.

Even in the light, in the darkness, you know,

I took this phone pick of it and looked good to me.

Yeah.

Well, there was a car the other day that was,

they didn't want to show it in a grayscale monochrome color.

But then eventually they, you know,

somebody had ordered one in that spec or whatever.

It's like, oh yeah, it suddenly looked really good.

I think they'd launched it.

Oh, maybe the Ferrari 849 Testerotta,

which the press cars at the launch were all red and yellow.

And the design director Flavio Manzoni

had a picture the other day that he put out of one

that had been specced in a kind of gray, bronzy, metallicky,

really, really good guy.

It looked so much nicer than it looked.

It looked like, yeah, this finally is the car.

That looks great in that color.

Amazing what a color can do.

Intelligent color.

Yes.

What's happening at Buley Motor Museum?

The National Motor Museum at Buley to give it its...

Yeah, they're having a big year, I think.

They've just spent or are spending $600,000 on a...

Is it $600,000?

Yeah, well, $600,000.

On a new thing called...

I think it's called Driven or something.

Yeah.

It's all about British cars.

Britain's motoring story.

Yeah, and they've divided Britain's motoring story

into five phases and they have displays for each of the five.

And they do the things you'd expect,

like the plugged-in side of things.

And before that, the legislative, so on.

And it goes to Buley as a fantastic collection

of very old cars.

They go right back to the beginning,

some of the very earliest.

But they just...

And what they've done with their 600K

is to change the entrance to the museum

and completely remodel their upper floors.

So as well as just being a display,

it's also a change to the architecture of the place,

which is exciting.

Now, I think I admire the National Motor Museum

because it's not the easiest thing to have a very large attraction

in a place where not everybody in the country

can easily reach, I suppose.

It's a nice place to go.

It's a beautiful place to go, isn't it,

in the New Forest, which is not...

But you've got to decide to do it, don't you?

You have, yeah.

I mean, I grew up not a million miles away,

but it would still take an hour and a half, probably,

from where I grew up, maybe,

or it could take an hour and a half.

And their answer to that is just to do good stuff.

And they have these rather excellent events.

They have several auto jumbles a year that became famous.

I used to go down there and buy a brooch for the misses,

believe it or not, an automotive brooch,

because I always had people selling strange jewelry.

Yeah.

It's weird.

Yeah.

But also, everything, you know,

you could buy a Willy's Jeep gearbox or whatever you like.

Yeah, I should do an auto jumble and get rid of some stuff,

I think, really.

Well, if you're prepared to pilot up,

you could probably go there and...

I suppose the thing is, though,

you're then at that risk of being there all day

and nobody turns up who wants a human-imped gearbox.

Yeah.

Which is quite feasible.

Whereas, I suppose, if you were online,

you'd find somebody...

If you just advertised it online,

there's always be somebody who wants a human-imped gearbox.

And yeah.

But when you go there, it is a...

I'm sure people leave a lot with stuff they don't actually need.

They just sort of see a couple of forward-prefect wheels

and think, oh, they look nice.

They look nice.

Yeah, I do have a set of...

Are they nine-spoke or eight-spoke Audi slash...

I think that Audi wheels...

Anyway, the TT wheels probably that I took off the A2

that I've been meaning to sell.

But I just don't...

It's not that I don't like selling things.

I'm very happy to let them go.

I'm not a hoarder.

If somebody came and said, here's a couple hundred quid,

here's...

And I'll take...

Fine, take them away right now, please.

Yeah.

But just the slight ball ache of actually selling them is online.

It puts me off because you just hear and see these stories...

Well, somebody comes around and then they look at them

and they tell you why they're not quite as good

as they thought they were going to be.

But actually, I've had...

Which is stuff because I've had some really nice experience

of selling...

I sound like a cart when we were younger and we sold it online

and a guy turned up and was lovely.

It couldn't have been lovelier.

Yeah.

And I sold a Triumph TR2 to a guy in Germany

and it was also a real...

Also a real...

Such a pleasure that I drove the car over...

Well, I'd trailed it over to him.

He said, how will I get it?

I just said, I'll bring it.

Wow.

You know, he just...

Well, I'd had such a messing around but people...

Some blokes said, I'm coming over from France.

Is it...

Would you be flexible in the price?

I was like, yeah, a bit like maybe 10% whatever.

You know, a bit...

Of course, there's a bit factored in.

Anyway, then he came over, he drove it, he liked it

and he went away and then a couple of days later,

he offered me like 30% off the price.

Yeah.

Just like...

You've just wasted your time in mine

because I told you I wasn't going to give that much off of it.

And so why did you get...

Why did you bother?

Why did you bother wasting your time in mine?

Anyway, a guy from...

Andreas from Germany.

It's unlikely to be listening but if you are, hello.

Said, love the car, looks great.

I'll pay you what you want.

How am I going to get it?

So if you're paying what you want, mate, I will see you next week

and I'll bring it on a trailer.

Yeah.

And had a really nice journey over.

Yeah, nice transaction.

I think, yeah.

And he had a great collection as well.

He had some nice...

He basically had a little warehouse in his village

that he'd hired, rented or bought.

And inside were BMW M1, early flat-floor E-Type.

Wow.

And Porsche 912 and...

Yeah, proper...

Didn't have much French or Italian

but a lot of British, American and German.

German cars probably had 20.

Oh, right.

Oh, gosh.

Interesting.

I remember that TR2 special, wouldn't it?

Yeah.

It's nice.

It was nice.

Yeah.

If you're thinking about selling it, Andreas, let me know.

Because it could...

It's one of those things.

I remember my son saying,

look, one day we should get that back.

But I didn't have the space and the time and the...

I needed...

I could have done...

I think we were about to move house and I needed the...

I wanted the money.

Always a way in it.

It was always something.

But anyway.

Anyway.

Yes, I might...

You could go over and get it.

It sounded like a nice...

Well, I was thinking about buying something else.

So...

Yeah, yeah.

Oh, good luck.

So that brings us about to the end of this week's

My Week in Cars podcast.

Also on this feed, we have our Jeremy Clarkson interview

last week.

James Cameron interview, which ran just over the weekend.

And coming up in a few days' time is an interview with

the Dacia design boss, David Durant.

Actually, it's interesting.

I was talking to somebody else in the industry

just a few days ago about my Dacia,

which is a Series 2 Duster.

And we're up to the three.

And he says they're getting too good, you know.

It was a designer.

Oh, really?

And he says that the two was a bit...

It was just a slightly less ambitious than the three.

And he liked them unambitious.

That's interesting.

So...

Because they were more affordable too, as well?

Or...

Well, I think he felt just a bit less modern stylish.

And...

Oh, just from a design and aesthetic perspective.

And the latest one he feels goes close to...

You can sort of see the attempts to reposition the car.

He's not sure that repositioning is the right thing to do.

Yeah, I get that.

I think Dacia should be held to the position of popularity

that it did for...

They've done so well by having their boy.

Yeah, because it was a no-nonsense.

It's like a Tesco value thing, isn't it?

You know, it's just the shop's own brand,

white bread, loafer white bread.

That's it.

I'm always boasting about this car.

It's crazy, but I just love it so much.

Yeah, I can believe it.

I can totally believe it.

That does bring us to the end of this week's podcast.

There's more that we haven't talked about.

I was worried we were going to run out of stuff,

but I haven't talked about the RS5 at all, really.

Oh, no.

Haven't talked about the 600,000-mile Audi A2

that I saw the other day online.

And we will talk about that in the coming weeks.

Yeah.

I think.

Thank you, Steve.

See you later, mate.

See you next week.

A roof on a scooter? Volvo sorting itself out. A-Class vs A2.

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