Corvettes, the Can-Am Lotus, luxury MPVs

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Hello. Welcome to the AutoCup podcast. My week in cars with prior here.

Steve Cropper there. Morning Stephen. Morning mate. Morning mate. Triumphant return to the

storeroom. It's been a while. I've missed the automotive storeroom. But every time we go and

come back, they've moved something. Like the big plinth, whatever you call them,

that I'm allowed to rest my laptop on. They will hide them away. But I'm happy to be back.

I suppose it's like a restaurant. They change the menu every now and again.

Every now and again. Just keep you interested. Go to the supermarket and find that the tomatoes

have moved. Right. This podcast is as ever brought to you in association with Anderson EV.

Makers of top quality domestic electric vehicle chargers.

Nice folks in Bedford. Very nice folks in Bedford. British designed and built seven-year warranty.

If you go to anderson-ev.com, you can see all of the different designs they make and they look

very, very good. Yeah. There are several versions now. There's a higher volume one or the one that

I have got because mine's an early one. And yeah, it's good. I'm two years into my seven-year

warranty, so I'm feeling secure. Anderson-ev.com for all of your domestic...

Oh, should we talk about the 50 quid? Well, I think that offer runs till the end of October.

So get in quickly. Get in quickly. Mention the My Week in Cars podcast too,

then when you order it and you will get 50 pounds off. But that offer runs at midnight

on October the 31st. Well, it'd be interesting to hear from somebody that made the phone call

on the 2nd of November. I don't want to see it. Yes, I don't want to see it. I don't know. Maybe you...

Well, I mean, I wouldn't like to say, but maybe if you phone them up first thing on the 1st of

November, they'll... I don't know. Who knows? Who knows? I'd like to hear. You can write to us.

Listen up. Autricartatheymarket.com as Tim in London has done to say,

on owning a classic tractor in a terraced house in the city, which we sort of mentioned last week

about classic tractors. Tim says, I lived in Frankfurt in the late 80s. Central Frankfurt is

high density living with street parking at a premium. Every so often, you'd spot a classic

tractor parked on the curb and you knew the owner had had their license revoked, perhaps for excess

party juice or speeding. However, tractors with a maximum speed of 40 kilometers an hour could

be driven on a separate license. So a classic Deutz, Fent and even early Porsche tractors could

be seen regularly around the city. Do not know if this is still an hour now. Thank you, Tim in London.

What a winner. That's the way, isn't it? It is. Yeah. A little bit exposed to the weather, but

a little bit. A little bit, but not the end of the world. And Rupert Richards writes to say,

the standard engine went into the Ferguson TEA-20 and Rupert sends a photo of his 48 Ferguson,

which is in regular working use. It looked good, didn't it? I thought it didn't say that. Oh,

they're great. I did, yeah. The derivative was used in a Morgan plus four, good strong engine.

Concur with Steve's bevel drive to catty comments, the ones that would take your

angle off if you weren't careful. Fabulous win on song, but a pain to kick start. I rate the

retro GT 1000. Is that how you get it? GT 1000? I suppose, yeah. Anyway, thank you, Rupert, for the

picture of your tractor and the note. I love the parked in the street job. That's brilliant,

isn't it? That's brilliant. Yeah, a way to get to the pub without. Or work, hasn't it? Or work,

the next hour or thereabouts. We're going to be talking our respective auto car columns and

much more besides. Steve, where have you seen a Can-Am Lotus? Well, you and I saw it. It was a

car that just built a few years ago, but it was a thing called the Lotus 66. It's on display in

the British Motor Museum, and we, it's something that Lotus under Geely built fairly recently,

but using most of the plans for a Can-Am car that was proposed by Colin Chapman but never

used. And the idea was that McLaren, in those days, Bruce McLaren and Denny Halb were making

big inroads into the races there, making a lot of money, lots of American series,

American Canadian, I think series. Lots of money though, and Chapman motivated by the pound note

thought they could probably dip into it, but never did. And this car now is a sort of modernized

version of that thing. And it looks, it's got, although it's got a fully enclosed body,

there are overtones of Lotus 72 about it. It's really remarkable, sort of wedgy looking thing.

It's an amazing looking car, isn't it? I think how big Can-Am cars are. It's huge.

Yeah, lots of, lots of arrow, you know, downforce. But the thing is, I'm normally deeply intimidated

by cars with 830 horsepower, but somebody upstairs was saying, you'd need the big boy brave pants to

get into that. But the thing I found good about it was that it had a rather luxurious,

a sort of gentlemen driver driving position, didn't it? You know, it's a kind of corduroy

seat. Yeah, I thought the seat looked remarkably pleasantly upholstered, actually. I thought,

yeah, it looked, it's beautifully done, isn't it? It's really beautifully done.

And that had, but it still had those, those amazing, amazing induction stacks that come

out of the center of the motor with it. And they're so big, they won't fit together without being

slightly sort of put in a, you know, in a rather asymmetrical way, just so that all the,

all the air can get down there. It's great, wasn't it? Yeah. And they're going to, the plan was,

maybe still is, they were going to make a tent, I think, is that right? That's right, a million,

a million ago. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, Geely is, in a degree, well Lotus is

not the most logical organization at the moment. So we're, we're sort of wondering whether it

will happen. But look like it, you could imagine 10 millionaires around the book,

billionaires around the world wanting one. Yeah, I could, I could well imagine wanting one if I

had all the money and the spend driving it for fun quite a lot. Yeah. I would think, yeah.

Because you'd find somewhere to, I mean, there'll be super expensive track days. I wonder if you

could find somewhere to race one or not. Yeah. I mean, there are places where you can race.

Most things, if you really try, they might put you in a weird class somewhere. But if you really,

but if you turned up somewhere and said, I wanted to do. Yeah, or if the very worst bung it up in

Hillclimb. Yeah, we go pretty well. Pretty wide. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, it would make a lot of

lovely noise. I mean, I've been at Shelsley Wolfe plenty of times and seen Lola T70 go up there.

That's bulky and noisy. I saw a bloke at Shelsley or Prescott and he had an old something. It looked

like an old Can Amcar. I don't know what it was exactly. But he'd obviously owned it for a long

time. It hadn't raced for a long time, but he used to just punt it up the hill for fun now. And again,

tyres must have been 30 years old. But he just went, well, you know, I just come, bring it,

unload it, run it up the hill a couple of times. Got a cruise and then take it away.

And on the straight bits, it was probably still pretty handy. Yeah, you would think so.

Yeah, you would think so. What has the General Motors President been doing?

I was just looking through automotive news, which is a, you know, well known

European and American sort of industry title. And they're 100 years old, I think, and they,

which makes them rather young in our terms. But they were inviting various

luminaries from the industry to write essays. And there's a bit by this bloke called Mark Royce,

who's the president of GM. His dad, believe it or not, was also the president of GM for a few years.

But he just wrote this really rather lovely, happy piece about his connection with the Corvette.

And he was, you know, talking about being squeezed into the back of an original,

or stingray type, Corvette and being driven round by his old man. And as a kid, he met

the Zora Arkazdantov, the bloke that was, I suppose, the, not, didn't design the first Corvettes,

but he caused them to become such a big part of American life. And he was, there was all kinds of

bits and pieces, including the fact that Royce himself had driven one at $226, was it?

$233, it says. $225 Corvette ZR1, as they would say. Breaking the world record for the fastest

production car of less than a million dollars. Not bad. Pretty good, isn't it? Not bad for the

president of a, you know, as a sort of, I suppose, a guy that we would normally think of as a bit

of a shiny bum, you know, a sort of office waller. And the thing is, I was just taken with the fact

that this bloke has grown up from absolute babyhood as a car nut. And he was making the point that

the latest mid-engined Corvette is obeys the intentions of Dantov, who built a load of concept

cars, mid-engined V8 concept cars, starting in the 60s, I think, 62 to 1990, there were three of them.

Dantov wanted the Corvette eventually to be a mid-engined car, and now it is.

Oh, interesting.

So he says that while we may, we latecomers may think that the Corvettes are supposed to be

front-engined, they're not. According to Dantov, they should have been mid-engined.

Because there was quite a long time, wasn't there? I remember doing a couple of Corvette

events where some of the engineers were like, actually, the Corvette traditionalists,

A, wanted it to be front-engined, but B, it was leaf sprung for quite a long time, wasn't it?

And there was a bit of a resistance to move away from that, even though, I mean, eventually it did,

as you say, it's pretty advanced, suspension-wise these days. But I can't remember, even as little

as 20 years ago, there was still leaf sprung all back. Transverse leaf spring, is that right?

In the sort of Volvo-ish style.

Yeah, we're doing it again, aren't we? This is, I've also got this echo, and I was wondering

whether there wasn't some, never looked things up, do we? I think there was,

there might have been a composite leaf spring involved.

With the Corvette or the Volvo?

Yeah, with the Corvette.

Yeah, so yeah, I think you're right, yeah. But also with the Volvo's. So when the,

one of the engineers told me a story about this, about the XC90, I think, was in 2014-2015,

and that got a leaf spring, one big long transverse leaf spring, rather than long intuinal ones.

And they were doing some development work with it. The plan, the thinking is, is because you can

put it underneath the boot floor, and it's very wide and it's very flat, so it doesn't actually

intrude into the wheel arch area, where you might have a big upright strut, and actually then

intrude on the boot. The idea was that this leaf spring would run underneath the boot floor,

very compact, and because it's composite, it would actually be very light, and therefore

you wouldn't have some of the unsprung mass drawbacks of a big heavy leaf spring.

And some of those, the steel leaves, as Land Rover owners know, tend to get more and more

clogged up with rubbish and friction, and the damping goes wrong and all that.

So the Volvo engineers started doing a bit of development on it, and they ordered,

from the Volvo back catalogue, a bunch of old leaf springs that had been fitted to

Volvo's previous, to just do some basic development work and thinking about it.

So they ordered a bunch of them, and then a little alarm went off somewhere in the headquarters,

and something flashed up on a spreadsheet going, we think that we might have a problem with

old leaf sprung cars, that suddenly these leaf springs are failing, because suddenly

we've had a glut of orders on the new ones, and a word went around the building until an engineer

put his hand up and said, oh no, no, no, no, it's okay, that's us. It was us, we wanted them.

It wasn't some failure and a bunch of, what would have had them, 360s had them,

900s, I don't know whether they... 360s, yeah. Anyway, the thing about the,

although I accept what Duntoff wanted and that the direction of Corvette

travel is towards mid-engine, I still got a lot of sympathy for these front-engine cars,

because you sit behind this great big shapely thing in front of you, and I've always had this

theory that front-engine cars are good, TVRs were good at this, because you sat in them,

you looked out over the aircraft carrier deck, and you could see what you bought,

and the car didn't just end at the end of the windscreen, you just see these lovely...

That's really interesting, because a lot of mid-engine cars, you will see no bonnet at all,

will you? You'll see nothing, and it's rare that they will put some kind of, you do get some cars,

don't you, Porsche 911s, you can see the little haunches either side, which help you place the

car on the road, but yeah, it's unusual, isn't it? Because you see nothing at all.

Loads of the lease, nothing. Yeah, we spent some time in lots of cars last week,

because it was our Britain's best driver's car, Schindig, and there was something in that,

I was driving something along and going, yeah, I really like the fact that I can see the bonnet,

and a little haunch on either side of the bonnet, and it made the car feel...

You see the value somehow? Compact, yeah. I think it helped TVRs

in times in their lives when they needed help as well.

Yeah. Did you ever own one?

Never, never thought about it, but I just couldn't see the... You know how your life has

slots in it that suit particular cars, I never quite saw one. I would have, I think it would have been

fun on a hill climb, but I just don't know enough about them.

Yeah, I could have fancied a quite... Because it was my sort of era when I was getting into cars

seriously, the sort of early 90s Griffiths, I thought were tremendously good looking cars.

Were you around when we had a Griffith 500 long termer for a little while?

No, I did drive one when we did a feature on cars of the 90s, and

we had a long... I can't remember if it was whose theory it was, it was 93 or 94,

they just, 93 I think, decided that was best year for cars ever, because it was the Griffith 500,

Ferrari F355, Porsche 968 Club Sport, Porsche 911, 993, and maybe there was

something else as well, and we had a load of them along, and I picked up the 355 from a dealer.

It felt tremendous, great visibility, terrific engine, not too big, not too fast, manual gearbox,

wonderful. 968 Club Sport felt as tight as the day because it's caging, it felt tremendous,

and this Griffith did slightly feel like it had been made from sticky tape. It was a bit,

it did not feel, it did not quite feel like it had the same integrity of some of the other stuff,

but great noise, and I think really good looking. Yeah, they look really compact now,

don't they? I'm surprised how small they look. Yeah, I think probably it would be fun to own

one, but you'd have to spend the money, I think, to just make sure it was all nicely put together.

And I love the look of the interior as well, they were really beautifully designed inside.

Given that it all was done for comparatively low investment, no investment, it was enormous,

and that was achieved with those cars, I think, good old Peter Wheeler. Yeah, I think they'd be

good fun. Not too late, mate, not too late. Well, I don't know how much they are.

I think you'd probably be safest with a Rover, wouldn't you? Yeah, I think so. Yes, a 4.3 or

5.0 litre, I think. That would be fine for me. I think I'll be very happy with something like that.

It's always interesting in the traffic now, isn't it? Because you're kind of easing along in some

almost silent car, and when some occasional V8 thunders by, it's great. Yeah, I was on the

motorway last night and somebody came past in a tweaked old one-series, not the front-wheel-drive

one-series, the one-series Coupe, and they'd done something to it, which made it a bang-like

machine gun fire on the overrun, and I just thought, oh, that would just drive me nuts,

because it wasn't a nice sound. It was just like, all the time. Every time he lifts off,

it does that. It's just infuriate me and all of my neighbours. But yeah, there is,

yeah, I don't have a soft-top car. Do you care? I wouldn't mind one. Well, I don't know. I've had

a few of them. We had a Peugeot 205 convertible, and we've had obtainer leases and things,

and quite a lot of lotuses, but I don't look back on it all and wish I had one now. It's funny.

Quite happy with our sports car as a 110 with a solid roof and all that. Yeah, this Morgan Super

3 is still around my house at the moment, and that is quite, it is quite pleasant. Yeah. Because

you just, you know, you don't only, well, you hear things better, you see things better, you can look

up all around, because it's so open. Yeah. You know, there is no head of rail or anything. It really

does feel good. When you are about to be tested by the weather. Yes. Yes, I was driving back from

Brighton last weekend with a helmet on, and it started raining as I was

stationary on the M25 for 45 minutes, which was less than entertaining. But, you know,

if you can get out of it and still admire it at that point and still like it and go,

yeah, that was fun, then I think it's got something about it, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely.

The thing that always amuses me, or can remember so well, is on occasional traffic hold-ups in

open cars when it starts to bucket, and you're sitting there next to a load of people who are

in saloon cars, and they kind of, they look at you with this kind of curiosity, as though you're

some kind of museum exhibit, because there you are, you know, with these kind of rivulets running

down your face, and they're sitting in perfect security thinking, you know, looking across to

the passenger saying, isn't that bloke an idiot? But they don't. I don't think they think that

about people on motorcycles. No. But if you dress the same way, I mean, you don't have to dress with

the armour, of course, but if you dress warm and comfortable, then you can, my slight problem is,

is that there's always a bit, and I get it on a motorbike, and I also get it in an open car,

that just, the rain will find its way in just somewhere, just like down the back of your neck,

down a sleeve or something, and it's suddenly, that's just one bit is very, very cold and

irritating. And that, I do find that slightly buggy. I always liked Simon Saunders aerial,

somebody, some fool, early in the air, in the atoms, days asked him if he was going to do a

canopy, and he said, no, but we're going to drill holes in the floor.

Well, it's such a, it's such a engineering painting the backside to make cars with doors

and windows, doors that shut properly, and then don't leak, and don't have any wind noise,

and then windscreens that are demisted properly, and everything else, and then you have to get

the wiper spread across them properly, and just engineer, if you can engineer something with no

doors and no roof and no windscreen and no windows, I mean, that's much, that's much simpler. It saves

you so much for a company the size of aerial, it must save them so much money. Oh, indeed.

I mean, because even the latest Morgan Super Sport, which we really like, don't we? Yeah,

really love. It is, it doesn't seal in the same way that a Porsche 911 does, you know, they just

don't, because it's difficult to get done. It's ironic though, if you, you know, remember the

aerial hypercar, which was a, which was a car with a body and a roof, and they went to huge trouble

to engineer these carbon fiber, very complicated carbon fiber doors, they're beautiful, fit perfectly,

and they've only built for, you know. Oh my goodness, yeah. Is that, are we going to see that,

about, or is it? I think it was, I think it might have, you know, be fired under a search vehicle,

because, I think not least because the concept of EVs and range extenders and so on have

been superseded, you know, what people actually want has moved on. Yeah. But the,

I think they would say they learned an enormous amount from it. I think they were not going

to charge enough money for it, either, from memory, because they were saying there's going to be about

£150,000, which is so much tech for that sort of money. Yeah, and a huge amount of

expensive stuff, batteries, bespoke batteries. I mean, when people are basically re,

you know, re-jigging old Porsche 911s and wanting half a million quid plus for them,

you know, the idea that, that, that somebody would go to that extent, create an entirely

new platform, entirely new powertrain system, and still say, yeah, it's only £150,000. Do you

remember the, that would have been astonishing if that, if it had been. Do you remember the generator

was propelled by a, by a little gas turbine? Is it going to, you're going to have your own jet? Yeah.

I was used to imagine it sort of melting the number plate of the bloke behind, with exhaust.

Listener, there's more gas turbine news to come on this podcast next week,

isn't there? Because we are at, Steve and I are at the British Motor Museum with the

head of. Yeah, Stephen Lang, the curator, the head of collections. Head of collections there,

yeah, and there's some gas turbine stuff. Yeah. In the pod, which we will talk about,

because we've been up there, mentioned it already. Auto, the reason is that AutoCard turns 130 years

old this week coming. Amazing, isn't it? Great, isn't it? Well, it's a lot of hacks,

mate. If you, if you stood them all in a line and reached halfway to the moon, wouldn't it?

Yeah, that is, but it's just, I don't know, I love, well, I love working here for that. Yeah,

for that reason. Yeah, you're sort of in charge of something, aren't you? Yeah.

Better get it right. Better get it right. Yeah, exactly. But yeah, so that's to come this time

next week in between then and now. Sorry, I've gone into the, it's a bit early for the advertising

break really, but between then and now, Steve and I will be talking to Ian Callum and David

Fairbent of Callum Designs. We are talking to them tonight and that will be live on this channel,

on Saturday the 1st of November. And that's going to be recorded in front of a live

audience at the Royal Automobile Club this evening. Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. Yeah,

me too, though. So much to talk about, isn't there, though? Yeah. Actually, funny enough,

I want to hear a bit from David because he's the MD of Callum, the new company. He worked with Ian

at Jaguar, but he was one of those guys that just did stuff rather than got in the news, shall we

say? Yeah. So it'll be quite interesting. He's taken the trouble to join Ian tonight, so we

will be able to find out what his story is. Yeah, I'm looking forward to that because I don't know

him. I've met Ian a couple of times, but I don't think I've met David, so that'd be...

No, well, I'll just... Have you got a list of questions to ask him already lined up?

I have. I have all kinds of stuff. I mean, there's all kinds of goodies that I've got them written

down here, actually. The thing that I want Ian to tell the audience is how Ian is four years

older than his brother. He's got a brother called Murray, Murray, who was also a distinguished

designer, rose to the point of being the chief designer at Ford Motor Company, so a big guy

responsible for all those trucks, all those Mustang revivals and all kinds of things.

But they were... At one stage, they worked together at Gear in early in their careers,

and there was a point where Ian was in charge of Murray. Right. And Murray was a fairly famously

short... Not short tempered, but a bloke that just does not like fools, and he was dealing with some

customer who asked him some inane question, and he said, I think he answered in a fairly short way.

And Ian got so cheesed off with this that he fired his brother. Oh, really? And there's a great

story about how Murray was going to tell his mum that he'd been fired by. I'm sure he'll tell that

story tonight. I look forward to that very much. And on the pod, of course. And on the pod, yeah.

And the only... I will do is a bit more looking around and thinking of some questions and stuff,

and the only one that strikes me I really want to ask him is whether car design has to be challenging,

because that is something that we've heard from designers now and again. You know, car designers.

Car designs need to be challenging, because otherwise you get bored with them. But I don't

know if that's true, because I see some very elegant, beautiful looking cars that don't seem to

challenge me that much, but I still think a great looking 30 years later. Yeah. It's a

really, it's a real brain stretcher, isn't it? Because at the moment, I find myself looking at

all these, you know, here we are in an era in Britain, almost every week, there's an arrival

of a new Chinese brand. And it's always an SUV that would notionally be a sort of two litre family SUV.

And I'm having extreme trouble. I mean, there's a Geely arrived last week. I've got no idea.

If I had, was required to stand back 10 yards, I wouldn't be able to tell you whether it was a

JQ or an Amoda or what the hell. Oh, I see. Is it a, is it a Geely Badged one? Or is it an Amoda?

They've just made it into this country, haven't they? Oh, I see. Yes. It was a launch. Yeah.

Yes. The new Geely EX-5 lands in the UK as a 32 grand Skoda Enyak rival. Well, somebody from

no, somebody from the Amoda JQ, Cherry, Triumvirate, Triumvirate, the other day. So explain to me

what the difference was between those. And the JQ is a bit more outdoorsy lifestyle. Yep. A bit more

Soho farmhouse, basically. Okay. And then the Amoda is a bit more

urban lifestyle, a bit more, a bit more best of village. Yeah. And the, and the Cherry is the

very straightforward housing estate. Right. Parked outside the ordinary, one of those three.

So now I know. Did you see the length of three? I don't, well, I don't know whether the reader,

listener, buyer, viewer, whatever, the customer for those, I don't know. And will they be able to

tell a difference? No. Because they'll all be the same size and the same price, don't they?

Yeah. That's it. They're under bits, you know, possibly. I don't want to sound cynical, Steve,

but you know, it strikes me that there's quite a lot of things that do the same.

But there is this theory, isn't there, that the Chinese are in this era where, you know,

the car market is a great big swimming pool and everybody gets chucked in at one end and

a few reach the other end and a few drown. Yeah. Maybe. Yeah. And as, you know, why would you,

that we've not the first time people have asked, why would you buy a Peugeot over a Citroen over a

something else in the Stellantis group, you know, but they can't remember which CEO said. He said,

well, look, if somebody buys us a Peugeot instead of a Citroen, we still get paid.

Yes. I remember asking Ferdinand Piech this story, you know, what's the point of having,

you know, a VW that looks like a Skoda, that looks like a Seat, that looks like an Audi,

or they're the same under bits. And he said, well, no, if I go fishing with one line,

if I go fishing with four lines as opposed to one line, I won't catch four times the number

of fish, but I'll get more than one. Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah. If you can make the

development of four cheaper than four times the development of one, I suppose you'll

thereabouts. There's a scary thing asking Piech a question because he always,

he always had this gimlet stare and he always considered every question. So you'd ask the

question and there'd be such a long silence that you thought, I've deeply offended this bloke.

And, you know, he's going to sort of say, that's it, interview terminated, you know, have this bloke

struck off or something. And then he'd answer in perfectly reasonable terms. It was just that he

considered everything. Amazing bloke. Talking of amazing people, Steve, the steering committee.

Well, I just was taken with this. People sort of by and large enjoy the description of

my misses as a steering committee. She gets slightly sick of walking around a Bista heritage and

you kind of run into people and I say, hello, this is Angela. And then say, oh, yes, the steering

committee. But anyway, she bears it up. She bears it up. But does she mind? No. And do people are

largely supportive of the wrong word, but people largely get that. Yeah, that's nice to her, of

course. But, you know, she just hears a lot, I guess. But the truth is, I hope she doesn't

actually listen to this, but she is indeed the steering committee in our place and what

she makes many of the major decisions and I'm happy with that. But anyway, I ran into this bloke

who's talked about the steering committee as a concept and he said, my term for my wife is

fighter command. And I thought, poor, that's possibly pushing it a bit far. Yeah, I think so.

Do people get offended by the phrase this too? Steering committee. I had one

letter years ago from a woman who felt that it was sexist and belittled my misses and all that,

but it's absolutely not meant to. It's just laugh, really. And it seems to play well with

most people, so we stick there. There is an element of steering that goes on in your house.

You get persuaded in a direction. Well, the other, but the thing is, she's the reason

we have the cars we have. She wanted to buy the Alpine. She wanted to buy the Ford, your Ford.

You know, I was kind of teetering on that and I've always had a weakness of Ford's. My grandfather

was a Ford dealer in the middle of Australia and all that. And she kind of insisted in the end that

we buy it. So she's got, she's just got good, sure of opinions, I think. So I learned to trust

them. No, quite right too. Yeah, quite right too. Let's take a short commercial break. While I tell

you about Anderson EV, makers of premium high quality, premium quality domestic electric car

chargers, they're so good, aren't they? Well, they're great. British designer built a 70 year

warranty. You may just get in, but you'll have to get in very, very quickly if you would like a 50

pound off of your order. But we've had a few people that have taken the offer, haven't we? Yeah, we

have. And written to us to tell us. That's good. Yeah. And delighted with the service, in fact.

Andy from Anderson turned up and fitted it. You know what, must have had a really quick turn around

because we haven't had this offer going for very long. And a guy wrote to us and said,

I already love it. And I, yes, I got the 50 pound off by mentioning the podcast,

and it's already been installed and it's up and running. So they clearly

get on with it. Yeah, you ask them to. She is talking about that and the good people, the guy

that came to fit our one, which is a few years ago. But I mean, he got on so well with that,

with the steering committee that, that, you know, she wanted him to stay for dinner. It was,

it was, it was a really clever bloke. He fixed it, you know, without

making a fuss about it, made some tweaks to the wiring of our house, which is an old house and,

and, you know, everything worked better when he left in his EV. Well, that's really good. I like

people who, yes, he was a lovely guy. You know, she'd send him a Christmas card if she knew where

he was. Also, while we're here, I should tell you, listener, because we're 130 years old this weekend,

I should tell you about the AutoCard archive, which is at themagazineshop.com forward slash

AutoCard. There are a load of offers, early bird Christmas offers, as I think we call them. You

can get up to 20% off on top of the existing offers. So there are 13 digital issues from as little as

£31.99, including access to the entire 130 year AutoCard digital archive. I mean, that is a deal,

isn't it? You know, even though we work from, you know, even if we didn't, you would still have

to say that was a great deal. There's various different ones. You can get print and digital,

you can get print only, or you can get digital only, and I mean, it's all mega. Yeah, all mega.

It's all great. What have I been into the archive for in the last seven days? I can't remember.

No, I mean, neither have I. But I have been in. Trouble is, it becomes so automatic that you...

AutoCard.com, you can do the same. You can write to us. If you mark your email podcast somewhere,

we're more likely to... slightly more likely to see it, but we should see it anyway.

But there are lots of... Well, we've discussed this before. There's a lot in the AutoCard inbox.

Sure is. Yeah, sure is. So apologies if we don't reply to every individual one. We try to as many

as we can. You were amazed by the packaging of the Citroen EC3 Aircross, says Nick, fitting seven

seats into a four and a half meter crossover, but with some packaging compromises. My family

owned three Toyota Versos in succession with different engine types. That gave a 4.46 meter car

with seven seats, but the middle row comprised individual seats that could be slid backward

and forward or folded. The boot had a smart roller cover that had its own storage space under the

floor. Bring back the MPV if you want improved packaging efficiency, says Nick Tiley. Funny

that Nick, because Steve has talked about this quite recently and it's in my column this week,

which I wrote before your letter turned up and before I'd read the EC Aircross review,

actually, which I still haven't, but I will do. Yeah, why don't we meet? I do like that idea of

the sliding center seat. I think it's clever. And as he says, Nick says, removable and foldable and

the Verso, you do see them around. They last in people's ownership for a long time, those

Versos. And I mean, they do look a bit God awful and they tend to court a bit of offense. No offense,

Nicholas. But I mean, they also get no offense. Again, they do seem to

cause a bit of a hold up in the traffic of times. They can do. Ah, that's right. It was the,

yes, the direct successor to the Corolla Verso. So it was a, it was a sort of MPV based on the

Corolla, wasn't it? Yeah. But you can just by looking at them, you can see how space efficient

are. And I'll bet if you really need that stuff, it's, it's, it's, it must be impossible to find

anything better. Yeah, yeah. So they run a man as well. Bulletproof, never, never break down, blah,

blah. What a cool. Yeah, quite. So he's right. He is right. And you've seen, what's that Toyota

that you? Oh, the Alphard. The Alphard. This is Toyota, isn't it? The Alphard? Is that right? Or

is it something else? Yes. I can't remember if it's a Lexus or a Toyota, but this is amazingly

radically styled MPV big car. But, you know, with a sort of huge chrome expanse or chrome or black

chrome expanse, because I've seen two others where I parked my cars in London. They're,

they're now three. And I think they're multiplying. But that, just the radical nature of the styling,

that line along the side that, that has a kind of amazing sort of really radical kink in it. I

can't get over it. No, it is something. And what's, it strikes me as that the, the MPV died of death

really because we all started buying SUVs instead, didn't we? Because, because they're a bit more

tough, a bit more, a bit more cool. They said more about the driver, whereas MPVs maybe said more

about their passengers. But what that has left the MPV as is a pure luxury vehicle, really. Because,

as you say, these Toyota Alphards and the Lexus equivalent, they're expensive. The Mercedes,

yeah, the Mercedes, Marco Polos, whatever they call those classes, they're like 80, 70, 80 grand,

something like that. I think more or Toyota, the Volkswagen California's 60, 60 grand. So anything

MPV shaped is, is an expensive car. Most, you know, for the most part. And they've got good,

I think they've got good at giving these boxy shapes a character. Yeah. I mean,

I always admired the VW California. It's very much a delivery van really, but it's a very elegant

looking delivery van. So yeah, well done them. Yeah. And I just think that actually maybe the

MPV is due a comeback. I think you're right. Maybe we'll appreciate it a bit more this time and not

think it was just for people who were. Well, wouldn't it also be the case that this is the

change in powertrains, you know, the EV either, you know, a hybrid with a relatively small petrol

engine or an EV allows the powertrain to be configured in a different way, which allows the

thing to be more space efficient. Yeah, you could have a really spacious,

I mean, there are lots of SUVs that aren't really SUVs around out there, but they've all

sort of got a bonnet of some sorts. But you could have a really spacious underbody powertrain and

just everything on top of the skateboard, you basically basically becomes the space volume.

Yeah. And you could do cool. We could do some pretty cool things with the styling of it.

I reckon it's, well, also we just love variety, don't we? I mean, you know, it does seem silly

not to have a, what is ultimately the most efficient shape of all a rectangle. And also,

although they have a big, a big ish frontal area, because they're not trying to be roughly

off-roaders, you can have quite a sleek drag coefficient. So I think a Volkswagen,

thinking back to my aerodynamics lectures when I was a student, a Volkswagen Type 2

transporter has a lower drag coefficient than a D-Type Jaguar.

Wow. But obviously the D-Type has better aerodynamics overall, because it's much smaller,

but, but they, they clearly can be very sleek and difficult through the air.

Railway carriages, don't they? They, yes, do just, just sort of long and regular,

straight sides and all that. Yeah. But anyway, I'm for the MPV making a comeback.

Yeah, well, so, yeah. But would you buy one, Matthew?

Well, I have an Audi A2 with no rear seats in it. And that is basically an MPV,

is basically a small van at the moment. Because I took the rear seats out to try and do this

economy run the other day. I don't know if I've talked about that on the pod yet or not.

You sort of started to, but I'm not sure whether you, I still have a conclusion.

No, well, I still haven't done the final calibration of the, the, the, the, the, the, the

trip computer, which I need to do. So I, so I'm still on Ted Talks myself because I haven't.

I think it's, it shames everything else. It's, it's so shames everything else. And it's all

these years old. I met somebody last week on our Britain's best drivers car thing. We had

a lot of cars up there, 10 cars, as you know, a lot of money, a lot of expensive stuff and some

exciting stuff. And this bloke came over who worked at M Sport where we were based. And

a group of us were standing there and he said, is, is one of you Matt Pryor? And I said, yes,

I am. And he, what he'd done is he'd come over earlier in the day and he'd seen the Audi A2

and said, whose is that? And somebody said, that belongs to a guy called Matt Pryor. And he came

over a bit later when we were all there. I said, yes. And he said, oh, you've got the A2. And we

spent, because he's got two of them, and we spent a good half an hour talking about A2s.

Did he have, do you presume you talked about wheel sizes and wheel sizes and all sorts? And then

also there's a bit on the, because it's got one big windscreen wiper and there's a bit near the blade.

Because I'd read something on a forum somewhere or somebody saying that the, one of the brackets

gets a bit loose and that can damage the base of the windscreen. And he said, oh yeah, it's just

there. Look, you can see where it's marked the bottom of your windscreen. You can either buy a

new bit and he said, but actually because I work at M Sport, I've just turned up a couple of new

little connectors on the lathe up here to sort that problem. Basically, there's a click which

rubs on the screen, which should be lifted away from the screen. Is he going to give you one?

No, but I now know at least what it is and what to do. Yeah, what to do. But I have had no more

correspondence about any car in the past 20 years than that car. It's amazing, isn't it? It really is.

And it's sort of MPV shaped, I guess. In a way, it's interesting that it's sort of fresh territory,

isn't it? Because people haven't made a fuss about the car but loads of people know how efficient

and effective it is. Yeah. Who has just bought a Citroen C1? Well, a bloke called Darren Geldard

wrote to us to talk about a 18,000 mile 08 Citroen C1 that he bought for his daughter,

19 year old daughter. 18,000 miles. That's tremendous. It is tremendous. The car looks great.

And the thing that, as he says, this will be a candidate for the festival. He had an exceptional

scene because we start off thinking that cars loaded with gadgetry are a good thing but we

eventually get round to thinking. The one with the steel wheels and the plastic hubcaps and the

wind-up windows is actually the desirable model. That's what he's got, the basic car. And he paid

14.50, which is just, I think, says something about what you paid for your Audi. But it's

still a very good deal and I was taken with it because I think that the Igo C1 107, all of which

came out of the same factory, were insufficiently celebrated really. They were, you know, with a

time, didn't go anywhere. But the, you know, if a three-cylinder, one-liter engine was made by

Ferrari, it would be this engine. It just, it's just a really sweet, you raised one, didn't you?

Yeah, but I, funnily enough, I raced against one on Saturday.

Ah, did you?

Yeah, I did. Yeah, I did the Birket six-hour relay, thanks to the 750 Motor Club.

So what were you in?

I was in a Suzuki Swift Sport. Oh, man.

I think it was, I've got, it came up quite late.

Presumably this is going to be a story.

This will be a story in the mag, yeah. But it makes, I got an email halfway through last week

saying, you're not free on Saturday, are you? Because John McGinnis of Audi, of Isle of Man,

TT, riding fame, is busy. And he was supposed to be driving this car with another TT rider

called James Hillier. So John can't make it. Do you have space in AutoCart and are you free on

Saturday? And I thought, yeah, I know, I've never been happier that John McGinnis was busy.

Honda owner as well, the Honda most.

So I am, well, yeah. And funnily enough, James Hillier, who is also, who rides in the TT and

also the Dakar, was sharing the car with me. And I met him on Saturday morning. We started chatting

about cars and bikes and stuff. He's also got an old off and onto Africa Twin.

Is he a good bloke? Obviously.

Yeah, lovely bloke. Yeah, really nice. Yeah, really, really terrific. A lot of bike racers

do seem, especially road racers, because they're a bit, you know, a bit special, aren't they?

Well, yeah. And they, they see life as it is, don't they? Oh, God, nice.

But it's a great, a 750 motor club, right? It's such a great event.

So six hours, did you say?

Six hours. And you can have, and it's a, it's a relay. So you come into the pits and the next

car in your team isn't allowed out until you've, until you've driven past them.

So I think you can have, I don't know how few or how many, I think you can have two cars if

you want with a driver each, but you can have up to, I don't know, three or four cars with

three drivers. I think you can have up to six drivers in total.

Wow. And so we had three cars in our team, a two Honda Civic Type Rs, which were quite quick,

and one Suzuki Swift Sport, which in a straight line is not that quick.

But the 750 motor club launched, because almost sport gets a bit more expensive,

bit more expensive, doesn't it? So they launched the Suzuki Swift Sport Challenge

this year, and they've got pretty much 30 car grids already, and a lot of the owners drive to and

from every race. Do a couple of races and then drive home again.

This is, this is the answer.

This is great. And I really like, I mean, I like the Swift Sport anyway.

You had a pile of fun, did you?

Yeah, it was mega. It was brilliant. It was at Silverstone on the full GP circuit.

Really?

And the Swift Sport is, what do they make, 130 horsepower standard, something like that? So you,

but it doesn't fit, they don't feel overwhelmed. You know, you're on the throttle a lot of the

time with radicals coming past one side and catering is coming past the other.

But because it's such a big circuit, and there's what, 65 cars on track at any one time,

it's, you know, you know, it spreads out. Yeah. And it's daylight as well. So it's

if you sit there on the long straight, sort of speculating on what the top speed really is,

according to the wind, I think it did about 100. And there was a bit of,

actually, James put a telemetry thing that you brought along with him in.

And I think it said my top speed was 107 miles an hour.

Excellent.

But I think the average speed around a lap is pretty high because they,

it hangs on really gambling in corners because they don't weigh very much.

And especially once you take everything out of them, I could see one or one of those I could,

I haven't, I haven't, but I really could see owning and just take them along

once every now and again to a hill climb or a sprint or a race.

The 750 motor club race entry fee is something like £400 for a weekend.

I mean, you could, and they say, look, people do, they might actually own the car,

buy the car, get it done, and then maybe spend £2,000 to £3,000 during a year racing it.

Not, not coming to every round, but just going, well, I'll spend, you know, I've got £2,000,

I can afford to go racing this weekend. I mean, people spend that,

golf and the gym and all kinds of things.

Absolutely. And who can, who can race on the, on the full circuit?

Yeah, Silverstone.

Yeah, it's mega. It was brilliant. Yeah, it was brilliant.

And my gratitude to the store, my gratitude to the 750.

Give it a bit of space.

Yeah, I hope so. Yeah. It's at least a spread, I think.

So the picks will come through later this week.

Fantastic.

Yeah. But that'll be in AutoGar in the coming weeks.

Don't you love Suzuki? They're always in there doing something.

But the, but also that, that engine, I think this car had 70,000 miles,

but of course you're just living at 5,000 to 7,000 RPM the whole time.

And that's it for in C1. People race them for 24 hours and do that.

They're just on the limiter for 24 hours, basically.

And they just keep going.

Yeah, I do really special.

Oh, that's terrific. And then you chuck all your junk in a boot and go home.

Yeah.

With a radio on.

With a radio on. Yeah.

So I think the C1 race cars have to retain the radio and the,

well, they have to be road-registered and legal, I think,

MOT and everything.

And then, well, they used to be. I think they still do.

Yeah. And the radio's still got to work and the heater's still got to work.

And I love it.

Oh, mate, what a good one. Well, I want to see the picks.

Yeah. I'm looking forward to that arriving.

I'll bet you are.

I just, I, yes, I just had to, that was a way until Friday morning.

And I had to basically sort everything out on Friday,

like find all my kit, go and get an eye test

and renew my race license and everything.

I just thought, I just, I'll, I'll, yes, I'll find a way.

Well, you did well.

Yeah, find a way to get it done.

So did you go over to Bista and renew your license?

Well, I did it online, actually.

MOT Sport UK were really helpful because I phoned them up and said,

this has just come in.

What's the, but, but, because I haven't had a license for two years,

I can't log in to do anything.

And they went, I will set you up a,

allocate an email to your account.

And then it's more simple these days,

because you can self certify medically,

rather than have to have a full medical,

unless you want an international license.

So you don't have to do that.

And then I just booked an appointment locally

as an optician Friday morning, just to sign off my,

because a normal prescription isn't good enough.

They have to do the little checks here and there

to make sure you can see in the edges.

Yeah. When I get my eye tested these days,

I always ask them to, you know, just make sure,

you can just get them to say, yep, and this bloke's okay.

Yeah. You can download a form off of the MOT Sport UK website

and they fill out that section, section 4A,

and they just fill it out and say, yep, this bloke's all right.

And then I uploaded it, phoned them up to say,

look, do you mind just signing, approving,

you know, the thing I've just uploaded,

and then I'll apply for the license,

digital license, which they just emailed through to you.

And it all, it was all done.

By the time I'd completed the paperwork

and filled in the thing,

I would think within about three minutes it turned up.

They are brilliant.

I think they're very keen to make sure,

the system that allows people like you and me,

a little bit lapsed, but basically keen to renew easily

is being refined, hasn't it?

I think MSUK, you know, like all regulators,

they take a bit of stick.

But I think my experience with them has been great,

really good.

Yeah, they just want to get you on the grid, don't they?

Yeah.

Because it's good for them, it's good for everybody.

Yeah.

So, and it was, yeah, I mean, it's such a nice event as well.

It doesn't have, because, so they run the race as a,

the Birket six hour is run as a handicap relay

because there are so many different disparate cars.

There's like all Porsche teams and all radical teams.

And then there's people like us who've got a Swift Sport,

which the, it's only out accelerating Citroën C1

and a Toyota Yaris, you know, but other than that,

it's not a fast car.

So they work out as a system of how fast they think

you are pedalling the cars that you have to put you

somewhere on the other.

So are we finished seventh, which I thought was all right.

Oh, mate, that's brilliant.

Yeah, I thought it was pretty good, quite pleased.

Gosh, well done.

Out of nearly 70.

And actually had we run, the rules are a bit cryptic,

had we kept on, we ran the Civics a bit too long

and the Swift not quite long enough.

Oh, okay.

So they waited it ever so slightly back,

otherwise we might have got some silverware.

They're quite good at that business of working out.

Yeah.

You're making sure everybody gets a chance, aren't they?

Yeah, yeah.

But I went to the pub where the 750 motor club,

I think it was the 750 motor club got,

or it might have been the VCC, sorry,

Birket and Co used to hang out and Dennis Jenkins

and used to hang out in this pub in Hartley-Winley,

which is just off the M3.

And yeah, there's various bits hanging on the wall about

the formation of early race clubs.

Excellent, excellent.

I mean, I admire the people who do it

because they work really hard for it.

And I think a lot of it is done on their own time.

Yes, no doubt.

Just to get people on there,

same with marshals really,

they just do it for the fun of seeing people race,

which is tremendous.

Yeah, and I guess you are up close to them.

Yeah, yeah.

That just about brings us to the end of this week's pot,

I think, mate.

Okay.

We have AOB, any other business?

I don't think so, no.

No, we've done fine to come out.

Oh, the thing that I was,

a bloke came on,

he had a bit of a minor problem with a

subscription guy called Colin Bates,

been reading since October 66, 59 years, 59.

Whatever it is anyway.

Yes, that will be, yeah, that will be.

I just wanted to,

I wrote a little bit saying,

well done, Colin.

You know, there are other Collins,

but that kind of loyalty, it's amazing.

I remember now, he was trying to get hold

of a September the 10th issue,

and it really mattered to him not to have read

the September the 10th issue after 59 years.

And I thought, that's all right.

That's a bit of a tribute to all those people

going back to our beginnings, isn't it?

So thanks a lot, Colin, well done.

Yeah, absolutely, as we approach the 130th,

yes, to all the Collins and others.

Me, he's been there nearly half the way.

Fremendous, isn't it?

It really is.

Yeah, I can't begin to tell you how grateful we are for that.

Steve and I will return,

actually on Saturday,

because we're both talking to Ian,

Callum and David Fairburn this evening,

and that will be broadcast in a couple of days' time.

And then we will be back next week as well,

talking to the Head of Collections

at the British Motor Museum

for the occasion of our 130th,

taking a look at some of the cool stuff

at the British Motor Museum,

some of its history,

which matches alongside our history,

and an announcement about our archive.

So that will be along next Wednesday.

And then after that,

there's some more AutoCarMeets podcasts.

Oh, yes, I'm talking to Klaus Selma,

who's the CEO of Skoda.

Oh, yes, yes.

130th anniversary as well,

which matches up.

Yeah, so that's a week Saturday.

And then, I don't know,

you and I are back at some point.

See what happens.

Yeah, yeah.

So thanks for joining us.

Thanks to our sponsor, Anderson EV.

You can find out more about their charges

at Anderson-EV.com,

Seven Year Warranty,

UK Designed and Made.

I mean, they're great.

Don't know, extremely nice bunch of people.

Extremely nice bunch of people.

Thanks, mate.

See you next week.

See you, mate.

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