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Hello and welcome to the AutoCard podcast, My Week in Cars,

with Pry Hare, Stephen Cropley over there. Morning, Steve.

How are you, mate?

Very well. Thank you, mate.

I think I should start by telling you that we have teamed up with a sponsor,

Anderson EV, an all-British company that makes and sells

top-quality home chargers for electric cars.

And I think that we can both agree, Steve, apart from the car itself,

what the happy EV owner needs, most is a top-quality home charger.

I think we can agree. I've got one of these, you know.

Great British product made by nice people in Bedfordshire,

seven-year warranty, which means that my one has still got five years to run.

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And the killer fact, if you do a deal involving Anderson and Octopus Energy at

the moment, between now and the end of the year, you will get 5,000 free charged miles.

Oh, very good.

So not bad, eh?

Which could be anything from six months to a year's driving,

you would think, on an EV.

Absolutely.

It would be very good. Fantastic.

I had a look on the website last week, Anderson-EV.com, by the way.

They have some good designs, don't they?

They do.

Which is what I really like about them, is that it doesn't look like

this nasty little box on the side of your house. It looks quite good.

Yeah, I know.

As indeed yours does.

They got Ian Callum involved.

Do you remember?

Oh, did they?

He gave them advice on textures and colors and so on.

Right.

And I think it makes a big difference.

Very good.

Steve, we've got a letter from Matthew Henner, and I hope I've said that right,

Matthew, who says, I'm hoping you can give some advice to someone who doesn't

want to let the mundane and practical dictate cars.

I've earned a long list of cars.

He's listed them below, if you've seen his big list of...

Yeah.

Yeah, there's quite a good list of cars there, Matthew.

He says, I've recently sold my Porsche 987 Spyder and my wife drives an Audi A3 Saloon.

However, with one toddler, it's big enough, but another on the way, congratulations.

We are likely going to have to consider something bigger with more leg room in the back.

So a child seat will fit behind me when I drive, and a bigger boot for additional child paraphernalia,

because they do have a lot of paraphernalia, don't they, these days?

They do.

Ideally, I'd like to spend not more than the value of my wife's current car,

which is probably £25,000.

Happy to spend less, ideally not something dull and boring.

I've considered an L322 Range Rover with the rest left for incidentals,

if I spent £10,000 on it, for instance.

Separately, I could do with an occasional car, mainly for me, sometimes an additional passenger,

and I'm currently a bit smitten with a Morgan Super 3.

Can you talk a bit more about that, and am I an absolute idiot to consider it?

My Porsche Spyder had no roof, and the S1 Elise leaked all the time,

so he's amenable to that sort of thing, I would think, by the sounds of it.

Daily, not boring, practical, enjoyable, family-friendly, decent budget.

What do we think?

We support the anti-Monday thing, don't we?

Oh, 100%.

I mean, that is rule number one.

I like his L322, and I think, I mean, you'll be better than me,

but commenting on the Mog Super 3, but I like the idea of it.

I think with two children, you do need some galloping great SUV, that's the truth.

Yeah, a bigger state or an SUV, or certainly a big hatch.

But a Range Rover is such an event, isn't it?

If you buy a nice one, and I think, even though it's a few years old now,

I think it'll still be an excellent car, that.

I drove one down at the Good of Festival of Speed a couple of months ago.

When I drove an electric Range Rover, they had one around to have a quick going,

and it still felt really special.

I thought it still felt terrific.

They look nice on the road still too, don't they?

And they're probably not too big, do you know what I mean?

They're not as big as, I mean, I don't know, but I don't, from memory,

I don't think they feel as big as some big, big SUVs.

And I don't know, have they entered a phase where people don't look unkindly on them?

Like they might do.

If you bought a brand new, I don't know, Mercedes, GL, BMW X6 or something,

I think people look a bit more kindly on a L322 Range Rover, is that fair?

They've reached this kind of state of grace, haven't they?

They've been embraced by Clarky, Clarkson, and Harry Medcalf.

They had a bit of a love in, didn't they, a while ago, just about how wonderful these cars are.

When I say they're quite classless, what I think is, in a way,

because I think the one I drove belonged to the Queen at some point.

But also, do you remember those two blokes who very recently got locked up

for dropping down the tree up in the thingy gap?

They also went in, I think, an L322 Range Rover.

So it's a broad church, that doesn't comfort us a lot.

Criminals in the Queen.

It's slightly old Defender, no, not Defender, the Freelander 2 are similar,

you know, because I think Prince Philip used to knock around in one,

but also the bloke I bought my Defender from had one swore by them,

and he got jailed for fraud.

So it's a real, these things are a broad church, I think.

They are appealing in ways.

Did he visit the fraud on you?

No, no, it was, oh, I don't know, but no, it was,

I didn't love my buying experience.

Let's put it that way.

Part of your complex backstory, mate, that one.

So, yeah, so, let's write it up, Matt, yes, we don't think that's too,

we don't think that's too bonkers.

And I think if he's put up with an original Louise with its various quirks,

you know, Super 3B, all right, wouldn't it?

Yeah, Super 3B, fine.

I mean, can we let it out at this stage

that you've just done a quite a considerable journey in yours?

Yeah, yeah, so the hello feature for this long-term Super 3 that I'm running

is in the mag, I think, as this podcast is broadcast, I think, on the day.

I think it's 17th, 17th, September.

And in a couple of weeks, I'll have an update.

I've just driven to Brusian back in it, in mixed weather, and it's fine.

It is, of course, it's more tiring than a normal car,

because you do all of that prepping to get in it and get out of it

with a tonneau cover.

And it's not, if you've got the sort of luggage cage on the back,

you have to undo that and open up and go.

So it's a bit like getting ready to go somewhere on a motorbike.

And if you forget to put your earplugs in before you put your helmet on,

at some point, you've got to stop taking your helmet off, put your earplugs in.

If you are into that kind of car, and Matt has had,

A, that spider with no roof, and an S1 Elise,

and we know how difficult to get in and out of early Elise's are.

And if the roof leaks all the time, and from my experience, they do a bit,

it's not that much harder than those, I don't think.

I think they're really good fun.

And it is a well-engineered product now, isn't it?

It's a well, you know, it's strong and, you know, well-proven.

Yeah, it seems to be.

They've got a development hack still at the factory,

which they use for all kinds of stuff.

They take it, you know, what's the, one of the motorbike branding clothing companies

does some little off-road race or something like that.

And I think they use their Super 3 effectively as the support vehicle for that.

It's like the pace car or something, you know, for that, for that.

And it just hacks around the field and they use it for all kinds of things.

So I think, yeah, I think fundamentally, it's a sound piece of kit.

Oh, good.

But you've got to do, I suppose you've got to do stuff you wouldn't

do in a normal car because it's a chain drive at the back.

And at some point the chain will need adjusting.

And also the chain will occasionally need lubricating.

So it's a steel chain.

It's not a, not a, no, it was a belt when it came out, I think.

And then they decided that the chain was,

I think either smoother and or more reliable and or didn't need adjusting

quite so often because I think even those belts stretch a bit,

don't they? And I think the chains needed less of that.

But this Morgan, which I didn't drive this morning because it's pretty windy out.

And well, I've just driven them a thousand miles.

It's, I've lost my train of thought entirely.

Well, you were just talking about weather protection and so on.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You've just got, it's like riding a motorbike.

You've just got to think to yourself,

yeah, you've just got to think to yourself, I'm going to get ready to go.

Yeah.

But I think it's cool.

I love the design as well.

That would really.

It sounds as though his instincts are right though, doesn't it?

Yeah.

He's on the right track.

Yeah, but that's the other thing.

Matt is by the car you want.

Yep.

Fundamentally.

Because if you, because if you don't,

you might end up looking at the car you did want to buy.

Enviously, every time you see one.

Yeah.

And time passes doesn't it?

I, unless you, unless you do it, you'll never have done it.

That's what I'm, it was, haunts me that.

Are there cars you should have bought?

Yes, but not many really.

Not, no, I've usually, I've usually,

something I've really been driven to buy of, I've bought.

Yeah.

And as Matt says, he's, he's got a reasonable budget for his car.

He could spend less.

I would, I would happily spend less and then keep a little aside just for something.

Ranger over a tear is perfect.

Yeah.

Just, just to hire a car if it goes in for some work.

You could rent something else for a week or two just to tide you over.

Yeah.

You might need a sort of meaningful dialogue with the insurers too,

perhaps for those two cars.

They be.

Yeah.

And I wonder if it depends where you live, doesn't it, as to,

as to when and whether cities and towns introduce congestion slash air quality charges

and so on and so forth, something to bear in mind.

I need to pay the Dart charge today before I leave this room.

Steve, please don't, please don't let me forget that.

I've got Dart written on my notes here.

Goodness me, goodness me, that could have gone wrong.

What, what's the damage if you don't?

Well, I think that, weirdly, I think the first time you do it in a car,

if you forget, they send you a letter saying,

you forgot to pay £2.50.

Can you please pay £2.50?

Wow.

I think from that, certainly that happened to me.

I got a letter from a press office who had,

I'd driven through the Dartford Tunnel or across the bridge in one of their cars

and they dropped me an email saying,

have you driven across the thing because we've got a letter requesting £2.50,

but an actual letter, they've sent an actual letter in the post asking for £2.50,

which would have cost them quite a lot more than £2.50 to do.

Absolutely.

But I appreciate the fact that they didn't suddenly say,

you've forgotten to do this, it's your first offence,

£2.50, please mate.

But mate, that was a couple of years ago, so maybe it's changed.

I think in that case, you'd be almost moved to say, here's a five-hour.

Yeah, exactly, treat yourself.

Have a cup of tea on me.

What did you think?

Because Steve and I are going to ostensibly talk about our columns for the next

30 minutes or thereabouts and 12 minutes in, we haven't started yet.

So thanks for your recent feedback on pod,

three-year anniversary pod, by the way.

Which says, carry on.

Yeah, it was relief, wasn't it?

Because we were able to show that around the suit brigade and they were,

they took it on board, didn't they?

They did, yeah.

And actually, Robin Kappa writes to say, from New Zealand in fact, hello Robin,

to say, the podcast and the digital back catalogue

made me an AutoCard digital subscriber, rather than an occasional reader.

What a hero.

From New Zealand.

Fine fella.

Thanks Robin, that's very kind.

So anyway, in your column this week, starts with a bit of Munich Motor Show stuff,

which we touched on a bit last week, but feels like we could,

feels to me like we could still say a bit more, because you were there

and at the time you hadn't been.

No, I was taking a guess, wasn't I?

Yeah.

It was, well, it turned out to be a three-day event.

I was there on the official press day,

but that turned out to be the second day.

So there were some big German industry reveals the day before.

I went to the main exhibition center, which consisted of six halls,

sort of rather logically arrayed, so you could find your way around for once.

Bit different from Frankfurt.

Do you remember how you used to have to?

Oh my goodness.

You needed a kind of cut lunch and a water bottle to find your way around.

But however, it was a bit of a funny event,

big millions of component suppliers that I don't think will be very interesting

to the punters who are arriving by now.

And these component suppliers, people making rear steer systems for semi-trailers

and all sorts of ADAS gadgetry and windscreen wiper motors and God knows what.

And they were used to shroud the Chinese.

So if you wanted to find BYD or Chang'an or someone,

you had to wade your way through lots of windscreen wiper manufacturers.

And on the other hand, you could find Mercedes and BMW and co pretty easily.

Oh, interesting.

So it was a bit unwelcoming for people who weren't local.

And the other thing that struck me, I think I mentioned it last week,

there were two things going on.

One was everybody, VW, Audi, BMW, Mercedes-Benz,

they all found a way to to say that this was now the bold new tomorrow from this show onwards.

There was a, you know, VW were saying we're returning to our roots.

BMW had their Neuer-class, first Neuer-class production car,

which was I was rather rude about last week.

But I think it was fair bit nicer than I thought.

I walked around it properly.

It looked better in the flesh than in the pictures.

It's got nice sort of tight surfacing, hasn't it?

Yeah.

It looks quite, yeah.

See the IX3.

IX3, yeah.

And it's, I think it's, I mean, they say there are going to be 40 cars off this,

off this, you know, in this class.

And I think it's a good start.

I was, I take it all back.

Mercedes, however, I thought were a bit of a sorry state.

You know, they've already had Ola Kalani as the boss complaining about,

you know, what European clean air regulations are doing to the car industry.

They had these big signs around the place saying welcome back

to, you know, to customers and the inference.

I mean, what they were trying to do is provide a happy home and say

we're lovely, warm, cuddly people come and check us out.

But unfortunately, the way it looked to me is they're actually saying

we're all a bit frightened of the future and we need you.

So, you know, please come back and put your arm around us and make us feel better.

Interesting.

And I don't know whether desperation sells cars.

But I could be wrong about that.

Yeah.

And is it, if you go to the show as a visiting customer?

Because my impression was that some of the launches and unveilings of new cars happened

elsewhere around the city, rather than in the show itself.

Do those manufacturers also have a presence at the show?

Because there's a Hyundai IONIQ 3 concept, wasn't there?

Good-looking thing, looked like a sort of new Veloster in a way,

looked a good-looking thing.

But somebody said, oh, that's happening on Tuesday morning,

not in the show itself.

Were Hyundai also at the show, or if you're visiting as a customer,

do you see a few cars, but actually not as many as you think you're going to?

No, it was unsatisfying from that point.

Right.

If some of them were there, but a lot of them weren't, or they had an sort of incomplete,

they had a, a lot of them had a big sort of set of seats and a big screen.

The boss was going to turn up and make a speech,

and you were going to see all this on the screens.

But a lot of the actual properties were scattered around the city.

Oh, really?

So it was, it was good and bad.

As a lot of people said, it was great to see this, this extremely nice

German city totally involved in the car business because of, you know,

every town square was seemed to be full of cars.

And that made a good point about the, you know, general German commitment to

personal mobility, but it didn't help the person who just arrived on the bus

at the exhibition center and thought, right, where are they all?

Yeah.

So

I would need to do it better.

And I think I'd probably need to go for more than one day next year.

Okay.

If there is an extra.

I mean, do we, I suppose that's my question.

Do we think the motor show is back or?

It was strong.

I'm not sure I should know this.

This is shocking.

I shouldn't even be admitting this, but I think it might alternate with

Paris, doesn't it?

Or something like that.

It used to, didn't it?

It was Frankfurt one year, Paris the next.

That's how they used to agree to do it.

But I don't know if that's the case anymore either.

There's only so much you can know, Steve.

Well, yeah, but, you know, we know that the brain work, wouldn't it?

Well, yeah, but I can tell you the, I can tell you what the average fuel economy of a

Morgan Super 3 is.

And something's got to slip out, right?

I can't, I can't have it all, all the time.

It's unreasonable to expect that we can.

You've got a good memory.

Mine's just not worth a damn.

It's not, mine's not bad, but it's just silly nonsense most of the time.

That's the thing.

Somebody will go, do you remember when, I don't know, I don't know, the lyrics to the

theme tune to the Puddington piece?

I don't know, I can, or the, or the dogtanion.

I could, I could tell you that absolutely 100%, but I can't tell you if Paris and

Munich swap every September, despite the fact that it is my job to know it.

You spoke to Francois Provost, did you while you were there?

Yes.

Who's he?

What did he say?

He's a new boss of Renault, Renault Group.

He's the guy that replaces Luca D'Amio, who was such a dominant figure until recently.

Luca D'Amio is the guy that's brought, introduced this concept of

revolution that, that he, a name he swears he dreamt up in the shower.

He was there for five years, I think total, brought fantastic improvements to Renault,

including the five, the four and the twingo, you know, everybody said the problem is no,

there's no European small EVs now there are.

And then he suddenly stepped away and, and either got some sort of huge offer or just ran out of

interest.

Yeah, but he's gone to run the Gucci Empire.

Oh, that's right, yeah.

Somebody scurrilously said the Gucci Empire has got connection with this

Talantis, you know, which is Renault's

Oh, interesting.

hated opposition and, and, you know, they're wondering whether D'Amio is in storage for a

while until he, until he sort of emerges from the woodwork in about 27 to runs the landed.

Well, that would be interesting.

But did we, did he imply that it might, or am I making this up that it, that actually

this current gig might be his last because he was in his, is he in his 60s and he, somebody

said it might be his, you know, he'll do this for a few years and then that will be that or what

I can't remember now.

Yes, I think that that seemed to be the implication.

I don't think he's had a lot about his career path, but, but anyway, provost,

tall bloke, nice suit, walked in, nice smile, looks, he looks like a cross between a head

master and a, and a vicar.

And it, you know, he's sort of round glasses and rather studious looking.

But he was very impressive, I thought, very direct, answered the questions.

We, I was in a group of about, I suppose, 15 hacks, managed to get two or three questions

in, you have to shout loudly and, you know, just assert yourself.

And I quite enjoy that stuff.

So, but he, he answered more directly than D'Amio actually.

D'Amio is a great talker, but he tends to tune up a bit before he gets to the answer.

Right.

And whereas, whereas provost was straight out of the locks.

And he, you know, he made it very clear that he was a continuation man.

Renolution was a good thing.

He was involved in it himself.

Okay.

All the product plans that they've revealed are his product plans, as far as he's concerned.

He'd also, that weekend, been to Monza to check out the F1 team.

He wasn't happy with where they were on the grid.

But he was happier than they've been for a while with the state of the management.

And he reckoned that they could look forward to steady progress.

You know, they had a good engine supplier, Mercedes.

And they weren't, they were certainly not going to step out or sell it or any of that.

Okay.

So he, he seemed like a thoroughly safe pair of hands.

And I spend my time, as you do, trying to ingratiate myself so as to do the big interview

in a few months.

Yeah.

We will see.

We'll see.

Come on the podcast, François.

Very good, wouldn't it?

Yeah.

Introduce him as a man who looks like a cross between a headmaster and a becker.

Sorry, mate.

No, I've just Googled photos of him and I think that's a fair enough description.

It's the glasses that do it.

Yeah.

He's got these sort of these, you know, student like, or professorial glasses.

Yeah.

It's the kind of, yes, it's the, it's the smallish round lens with the, with the,

with the, you know, the, not metal rims and there's a certain continental student-ness

about them.

But he had, you know, sense of humor and perfect English, of course.

And, and I liked him.

I thought, I thought you could see why they'd show, they'd chosen him.

And it felt good.

And I hope to spend some more time with the guy.

And if he's in, as you say, you know, if the revolution and the current product plan,

which seems to be pretty good, doesn't it, is part of his thing,

you can see why they'd want the continuation and why they'd want it to carry on.

Yeah.

The point he made was that he was part, although he isn't very well known to us,

because he's, it's because he's been in China career, you know, other sides of the world.

And, but he was very much part of cooking up this stuff.

So it's his plan too.

Yeah.

Sounds like a very natural progression.

I suppose the, I don't know, I don't know about F1, because you can put all of the,

you can put all the right things in place, can't you, with F1.

But it's still a sport.

So you're just, sometimes,

charts will decide whether you succeed or not.

Yeah.

I mean, you can, you know, you can try and prepare and blah, blah, blah,

better than everybody else.

You can increase your likelihood of winning,

but it doesn't necessarily guarantee it.

No.

And I, I wonder how, and I've always wondered this, how you,

and I think when I've asked people, they say, well, you can't really,

how you quantify accurately how much being involved in a sport as a sponsorship

is worth to you as a manufacturer.

And I've got no idea.

And I think most of the time, they're just car, car companies are run by car people

and they want to do it.

Yeah.

I mean, how much does, when you spoke to Bill Ford the other day, you know,

if you say, you know, come Bill, how much is it worth that you go racing?

I don't know.

We just want to go racing, I suppose, dear.

Yeah.

And like Akio Toyoda just loves it.

Just loves it.

Just there's no way of, there's no real way of quantifying it.

Is there?

He's there.

I mean, you can make it up, I suppose.

You go, oh, well, you think it's worth 400 million pounds in exposure.

I suppose there's the fear of missing out thing, isn't there?

You know, if, if you're, if all your, your mates are in it,

you probably think you should be, you know, Cadillac and GM

and Ford are cat and dog, aren't they?

And GM and Ford are now both in Formula One.

And they sort of have to be because of one another.

And but, but I think it is, it is what you say.

You know, in the end, they, they just like the idea of it.

Yeah.

But the, the, the success thing that I think over the years

we've discussed this a few times, haven't we with people?

And they, their fear is not being seen as a contender.

They don't, they can understand not winning every week,

it'll be two weeks, sorry, but, but they don't want to be seen

as grubbing about.

Oh, interesting.

Yeah.

Okay.

They, they, they want to just be seen as, as intelligent contenders.

Yeah.

I wonder if that's one of the reasons that organizing the people

who organize races, right?

Yeah.

The people who set the rules.

I wonder if that's partly behind things like balance of performance

and budget caps and so on and so forth.

Because actually, if you've, if everybody thinks they've got a

reasonable chance of winning, then the manufacturers who are

not winning might stay in it.

But actually, if they just find that they are nowhere,

well, then the sport just loses the, the money of the,

yeah, that loses the money of the people who aren't winning

every other week.

Yeah.

As long as they feel like they're close.

It's not just for the spectators benefit of close racing.

It's also for the series benefit that actually people will stay in it.

Yeah.

I'll tell you who does that really well.

That's Alan Gao who runs the BTCC, you know,

he's always tweaking the rules and, and so on, just so that the,

and the, and the cars when they're racing are always a clump,

aren't they?

There's not, there aren't, there's nobody that's a laugh and a half behind.

No, no, no, no.

And they're, and when they qualify, they can be, you know,

there can be four or five cars in the same 10th and all that.

Yeah.

Amazing.

Let's do a commercial break, Steve, where I tell you about Anderson EV,

the fact that this podcast is brought to you by Anderson EV,

in fact, makers of top quality EV home chargers,

every one of which carries a seven year warranty.

British designer made, I went on the website the other day

and they have some very, very good looking chargers.

Great.

Welcome to part two.

Oh no, I've also got to tell you a few other things

before we start part two.

One of which is that drivers of change that we talked about

a few weeks ago, which is the scheme we run,

is had its deadline entry extended to the 24th of September.

You find this quite a lot with schemes and competitions.

They go, by the way, that's the deadline, that's the deadline,

that's the deadline.

And there are loads of people who go, I know,

I must get around to it.

And then they almost have it completed,

but they don't send it, do they?

It happens so, and I know I've, Lord knows I've done this.

Yep.

So anyway, if we extended it by one week,

then it celebrates apprentices or those in the first two years

of work in the automotive industry.

It also celebrates the companies that support them.

We will name the best new talent.

We will name the best companies that support them.

Please spread the word.

Search drives of change on AutoCar.

If you are in the first stages of your career

in the automotive business, or in fact,

if you know people who are and you work elsewhere

in the automotive business and you want to celebrate

how good your young people are, search drives of change,

tell us about it.

There's an event at Stalantis HQ in November,

where that will be celebrated.

I'm going to go to that.

I like their, we've used this drivers of change umbrella

for a bit, haven't we?

But I think this is the best set of rules of the lot.

I think helping people to make progress,

you know, to just to help them,

help them know they're on the right path is a sacred thing.

You know, I hope it works.

Let's welcome back to part two.

Let's start.

What other award is back, Steve?

Is it the Sir William Lyons Award?

Yes, sir.

And what is that?

Well, it's an old, sorry, venerable competition

that started in 1966,

backed by the Guild of Motoring Writers,

which is the sort of hacks union,

the Motoring Hacks Union.

Also backed by Jaguar because Sir William Lyons was

obviously the legendary founder of Jaguar.

And what it aims to do is get hold of young writers, 17 to 21,

invite them to write a story in the style of the auto car,

why I love column.

Oh, interesting.

I must say I enjoy writing them anyway.

Yes, me too, actually.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, I know we don't do quite so many as some of our

colleagues because we also have columns that we're writing,

and I sometimes am loath to waste anything that could become a column.

But they are good fun to write, aren't they?

And I think enjoyable to read.

And they can be about anything.

I wrote one about how I love grills, remember?

I was on about the Dopey Toyota Alphard the other day,

Why I Love Oversteer.

You know, and there were,

you know, Pete, somebody wrote,

Why I Love Traffic Lights, for God's sake.

But it's just a chance to nice 400 word.

Little essay, I suppose.

And it has to be entertaining.

It has to be amusing, well-turned.

It doesn't need to be faux Jeremy Clarkson,

but it has to be nice read, doesn't it?

Yeah, yeah.

And 400 words is a tight copy limit to write to as well, isn't it?

You've got to say quite a lot in not a long time.

You need to do this with my column.

You need to even go short words, save syllables even.

But anyway, 17 to 21,

there's a cutoff date that I said slightly escapes me,

but it's coming, oh, end of September.

Oh, welcome.

That's right.

And I am a judge.

There's a Jaguar director whose name escapes me,

but a good bloke who is also a judge.

We're going to judge the finalists.

And the Guild of Muttering Rotters will announce the winner

at the end of the, or at their dinner, I believe, in November.

And they can come to us on working experience.

So the winning entry gets published,

and the, and who knows, it might begin...

We publish as a YI Live in the Mac.

We will, yeah.

Excellent, excellent.

And also, I've known people who have written one wonderful thing

and established themselves as writers.

Freelance, but we wouldn't be a job,

but they can come and work with us for a while.

And then off they go, hopefully.

There are some rather good people that we all know

who've won the Lions Award over the last 40 or 50 years,

whatever it is.

And we hope that by refounding it like this,

we'll start the whole process again.

Yeah, I'm really pleased about that.

Me too.

Yeah, I think that's a good thing.

Yeah.

Jonathan Wagner writes from abroad, in fact,

in Florida.

He says, with episode 300 around,

I wonder if you and Steve would consider discussing...

It's a little bit indulgent, maybe.

Consider discussing the genesis of the podcast,

How You Do Know Each Other,

Beyond Your Histories at Autocar.

Do you always meet together in the same room?

Just a few minutes of background about you both

and the original idea for the pod.

Thanks, and keep up your work.

Thanks, Jonathan.

Very kind.

How did we...

This wasn't our idea, was it, this podcast?

No, no, no.

Do you think we should...

Have we talked about this too much already?

Have we said this before?

I don't know.

Will it...

That's excellent.

I was wondering whether we ought to...

I mean, there's quite a lot of questions there, aren't there?

There's probably, I don't know, 15 minutes worth,

isn't there?

Maybe what we ought to do is export it and do it.

Oh, maybe.

Just in a second and a half sometime.

Yeah, Autocar meets Briar and Copley on a Saturday morning.

But no, well, the glory of it,

is that it wasn't either...

It wasn't our idea, was it?

No.

I think it came from Jim Holder.

I think so.

Who is a bloke who's given to having good ideas.

This is one of his best, I would say.

And...

Well, it feels to me on the theme of motor racing,

this feels to me a bit like Autocar sponsoring a race team.

It's impossible to quantify what this means to them.

It makes them a small amount of money,

but it also does cost them to do it.

And I think they let us do it,

because they think it's good for the business, right?

They think it's good for...

Because we have letters like this going,

I'm a digital subscriber now because of YouTube health.

So we think it's a good thing, but nobody can quantify it, really.

But we like doing it enough that we justify it that way.

Oh yeah, it's definitely good for business.

And you do get the odd letter from somebody saying,

I've returned to the fold because of...

Because of.

You can imagine, we hold those pretty close to it.

We send those to the suits immediately.

Say, look, another one.

On which note, if you are interested in the Autocar archive,

you can find it at themagazineshop.com.

You can find all this stuff

if you just search Autocar on the internet.

You can find all these things.

The digital archive has every issue,

we think every issue.

Somebody...

Damn close.

Do occasionally get it, but damn close.

Yeah, if you were taking it to the one decimal place,

possibly even two, you would get to 100%

if you round it appropriately.

An engineer speaks.

Since 1895, weekly since 1895.

There were a couple of gaps, weren't there?

Was it like the paper shortest three-day weeks,

strikes in the 70s, that a couple of weeks it missed?

I think so.

I think it went through the war, though, didn't it?

It was.

I think so, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think Keith Jones, our friend and keen archivist of things,

knows that sort of thing.

In fact, he's going to reveal all his needs working on this opus.

Yeah, yeah, the Autocar road test data...

God, Keith, tell us about it.

My goodness, he sent you any screenshots of the data collection,

things that he's got.

This just looks like the matrix.

It's unbelievable.

It's just like screen upon screen.

He probably doesn't even see the data now.

The world needs people like Keith, doesn't it?

Yeah, tremendous.

Because, I mean, I just wouldn't know where to begin,

let alone finding the actual...

No.

Just on that business of having a rattle about where it all started,

will we just sort of park that and do 15 minutes at some time?

Yeah, let's do it at some time.

Yeah, I don't know when.

Because there's always...

Eventsity avoidance.

There's always lots...

Yes, eventsity avoidance.

There's lots to talk about, such as the fact

that the Citroen Bollingo is back.

That was my happiest press release of the year.

Yeah, that one.

When Stellantis decided...

Not a high bar.

Sorry?

Not a high bar.

No, no, very good point.

When Stellantis decided that the world was going to be electric in a flash,

they decided that only business, only commercial vehicles would be

in future have ICE engines.

But now they've decided that Bollingos and partners and whatever

the Vauxhall version of this combo life, they all...

And you say your memory's bad?

Well, it's a fluke, mate.

Sometimes the odd fact pops in, you never know.

But no, what's happened is that those sort of four-door,

five-door machines like I had, mine was a multi-spass,

a Bollingo multi-spass, 19 years old, lovely old car.

And now the latest versions are excellent as well,

spacious, not soft-riding, all the stuff.

And now you can get one as a diesel, a hybrid, a petrol, and an EV.

And I don't say I'm going to buy one, but if this were the moment

for me to buy a vehicle like that, I'd be in there like a rat up a drain pipe.

So yeah.

Still a really good car.

Anyway, well done, Stellantis.

I'm glad you've seen the light.

Yeah, me too.

Really pleased about that.

Very pleased about that.

Shall we...

Let's talk my column a bit briefly, because I...

Well, do you ever read that young people aren't interested in cars?

Oh, of course.

Because yeah, because...

Well, there's various reasons we know that we think it's nonsense,

because if you go to any car, cafe, event, whatever,

you'll see loads of young people with cars all the time.

But some people will go, ah, well, if you look at the statistics,

you will note that the number of young people learning to drive

is not what it was, proportion.

Proportionally, less than it was 30 years ago, whatever,

which is fine.

But they infer from that that young people don't like driving.

But I think that's cobblers.

Cobblers is the word for it.

I think that's absolutely cobblers.

So let's take the example, one example I found,

because the Instagram algorithm the other day decided that I wanted

to see professional football as arriving at training.

I mean, I have an interest in cars

and I have a past interest in football,

so I suppose it thought to itself,

what this man wants to see is a matchup of the two.

Anyway, so it was the training ground of a Premier League football team

and it's like, here's so-and-so arriving in his Lamborghini Urus,

he's matey in his Audi SQ8, he's matey in his Range Rover,

he's about four Mercedes G-class, he's somebody in the back of a V-class,

which, fine, but actually it turns out that

he doesn't have a driving license at the moment,

because his Majesty's government has it.

And anyway, these are all lads in their average age mid-20s, I suppose.

They don't need to drive a car.

They have no need to drive a car.

And when you and I were spending our entire youth obsessing with cars,

they were doing exactly the same about football.

So as you know, mate, there's only so many hours in the day

you can think about stuff.

Their obsession is so good that they earn at least

five million pounds a year from doing it and having it, at least.

So that's what 100 grand a week, which is an astronaut

who got a amount of money for most people.

But in the elite football sphere, you're just getting into it.

Basically, a lot of them earn many times more than that.

So they have no need to drive a car,

because it would be better for them

if they walked out of their house in the morning,

got into the back of a Mercedes-Benz V-class,

a much more comfortable seat.

Didn't have to get changed or anything else,

and they got chauffeured to the ground.

And they could afford it, the club could afford it,

it would be safer, it would be more reliable.

The car would be warm when they got out.

They'd never have to defrost a windscreen.

They wouldn't have to do any of that stuff.

It would be better for their body

because they'd be relaxed all the time.

Driving is not good for you, is it?

It's not a thing.

And it fundamentally isn't, their hobby is,

their obsession and hobby is not cars, fundamentally.

But every single one of them chooses to drive a car,

every single one of them,

unless they've chosen to drive it too fast

or too much under the influence recently.

And that, without question, and they all do it.

So there is something about driving,

even if you don't have to do it,

that you kind of want to,

that I think people want to do.

And I don't think, I don't know,

I don't think that goes away.

And I sort of think that actually,

the reason fewer young people are learning to drive,

and it's how I think it's pretty marginal

when you look at the stats.

The proportion is down.

But people learn to pass tests later.

There are more people passing tests, I think, in the UK than,

I mean, there's more people living here than ever,

but there's more people passing their tests,

I think, than they ever have.

I think people are,

the fact that they don't,

the fact that proportionally fewer people

are learning to drive,

if you infer from that that they don't like cars,

I don't buy that for a second.

I just think it's harder for them to own cars.

No, I love the payoff in your color.

Well, I think to suggest that young people

don't like buying houses or having Caribbean holidays,

or I don't know, whatever the third thing,

in the group of threes that you are,

it's not they don't like doing it.

It's just that they can't do it.

It's really expensive.

It's really difficult,

and they have other things to worry about.

You know, I'm sure they,

oh, young people don't like buying houses.

I thought they love buying houses.

I'm sure they'd love a house.

Oh, they don't like living on their own.

They'd love to live on their own,

but they can't.

And I think that's kind of the slight situation

where people say young people don't like cars.

We erect these barriers, don't we?

We erect the insurance barrier.

We make it hard for young people

to drive through Oxford.

Why would they want to?

Don't get me started.

74 percent.

Well, I mean, I live near Oxford,

and it's just the,

I've got a bit of Oxford County Council beef now and again,

because there's a perfectly good roundabout near me

that has been changed into traffic lights,

which are also fine.

But it was, it worked perfectly well as a roundabout.

And when I'm sitting at a red light at 11 o'clock at night,

and there is nobody there,

and they are these sort of smart lights.

I think they sort of detect people coming

and how many people are in a queue or whatever.

But still, you can be there 11 o'clock at night.

And I think if this was a roundabout, we'd all be gone.

All of us would be gone.

And it's not like they were awful queues, anyone.

Anyway, latest estimates, and that, I don't know,

it took them over a year to do 12 million quid.

Apparently that came from the levelling up budget.

I'm not entirely sure Oxfordshire is the place for levelling up.

For levelling up, but I just like.

And it still doesn't matter what budget it comes from.

Still our money, I mean, it still could spend it on something else.

We could.

Anyway, I believe Oxford is going to introduce a five quid congestion charge.

And because they did a survey of Oxford residents,

some people thereabouts and said,

do you think we should do it?

74% of people said,

we think it'll have a negative impact on Oxford.

So they've decided to do it.

I think the insurance barrier is a big one.

The insurance barrier is a big one.

Cars are complicated.

Some of the guys are now,

auto cars, I'm sure people know,

but auto car is a rather exemplary place

in that it's got quite a lot of young journalist employees.

The way they fight to get sorted with insurance

is nothing like I had to do.

I did pay quite a lot of money for my boys

who are now in their 40s.

But boy, insurance is tough.

And you just got to ride it out,

wait till you're 25 and then begin your life almost.

Yeah, I think my son's still got a black box in his car.

Has he?

Yeah, I think so.

How old is he?

22.

Oh, right, so he's not in the middle of it?

Yeah.

And I think I would have thought my daughter

hasn't anymore.

And I don't think she needed one by that stage.

And I don't know how much difference

it makes to his now.

He probably doesn't need it now.

But it's a young people just get used to it.

I would have hated to have one,

but it just seemed to accept that it's a thing.

You've just got to have some little monitor

that knows how fast you're going.

I just keep thinking, how would I have ever

practiced oversteer slides in somebody's field

in the middle of Australia if I had a black box?

Yeah, I wonder.

Because if you're not on the public highway,

it shouldn't register, should it?

It should go, well, OK, fine, you're at

Dollyton Park.

Therefore, it doesn't matter that you're

accelerating and breaking sharply.

So from memory, it monitors your speed, of course.

But if you're not going near the legal limit,

like on a lot of back roads, which may have a 60-mile-an-hour

limit, what it will do is it will assess your speed

compared to the typical speed that other people

go on that road to decide whether it thinks you're

faster than them or not.

And then it monitors how abruptly you accelerate

and break.

Puts that on a little dashboard that your parents

or whoever can go on and check on your score.

Kind of brainy, then.

Yeah, I mean, it doesn't measure how well you drive

because it doesn't measure, you know,

it can't measure a road craft or anything like that.

But it must, the insurers must think it has some effect.

Otherwise, they wouldn't insist on it being put in,

I suppose.

I did get one phone call once from the insurance company

saying, yeah, this isn't a problem.

But we just want to let you know that the,

I forget which car it was at the time,

was recorded on going, I don't know, it was like 82,

83 miles an hour on the motorway this morning.

I said it wouldn't be the M40 about, I don't know,

10 to 11, something like that.

You know, when one of them was due to start work at 11,

they just had a few minutes to make up there.

But they said, look, it's not a big deal,

but we thought it'd let you know because if it happens

frequently, it can be a big deal because they can

I don't know, actually they do cancel the insurance, I suppose,

but I don't like the idea of it, but what do you do?

What do you do?

Let's talk Eric Carlson briefly because only if,

subject of oversteering fields, he's the man.

Well, I was in Sweden, as you know, a couple of weeks ago now,

and I got talking to various blokes over there

about Eric Carlson, who was a big hero,

rally driver known as Eric on the roof, Carlson,

because he, for two reasons, he was inclined to roll these cars.

And the cars, if you look at the frontal shape of a Saab 96,

which is what he specialized in rallying,

they're, it's almost circular.

And once they roll, they roll a lot more.

They keep going.

And there was just a lovely photograph of Eric

that he posed for sitting on a verge with a bottle of beer

with this upside-down power on the other side.

It's a famous photograph.

I knew Eric really well, and he,

I've got several signed copies of the same book

called Mr. Saab.

And I sat in with him a good few times in, you know,

on ice circuits here and there, and he specialized in,

during my era, it was the Saab 99 and the 900,

and you'd go on these ice circuits,

and he always wanted the car packed with people.

He didn't like just doing it for one passenger,

so there'd be three across the back and one in the front.

And he'd have the car doing ridiculous speeds on this ice

and going everywhere but straight.

And he'd be demonstrating recoveries and so on,

but he was always talking over his shoulder.

So he's actually looking around out more or less

out the back window while recovering the car.

And he is such a lovely guy.

He went on all their car launches.

I remember going on a launch of a particularly

undistinguished Saab, the one that was based

on the Vauxhall Cavalier.

Do you remember the original 900?

Yeah, one of the 900s.

But it, we're driving through the night.

It was a bit of a grim route in the car.

I remember had sort of funny front spring rates.

So the nose bobbed up and down.

And one minute you could see the horizon with the headlights

and then the next minute you were tripping over them.

Anyway, we've finally arrived at this destination.

Dark, not very welcoming.

Suddenly out of the darkness looms this huge figure.

He was a big bloke.

Wrenches open a boot, grabs our luggage,

takes it inside and says, you know,

come and have a beer or something.

He's just such a lovely, welcoming bloke.

You would not find too many international stars of sport

unloading your baggage for you, would you?

No, no.

And I love the guy and so did the rest of the world.

And we got talking about it.

Oh, sorry.

The story I love was the one that's told in various ways.

But during his day of rallying, the pace notes were not

known in the detail there are now.

And the way you had to drive a Saab 96 was flat.

There was no torque.

So all you could do was stick your clog on the floor

and sort it out.

Is it a two-stroke?

Is the 96 a two-stroke?

Yeah, a three-cylinder two-stroke, 850 cc, no poke.

50 brake horsepower.

Oh, goodness, OK.

But he won various British rallies.

Yeah.

And I heard somebody say to him, weren't you terrified

when you got to blind bends or crests?

And he said, I hesitate to mimic the accent,

but he said, I don't see the problem.

The road's got to go somewhere.

Yes, I suppose so.

That brings us pretty much to the end of My Week in Castle.

This week, what else do we want to have to remind you of?

Do you want to do an archive?

Yeah, I haven't been in the archive for the first time in a long time.

Oh, yes, I have.

Yes, I have because I was looking up this morning.

It is shortly going to be the 75th anniversary of the Morgan Plus 4.

And we broke the story of it with a cutaway drawing,

one of those schematics that we do.

Wow.

And news story, a big sort of page and a bit

detailed description of the car in the September 29th, 1950 issue.

Wow.

So next week, hopefully next week, my diary's a bit packed,

but over the next 10 days or so, I'm going to go to Morgan.

They want to have a look over the Super 3 anyway,

because I've had it for 1,000 miles.

They just want to give it a check over, well, 2,000 now, but anyway.

And I'll drive a new Plus 4, have a look at an original one,

write a story about it.

That will be online September 29th.

Is that good?

Is the plan.

Are you going to drive the original?

Well, I don't know.

They said they've got one on, one will be on site,

but I don't know if I'm going to have a go at it or not.

I'd like to, if we can, I will.

But yeah, it'd be really interesting to do.

Because they had the old flexible twin rail chassis,

didn't they?

Oh, yes.

Compared with what you've recently driven,

body rigidity is kind of unknown.

Yeah.

So I'm interested.

So anyway, if you subscribe to the Auto Car Archive

and you go to 1950 and you go to September,

I think it's 29th issue, there it is.

Wow.

And in fact, I found it just by, well,

we got told by a former colleague of ours who said,

oh, I think it's 75th anniversary.

I looked in the archive and there it was.

So yeah, it's a feature coming up on that.

Your podcast with Carl Ludwigson is live right now?

Yeah, really enjoyed it.

He's such an expert.

I mean, I just don't know how one man can have the brain space

he's got.

He's written 70 books.

I asked him the killer question,

Carl, have you ever written a pot boiler?

And he hasn't.

He just hasn't.

Everything that he's done has been meticulously

researched.

Yeah.

You know, his latest effort, which is called Power Unleashed,

which is a three-volume examination of the way

supercharging has been applied to petrol engines,

petrol and diesel engines through history.

So airplanes, racing cars, production cars.

Goodness me.

Trucks even.

Took three years.

And he just, he just dedicates himself.

The thing that he's got in coming up,

I probably shouldn't rattle on, should I?

We're trying to end that.

No, it's a good thing.

But the thing that is really interesting

is that he's, he knew Harry Mundy very well.

You know, one of our awards is called

the Mundy Award for Engineering,

because Harry Mundy was an auto car journalist

as well as the bloke that designed the Lotus Twin Cam engine

and the Jag of V12, not a bad little back.

It's not bad, is it?

Story.

Anyway, he knew Harry Mundy really well,

says he was a good bloke,

and he's got all the info and wants to write his biography.

Oh, amazing.

But I'm not sure whether it's the next project

or the one after next.

I'm kind of hoping he makes it.

Sooner than later.

Because I'm really busting to read it.

Yeah.

Great.

Well, that's online now.

I haven't, because I've been away,

I haven't listened to it yet, but I will do that.

That is the thing about running a Super 3

is because it doesn't have a stereo.

And in fact, my little Ali A2

doesn't have carplay or anything.

I am behind on podcasts.

So I do need to, I do need to catch up

because you proof listened to yours

because I was away as well.

So I haven't heard George yet, so anyway.

Do you, can the A2 ever get something with Apple CarPlay?

You can, so the options are,

you can remove the standard head unit,

you could put in one that does have them,

but there's something on one of the forums that says,

ah, now if you just install an aftermarket one,

that might disconnect the back speakers

because somehow the way that it's all integrated,

the backs, but what you can also do

is you can take the head unit out,

you can attach to the back,

one of those little Bluetooth receivers,

and then you could stream from your phone

to the Bluetooth receiver,

and then the car picks it up that way

and that keeps the original head unit looking original to you.

So I don't know exactly what I'm going to do.

I don't know if I have back speakers

because some, mine's a sport specification,

so it probably has four speakers.

But some only had speakers in the front,

some had them in the back,

and apparently there's something very complicated

about the way they're wired up.

So if you just drop a new head unit in,

you might lose two speakers,

but I'm not sure I care.

I'm not sure.

Nobody ever sits in the back.

I don't mind that much.

No, I suppose the fact is,

you're in the car so much

because you like it so much.

It'd be really helpful.

Yeah, I drive it too much, really.

But isn't it funny,

we've got all these cars that come and go,

but I spend such a lot of time in the forward.

It's really stupid.

I've done, I don't know,

12,000 or 15,000 miles in a year

driving this ridiculous wrapper.

And that's only one of the cars.

You still drive a lot of miles every year, then, don't you?

Yeah, a lot.

You speak partly because of where I live.

It's a sort of 100 miles to everywhere.

Yeah, yes, yeah, fair enough.

Well, that is it for this week.

Steve, who do we need to thank?

Is it Anderson Evie?

Oh, I think so.

You can discover all you need to know

about setting up your own charging point

at addison-evie.com.

And of course, there is that excellent offer

if you buy one now and shop with octopus energy at the same time.

I think it's a matter of going to the website

and being sure about it.

But I think if you buy the charger

and link it up with an octopus account,

you get these 5,000 by bonus miles.

Yeah, very good.

It's also, as I noticed the other day,

rated excellent on trust pilot.

Anderson Evie, so Anderson-evie.com for all of that.

Just go to your favorite search engine

and put in order car for all the rest

and you'll find everything we do

across the modern media landscape.

Cheers, mate.

See you later on board.

See you next week.

Straight line to a destination on the horizon.

Sometimes it takes an unexpected turn

with detours, new possibilities,

and even another passenger or three.

And with 100 years of navigating ups and downs,

you can count on Edward Jones

to help guide you through it all

because life is a winding path

made rich by the people you walk it with.

Let's find your rich together.

Edward Jones, member SIPC.

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