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Hello and welcome to the AutoCard podcast, my week in cars with Pry here.

Properly over there.

Morning, Stephen.

Morning to you, mate.

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I need to shine mine up, you know, I've allowed it to become a bit shabby.

It needs a bit of car polish, I think.

Disappointing, mate.

Disappointing.

We have another announcement.

This time next week, we will have a guest on this program.

Steve, who is that guest going to be?

Well, we think it's going to be Jeremy Clarkson unless he rings up today and tells us he can't

do it.

How?

Yes.

So I read, as you did yesterday morning, his column in the Sunday Times, which said,

it's been raining nonstop for the past two months.

I can't do any work on the farm.

They don't want me at the pub.

They don't want me in the farm shop.

All I'm doing is sitting at home ordering stuff online and it's very expensive.

And with excellent journalistic opportunity and enterprise, you said?

Well, I just dropped him a note and said, OK, mate, if you're that bored, what about

putting up with me in prior for an hour?

And he said, astonish me.

If he's going to reply to you, he doesn't always, but if he's going to reply to you,

he always replies within a minute or two and back came this thing saying, well, I could

do something tomorrow.

So we are going this afternoon.

We are heading over to the farm and we'll meet him and we'll chat for as long as he

can spare.

Yeah.

And that will be on this podcast Wednesday next week.

That is the March the 4th.

Something, mate.

Yeah.

I think, yes, I think March the 4th.

Anyway, this time next week, we will have All Being Well.

If you're listening to this, it will be well because otherwise I'll have cut it out.

So Jeremy Clarkson will be on this show this time next week telling us, well, we'll check

cars.

It's a car show.

So we'll talk cars.

I said to him, we don't want to talk about a lot of daily style nonsense.

What we want is hear about you and your relationship with cars.

I can't remember.

I'm sure he's written about what his first car was, for instance, but I'd love to know.

And does he care about classic cars?

Does he, you know, he still, I mean, you said just the other day that he was still a top

class car reviewer.

I think so.

How does that happen?

Because if you're trying to run a farm in a pub in a brewery, how do you stay up to

date?

I wouldn't be able to do it.

No, I think that's pretty good going.

So I'm hoping you'll tell us that stuff.

Likewise.

So tune in this time next week.

Between now and then, Steve and I will have a letters special on Saturday, another letters

special.

We did run just this week gone by and then we have some more interviews coming up in

the coming weeks as well.

I will be speaking to James Cameron of Mission Motorsport and I think Felix Page, our deputy

editor has been speaking to design boss of Dacia recently.

So we'll have that on in the coming weeks too.

Anyway, stay tuned.

There's lots coming up this week.

Steve and I are going to be talking our respective auto car columns and a bit more besides.

You can write to us auto car at haymarket.com.

Stuart Hilpert says, because of your high praise of the festival of the unexceptional

I booked a ticket to visit, which will be the first festival of cars I've ever been

to.

Wow.

Well, I hope you enjoy it, Stuart.

But my main reason to write in, I was driving along the dreaded A14 this week in my woeful

Nissan Pixel.

Is that woeful of Pixel?

Well, maybe this is a particularly woeful example of a Pixel, I don't know.

But in the space of a few seconds, I passed a Hyundai i10, a 2022 Ford Fiesta, and a

VAR565 and a Suzuki Swift.

Then a McLaren passed me, no idea which model.

You know what?

The first four were more pleasing to my eye.

I love smaller cars, and as your recent discussion touched on, we'll have a premium brand car

of this size.

Imagine a Volkswagen upsized car with the dynamics of a Golf in the interior, class,

and tech of an Audi.

I love the look of the Hyundai Insta and Renault 5, but wish they did these with engines living

in a flat.

I can't charge my own electric car, so they remain impractical to me.

Thank you, Stuart.

Another vote for the small, premium, luxury car.

Well, I think it's enticing, isn't it?

Because small cars have they can somehow be cute if they want to be or or sort of

bold. They justify bright colors.

A lot of them are quite well packaged, so you can fit in them.

OK, you know, I'm the person that can prove that.

And so he's right, I think.

Well done, Stuart.

I think that's true.

So that's the wrong with a pixel.

It's just a bit of a rarity.

It is, isn't it?

I mean, did they was it officially?

I don't remember why they did it, because the micro was there as well.

I think it might have fitted below the micro in price range.

Yes, maybe it did.

Was it on sale at the same time as that not very good era micro?

Yes, possibly.

Yeah, that's right.

There was the that's right.

There was a really nice one that looked like a frog.

Remember with it?

Yeah, that was really good.

And they kind of had those kind of they had some fabric inside,

but also kind of Bakelite looking switch gear.

Yeah, really classily done.

And was it? Yeah.

And I think the the one that was poor was was poor all but the engine.

There was a there was a wasn't there a supercharged engine or something?

A really unusual little engine that I could be talking out of through my hat.

Or words to the effect.

I we reviewed that car, gave it not very many stars from memory.

And sometimes you get a call when that happens.

Sometimes you'll get a call from a manufacturer saying always

sometimes we let them know in advance just so that they can tell their bosses.

Listen, it's not going to go away.

Yeah, and I remember having a conversation with somebody from this

and he said, look, sometimes I would tell you that you're wrong.

Sometimes I would tell you that we're going to be greatly offended.

And sometimes we will use this to take to the bosses and say, look,

we told you this car wasn't going to be good enough and we think we should do better.

And this is one of those occasions. Wow.

So we it wasn't news to them, was it?

You know, it wasn't news to them when this car landed because it was

developed slash built for some.

Far Eastern markets.

It was made in India, wasn't it?

Yeah, maybe or Thailand and or Thailand.

Thailand, perhaps that's it.

But it was not and then they kind of modified it for Europe, but not well enough.

Yes. It's fun, isn't it?

I think I wrote about this some point last year when the new

so the new micro will be a Renault five underneath a shared platform with a Renault five.

Yeah. The previous one was.

Have we been without a micro for a couple of years?

Yes, I think so.

But they want this one to be they said it's no longer a grandma's car.

The boss said last year and then there was the not very good one.

There was the there was the one that was fine that was launched in what?

2013, that was like that was OK.

Then there was the really good for a guide one.

Then the one before that was the car of the year winning K-12, which was really good.

Really good. Yeah.

I think that car has had a lot of different personalities.

And a lot of different personalities isn't the right word.

But you know what I mean?

But buyers have always looked exactly the same way on it.

Yeah, it doesn't matter what it's but how good it's been, how youthful it's been,

how good, bad, drab, whatever, whatever.

I think the buyer has thought about it exactly the same way.

So when the boss goes, it's not going to be a grandma's car anymore.

I think, well, one, what's wrong with it if it is?

But also.

I think I think the public will decide whether it is or not.

They will. You can't because, you know, I love that stuff.

It seems to come from the center of car companies, where they say this one's

going to be youthful and vibrant and adventurous and all the rest of it.

Yeah.

I can remember talking to an executive who was listening to one of his

one of his colleagues making these claims about youthfulness and vibrancy.

And and he said to me in an aside,

we just want to sell this to people who've got the money and a driver's license.

Yeah.

Oh, I do remember a presentation of the Golf Plus.

Remember the Golf Plus, the tall golf and and that.

Yes, the presentation said, who is going to buy this car?

Young people, active lifestyles, blah, blah, blah.

And then he pulled up another slide and and old people, the sedentary,

the miserable, not outgoing at all.

Basically, anybody who anybody who wants one can have one.

Oh, they've sort of throttled back on that a bit, haven't they?

Do you remember the version of the Fiesta?

What was that called?

There's the sort of city,

city-fied, slightly raised bread, Vanny.

Oh, Ford, something Ford.

B-Max, not the B-Max.

No, it was it was it was a bit further back than that.

Sorry, mate, you probably weren't born.

But it was it was just how long ago you take are you talking?

God, it was a sort of city.

It was for young city dwellers.

You know, you'll know it, you'll know it.

They're still around.

How far back are we talking?

Oh, 20 years.

Sorry, mate, this is ridiculous.

It's and it wasn't called Fiesta, something.

No, no, I don't think so.

No, it was it was it had a dear need to find it out.

Oh, fusion, fusion.

Yeah, fusion. Yeah.

And there were all these claims made that it was from sort of modern, useful.

Is that what they were saying at the time?

Yeah, yeah.

And it's turned out to be a, you know,

Gimawag and something that, you know, me and my mrs.

might in a in a very sad life choose.

I do remember the I do remember the fusion.

There's a garage near me.

That was put out of video on the socials yesterday or day before over the weekend.

And they were trying to convince people to buy a Ford Fiesta active on the basis

that it would be better over Potholes.

Well, it might be, I suppose it might be the thing they didn't address is the fact

that this guy, so he was in the he was in the showroom going, look,

this is a normal Fiesta.

This is the Fiesta.

It is the active, isn't it?

The one that's got the cladding and is a bit tall.

He said, look, it's got that that bit more

wheel travel, it's got uprated springs and dampers.

I was thinking, I'm not sure they're

uprated for for anything.

A bit of height and crushing the parts.

Didn't address the fact that it's still wearing some sort of wheels that

don't look like they would react incredibly well to the biggest Potholes.

It's all about sidewall capability, really, in that.

Yeah. Yes, I've brought my

my choices today were to bring a BMW 330 CI to pay,

which I'm enjoying very much is my current long term or my Land Rover Defender.

And I thought, given I've got a drive across the Cotswolds to a farm,

I'm going to bring the Land Rover just in case.

Well done.

Looking good, too.

I just saw it looking outside resplendent in the sun.

Well, I cleaned it the other day,

mate, because it's been to Wales and back over the weekend.

And so I think it's done six or seven hundred miles this week.

So I cleaned out the inside and I was instructed not to clean out the inside too thoroughly.

Don't go, don't go, don't you don't have to make too much of an effort.

I said, I'm cleaning out the inside with a shovel.

So this is because of the hay bales.

The hay, yeah, it's that it was getting a bit.

Mildewy inside because,

yeah, because of hay and feed buckets that get put back in it damp and everything else.

So it needed a bit of a once over to get rid of the moulds inside.

I mean, the ones that we had two of them,

and I remember they always used to grow moss along the edges of the windows.

Don't know why.

No, I've got a bit of that on the Audi A2, actually,

a bit of moss on the ears, building up on the back of the spoiler at the back.

Must be the moss season.

Must be moss season.

I found a bumblebee on the windscreen wiper of the BMW this morning as I did a

station run first thing and I looked at the windscreen wiper.

I was like, there's a bumblebee on there.

I better not wipe the wiper.

Anyway, I've parked him in the sunshine and hope that he'll sort himself out.

Yeah, yeah, I will.

Shall we talk your column first item?

Tom Karen and Johnny Ive.

Yeah, I was just

I've been a bit of a passenger in all this Ferrari loose stuff because,

you know, I just read what everybody else has read about it and seen the pics.

And obviously, we had our chat with Will Rimmel the other day,

who was was our man at the reveal of the interior.

But a journalist, a venerable Norwegian journalist of my

acquaintance called John Vinding Sorensen, I fanated,

known to us as wind up because we could never get around his crazy surname.

He just sent me a note saying, did you do you realize that it was Tom Karen of Ogle

design, Tom Karen being the bloke who designed the reliant

Symitter and the and the what the chopper bicycle stuff in between.

Hmm.

Tom Karen rescued

or at least had a very beneficial effect on the career of Johnny Ive when he was

very young, because there was a point in his career apparently when he

was inclined to give up the whole design idea.

Johnny Ive.

Yeah, was.

Yeah. And did he work for Tom Karen at that?

Well, apparently there was some sort of one family knew the other or something like that.

Right.

And, you know, Tom Karen got hold of young Johnny Ive,

marched him around the Ogle studio, showed him all the good stuff they were doing.

And in effect, inspired him.

I'm not sure. I don't I don't think he had Johnny Ive did anything more than a bit

of work experience, but he but it did give him a bit of a infusion.

And back he went to greatness.

Interesting story.

Yeah. Yeah.

Tom Karen had so so much

effect on so many people, many died a few years ago now.

And he was very but he was working to a great age, wasn't he?

I think he might have departed when he was 90ish.

OK.

Pretty good effort.

Yeah. And this Ferrari Luce interior.

It's been quite a lot of hot takes

on that car. More people than I expected.

Dislike it.

Yeah, I'm surprised by that.

Yeah.

This is you are not about this in your column.

Yeah. And I wonder if one I'm going to not have a hot take until I've seen it

and felt it and everything else.

I think Will Rimalar News Ed was right when he came on the pod the other day.

He said, actually, some of those,

they look computer generated images of it, don't quite do it justice.

But when he saw and felt and

touched all of the bits up close separately,

their quality really shines through.

But I also wondered if and in the same way,

the new Jaguar's design had those had those things not accompanied the fact

that it was a shift towards electrification in some way.

I mean, Jaguar has made an electric car before.

Yeah.

This would be Ferrari's first electric car.

But you know, Jaguar's having a big step change into electrification at this point.

I wonder if these new designs had they been if the if the new Jaguar

design had come out and they said, by the way, it's going to have a supercharged

five litre V8 in the front and be rear wheel drive.

And had the Ferrari's interior come out and they'd said, actually,

this is the new interior for the Dodici Chilindry.

Yeah.

Whether the reaction to it might have been a little different,

whether some people, not all by by any stretch, but some of the most

vocal opponents just don't want to like it because it will be attached to an EV.

No, it's it's oh, God, I'll tell you what,

if you could teach your sprog anything in early life, it would be.

I think it would be open-mindedness is one of the most stultifying things,

isn't it, when you you encounter this rather sort of muleish critics of things

who don't don't really have a reason for not liking it, they just don't.

And

but I think it wasn't there also a thread.

This is this car is called luce.

Luce, yeah, I mean, light, light, I think, yeah, or light source or something.

Yeah, it'll be OK.

Didn't we'll also make the point that the when you see it up close,

when you actually see the properties themselves with your own eyes,

that the quality is much more obvious than yeah, certainly wasn't the pics.

Yeah, and I think actually on the video he's put together,

which is on YouTube, like and subscribe,

it look that that's much more evident than in those pictures.

And also in the pictures, you don't

because we haven't seen the whole interior yet.

We don't quite know the entire environment it's going to be in.

So the three elements, three or four elements that we've seen,

steering wheel, a bit rounder, less stuff on it,

three spoke and you look at that wheel and it can look a bit

silvery plastic, but actually I think in the metal, it looks much more convincing.

And the instrument cluster,

as Will was saying, it's got a glass top, then it has a real needle.

Only then do you have

the real needle is behind the glass top and only then behind that is there a

high resolution display so it has a lot more depth and a lot more quality

than just a digital dash normally would.

And I think that's, you know,

I think I think the

I think we'll need to see it and feel it before we have a proper.

I was I thought it was who hasn't been.

You know, there are more switches and buttons.

Who hasn't been asking for that?

No, I find just just from the illustrations,

I was really pleased with it because it seemed like a,

you know, a nice understandable car.

I mean, this is my age talking probably, but

but, you know, round dials,

easy to understand graphics, switches again,

look like a Ferrari, I liked it.

Yeah, yeah.

Did I tell you? I think I did.

I drove this series three Land Rover Resto mod the other the other week.

You did. Yeah.

And by Kent Heritage works.

And the boss of that spent 18 years working for Apple,

not in not as a designer, I think, but he had a it does have a screen in the middle.

Yeah. And on the when you're on the

the most of it's got car play in it.

So which is fine, that all works as is.

But then the other sort of significant

intel that it has functionality that it has is this just large screen.

With a heated windscreen button in the middle,

heated seat for driver side on one side and heated seat for the passenger on the

other side and these buttons must be 30 mil or plus each.

These big icons, the rest of the screen is blank and that's it.

And you just like, well, that's the perfect.

There are all these companies that try to overly design these incredibly fussy

big touch screens and he's just got no one big black screen, three buttons on it.

Yeah. And you go, well, that's fine.

That that is entirely as functional as you would want that screen to be.

Yeah, he's really making a point, isn't he?

Yeah. Yeah. Good luck.

What was that was V8?

Yeah, Rover, Rover V8 because then it could hook up to an old fashioned

four speed auto, which meant that it still could drive through the original

high low ratio gearbox.

It had uprated diffs so it was effectively running a rain.

It's effectively underneath the Range Rover classic drivetrain with a

yeah, tweaked up 3.9 litre Rover.

I think 3.9 Rover.

Yeah, Rover V8 really nice.

You were talking about the the excellence of the TD5, the five cylinder diesel.

I think Perkins involved in that.

But anyway, the five cylinder.

I after we were talking about that, I was driving home thinking, wouldn't be good

if somebody did a sort of optimized version of the TD5 today.

So, you know, balanced,

you know, more cleverly fed, perhaps, than,

than, you know, aspiration, better aspiration, better exhaust than it used to

have a bit more poke, but in essence, the optimized TD5.

I think, in a way, I'd almost prefer that in my Land Rover than a dropped in V8.

Yeah, I mean, I wonder, I wonder whether somebody does.

Mind you, you know, what needs is a go to overall.

This is the package thing.

Yes, I was also a passenger and a defender with a V8 in it last week,

though, and I've got to say, mate, they do sound rather, they do sound rather nice.

Don't they? Yeah, that's changed.

I was following one in the Ford the other day.

Sorry, it was a new defender, V8, I guess, and after, I suppose.

And

it did, it did put the rest of us in our places.

Yes, yeah, this one had quite a bit of driveline shunt in it.

It's James Cameron's short wheelbase pickup based one.

And we just went around a little off-road course to Bista Motion,

which is where I interviewed him as we were sort of kangering around a bit.

I said, it's quite a lot of driveline shunt in this.

He says, yeah, you put your foot down in Surrey and it's ready when you get to

Barcha, the slack is taken up at that point.

But they do sound really good.

He's a good bloke and that's great work they do, isn't it?

They do sensational work, I think, they do great stuff.

He's got a he's got an old dodge.

I think it is 20s dodge that he goes around in.

And I was he brought some vent at Bista.

And I was I was within the sort of breath or two of bidding him on the thing.

And he's keen to sell it as well.

So I think he might have managed to restrain myself.

I think he might have changed his mind on that, mate.

I think I think he's very, very happy with it.

Yeah, I think it's I think I think we talk about it on the pop.

He's desperate for you to come and have a go.

I was a lovely old car.

Yeah. And there was a I think I was boning on droning

onto him about how in my youth in the bush in Australia, there was a

there was a boy student called Lee Wheatley, 17 year old, same as me.

And he inherited one of those from his granddad and we used to go to school on it.

And there would be about eight of us in it, you know, five in the car.

And the rest of us hanging on the running boards, going down the main drag to school.

Yeah, that's perfect.

I did a

VSC, Vintage Sports Club, race up at

Alton Park a couple of years ago.

That's right. You were in Austin 7.

In Austin 7, yeah.

And there were there were a family there who had a car, quite a big car of that kind

of era, early twenties car, and they were firing it up at the end of the day when

everybody was standing around in the in the pit lane.

And I thought they were firing it up so that they could put it back on a trailer.

But the but the dad shouted to the to the sort of lads who were in there.

So I think a son and a daughter in their twenties, maybe he was like, right,

come on, come on, we've got a I've started the car.

I thought they were going to help load it onto a trailer or whatever.

But no, they just went, oh, well, right, well, we better go cheerio.

And I said, where are you going?

So we're going back to Wiltshire, I think.

And they were driving this thing that they've driven to Alton Park from Wiltshire

in the morning. Fantastic.

I've raced it around a bit and then we're driving it back.

And I think it's.

Well, those big Americans talking, you know, four litre, four cylinder,

whatever their engines, they're they're quite capable.

Yeah. And obviously made out of real railway lines.

So nothing ever goes wrong, either.

Yeah. But yeah, what a joy.

I could quite fancy something like really, but.

Oh, God. Trouble is, it gets back to the barn talk, doesn't it?

Yeah, not getting it down to you.

Not enough time, not enough space.

No, no, not enough money.

Well, that too. Yeah, that too.

Yes, Jim, he's well, he's got a workshop and a bunch of people that can

do stuff for for vision motorsport, hasn't he?

Yes, he's got a few one or two Land Rovers, too.

I think in a couple of Porsches as well.

But they do lots of training.

They do lots. They do lots of training.

They place a lot of people in the industry.

They've got actually coming up in a few days time from the from this podcast.

They've got an event at Silverstone where they where people come and try to get

jobs in the industry because there are a lot of former service personnel

who have a lot of skills who don't shout about it enough because they don't.

It's trained out of them.

Yes, you know, whereas you and I would

write a CV going, I did this because I'm great at that.

I'm great at that. It's just not in their nature because they spent, you know,

decades in the services being being trained out of doing that.

Amazing. Yeah.

But I remember talking to people at JLR about this.

That, you know, they can be fantastic people for

for for sort of process driven work where where, you know, people of authority

are needed, you know, to take responsibility and they're really good for that.

These ex service folks.

Yeah, yeah, I think I'd need to double check the numbers, but I have a feeling

that they've helped sort of like some like 1400 people work at JLR, I think.

Wow. I think I'll need to double check the numbers.

But it was a lot. It was like, this is

impressive. Yeah, this is this is good stuff.

He's a former tank jockey, isn't he?

He is. Yes. And in the pod, I ask him what the difference is.

You may you may have seen this sometimes somebody will say,

somebody will show a picture of a what I might think is a tank to him.

And he'll go, that's not a tank.

You go, why is that?

Anyway, so I ask him, what's the difference between a tank and not a tank coming up?

I'm looking forward to this.

He's got a good turn of phrase, too, hasn't he?

He has. Yeah, he has.

And let's take a very short break where I will tell you that if you visit

Anderson dash EV dot com, I'm going to open right now.

They have a design upgrade event.

It's a limited time offer.

You can get a hundred pounds off of premium colors and facials on the

Anderson courts, a three and a two charges.

If you go to the sort of product page, you can also ask for them to send you a swatch,

which will show you the colors and finishes that you can get on their premium

design led charges.

And we're very grateful they sponsor this part.

Sure are.

Also,

have you been in the archive?

I've been in the archive because for boring reasons,

I was reading some of my old stuff earlier this week.

If you go to the magazine shop dot com,

there are various different ways you can subscribe to the magazine and have access

to our one hundred and thirty one year archive.

I was in the column in the archive, looking, reading my first column.

Which was, you know, because I've just passed a bloody another,

another dopey anniversary, another dopey anniversary.

Let's begin part two of this podcast.

Then Steve,

oh, I say, I tell you what, I can do that with

a letter that has literally landed in my inbox as we were talking.

Scott Brown from Melbourne, Australia says,

I've been thinking about writing and I was encouraged to by Steve's plea for people

like me in the excellent Steve and Matt, have your letters episode of the podcast

last week. I've wanted to express for a while how much I think Steve Cropley.

This is this is quite a complimentary email, Steve, and coming in is a treasure

to the motoring industry.

Perhaps I feel kinship because he's an Aussie deep down,

but I reckon his depth of experience is something really special.

His occasional comments on how he remembers attending the launch of this or

the prevailing public opinion of that are always fascinating.

I think the cheery outlook of both Steve and Matt is admirable in a world

where some will tell you the entire car industry is moving backwards.

Well, you're more optimistic than I am.

Steve, you guys managed to be upbeat without being naive, cynical without being too

negative. And I find this attitude a great comfort while driving around rural

Victoria. Well, thank you, Scott Brown.

You're very kind. Yeah, yeah.

What is Steve, the anniversary that you have just passed?

Oh, I've been doing this for 34 years, exactly.

And that that runs the column writing 1700 columns, which is

even, I think, is quite a lot.

That is quite a lot.

And the steering committee was saying to me, how much is that actually?

Some bloke wrote to me, first of all, Mr.

Peterson, and he wrote to say,

if we put all these sensors in a line, do you think they'd reach the moon?

I didn't really have an idea about that.

But and my Mrs.

were saying, how much work is this?

And we worked out that it is actually two, twice the length of war and peace.

Well, and one point four times the King James Bible.

So so that's estimated.

What do we recommend?

Four thousand eight hundred pages of doubles based words or more, depending on

depending, depending on which, depending on who you.

A text of twelve hundred words is around two point four pages.

So that would be that would be quite a lot.

That would be quite less than the thing is.

It's got to be more than that.

Isn't it weird, though?

Because I mean, you're so same for you.

You write weekly column two and the and the

we're always thinking we're always battling to squeeze things in.

You know, you always you've got about 200 words more than you want to.

Yeah. And you know, mine, six hundred and sixty.

And I so I suppose ours are the same length.

Oh, no, yours will be less because yours are quite often cross headed, aren't you?

You've got like three or four column points,

whereas mine's one or two bits of flowing copy.

Yeah, mine has always been or at least in modern times has been six hundred and sixty

what six hundred and sixty one words and I went through a period of conceited period

when I was I was just used to try and provide exactly six hundred and sixty one words.

But I found in the end it was too short because there we have a weird thing in the

print racket, don't we?

Widow lines and people want to fill things out and cut things and so on.

Yeah, because I think I had one word over on a line last week.

So the subs just added five words just to make it look a little nicer and it still

reads fine, you know, that's that's that's their gig.

Yeah, that is there.

That's why we've got them.

Yeah, yeah.

But anyway, it seems to be a lot of just I can't I've got no idea what the hell

life was like 34 years ago, but I know I've enjoyed doing it.

Do you know what was in your first column?

Yes, there was some there's some sort of political commentary.

There was it was

some politician was mouthing off about

cars and how I think it might have been that the general

Michael Gove, I think was the Michael Gove.

Well, I've forgotten. I can't remember.

But but anyway, there was there was some stuff about, you know, cars needing to be

curbed and all rest of it.

Oh, OK. I predictably didn't agree with him.

No, well, they're still saying it.

I think really so.

And they're still wrong.

Yeah, let's do another let's do another letter.

I'll see what you I'll see what while you while you think about it,

I might try and look up your first column while you tell me what you think.

In 1992, OK.

Michael Bacon writes to say, I was relieved that Massimo Fraschella,

he is the Audi design boss, design director, something like that,

admires the same older Audi's that I do and talks of clean lines,

smooth surfacing and sparing decoration.

Over recent years, Audi design has gone a little off the rails with grills

expanded to ineligent proportions and the rest of the styling becoming evermore

overwrought and crease laden.

Eagley await Mr. Fraschella's much needed design reset, says Michael.

What do you think, Steve?

Well, it's interesting.

I just happened to be talking to somebody who was involved with Jaguar design

when Fraschella was still there.

Oh, he was.

And he was talking about a design competition, a sort of internal design

competition, you know, that was quite often done in design departments.

They have a task, lots of people have a go at it.

And Fraschella's work was deemed to be so much better than the rest that

they didn't, the others didn't actually survive in the job.

Oh, really?

Apparently, apparently he's very highly regarded and he had a lot to do with

Concept Zero Zero and the

as I think I said the other day, I have seen the car unclad, but we're not allowed

to photograph it or really describe it very much.

But it is a very clean sort of I don't know.

It's a really spectacular looking car without being full of excrescences

and gargoyles.

There, yes.

And there were, I was told the other day, 17 full sized clay mock ups of various

different before they got to the type zero zero.

That might have been the competition.

I wonder if it was that this guy was really interesting possible.

Yeah.

But yeah, 17 is, I mean, I don't know.

Maybe that's normal, but it strikes me as a lot.

When we did interview Julian Thompson, he was talking about something similar

at Volkswagen for the Passat, wasn't he?

They had lots of design departments.

Yeah, he was really interesting on that, wasn't he?

Just the fact that people got involved in the politics.

They didn't actually do their best work.

They did the work that they thought would play best with the bosses as they

knew them, and he was a bit disappointing.

Yeah, and I think the interesting thing about that with his current job is that

he doesn't have to do any of that.

No, in fact, they want him to really go for it, don't they?

I think these outpost design studios are supposed to do that.

No, I think it wasn't.

Isn't it the case that Julian, as much of his career, he's been involved

in the advanced side of styling anyway?

Yeah, certainly was at JLR, I believe.

Transport Minister Malcolm Rifkin came on the radio,

bendings extraordinary vows around the job of selling a smaller privately run

service area is not the worst idea he's ever had.

It works in France.

I bought a packet of peanuts from a sullen lady in the service shop who responded

to my wavering smile by snatching my fire and flinging the change back so that it

fell on the floor.

These people should have to compete for our business.

That is so that's the 26th of February.

Oh, was it OK?

But I couldn't find it.

I think I'm just being dimmed, mate.

I flicked through the, what did you say, 19th of February?

I thought 19th, but could be wrong.

No, I think you're probably right, mate,

but I'm just because I'm trying to multitask and I'm too.

I'm impressed by the fact that you could be able to do this.

But you've always done this.

You know, we're talking away about the Nissan Pexo and then, you know,

a second later up comes an image and I'm damned if I can do that.

It always takes me, you know, 45 minutes to dig something.

Yeah, but I'm still I'm aware that I am not as up to speed with these things as I

perhaps could be every time every time I'm around a young person,

which happens, you know, reasonably often because my children are in their 20s.

Yeah, I just think how you do it?

How how how are you doing that?

And it's a battle, isn't it?

Yeah, we do see it that way around the office.

That's actually interesting.

I was I was one gets involved in doing the odd talk with groups of students and so on.

And I always if I ever see anything decent written in a paper about,

you know, how to how to do work experience, I pirate it and pinch the best out of it.

And one of the best pieces of advice I ever ran across was

somebody saying to the to the 20 year old,

remember, when you go into the office, you will be the person who understands the

tech, the rest of them, the place, if it's a media office, it'll be full of old

sadsters who've had who are on about their 13th iteration of technology.

And they were left behind at about number eight.

Yeah.

And and you will be the person that can sweep in and say, no, do it like this.

Yeah.

I mean, there is something in it, isn't it?

I mean, we've had.

What gets me?

Sometimes I think my computer and my phone, I just think, why is it changed?

Why is it why?

There's no reason that that is now doing this in a different way that when it was

fine, it was, I don't understand that old man yelling at cloud, but it was there

was nothing wrong. Why is it not doing what it did before?

You know, there's a new update to your phone.

Brilliant. Now all the photos are in a completely different order.

Yeah.

What? Why have you done that?

Why is why?

What is that for, Matthew?

It's better.

It's just not. It just isn't.

Just actually funnily enough, I left the house this morning.

Here we are in sitting in the BMM at three minutes past 11 in the morning.

When I left home this morning at about eight, there was a the same rent was was

heard from herself because her telephone has just been updated.

And there's there's despair.

There is despair and glossary.

Because it's all just different.

Why is it different?

I mean, we've had some audio, as you very kindly noted in your column the other day,

might you you picked up my patience because we had a bit of an audio issue.

No, it's but your laptop just does different things than it did two weeks before.

Yes, that's very kind of you to say that.

But in fact, in that case, it was a piece of our stupidity.

It was it was it was so nice of you to say these blokes

that have just updated your computer was all their fault.

Well, it was I'm afraid I thought normally recorded in that you would record it.

You would save it and it would be there in the same place.

And then that week it was not because because somebody in a

in a in an open plan office with a slide and a beanbag in California has decided

that it would be better for you if it was uploaded to somewhere completely

different where it where it just wouldn't where it just wouldn't exist anymore.

I still haven't found it.

There's there's a file floating about in the in the ether of this computer

that I'm looking at at the moment.

And that stuff is there somewhere, the forgotten pod, the forgotten pod file.

It's in there somewhere.

Stellantis CEO, Antonio Filosa, impresses you.

How, Stephen?

Well, he's he's faced up to the problems.

He it seems to me that car company bosses have got so many problems at the moment.

The that the demand for EVs is expanding, but it's not expanding fast enough.

They've been impelled partly by their own, I don't know, instinct for expansion,

but also by by being big, big shove up the backside from governments to increase

the production of EVs faster than the market wants to take them.

And I just think that Filosa, who's come along to take over from Carlos Taveres.

Taveres led this huge Stellantis expansion into EVs.

Filosa is modifying it while still allowing it to grow.

And he said, I love the quote that said,

the picture of car users they were painting was just so unlikely.

This is governments.

And I kind of I think that's another piece of realism.

You remember, we were talking about Lynn Calder the other day, that the the

INEOS CEO, who was who was saying all his A-dash stuff is pain in the backside.

Yeah, yeah.

That seems to be another piece of an outbreak of realism.

You know, the picture of car users they were painting was just so unlikely.

And we always had that suspicion, didn't we?

We you you you just have a notion of what the market will take.

And and it wasn't it was being exceeded.

Yeah. And there's there was a lot of you know, you would get shouted at if you said

that by one group of people and then you would be shouted at by another group of

people if you said EVs are quite nice, actually.

And then but somewhere, as is quite from the case, somewhere there's a there is a

middle path where it is all.

OK. Yeah.

Did you see in the paper yesterday that

Stefan in the Times yesterday, Stefan Winkerman has said that EV development

risk becoming an expensive hobby for Lamborghini.

So they've scrapped the full EV and they think plug-in hybrids will be it for them.

Yeah.

Well, you can see why it works.

We've driven lots now of plug-in hybrids of various

hues, haven't we, the economy of minded ones and the ones that provide extra poke

and fill in gear change pauses and, you know, give fantastic step off.

And you can see you can see exactly how

a plug-in hybrid is going to be, you know, when further developed,

it's going to be fantastic in a Lambo.

Yeah, I'm going to drive an Audi RS5 tomorrow.

There will be words and

pictures and video this time next week.

Right.

It is quite it does weigh quite a lot.

Yeah, I think it's two point three tons.

Wow. And it's got a forty five litre fuel tank, which is not huge.

And I think the boot space may be slightly

compromised to fit the batteries in as well.

So there is a there is a compromise with them, isn't there?

Yeah. But but they are taking that stuff now, aren't they?

You know, I can remember.

Do you know people are starting to say, you know, we've we've made the technology

work pretty well, the batteries are,

you know, merrily progressing, but they've reached the level.

Now what we've got to do is get the structural stuff better and reduce the weight.

And there are some weights coming down, aren't there?

Yeah, and actually, you can.

I mean, as we find with with some EVs, you can make heavy cars feel quite agile.

Yeah, you can, you know, with with quick steering response and lightweight,

like light steering feel and with electric power assisted steering,

you can make a car feel a lot lighter than it is.

Definitely, especially if the weight is low in the car, which it quite often is

with electrification, because that's where the batteries are sided under the floor.

Yeah, which helps things.

Yeah. So anyway, I'm intrigued to try this car.

Yeah. What were we this?

I think you said Morocco for this.

Yeah, Morocco tomorrow morning.

Yeah. And then back.

So what's the race track you're going to go home, pack the clobber and go?

Yes, I'll I well, I'll go first thing in the morning.

I've got to go down to the to Gatwick for eight ish, I think.

So and then there is a there is a race track there, but I have not driven on it.

So I think there's a bit of track action and some road stuff.

Because what you want to do is get his least feel the car sort of somewhere near

the limit, don't you? And yeah, it gets hard with these big, heavy cars.

To safely approach the limit anymore, because when they're heavy,

that if there's a breakaway, it can take a little bit of gathering up.

Yeah. And they're so capable, aren't they?

I mean, all of these.

I mean, they were 10, 15 years ago, but you know, you have to be going so fast

to get anywhere near the limit of a car on the road.

That is just I just don't.

I can't remember the last time I tried.

No, it's not very satisfying either, is it?

No, not really.

I was having a go the other day with the

I've got this Ford Capri at the moment, which is rear wheel drive.

So it should slide.

And I was on a discreet and deserted roundabout the other day.

I was just trying to see what would happen if you

kept on going a little bit faster and see who would just just get into a power

slide. It didn't really.

It's just it I turned everything off, but it was not willing to.

I couldn't I couldn't get it to, you know, do your classic Mazda Mx5 power slide.

Yeah. Does everything turn off and stay off if you want it to?

I think so. Although I'm never clear anymore.

You can turn off everything.

You think you've turned it all off, but there seems often there's stuff embedded,

isn't there, that won't let you.

Have I talked to this BMW 330 to you much?

No, no, no, I want to hear about this because that's good fun.

That's and it's so it's owned by eBay and they paid just under

nine thousand pounds for it.

So it's a nice one.

It's twenty twenty year old 330 CI.

It's a fit car.

Yeah. Yeah.

Ninety just under ninety thousand miles, but healthy.

They bought the best one they could find.

Yeah. And then they spent some time and money upgrading the interior tech.

So it runs with Apple CarPlay.

It's got a blind spot monitor.

It's got reversing camera and parking sensors and a little head up display as well.

Aftermarket stuff that you the idea is they're showing what you can buy on eBay.

Right. I see.

And then they've lent it to us and they've gone.

Look, why don't you run it for a bit?

Because actually we've got a bit more of a budget that you could spend on some

mechanical upgrades. So I thought, well, I'll try and bring it.

What I'd like to do is bring it back up to

it right pliantly. It's quite comfortable.

More more so than I remember it.

It feels a bit more of a long legged GT car than I remembered them being at the time.

was like the powertrain.

Yeah. Really lovely powertrain.

There's nothing wrong with that at all.

And it's had a at some point it's had an exhaust fitted to it.

So it's got a bit more boom to the exhaust.

I think it needed a new one, basically, so they fitted a nice one.

Anyway, so I thought, well, I'll try and if I told you where it what I did.

So I replaced.

Not really. I found the bits.

I found the bits online on eBay and they've got

and I do this a lot when I buy bits for my cars.

Anyway, if you have an account, you can set up a thing called my garage,

where you put in the cars that you own.

And then when you search for a part under the your garage bit,

it only brings up results for things that are assured fit to fit your car.

And then if you buy them and they don't fit, you can send them back for a refund.

No, no, no questions asked.

It's just like this doesn't fit and I go, OK, fine.

So I had no idea about that.

That's a good thing that I think.

And and some manufacturers like BMW have their own official eBay store as well.

So you can buy parts that you know will fit.

You can get them from brand new parts.

You can get them from the manufacturer.

Anyway, so I thought, well,

what I'd like to do is because the car is 20 years old and metal does fatigue a bit

as it's worn, what I'd like to do is try and bring the chassis back to a bit

of strength, but not ruin the ride quality.

Yeah.

And I because this car's after after I spent time in it,

it's going to still go and be lent to other journalists.

And I don't want to be the one who's ruined it.

No, I don't want somebody from another magazine to get in and go.

Priya has absolutely stuffed this.

So anyway, so I've left the springs and damps alone, replaced all the bushes

and fitted a brace front and rear and an Alcantara steering wheel rim and a

limited slip differential.

And actually, what I've found is that even though I'm not driving anywhere

near the limit of that car, you can feel those changes.

Hasn't changed the character of car completely, but it's just subtly

subtly changed it.

The ride is no worse, but it just feels a bit more poised and taught and taught.

It sounds good.

The sort of drive out of corners is a bit nicer because of the diff.

It probably understeers a bit more on the way into a corner, but not.

Not. Oh, my goodness, it's understeering beyond grip.

When you're still well within the realms of grip, you just go, OK,

I'm not sure it's turning quite as comfortably as it was because the rear

wheels are not allowing themselves to alter their speeds quite so violently.

So if you if you just trail the break into a corner very gently, it still turns

really nicely, drives on the way out really nicely.

And I'm enjoying it a lot.

I must say I've seen it outside your gaff a couple of times.

I know it it does look lovely, doesn't it?

It's such a low car now compared with what we're used to.

Yeah. You know, the bonnet lines low and used in the

I presume the driving position is really nice to great driving position,

really good ergonomics inside, and it's just a bit narrower than most modern cars

as well, which is not by not by a lot, but I think it's one.

It's under one point eight or one point eight across the body.

Have you changed the tyres?

No, it came on.

Actually, and that's the other thing is it feels the steering is quite precise

and has been improved, but it's still running winter tyres.

So or Sotto zero.

So they all season or are they winters?

But anyway, they're, you know, given that there's normally a bit more

squidge in those than there are normal tyres.

Yeah. I'm sort of, yeah, I'm quite.

It does it does creak a little on now that I've sort of upgraded the

now it's got braces front and rear.

The body does when you're maneuvering on full lock.

You just get the create the occasion.

The chassis is just I think what you'd really want to do is seem well.

The chassis all round and fit a full cage in it.

Then it would feel stiff.

Yeah, yeah, but it's anyway, it's a it's a really nice thing.

It sounds like if, you know, for for nine grand plus the upgrades,

what, another three grand or something?

For twelve thousand quid, it sounds like a lovely car.

Yeah, yeah.

Gosh, and that and I've just got such fond memories of that, that powertrain.

It's a lovely, but it's a lovely powertrain.

Nobody and nobody really apart from

GT Porsches make engines that behave in quite that same way anymore.

You know, you it's very linear.

The more you rev it, the more responsive it is.

Beautiful. Yeah.

Lovely thing.

More about that reader in the magazine, which you can find on the newsstands

or at themagazineshop.com, where you can get access to

the print or the digital

magazine, including access to the full one hundred and thirty one year auto car

archive and Steve's thirty four years ago.

Did you have you worked out, we should work out that out,

what that is as a percentage of the magazine's history?

Yeah, what is it, one hundred and thirty years or something?

Thirty four over one hundred and thirty.

Yeah, I can't do that in my head.

Quarter, something like that.

Yeah.

Also.

Tune in next week, Steve and I will be talking to Jeremy Clarkson

of Clarkson's Farm of the Grand Tour of Top Gear of The Sunday Times.

Yeah, formally of

Performance Car, the robber and advertiser, the Shropshire star.

Was it? Was it? Yeah.

I think that was his first.

I just remember the performance car columns.

They were so brilliant.

There is a story.

He told me this once.

He claims to have in his files two letters from me

telling him that he was unfortunate,

not the person we chose to work on Car Magazine.

No.

So he says we'll ask him.

But but but honestly,

I am the man that said the Beatles are crap.

I think I think having said which I think he might be a bit too much of a larrican

at the time to do it to have done it.

And I think he wrote the last letter that I remember him writing to Auto Car was

to say you've just published a thing saying that the Voxel Astra VXR steals

the Volkswagen Golf GTI's crown, but not very long before that.

You said the Ford Focus ST had done exactly the same thing.

So which which of these cars holds the crown?

Can you if you're going to be

can you be consistent because being inconsistent is my job?

Yeah. Yeah.

So anyway, we're going to Steve and I are going to record something else in a minute

and then we're going to head over this afternoon.

So that will be on this pod this time next week.

And we hope that you will like that very much indeed.

We'll enjoy it.

We will. Yeah.

Meantime, Steve, thanks.

See you later. See you soon.

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