What's up at Ford; car insurance; 'the Havana Effect'

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Hello and welcome to the AutoCard Podcast, my weekend cars with Pry here.

Steve Cropley over there. Morning, Stephen.

Morning to you Sport. How are you?

Very well, mate. Very well, because this podcast, as usual,

is brought to you in association with Anderson EV,

which is an all British company that makes themselves top quality home chargers

for electric cars.

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

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

That is for sure.

And the fact is, it is my Anderson EV charger that got me here today.

Is it?

I arrived in the Renault 5, having discovered late hour last night

that the car was empty, so I plug her in and here I am, larger as life.

Here you are.

Thanks, sir.

Of course, the other thing I need to tell you is that I've had one for a couple of years.

It sits on the wall of my 150-year-old barn,

but it would look just as good on a modern building

because you can get all kinds of colours and textures.

It talks to my home charger, my home Wi-Fi, sorry, I can control it from my phone.

If you were particularly keen to know, I could look it up right now in your...

Oh, interesting, and see if it was charging or if it was idle or turn it on or off.

If I thought somebody was illegally or sort of illicitly plugged into it,

I could just turn it off.

Yeah.

And of course, it's got this fantastic cable attached which self-cleans.

So when there's a little brush thing, you roll it up and it just cleans itself.

So next time you handle it, it's not a handful of mud.

It's great.

Very good, very good thing.

Listener, you can learn more at anderson-ev.com.

Steve and I are going to be talking our respective auto car columns

and much more besides over the next, well, used to be half an hour.

The last couple of weeks, we've turned it to an hour.

I had a little look at the analytics yesterday.

Last week's poll has done very well, mate.

So yanking all the way?

Well, I can't see that a few more people would have to watch it

through the embedded player for me to see.

I used to be able to see at what stage they were listening to,

but the analytics at the moment is not letting me do that anyway.

It's slightly confusing.

Someone will tell us, I suppose you've played board.

Yeah, let us know.

Short of it is, it seems to be doing fine.

So I think we'll just carry on as far as I can see.

Well, it's certainly the easiest thing, isn't it?

Also, listen, there is just uploaded as an interview

that Felix Page, I say just uploaded.

It was this podcast going live on Wednesday.

On the previous Saturday, we had one of our auto car meets podcasts.

Which is Felix Page in conversation with Bugatti's design chief, Frank Hale.

Oh, that sounds like a good one.

Yeah, good that.

Because they're really honoured at the moment.

They've got lots going on, haven't they?

Yeah, they've just announced the one of one final edition of the W16 car,

which has gone into a special edition version of that,

which must be loads of money.

Because they say there's no, they've made,

so of the, how many Chiron and Chiron based cars have they made?

500 or so?

And I think of the last few, some of them were Bolleads,

some of them were Mistrales, and they've got separate bodywork.

And you have to go through some kind of homologation for the bodywork,

some kind of testing, stuff like that.

For the one of one, the very final edition, there's only one of them,

but you still have to go through all of that kind of testing

to make sure it's going to work and everything else.

So the cost for it, they won't say how much it costs.

It's got to be five million, doesn't it?

It's got to be way, yeah, I think it's got to be more.

It's got to be, I think they said the previous most expensive one was 11.

Oh, really? Oh, my Lord, I didn't know that.

I think this has got to be much more than that.

But a matter of being the person who makes the phone call to say,

not only do I want a Chiron,

not only do I want one of the limited rare Mistrales or Bolleads,

no, what I want you to do is make me one car

and to have that phone call.

Absolutely amazing.

Mind you, you hear these stories.

Do you remember the stories about people

who were offering bespoke cars in China?

And they, I did hear some tale about some guy

who sent his people to look at a concept car

and he was told that the price was 900,000, something or others.

And the message came back saying that the owner

wasn't really content with that because it was,

he wanted to buy something that was a seven-figure car.

So they gave him a gold-plated naturally

and put the price up.

Excellent.

I might try, I might try that.

Yeah, yeah, reassuring.

It's the most expensive of all that stuff.

I don't know, should I make it more?

Listen, you can write to us autocarathamarket.com

as Doug Marshall has done to say,

during his time at Lotus,

he couldn't think of anyone in the organization

who cared more about the brand, production quality

and doing what was right for the customer than Matt Wendell.

The decision to remove him as CEO is a real shame.

Another unfortunate example of the dysfunction

within the parent company, Geely,

I saw it firsthand how it affected

senior Lotus leadership, says Doug.

Yeah, Matt Wendell replaced last week, week before, I guess.

Yeah, yeah.

Yes, with somebody who, a Chinese lady

who had a history in the company

but had come from big, big companies beforehand

and you just wonder what her priorities are gonna be

and I don't know whether they'll be Colin Chapman's priorities.

No, no, I don't know what you do with Lotus, I don't know.

No, but there's been,

I've had a bit of correspondence myself back and forth

and that's the trouble.

People say, if you ask me what I would do now,

you know, the famous thing,

okay mate, you think it's wrong, so you fix it.

Tell us what you do, nobody's got a solution.

No, because it can't do, it's not small enough to be aerial,

it's not big enough to be even JLR.

Is it really, you know, and it can't make

the Elise kept it going for quite some time,

you can't make that many cars of that type

and certainly sell them in the UK and Europe

without moving up, I don't know what you do.

No, but I guess we wait to hear.

It's a little unprecedented challenge for the guys at Geely

who's, I'm sure their hearts are in the right place,

but I don't know whether they're equipped.

We'll see.

What's up at Ford?

Well, I was just talking idly, as you do,

with Mark Tissot, our editor,

one of our many editors, actually, and...

We've all got editor in the job cycle.

Indeed, yeah, it's very reassuring, isn't it?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And we were just talking about headlines

and we're talking two things.

The fact that there's been some stirrings at Ford.

You know, Bill Ford told us a couple of weeks ago

that he thought we would be pleased

with the developments they were cooking up

for European car range.

Then there was talk in America

of putting the more expensive EV trucks on hold

in order to build or to launch a platform

that was going to be much easier to build

and cheaper and so on.

Okay.

And a few other odd whispers that you hear from people

who might or might not be suppliers to Ford.

And it adds up to the fact

that they're at work on cars we can afford.

And, you know, they're sort of below the Capri

and the Explorer and so on.

And I think we will, we're binding all this together

and there'll be a story pretty soon,

according to Felix and Tish.

But we were just talking about what would be the most exciting

and forward-looking headline I could think of anyway.

And it was, Ford Fiesta Returns.

And that to me would be better than, you know,

another V12 Ferrari.

Oh, same, yeah, same.

I could imagine, yes, seeing that on the cover of a magazine.

Buy a magazine, by the way, listen.

If you are passing a shop in the imminent future,

pop in, buy a magazine.

Yeah, and it would be nice, wouldn't it,

to think that in a few months' time, perhaps we'll say.

Well, that car, the Fiesta's made so many people happy,

hasn't it?

And like so many of those Fords,

little Fords, they still have their integrity

in driving terms after a long, long time.

You know, I just drove up Ford Ka,

about a mile and a half recently.

God, it was a good little car, a lovely steering,

you know, amazingly small and light.

Was that an original Ka?

It was, yeah, it was one of the ones with the,

with the, God, what was it, the Valencia engine.

Okay.

So the original 1.3 was for old thing.

Wow, you don't find many of those.

No, they're rusty.

Yeah.

But there was, well, it just happened to,

there was one in the neighborhood

and we had a bit of a talk about it.

The guy was wondering what to buy next.

So I took the opportunity to go around the block

in the car he had.

No, I bet that was a joy, wasn't it?

Well, it was great.

Because, and you get in the car

and you look at that dashboard,

a beautiful Avalgaard dashboard

and the lines of the car.

I think the Ka is really gonna fly one day.

It's such a sweet thing.

The only trouble is they didn't protect him very well.

We had a couple in the family.

He went, my number one son had one,

which he crashed and then replaced with another one.

And the second one went West in the end

because it was starting to get bubbly in the body.

Yeah.

Which is a shame, but as for steering, ride quality,

so on, it was great.

Yes, Bill Ford on your chat with him recently.

Yeah, a couple of weeks ago.

Available elsewhere on this channel.

I forget, well, the phrase he used,

robustness or something like that within Europe,

was that right?

Yeah, he was offering as a robust.

Yeah, they needed to be more robust, that was it.

Yeah.

But it is not defining the vehicles themselves

as robust, it's something to, I don't,

it's a, I don't know how you would describe it.

Well, they needed to populate the market better today.

That was the thing.

The cars they've got, they've got the Mustang Mach-E,

which, you know, game effort and all that,

but it looks a little bit irrelevant over here and to me.

And the Explorer and the Capri,

people are a bit sniffy about the Capri, aren't they?

And the big Explorer is quite a good car,

but it's fairly expensive.

And what you need is a few, you know,

things like the Hyundai Insta and the Renault 5

and Renault 4 and then Twingo, which we've just seen.

Those Renault are going to clean up

with these little EVs, aren't they?

Well, it's just, they just,

they sort of worked out how to talk to people, haven't they?

Yeah.

That's quite a thing.

You can have the most, I don't know,

you can put whatever tech and whatever cleverness in it,

but somehow you just need to design a car that people go,

I really want one of those.

Yeah.

And they seem to be on,

they seem to be on the case for that at the moment.

We really are, we're forever debating, aren't we,

whether it's good or bad to reprise old cars

and use old names, but they just don't have any doubts,

do they?

Half five, half four, Twingo.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

My Hyundai Kia seem to do very well without doing that as well,

don't they?

They seem to be designing cars people want.

Yeah, the Insta, somebody, now who was it?

Somebody was talking to us the other day,

talking about how the Insta has got that Renault 5 effect

in that if you stop somewhere,

people want to know about it.

Yes.

Who was that?

Somebody took one to the festival

the unexceptional, didn't they?

And got stopped and talked about it everywhere.

Yeah, that's right.

It was a couple of days ago, dear.

But it worked anyway.

It was not very long ago.

His point was that the festival, the unexceptional,

wasn't primarily for cars made this year.

And yet, this car created a lot of interest.

Created a stir, yes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

If you were going to ensure one of your vehicles, Steve,

what do you do?

Well, I tend to group them together because I hate admin.

The steering committee will tell you

that I am extremely bad at home admin.

But so I've put them all together.

And this was, in fact, three motorcycles

that are all on one policy or associated policies.

And I always fear insurers because there's

going to be some sort of cock up.

But anyway, I rang up to re-ensure my bikes.

And I encountered this extremely nice lady called

Suzanne, who sorted out what had been an electronic maelstrom,

or cock up or something or other, in a few minutes

with a sort of nice voice and a friendly approach.

And she said, ah, don't worry.

It's going to be OK.

That's what I'm here for.

It's my job.

And I found myself thinking, she sorted it in 10 minutes.

And I found myself thinking, one is unnecessarily,

sometimes you have it down on people who work in call centers.

And I don't suppose they cover themselves in glory sometimes.

But this woman was so nice.

And I thought, I really hope you're there next year,

Suzanne, because we and all the people in between me

and my deal next year, we all need you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So keep right on.

So keep at it.

Do you use an insurance broker for your cars?

I do for cars.

The bikes are on this thing called bike shore, which

seems to be backed by, it carries the names of various

people, Adrian Flux, which is a broker, a big brokerage.

And also, motorcycle news have got some kind of association.

Right.

And they, behind those are various insurance companies.

But I go through the thing called bike shore.

And there's a website that you're

supposed to be able to plug into and you look at your account

on there.

But the account took me around the block backwards.

I didn't understand it.

So that's why I needed this lady.

He's somebody to actually speak to a person.

Yeah, but for the cars, we have four cars.

They all get insured by one broker who is a fellow that I

encountered because I happened to know somebody who

worked at Lloyd's.

And I thought an insurer who's career is in insurance

must know a good broker and sure enough, he did.

And I couldn't honestly say that the car deals I've got

are the cheapest.

But they're certainly the easiest.

And I have great faith in the guy because he speaks normally.

Yeah.

And I always had this mad idea to buy a fifth car, a Caterham

or something like that.

And I rang him up, he's a cockney bloke.

And I said, is it going to bust the bank

if I put another car on the insurance?

And he said, oh, no, everybody understands that Caterham

only does a few miles.

Just stick it on, it'll be a few quid.

Knows his onions clearly.

Yeah.

Excellent.

And the thing is, he gives you hope.

You know, there's lots of head shaking and foreboding.

And I just like positive approach to anything.

So they're good.

They're good, I think.

Yeah.

And the other thing is the bike insurance went down.

Susanne, I think went down about 15%.

That's pretty good.

That's very good.

Yeah, and I wonder, I mean, you say it's not the cheapest,

but by the time you've spent X number of hours on X

websites doing it for each individual car, well, what's

your time?

You know, have you saved?

As I speak into a bloke who doesn't do any maintenance

on any of his cars.

He says, well, if I can go out and earn more than I'm paying

the mechanic to do it, then that's worth me.

Then I better off working and not underneath the car

swearing, you know, not knowing what I'm doing.

And I think, yeah, that's probably true.

And there must be a point where you could be off earning

more than you are saving, sitting on a website.

And I think these people do know their way around, too.

You know, as long as you feel they're really working

for you and not the insurance company, then it feels

good, I think.

And certainly the car brokerage, I do get the feeling

that they're trying to do their best for you.

Perhaps they're good actors, but I don't think so.

Yes, just good at sales.

Yes, I might.

Yeah, maybe I'll look into that.

Yeah, well, I'll give you a name, mate.

Yeah, that'd be useful.

See what you think.

Shall we talk Mercedes-Benz before the break?

Let's do that.

Ola, how do you say it, sir?

I'm cacanious.

Yeah, cacanious.

I don't know about the second K.

Cacanious.

I've heard it without a silent second K.

But he is the CEO of Mercedes-Benz.

And what is he saying this week?

Well, he's spelling a fair bit of doom and gloom,

I thought, which is unusual for him.

He came from quite a...

Well, I suppose he's well along in his career now.

But he came to notice when he was quite a young bloke at AMG.

And he has always struck me as a positive person

and very much a Mercedes-Benz person

in that they don't say things ill-advisedly.

They're quite a good spokes organisation

for the whole industry, seems to be.

And anyway, his point at the moment

is that if we continue on the net-zero path we're on,

with the speed we're pressing,

this may well mean rather a lot of doom and gloom

for the European industry.

And because of the people who can meet the regs are the Chinese,

they also have the suppliers and the raw materials

and it's quite hard for our own industry to survive against them.

And if we deliberately erect barriers

that make it hard for the industry,

then we put a lot of technology,

a lot of forward R&D and a lot of people's jobs at risk.

And he doesn't...

Oh, the other thing, of course,

is that he was talking about a thing called the Havana Effect,

which I had not described like that.

But it means that you encourage people to keep their cars

for 30 years rather than move them on.

And obviously a 30-year car is pretty dirty,

so even your clean air targets go waste.

This is a reference to the fact that cars in Cuba,

because they weren't importing...

Yeah, that was it.

We just kept going for a very long time.

And as we reported two, three weeks ago,

the average age of car in the UK has gone from seven and a half to ten years quite quickly.

I think I saw another, in the meantime,

I've seen another one that says in Europe, across Europe, it's 12 years.

Oh, really?

Yeah, I can believe that we buy more on PCP and lease

than whereas in the rest of Europe, they keep cars for longer.

It's not particularly good news, is it?

That 12-year-old cars make up a lot of the population,

because they just won't be as clean, they can't.

They will not be, yeah, they will not be.

I don't know where exactly I stand on this,

because I also quite like cars hanging around

and think that we do get rid of things too early.

So you've kind of got this air quality.

The problem with dirtier older cars will be air quality, won't it, effectively,

which is not very good, but from the flip side of it,

if you're building fewer things and keeping things around for longer,

then that's not necessarily awful from a CO2 perspective.

You're right, yeah.

And you're not chipping the road across the world.

Yeah, and it's hard to know what exactly is best to do, isn't it?

I mean, it's what we're, and I suppose you could ever work out

what the part of least energy use versus air quality,

versus all the other factors, versus economic factors,

because it's better that people run old cars and we produce less CO2,

or is it better that we produce a bit more CO2,

find ways of working around it and keep people in jobs at the same time?

Yeah.

So it's a real brain stretcher.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I love that.

There's all kinds of figures out there.

You remember, they used to say that the ship that brings a load of Toyota Priuses

from Japan emits more rubbish in the atmosphere

than all of the cars for all of their lives, so to speak.

Yeah.

Difficult, isn't it?

It is difficult.

And also, but also having said that, is he probably right

that actually, in all of this, would it be worth

ruining manufacturing in Europe and building it in China,

which is which is fine by the Chinese, I'm sure.

Yeah.

And in fact, is probably the point, the fact that, you know,

the European market is being flooded with affordable Chinese EVs,

because they would quite like it if we all bought those

and didn't buy Ford's and Mercedes and Renault's and so on and so forth.

Because then once that is done, that is done.

Yeah, it's interesting, though, isn't it?

How cars come to notice when, you know, become noticeable

to everybody, whereas television sets don't.

Yeah, it's really interesting, that, isn't it?

Or, you know, or, you know, plastic buckets, for that matter,

you know, that so much stuff is made almost universally

on the other side of the world.

And we don't, yeah.

Yeah.

It is funny how cars do get that scrutiny.

Is it because they are, is it because people have

an affinity to their vehicle that they do not have with?

I reckon it is.

The bucket, the kitchen implement.

Yeah, they just think about it more, you know.

Whereas if you need a new bed, a new mattress,

you know, every whatever it is, 15 years or something,

you just buy it and don't think about it ever again.

Whereas somehow every time you close the door of your car,

you find yourself thinking about the design of it

and the efficiency of it and how it works.

And also, I suppose, the other thing is that it is one

of your possessions, the one of your possessions

that says most about you, perhaps.

And people are therefore concerned with it on those grounds,

I don't know.

And it can't be just us, because that's the other thing.

It can't just be enthusiasts who think this way, can it?

Because it dominates newspaper and TV headlines anyway,

in a way that the radio, you know, the high-five industry

or the plastic bucket industry does not.

That's it.

We're making fewer plastic buckets in Europe than ever

before, it's a tragedy.

Nobody says that.

There is no headline that ever says that.

You wouldn't believe how the grommet industry has shrunk

in the past 30 years.

And yet, you know, the UK builds fewer cars

than it has done for 70 years is quite rightly a headline.

Big deal, yeah.

I suppose it is a massive industry, isn't it?

I mean, you, so many jobs, so much export income,

you know, either gained or lost.

Perhaps that's it in the end.

Yeah.

Somebody's been taken to hospital.

Yeah, listen, you don't need to worry.

It's not, if you're in your car,

you don't need to turn down your radio

and think, where is that blue light vehicle coming from?

It's just whizzed past the house.

Is it going towards Bistar or...?

We are, that's going away.

I live quite near the route that ambulances take

from one of their, I don't know what you'd call it,

their bases, I suppose, to if they're going towards

Buckingham or a village or Brackley or something.

They go up a nearby road quite a lot.

But they're very discreet.

Usually only have the sirens on

if there's other traffic around.

Otherwise, it's just they just run on the lights

and keep it quiet, which is very nice of them.

Very good at them.

Really good at them, actually.

I don't need to, but that's very good.

Let's take a short break.

Listen, there used to be an actual commercial break

during this point with the mid-roll ads, as we call them,

but there isn't now.

But I do need to tell you some things.

One of which is that AutoCart is back

with its Drivers of Change initiative,

which we've had running for a,

it's back to celebrate new talent,

apprentices or people in the first two years

of their career within the motor industry.

And it's run in association with the SMMT,

Society of Manufacturers and Traders,

and any sector goes after market sales, retail,

technicians, vehicle development, engineering, PR,

et cetera, et cetera.

If you are new to the industry and making change,

we want to hear from you.

Or if you know someone who is new to the industry

and is making change,

we would like to hear from you on their behalf.

Entries are open now with more details.

If you go to autocart.co.uk,

forward slash Drivers of Change,

or if you just put it into search engine,

AutoCart Drivers of Change, you'll find it.

There's an event in November at the Stellantis HQ

in Coventry, where we will name the company

our judges deemed to be doing

the most to develop Ansible emerging talent.

Good stuff.

There was also the AutoCart archive,

I need to tell you about.

Hey!

Shop.com forward slash AutoCart,

or just search the AutoCart archive,

just go to the AutoCart website,

you'll find all this stuff.

When was I, I was in it looking up the Audi 100,

which we will talk about in part two

in a moment this week.

And I found lots, but not,

not the one photo I was looking for.

Do you,

there's no reason you should remember this, Steve.

The Audi 100 had a very low drag coefficient.

Yeah.

Of 0.3.

Yeah.

Said on the back window.

0.3.0.

CD, 0.3.0, etched into the back window.

Yeah.

I'm not making that up.

No.

So I said this in my column this week,

which we'll come to in part two, sorry.

And Chris, our chief sub said,

where did you find that info

about the etching in the back window?

Because I can't find it in any pictures.

And I said, I know,

I couldn't find it in any pictures either.

But I was looking at a used car lot

on Bedford Road, Petersfield

in the late 1980s with my dad

while I was trying to convince him to buy an Audi 100.

And there was one in there

and it said CD, 0.3.0 on the back window.

And I also found a feature column

written by Richard Bremner in our magazine.

The cars I, all the cars I never bought,

which he used to write,

which is very entertaining.

And he referenced it then as well.

So I'm like, okay, it definitely happened.

I remember it too.

It may just have been on the very early ones.

Yeah, maybe.

Race test cars.

Yeah, maybe.

Because it just can't.

I think they would have photographed it there, wouldn't you?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I couldn't find a photograph of it.

And every picture of the 100 that I can find,

you can't see it on the back window.

But I was, yes, convinced it was there.

Such a big deal.

Yeah.

And it's interesting though, isn't it?

0.30 is still okay,

but it's not, there's plenty at 0.26

and things like that.

Yeah, there's plenty that are much,

yeah, that are much.

Shall we talk about this now?

And we'll come back to the letter

from Steve Parker in a minute.

This is part two.

Welcome to part two.

Yeah, 0.30 is good.

Isn't it?

Yeah.

But it's not,

it's not outstanding.

It's still not terrible now.

No, no, no.

So Audi had flushed glass with the,

with the, with the sort of body,

which was unusual at the time.

Yeah.

And this little,

had those sort of little pegs

that ran behind the glass.

And it ran up and down in a,

in a groove and held the glass very straight

in a way that they've obviously found better ways

to do it these days.

So anyway.

It looked amazing though, didn't it?

The difference between framed,

obviously framed glass and,

and this flushed stuff,

just the modernity was amazing.

Yeah.

And I've, anyway,

I was reading,

the reason I mention it,

is because I was reading a,

it's a sponsored piece actually

on the AutoCar website.

It was an interview with Audi's head

of aerodynamics.

And he was referencing the Audi 100

and also the A2.

And he said,

the things that we did with the A2

were its wheel design,

very carefully for aero effect.

And I've just recently

put a new set of wheels on my A2,

which I may have talked about on this pod already.

I know I've bored you about it.

No, I'm interested, mate.

I think it's really interesting.

So I've done this,

this car's done 6,000 miles

since I bought it pretty much.

And it's up to the point

it was changing,

it changed the wheels.

It was doing 68 to the gallon.

Now I've changed the wheels

for a set of smaller, narrower, 15s,

like a Peppa Pot style

on a,

on a good tire,

good year-efficient grip tires.

And the trip computer

has gone up to 71.8

and is still going up.

That's just fantastic.

And that's for the entire period

I've owned the car.

But, and I'm thinking,

well, it's important

because I want to keep a log of,

of, you know,

how much fuel I've used

and I'll keep a trip.

And it's only got one trip computer setting.

So it's not like you can

keep one for short journeys

and one for long journeys.

Anyway, the short fit is like,

what I think I will do at some point

is give up the overall

once it's peaked somewhere.

What I want to do is sit behind a truck

on a motorway

and see what it'll do.

So you can do 100.

So yeah, because I reckon

it will get pretty close.

I reckon it'll do really well.

Anyway, the short fit is

I thought that these narrower tires

you had sorted out the frontal area

and made it a bit smaller.

And I thought that the,

they just must be a more efficient tire

than was on it previously.

Yeah, road existence.

Plus also the wheels are lighter.

No question.

The new wheels are lighter than the 17s.

But then when I saw his aerodynamics

is talk about the aerodynamic effect of the wheels.

I thought I hadn't even considered that.

But yeah, they are,

instead of these sort of nine spoke big

choppy blunt alloys,

they're a very smooth,

they're just like a disc

with 10 very discreet holes cut in it.

So I suspect that quite a lot of it,

quite a lot of this improvement

is aero improvement from the wheels.

Yeah, yeah.

Do you notice any handling or ride difference?

Ride is much better.

Yeah, because it's 60 profile rather than 45 profile tires.

The steering is a little less precise,

but that's okay.

There's a, there's a, you know,

they're a higher profile tire

with a tiny bit more squidge

and a smaller contact patch.

But the ride is, the ride is better.

They're quieter.

I'm much less worried about potholes.

Quieter.

I don't, I don't think they,

people have said, oh, they look great now,

but I really quite liked the look of it on the 17s.

Well, our lovely wheels at the 70s,

they were reminiscent of,

do you remember that concept car called the Avis?

I do remember that.

Yeah.

Beautiful wheels.

Yeah.

But you've got them both, haven't you?

I've got them both.

Yeah, although listener,

if you do want to buy a set of 17s,

do with some sort of budget tires on,

do give me a shout,

because they're just in the way.

I'm not going to put them back on.

I don't think really,

because I just need to sell them.

Oh, yeah.

And then I also thought,

if you ever cleaned a car and thought to yourself,

this feels better,

this feels more responsive after you've cleaned it.

If you take a dirty car,

quite a dirty car,

clean it and then drive away and go,

oh, this feels a bit more.

I have.

Yeah, I have, really have.

So I thought as part of this,

as part of my little investigation yesterday,

I went down the rabbit hole of stuff.

There was a TV program called Mythbusters

in the United States.

They may still be in fact.

And they said,

we've heard a rumor that people say a car,

if it's dirty,

will give better economy than one that's clean.

And I thought, I'm not sure I'd buy that really.

But it's kind of like the golf ball principle.

If you dimple it, you'll improve the aero effect.

They said, so what we're going to do is we're going to,

we're going to try.

We're going to get a car really filthy.

We're going to measure its fuel consumption

and then we're going to clean it,

the same car as close to the same conditions as possible.

And we're going to measure its fuel consumption again.

So they did, they got it absolutely filthy.

A typical American, they debudged it,

but I think it's like a Hyundai Elantra or something,

just a big sort of saloon, non-descript saloon car.

Anyway, they got absolutely filthy

and it was doing 24 miles to the gallon at 65 miles an hour.

And then they gave it an amazing clean

around the same tests.

You could pick a couple of holes in the tests

if you really, really wanted to.

You could go, well, is the atmospheric condition

exactly the same as the wind?

But they drove down the same stretch of road,

measured mile five times and they took an average.

And it's pretty good when you look at the testing,

you go, yeah, that's, I would pretty well trust

the results you get for that.

Anyway, from 24 with a car dirty,

they got 26.5 to the gallon,

26.4 I think to the gallon with a car clean.

So they improved fuel consumption

by around 10% by cleaning the car.

So I think if your car is filthy and you go and clean it,

you are probably reducing the rotational inertia

of the wheel because it's now lighter

but also now clean.

And also just cleaning the air through the body.

If you're making that much difference to fuel consumption,

I reckon you can tell the difference.

I don't think it is a placebo effect

when people clean their car and go,

oh, it feels a bit more responsive.

I bet initial accelerated response,

I doubt it would show up on a stopwatch

if you did a 0.60 or whatever.

But I reckon that initial response,

you just go, oh, yeah, that is a bit perkier.

I believe it.

Oh, I believe it, I'm not sure you're right.

It goes back to an ancient story,

I had an uncle who was in the Australian Air Force

in New Guinea during the war

and one of the many wars.

And the 1940s job.

And he and his mates were always at risk

from the Japanese who had aeroplanes at one much faster.

So they got out the French polish one time

and did their Hudson, what not,

airplane, you know, twin-engined light bomber.

And they found that they added 15 miles an hour to this thing.

No way.

And, you know, he always said that it saved his life.

I mean, he didn't actually survive the war

so it didn't do him much good.

But he lasted a bit longer.

A bit longer because of it.

There you go.

There is, so yeah, I think aero effects are, I think.

Important, yeah.

And also doubly, I mean, my column just rambled on

a bit really this week,

but also doubly important in the EV age

because if you've got, like with my Audi,

improving the aero of the wheels

has made an astonishing difference.

Yeah.

A real big difference in reducing rolling resistance,

reducing rolling inertia, rotational inertia,

and presumably improving aero efficiency

has made quite a big difference.

But that engine will still only be,

I don't know why it's a 25-year-old diesel engine.

It's what, 30% thermal efficiency?

It's making a lot more noise and heat

than it's making forward motion.

However, in an EV, because they don't make

a lot of noise and they don't make a lot of heat,

pretty much 90% of the energy you put into it

goes into forward motion.

Therefore, if you improve the aerodynamic efficiency,

you get a much bigger net overall gain on an EV

than we do in a combustion car.

Don't we?

We see this in various versions of EVs

because there are versions of the same EV

which have got different tire sizes

and they quote different ranges nowadays.

One will do 266 and the other one will do 275

and that sort of thing.

It's really interesting.

Yeah, it is.

So it's real.

And a car that's got a very,

that there's a crossover derivative

or something like that of an EV.

But it's otherwise the same platform,

the same mechanical architecture and everything.

There'll be a big, big difference between the two.

Between the hatch and the SUV variant.

And it's all down to...

This is the new...

Aerodynamicists are the new...

Which is difficult because cars are getting more similar.

So how do you differentiate

them well with design?

Well, okay, but you've got to be a bit careful with design

because there's only one way to make it as clean

as possible through the air.

Yeah, good point, isn't it?

Yeah, gosh.

Who would make cars?

Who would?

What was I talking about?

AutoCart at haymarket.com

you can write to us, Steve Parker has done so.

Thanks for the podcast, Gents.

I'm thinking of buying a second hand,

more fun car in addition to the Mazda CX-5

we run as a daily.

Wouldn't mind trying something electric,

possibly a second hand Jaguar I-Pace.

My concern though is selling it in a few years

after I've had my fun.

When buying our main car,

we've generally traded it in at a dealer.

But in your opinion,

what is the best way to sell a second hand car?

See a lot of adverts for the We Buy,

any car and the like,

but by the nature of their business,

they may not give you the best price.

I also privately hear horror stories

about people turning up to your house following adverts.

What is best to do, says Steve Parker.

How do you sell cars, Steve?

I don't, I've never done one through

a We Buy, any car.com type of business

because I do think they're more about speed than money.

I've often sold to friends,

but, or as trade-ins,

I'm the wrong person really

because I just want to,

when I decided it's time to quit it,

I just want it gone.

And I am prepared to take a bit of a hit.

But I like to, it's weird,

but I like things to go to a happy home.

You know the 19-year-old Citroen Berlingo?

That went for a bargain price to a bloke

that I knew would love it,

and he duly does, and he's enjoying it.

He had three or four other ones

and this has become his prime Berlingo.

Excellent.

And so I'm a ridiculous case, I suppose.

But it's either,

for me, it's either trade-in or private sales.

I don't really like too much,

the idea of staying in on Saturday afternoon

so somebody can come around and tell you your car's

not quite enough.

Yeah, I've not enjoyed that,

certainly a classic, of course.

So it's, I suppose when he was,

this gentleman was talking about eye-paces,

I was thinking, well, the cunning thing is to do,

buy right on the way in.

You know, pay the right price when you buy

and then you don't feel,

if there is a bit of a hit to take at the other end,

it's not too disastrous.

But so I think lots of research

into what you really should pay

and then keen negotiation at purchase time

makes disposal easier.

Yes.

What you could do, Steve,

is, because he's got the CX-5 as a daily,

I think there's sort of two questions in his,

well, there may be two questions in his letter,

I don't know whether he wants our advice

on what to buy for fun or not,

but rather than keep the CX-5 as a daily

and then try something electric as a second fun car,

you could have something electric as your first car

and keep doing that on the trade-in,

which he's quite happy with the process of doing

and actually buy something slightly more a bit mad

and then selling something like that

is a much less potentially painful process

because you're talking to enthusiasts

rather than just anyone.

Yeah, have the I-PACE

for running around and buying an MX-5 as a main guy.

Yeah, that's what, yes, exactly.

Yeah, that would be, I like that idea,

but I-

I mean, there may be a reason

you can't have an EV as this first car.

Yeah, I think it's not a bad, having said this,

it's not a bad time to be thinking

of buying an EV as a recreational vehicle

because I was talking to somebody yesterday

who has a friend, I mean, this is third hand information,

but he paid well under 20 for a Tesla Model 3 performance

that was about five years old, but quite low mileage

and they're good buying at the moment.

I find them attractive.

I like the thought of those

because they're loads of grunt and an interesting car.

I mean, I know he lines a bit of a pain in the backside,

but it's not his fault, you know?

Exactly, it's not the car's fault.

No, a big glass area, good visibility,

quite good fun, aren't they?

Sort of very different, really.

And I do like, I know we're supposed to hate screens,

but I like that the big electronic experience.

It is the best of them, I think.

I'm not a huge fan of screens.

Light, light, surprisingly light.

But so, we're not being very helpful, are we?

We're not really, are we?

No, the short bit.

It makes five one minute and Tesla Model 3 is...

The Tesla Model 3 the next, and I, yeah, I don't,

I don't know, maybe I don't listen enough,

but I don't hear too many scare stories

of selling privately, but it is more hassle

than selling it to Diva.

You would buy a GR86, wouldn't you, in his position?

Probably, yes, probably.

Or GT-ATC, isn't it?

GT-LGR, yeah, either or, I think,

really depending on the money and the one available

and blah, blah, blah.

The GR's a better car, I think, but,

well, it is a better car.

I don't think it is a better car.

But I like the GT.

Did you run, you ran a GT?

I ran a GT-AT6.

And that was very successful.

I really enjoyed that.

Yeah, I really liked it.

I really, really liked it,

because it's just fun all the time,

and also amazingly practical, really.

Four seats, because my nippers

would have been teenagers at the time,

and I remember doing the school run in it,

one of them in the front,

one of them pushed the passenger seat forward

and one seat in the back happily enough.

The rear seats go down,

so I remember picking up some 4x2 from the DIY shop

and threading it through the back seats.

You could get, I know people who've been on holidays

with them with bicycles and so on and so forth.

So it is, you can do it.

Actually, I'm going to find a letter while I am here.

Talks amongst yourselves.

What should we, what's, hang on,

you need to tell me something while I look it up.

What do you want to tell me about, Steve,

an old Toyota or your new competition license?

I will, I mean, here we are in your house,

which is about, I don't know,

three or four miles from Bista Heritage,

which is the HQ of Motorsport UK or MSUK, whatever,

where you can just go straight up to the counter

and replace your competition license.

And I find that very convenient and they're nice people

and it's a pleasant place to go

and there's excellent stuff hanging on the walls

to look at.

And so I'm going to do that after this

because I'm going to have a go at the Watergate Bay Hillclimb,

the Cornwall event where they shut public roads for,

because you know the problem in Cornwall,

big place for rallying,

but no motor racing circuits or hillclimbs down there at all.

The nearest circuit, I think, is Castle Coon,

which is far from Bristol.

So what's needed really is a circuit,

but failing that, they've shut these roads

or this road between Newquay and Watergate Bay

and once a year, run a two-day hillclimb

and there's an EV class and I'm going to run the Renault 5,

which I was going to say,

I forgot what I was going to say before,

but if I were going to buy an electric fun car,

I think I would go for a Renault 5.

Oh, that is a very good shot.

Yeah, that's a really good call.

Either that or the Alpine.

I don't know the Alpine yet,

but I'm just going to run a Renault 5 at Watergate Bay

because although it's only 150 horsepower under,

I think the Alpine goes 200-ish, you've done that.

Yeah, I think so.

My memory is iffy.

But I think it's for these things,

but I think it's, yes, it's...

But the EVs just get off the mark so well

and the hillclimbing is all about low speed acceleration

and carrying speed and all that.

And I think the Renault 5 will do all right.

It'll be useless against 600 horsepower Tesla performances,

but I'll have some fun.

I will.

Anyway, that's the point.

I'm going to blunder down the road

from when we finished talking

and renew my competition license

and have a go at the Watergate Bay hillclimbing.

Very good.

Meanwhile, I have found this letter

talking of putting bicycles in cars.

Steve Croppley reports from the Festival of the Unexceptional

on the Fiat Multipla.

This car can be called many things,

but Unexceptional isn't one.

A space frame, compact people carrier

with two rows of seats

and a very distinctive visage is more...

Sweet Generous.

It's called that, isn't it?

This is getting into the old foreign words than mundane.

I would admit being in a very small minority here,

but as soon as I saw the preview pictures

of the Multipla, I knew I needed one of them.

We got one new in 2000.

On our annual French trip from central Scotland,

we loaded up with luggage for four people

for three weeks, two of whom were teenagers.

Additionally, we had two bicycles inside

and a tandem on the roof.

All of this in a very compact car,

not one of the BMOths that one has to deal with today.

So it's Joe Fitzgerald.

There was nothing like it on the...

There was nothing like the Multipla

and has not been since.

No, well, he's right.

He's right.

I mean, I suppose he is perfectly correct, isn't it?

It isn't unexceptional, but it...

Was it in the car park or was it in the unexceptional?

No, it was one of the finalists that we judged.

Oh, okay, okay.

But I guess they use unexceptional

in the sort of unloved term,

but there's a lot of slogans scattered around the place

and one of them says, you know, love for the unloved.

And the thing about the unloved, as we know,

the Multipla was not universally adored, was it?

I don't know, I suppose.

But you can absolutely...

He's so right.

And anybody that takes a good look at the car

and sits in it and operates the controls and so on

will tell you that...

I wish this thing wasn't buzzing all the time.

Anybody that knows a car will tell you that it's special.

It is special.

I love the controls, but the owner that we were talking to,

who's a car, you know, might well have won an award, actually,

was saying that the plastic turns to powder

and you've got to find...

Oh, really?

You know, one day the switches will fall off in your hand

and so on, but...

So the durability is not really there,

but it is an admirable car.

The way...

The fact that they built it, when you'd stand back and look at it

and then have a peep inside and you think,

somebody said, yep, we're doing it.

Yeah.

And there must have been people in the company looking at

the people who make that decision thinking,

well, that's not going to make any money.

How is that going to do anything?

What is that going to achieve?

Surely, who's going to buy one of those?

Are enough people going to buy?

Yeah, when they can buy a Vox all the state, yeah.

But I suppose MPVs were big at the time,

like the Galaxy and the Shiran and the...

Yeah.

You know, big people carriers, as we used to call them,

were a popular vehicle.

Yeah.

But I don't know, I just...

Even when it was new, you kind of look at it and think,

how many people are going to buy one?

Well, I told you that story, didn't I,

about that we're all getting into a multiple to go off

for a Christmas lunch one year

and as we're loading the bloke walks past,

talking into his telephone and he said to the person

on the other end,

I'm just walking past the ugliest car I've ever seen.

And I was sort of stand for the multiple.

But I do, they even drove well.

Yeah, I thought so.

Because of wide tracks.

Yeah, yeah.

Did they have like a really nice alloy wheel design?

Can't recall.

I think the early ones had a really terrific alloy wheel.

Are you looking on the archive?

I will look in the archive in a second, yes,

which is the magazine shop,

top to com, forward slash auto car.

They did have a good,

they did have a good alloy wheel design.

Yeah.

They are pretty ugly.

I always thought, I don't know,

I've got a soft spot for them,

they're quite a good looking car,

you've just got to look closer.

But actually, no, they are quite ugly.

I have people on, I think in auto trader the other day,

just to see what the market's like,

there aren't really are not many around now.

I think they do,

that they're in the hands of people

who wanna keep them going.

Yeah, yeah.

Which is good.

I mean, the guy that we met at the festival was,

he was a perfect advocate for the car.

He just loved it.

He was an engineer.

Okay.

And so he understood the kind of achievements

in building it was good.

And I do think three across,

having come from Australia

where everything was a bench seat with a column change

and three people across the front was kind of usual.

On which note, and this week's and finally story then,

tell me about an old Toyota you have spotted.

Well, at the steering committee,

I were messing around in a bit of a holiday in Wiltshire

and we came upon this Toyota Land Cruiser truck.

It was a newer one than I'd remembered,

but it was the same color and the same body style

as one that I had driven a hell of a long way

in Australia, just on the edge of an old plane.

I had a friend who was a geologist

and during my holidays from the newspaper I worked on,

I used to go prospecting for him

and we used to spend weeks walking this grid

with magnetometer, a geiger counter in your hand.

And if you walk a organized grid,

you eventually come up with an idea

of whether there's an oil body under the ground,

you see.

Wow.

Our truck was a, our transport was a Toyota Land Cruiser

just like this flat bed thing.

And the thing I remember,

two things I remember it for was one,

had these seats which were pretty much the same

as trampoline.

So if you hit a big bump of which there were many,

your head hit the tin roof bang.

And the other thing you could do

because bush tracks were long and featureless

and usually straight, you could just choose a speed

so that the thing didn't crash into too many bumps too badly.

Set the hands rattle, which was a knob on the dashboard

like a choke lever.

Lean against the driver's door,

put your feet along the seats and just drive on.

And hope not to nod off.

And yeah.

And I just remember it very fondly

because it's totally indestructible vehicle.

And, you know, they, whenever I see one,

I just feel warmer.

Because you know, you say,

why do I not have an old Land Rover?

Yeah.

Have you ever thought, why do I not have an old Land Cruiser?

Well, I, you know how things, Bob,

I watched the car and classic auction sales all the time.

And you do see the odd Land Cruiser

that vintage come up

and I have been tempted a few times

because I think they look wonderful.

Yeah, I agree.

Yeah.

I do sometimes, when they do Bob up,

I think of the seats and it's,

because I can remember we did have, during this episode,

we did at times have access to a Land Rover,

which felt like a limousine

just because of the sponge rubber seats.

Oh, interesting.

Instead of these seats with longitudinal coil springs

underneath them,

which would just immediately bounce you into the ceiling.

But that was the only fault with the car.

Everything else about it was fantastic.

Great running gear, fantastic old engine, really good.

And you, when you say you'd walk up and down a grid,

you'd walk rather than giving a car.

Oh, yeah, you have to, yeah.

What you do is you have a map.

You have some idea that there's a large oil body

underneath, radioactive.

Not enough to fry your cells of your feet or anything,

but you're looking for an air body of uranium.

And so you just plot a grid

and it takes you days and days to do it.

And you just stop every hundred feet,

take a reading, another hundred feet,

take a reading, always on a compass bearing.

And you finish up with hundreds of readings over an area

and then you plot them all,

one will say 6.7 or one will say 10.5.

And if you put enough of them on there,

you come up with a pattern,

which can be drawn if you like.

And you will know whether or not it's worth investigation.

If it is, you get out there with a drill

and go down into it.

It's an interesting thing to do, but it was pretty hot.

Yeah, I'll bet.

Yeah.

In fact, it got so hot that we used to get up at,

you know, half past four in the morning,

work till about eight o'clock

and then go and we had a sort of double skin,

big double skin, sitting in the tent

till about half past four and then go till eight o'clock.

It was a mad thing to do,

but having said which,

he is this brand of mine persisted with it,

got rich and goes everywhere in the helicopter.

So...

Well, there you go, yeah.

No more banging his head into the roof every time

he goes to the helicopter.

No, no.

Super.

That brings us to the end of this week's My Week in Cars.

What do we have left to tell you?

There is a video of the Aston Martin Valhalla live

as we speak, going up shortly after this podcast

is published, is a video on the big outing W16.

That's where deciding outweigh whether a car of that format

can feel like an Aston Martin.

Yes.

I really think that's a fascinating question.

I'm busting to talk about that more maybe next time.

Yeah, we'll chat more next time.

Yeah, chat more next time.

Yeah, it's good.

I mean, yeah, because it's got a lot of aero,

it's got three electric motors,

it's mid-engined, it's carbon-tubbed and, you know.

Yeah, it's a sort of very early prototype drive

just over at Stoke, but you'll find a,

yeah, that listener is on the YouTube as we speak.

There is more in the magazine.

That's your story?

That's my story, yeah.

There's the Bugatti W16 mistrial video

is just about to go live.

That's kind of an ode to the W16 engine,

which is about to have its day.

And there is an auto car meets Bugatti's designer

right now, and in a couple of days' time

will be Mickey Kasma of Cam,

who is the Porsche 912 rest-o-moder.

And it's a chat with me.

I'm gonna do one with Karl Ludwigson.

Are you?

Fantastic.

You remember we talked about it?

Yeah.

The world's most erudite author of motoring books.

Fantastic.

And also one of the most prolific.

Yeah.

Man in his 90s, I think.

Might be late 80s, I'm not sure.

But anyway, I'm gonna find out.

But anyway, he's written his magnum opus,

a three-volume book about supercharging

and all the many applications are supercharging.

He's gonna tell us, I think,

about how, as a child,

he attempted to supercharge his parents' car.

He became obsessed with supercharging at an early age

and has loved the whole notion of it ever since.

That's wonderful.

That's brilliant.

I look forward to that, loads.

When are you doing that?

Later in the month, mate.

I think, where are we in?

This is done on the 17th, or something, is it, today?

15th today, yeah, 15th today.

So this is the 20th of all the steps, so.

Yeah, probably a couple of weeks away.

This is episode 154, by the way,

which means we're only two weeks away

from our third anniversary.

Amazing.

No pressure.

So, Steve, thanks very much, mate.

Cheers to you.

Oh, no, hang on.

Wait, sorry, what I need to say,

just finally, Anderson EV, our sponsor.

Oh, yeah.

Thanks very much to Anderson EV.

You can discover all you need to know

about setting up your own charging point

at Anderson-EV.com.

I had a note from a mate of mine the other day.

Said he's thinking about buying a second charger

because he's now got more than one EV at home.

Guess where he's thinking?

Hey.

So, bravo.

Yeah, it'd be nice to think that it has some effect this year.

Yes, if you are going to buy one from Anderson EV,

let us know because it'll be good for us to tell them.

Yeah, we're quite, I find it's perfect sponsor

for us, don't you think?

Yeah.

Because the stuff's good and we need it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, super.

Thanks, Steve.

See you next time.

Yeah.

See you next time.

Yeah.

Hey, it's Raj.

And Noah.

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What's up at Ford; car insurance; 'the Havana Effect'

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