tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-91485101703461307732024-03-05T06:01:37.467+01:00Like Sore ThumbsRichard Tathamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06002386845513033206noreply@blogger.comBlogger55125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9148510170346130773.post-87787598542034652702010-07-08T22:54:00.000+02:002013-02-27T06:12:20.133+01:00Rover 827Si<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeXSN0EFp5ZweNJ6xtcNMdWjAYP_yPDPzveSBeGtGWPt7zYc5Ujsjd2heAx0VKFINo3C3AHYFPFEPBYyjlKtO4ZPjd2scGmns7m0gsURxSzHV919fHa2RXgTgHEetmwl5HRRuiBOvlewm2/s1600/Rover827fl.JPG" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5460747813229444626" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeXSN0EFp5ZweNJ6xtcNMdWjAYP_yPDPzveSBeGtGWPt7zYc5Ujsjd2heAx0VKFINo3C3AHYFPFEPBYyjlKtO4ZPjd2scGmns7m0gsURxSzHV919fHa2RXgTgHEetmwl5HRRuiBOvlewm2/s320/Rover827fl.JPG" style="float: right; height: 240px; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; width: 320px;" /></a>Britain has a history of marrying two things that you wouldn't normally expect together. Eggs in vinegar, for example, or Charles and Diana. Other times there are the incredible partnerships, when two very dissonant elements come together to create something far greater than the constituent parts, like putting milk into your tea.<br />
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In fact, some of the greatest relationships have been forged from the most curious of bedfellows. One scrawny feeble Englishman and one fat, oafish American, two people seemingly worlds apart, were able to form into the Hollywood success story of Laurel and Hardy, or Flim and Flam as they're known in Poland.<br />
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And what we're looking at here is the culmination of such an odd couple, the result of a time when the English and the Japanese were hopping in and out of each other's beds for most of the 1980s.<br />
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This wasn't some bastard offspring either. The car proudly sports Daddy's name on its front grille, bearing aloft the sigil of Rover, and while Mummy's name may only show up on a few official documents in certain registry offices, the maternal side hasn't been entirely diluted; especially when it's a family as famous as Honda.<br />
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To the uninitiated, two car companies coming together should be no big deal; it's happened dozens of times before in plenty of other countries. However, those previous pairings were full-on commitments, where one company takes the other hand in economic matrimony, buying the fairer half outright like some backwater village family in the 18th century. Peugeot walked down that aisle with Citroen in the Seventies, as did Rolls-Royce with Bentley forty years before them. But with Rover and Honda it was a much more modern affair. Certainly more than a casual fling, but nothing as severe as til-death-do-us-part. What we have here is a common law marriage, with the marital bed sitting somewhere in Morris Motor's factory in Cowley.<br />
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It's hard to say who wooed whom in the Rover-Honda dalliance. Rather than teenage passion, this was a more mature liason, with both sides being frank about what assets, and weaknesses, they were bringing to the table.<br />
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At the time, Rover certainly could hardly be considered an eligible bachelor, tied up as it was in the complicated knot of British Leyland, itself a heaving mass of automotive firms almost wholly financed by the British government. Rover wasn't pulling its weight within the group, and its flagship product, the Rover SD1, was a poor seller in contrast to its previous luxury saloons. It needed something new, something sleek, something executive to compete with the rapid growth of executive saloons that were flooding the market.<br />
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In contrast, Honda were becoming more and more aware that if they didn't expand their product range into the same sector, they'd be doomed forever to be an upstart motorbike manufacturer. While their small sedans, the Civic and Accord, were reasonable sellers domestically, they needed a much larger platform if they ever wanted to enter the lucrative American market.<br />
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Which is how, on a probably windy and rainy day in September 1981, Rover made the first call to Honda to suggest, you know, maybe getting together sometime to discuss what the future may bring. And a little over nine months later, the first clay model of Project XX was revealed, the embryonic form of what would later be the Rover 800.<br />
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The car enjoyed a relatively happy childhood. Both parents had ideas about what they wanted the car to be, and their visions were mutually beneficial. They wanted something solid, something powerful, something that would rise the corporate ladder and make its mark on the world. The clay models went through increasing revisions to make the car more defined and more present on the road, with a sleek look suited to the Eighties boardroom. To that end, Rover went about stuffing as much walnut dash and leather into the cabin as it could, while Honda set about shoehorning their new 2.5-litre V6 under the bonnet. <br />
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All considered, it should have been a knockout. Build quality was good, the trim level was competitive and performance was more than adequate. And with the two parents working in harmony, there was no hint of dysfunction at home either; Rover didn't suffer anywhere near as many strikes and walkouts as other British manufacturers of the time.<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_o3TklBOxC5Y/S8h5NczzBVI/AAAAAAAAATE/YYUr5Dj0TWA/s1600/Rover827rl.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5460747820165432658" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_o3TklBOxC5Y/S8h5NczzBVI/AAAAAAAAATE/YYUr5Dj0TWA/s320/Rover827rl.JPG" style="height: 240px; margin-top: 0pt; width: 320px;" /></a>What's more, the 800 had a trick up its sleeve that its big saloon contemporaries hadn't even thought about. Ford were conquering the bottom level of the market with their cheap and sturdy <a href="http://sticksout.blogspot.com/search/label/Ford%20Granada%20Mark%20II">Granada</a>, and luxury manufacturers like BMW offered both the <a href="http://sticksout.blogspot.com/search/label/BMW%207-series%20E23">E23</a> and E24 to cover the top end of the saloon and coupe markets. But neither had ventured into the executive hatchback market; a field that even Rover itself didn't consider that profitable.<br />
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Neither, really, did Honda, who with great diplomacy admitted that they were far more interested in trying to produce a big coupe for the Americans. Rover had always known that the Japanese would favour a baby with their own name, but always believed that the Honda Legend, the 800's twin, would share the same factory. But it was not to be, and Honda moved their production to Japan to better focus on producing a luxury two-door that would sate the Yank appetite for big cars.<br />
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But there were no hard feelings, and when the time came Honda were more than happy to hand over their improved V6 to Rover to take the range to a whole new executive level, boosting capacity from 2.5 to 2.7 litres. Following suit, Rover gave the whole 800 range a more aggressive-looking grille to match the beefier performance, culminating in what we have here; a Rover 827si hatchback.<br />
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It could almost be a match made in heaven. Rover's insistence on producing an English sitting room inside a car, coupled with Honda's desire for supreme performance, meant that final product was both sporting and sumptuous; the perfect mix for people who had 20,000 pounds to throw at a car in 1992. Yet despite reasonable sales, it never really got to the heights destined for it, settling for the best of the bargain brands rather than a serious competitor to the top-shelf alternatives. By the time the car was cancelled in 1998, Rover had gone through four ownership changes, none of whom were prepared to invest in a follow-up to the 800's success.<br />
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In that way, this 827 stands as one of the last of its line, one of the Last Good Rovers. And while the line may have died out, its owner can still be proud, just like its parents were.Richard Tathamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06002386845513033206noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9148510170346130773.post-61235608477276418352010-07-01T08:28:00.000+02:002013-04-22T16:55:10.492+02:00Zastava Yugo Koral 60<div>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9OFFvcUi7NyurcC7GwXsxvsAMOuZYg962lDyM9wQBe93L4LeGU1d6ZZsQKrn3G7PiGedDgcbobW1KuqxAiqZLNLh_sK7w9MFC3BaH7GbDQFiZ6l7wVTjjOKnYlIR8BovqOP4ytSiefpvz/s1600-h/Yugo45side.JPG"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5310447275153524130" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9OFFvcUi7NyurcC7GwXsxvsAMOuZYg962lDyM9wQBe93L4LeGU1d6ZZsQKrn3G7PiGedDgcbobW1KuqxAiqZLNLh_sK7w9MFC3BaH7GbDQFiZ6l7wVTjjOKnYlIR8BovqOP4ytSiefpvz/s320/Yugo45side.JPG" style="float: right; height: 240px; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; width: 320px;" /></a> It's that time of year when conversations drift towards summer holiday plans, and my office is no different. A colleague of mine was trying to tell me about her road trip plans around southern Europe, but she couldn't explain the destinations.<br />
As she searched for the name of the first country, her eyes rolled up and to the left, and her mouth hung open. It was there on the tip of her tongue, but no amount of umms and ahhhs could pull it into action. "Chorwacja? What is that in English?" she finally asked, with a typical Polish roll of the central 'r'.<br />
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It's a constant problem. So many countries with so many languages making so many names for us, the poor tourist, to remember. And while some countries make it easy for the international community, such as France or America, other countries have to suffer the ignominy of having their names stammered, butchered or worse, confused. I deeply pity the poor Netherlanders for the number of times they've been called Deutsch instead of Dutch. And poor Chorwacja, whose Polish pronunciation to the English ear, has a certain connotation to the first syllable, and an unfortunate one considering how pretty Croatia really is.<br />
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Croatia is just one of the Adriatic nations whose name and location is, to many, confusing. Its equally pretty sibling states such as Bosnia and Slovenia create a family as complex as a Shakespearean drama, with a plot equally bloody. The name of this modern tragedy? Yugoslavia.<br />
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Of course, Yugoslavia is long gone; but relics remain. In this case, a cobalt blue hatchback adorned with the "Yugo" name, sitting abandoned in a Warsaw car park.<br />
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To the untrained eye, a Yugo is just another Eighties car, folded out of steel plate somewhere behind the Iron Curtain and sold cheaply to the masses. And that's a fair assessment to some degree; there's nothing from the outside that would distinguish the car from contemporaries like the Ukrainian <a href="http://sticksout.blogspot.com/2008/11/zaz-1102-tavria.html">ZAZ Tavria</a> or the Lada Samara. The only distinguishing feature is the split-Y logo on the bonnet, which we would hope no-one recognises.<br />
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Because "Yugo" carries the unfortunate honours of being both one of the automotive world's most recognised and also most reviled brands. The little car that couldn't, as the reputation goes, which led to the car being classed as one of the worst of all time, by TIME magazine no less. Its reputation is so bad that the word "Yugo" now represents all that is wrong about poverty motoring, and Communist products in general.<br />
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But was it all that bad? After a production run of nearly 800,000 units over four decades, the consensus seems to be "yes", with complaints ranging from the minor (loose door handles and rattly trim) to fairly serious (engines exploding, doors falling off). Which seems odd, considering the car's parentage.<br />
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Half Serbian, half Italian, the little Yugo was yet another licensing project whereby an old Fiat was produced by factory behind the Iron Curtain. In this case, the Fiat 127 formed the base of the vehicle that would enter production at Serbia's Red Flag Factory, or as the rest of the world knows it, Zastava. <br />
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The Fiat underpinnings were tried and trusted. A simple 903cc engine was slotted under the bonnet, with a rudimentary 4-speed gearbox sending power to the front wheels. Around it, an Italian-penned body shell offered an unpretentious hatchback design, with no-fuss straight edges and flat surfaces to simplify the production process. To keep things efficient, parts were brought in from all over Yugoslavia, with Slovenian alternators and Croation upholstery all making their way to the Serbian assembly line. The design was signed off for production in 1978, with serial manufacture starting in late 1980. <br />
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On paper, the car seems no different from other period hatchbacks; the Ford Fiesta and the British Metro employed the same no-frills principle in a similarly angular bodyshell, and the <a href="http://sticksout.blogspot.com/search/label/Citroen%20Visa%2017RD%20Diesel%20C15">Citroen Visa</a> even shared the same mechanicals. But Zastava's insistence on simplicity went that little bit further. Most
early versions didn't even have a petrol flap, for fear of
over-complicating the production process with unnecessary extra curves in the body shell. Other price-cuts included a single front wiper, until you get to the point where the price brochure includes features such as "carpet" - one of the deciding factors when you're buying a new car, obviously.<br />
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But the real key to the Yugo's bargain price was the labour. Where American cars cost their manufacturers up to $23 in labour per man hour, Zastava only needed to charge $0.60, such were the wage levels in Yugoslavia at that time. Add that to the already frugal design, and you get a fully-fledged vehicle that can fly off the production line and into the showroom for the bare minimum price, and still turn a profit. This turned out to be both Yugo's strength and its downfall.<br />
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Taking full advantage of the Yugo's bargain price was one Malcom Bricklin; an entrepreneur who not only imported foreign cars to the US but also produced his own. Both his own sports car, the Bricklin SV-1, and his imported <a href="http://sticksout.blogspot.com/2010/03/fiat-bertone-x19.html">Fiat X1/9</a> flew in the face of American consumer tastes of that time, and the Yugo was no exception. But like the X1/9, the Yugo had passed rigorous safety and emissions tests in order to get past America's stringent quality controls; safety tests that had to be watered down because America's own manufacturers couldn't pass them. Safety tests that no other communist manufacturer had even dared to pass, which is why the <a href="http://sticksout.blogspot.com/search/label/Skoda%20Rapid%20130%2F135%2F136">Skoda 135</a> or the Lada were never exported to the States. That's a factor worth bearing in mind. If this little car managed to
pass those quality controls, it can't have been that bad. It certainly
didn't deserve the moniker World's Worst; it shouldn't even be in the
Top Ten.<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_o3TklBOxC5Y/SbJ_qJdsHWI/AAAAAAAAAPk/EUEc5-Vzi18/s1600-h/Yugo45front.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5310447272694914402" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_o3TklBOxC5Y/SbJ_qJdsHWI/AAAAAAAAAPk/EUEc5-Vzi18/s320/Yugo45front.JPG" style="float: right; height: 240px; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; width: 320px;" /></a></div>
The Yugo also had more to offer than the other Communist brands. While the initial offerings only gasped out 45hp from their sub-litre engines, later models got bigger and better motors, allowing the Yugo to be marketed as models 45, 50, 55 or even 60, depending on the power output. It's a Yugo 60 that we have here, and you can tell that not just by the comedy bonnet vent that feeds the 1.3 litre engine, but by having not one but <i>two</i> windscreen wipers. The Yugoslavians
probably believed that with so much extra power under the bonnet, you'd
need twice as many blades to blat the rain away from the windscreen at
such massively increased speeds.<br />
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While hardly blistering, these Yugos offered enough performance to seriously tempt overseas buyers. Combined with a retail price thousands of dollars lower than any domestic sub-compact, the Yugo immediately found itself a niche market, notching up 141,000 sales in the US among price-concious buyers.<br />
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But that price proved to be all important. Cheap products lead to cheap buyers, and in the unfortunate hands of owners who considered the car "disposable", Yugos were quickly driven into the ground. With owners skimping on much-needed oil and belt changes, the little cars quickly built up a reputation for terminal engine failure. Couple that with the sort of panel fitment you get when your assembly line are paid 60 cents an hour, and the little car from Serbia rapidly went from forecourt to junkyard, without going through any second-hand market in between. A used Yugo? You couldn't even give it away.<br />
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The Yugo name became toxic, in more than one way. As a brand its name was mud, but as a nation state it was tearing itself apart, and by the 1990s the Yugoslavian Wars were in full swing, with the whole world watching the continuing series of civilian bombings and wholesale massacres.<br />
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Despite the war, Zastava still kept up production. Desperate to rid the car of its tainted moniker, they dropped the Yugo name and relaunched it as the Zastava Koral, hoping that the successful reputation of their Zastava 101 model would be carried across to its smaller sibling. Along with a new name, new models with new options were released; bigger engines with fuel injection, alloy wheels, air conditioning and even a full cabriolet were all released to the market, as and when the international sanctions allowed them to. <br />
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But it wasn't to be. With the reputation in tatters, international exports trickled to nothing, and by 1992 the American market had all dried up. By the time the southern Slavs had worked out the borders of their new post-Yugoslav states (to a greater or lesser degree), people were tired of the flimsy little machine, and were looking for more upmarket and reliable models.<br />
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And yet, as the smoke cleared, Zastava found itself in a unique position. With each ex-Yugoslav nation licking its wounds, its populations needed to quickly and cheaply mobilise to rebuild the ravaged economies. Zastava cranked up production, reforging its ties with its sister factories in the new neighbouring states to keep production going. Thanks to that, thousands of Korals continued to roll off the assembly line each year to a grateful and desperate domestic market. So iconic was the soldiering little car, it remained in production all the way up until 2008. And while one may lie dormant and disposed of here in Warsaw, there are still thousands of these little machines still rattling their way along the Adriatic coastline today thanks to the continued efforts of the pan-Slavic production line. So maybe our tragic drama has a happy ending after all.<br />
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Richard Tathamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06002386845513033206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9148510170346130773.post-90611110192707248112010-06-25T19:10:00.015+02:002011-07-18T09:01:01.511+02:00Ford Granada Mark II<div><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5464123727608144418" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; WIDTH: 300px; CURSOR: pointer; HEIGHT: 225px" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_o3TklBOxC5Y/S9R3lIDd4iI/AAAAAAAAAUM/_725DRiBSn0/s320/FordGranadafr.JPG" border="0" />Cast your mind back to childhood summer holidays, and some of us are old enough to remember bucket-and-spade days on the coast of our own country, slurping up ice creams and trying not to get pecked by seagulls. The seaside town I grew up in was one of those places; long sandy beaches, deckchairs in the sun, and the hourly mad dash to the pubs and cafes because it started raining again.<br /><br /><div>In the Sixties, all that changed. Cheap package holidays sent the working classes off to the Mediterranean, where they could get wrecked on sangria, insult the locals, then come back with a straw donkey and some serious sunburn.</div><br />Ford of Europe knew exactly where all this was going, and knew that to market their lastest line-up of cars, they needed to tap in to this new-found Mediterranean flamboyancy. In line with the jet set, the names Cortina and Capri had been chosen to adorn Ford's saloon and sports cars respectively, instilling the range with a fun-in-the-sun flavour and conjuring in the minds of potential buyers the image of drinks by the pool filled with fruit and umbrellas. To continue the theme, the Large Executive Saloon had the name of a Spanish town slapped on its rear end, and was flogged to the masses as the Ford Granada.<br /><br /><div><span class="Apple-style-span">The car itself was standard fare, with the straight lines and large cabin space a known formula, proven to have worked on both the </span>Cortina and the <a href="http://sticksout.blogspot.com/2010/02/ford-escort-mkiii-16d.html">Escort</a>, which is no surprise considering the brainpower that had gone into them. <span class="Apple-style-span">The two European Ford corporations of Britain and Germany had collaborated on those projects to make continental cars that could be built and sold in both countries, and the Granada was to follow the same successful recipe. With a steady reliable drivetrain nestled under a roomy yet sensible body, the car won over managers and chiefs on both sides of the Channel, becoming a staple of the highways and putting up a decent fight against other, more luxurious contemporaries.</span></div><br /><div>And as the Seventies exploded, so did the story of Granada, both the town and the car. The former, throttled for years by the oppressiveness of its dictator-general Franco, suddenly boomed as airports opened and hotels sprang up all along the coast. The beaches accepted a trickle, then a stream, and now a torrent of fat Northern Europeans, slathered in suntan lotion and basking their bellies in the sun. And in 1977, the Granada too went through a revolution, and with a new range of fleet-friendly engines and performance upgrades, it became an industry benchmark for affordable performance saloons, with Ford's beast comparing favourably to much more expensive offerings from superior manufacturers like Mercedes. The big men with cigars in both Dagenham and Cologne could slap themselves on the back for their cleverly designed Mark II.</div><br /><div>Yet the cleverness of Ford's naming convention somehow became oddly reversed. Despite the engine range running from basic 1.6's to roaring 3-litre V6's, the car picked up a reputation not of poverty, but of the working class. Rather than the car absorbing all the foreign charm of its namesake town, the opposite happened, and the name Granada became permanently associated with fat sweaty Brits, sunburnt and shouting at Spaniards. The affluent masses, with their complete lack of social grace, tarnished the Granada forever.</div><div><br /><div><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5464123733894266050" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; WIDTH: 300px; CURSOR: pointer; HEIGHT: 225px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUFiEWlIrZ1sfYxFDXBXzsEWnkBQu8PAqC8m6ekIvBLIngIlboFaa7KkOpFUu178e2XZOOsTKApkOILoMfjYa8BRAxEEyRh9OTppR_91bEBzdRaA1OUQEh72qw-mXOqIte9NP-epHJA_0w/s320/FordGranadarr.JPG" border="0" /></div>It's that sort of social cheapness that sullies this Granada here. The single exhaust pipe and prosthetic-limb colouring point to the feeble engine under the bonnet, which is far more likely to be a four-pot from Dagenham than a V6 from Cologne. And yet someone has chosen to adorn both ends not just with "Ford" or "Granada" but with another name, "Berta", stamped boldly in black and white on the numberplate.</div><br /><div>This sort of vanity is relatively common further west, where overpaid and egotistic executives purchase personalised plates for their cars, either as a display of wealth or, more cynically, for other more personal shortcomings. So for someone to pay such a price (and it's not cheap in Poland) to do the same thing to a decaying 30-year-old saloon is a particularly delicious joke. Are they desperately trying to catch up with the money that pours into Warsaw year after year, or is it a cruel jibe at the besuited owners of Porsche Cayennes, highlighting others' vanities by playing them at their own game?</div><br /><div>Whatever the reason, Granada proved not to be the right name for the car, and for the third edition, released in 1985, the Spanish name was dropped in favour of the more astrological Scorpio; a sign that Ford no longer wanted their cars tainted by the actions of Brits on holiday. But I can't help feeling that, for a big heavy German such as this, Berta, or even Helga, might have been a better name. </div></div>Richard Tathamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06002386845513033206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9148510170346130773.post-17477004737809063422010-06-17T16:53:00.008+02:002011-03-21T23:21:24.107+01:00Renault 4 GTL<img src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_o3TklBOxC5Y/S8h6FD-yrGI/AAAAAAAAATc/ntG39I984sY/s320/Renault4fl.JPG" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 225px;" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5460748775573335138" border="0" />"Another glass, Jean-Jacques?"<div>"Merci, mais non, I 'ave to get zees onions to ze market for tomorrow morning."</div><div>"Oh come now, you 'aff plenty of time," says his friend, reaching across the table and filling the glass. In this way, two farmers let the afternoon pass, reclining on their seats and patting their prodigious bellies.</div><div><br /></div><div>It all seems charmingly provincial, the old bistro in its rustic setting, a cobbled patio next to a sandy courtyard where old men in waistcoats exchange bon mots with a saucy waitress while holding aloft ruby glasses. It's exactly the image Renault want you to conjure up when you think of the Renault 4, but don't be fooled. France isn't like that.</div><div><br /></div><div>While you carry in your mind two portly old rogues eyeing up the girls over a glass of wine, don't forget those all-important onions, without which the French economy would collapse, bundled up in hessian bags in the back of the farmer's Renault. That afternoon sun, which dapples gently on the paintwork, is roasting the glass-panelled hatchback, trapping the heat like a greenhouse and drying out the onions and their muddy coating until a pungent stench fills the entire cabin. It would mingle with the cigarette ash spilled on the floor, with the sweat soaked into the driver's seat, with the chicken droppings and vegetable litter compressed into the grooves of the bodywork until the car reeked like a pig sty in August. The underlying notes of poverty are the essence of the Renault 4. It stinks.</div><div><br /></div><div>The Renault 4 would like you to think that it's a cheeky little people's car, an avant-garde flash of simplicity and quirkiness that lends it an air of jaunty enthusiasm. But it isn't. That sort of flair had already been done by the Renault's rival, the Citroen 2CV for thirteen years already, and post-war parsimony was now giving way to urban chic and a taste for the fanciful. That didn't prevent the French automaker from going ahead with their effort to take over a large section of the poverty car market; a niche that most other manufacturers had given up making new designs for. But Renault had decided more moustachio'd serfs needed to trade in their mules for motors, and so the Renault 4 was launched on a summer's afternoon in 1961.</div><div><br /></div><img src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_o3TklBOxC5Y/S8h6Fv_6VWI/AAAAAAAAATk/w2EUZLyMhgc/s320/Renault4side.JPG" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 225px;" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5460748787389191522" border="0" /><div>On one hand, it's easy to highlight why the Renault 4 was a success. A simple engine mounted to a plain chassis allowed a relatively spacious body to be bolted on top, and with all the mechanicals up front and the suspension hidden underneath, meant that the maximum amount of space could be given to the body. Slap a simple barn door on the back instead of any pretence of a boot, and you've made a moveable metal box that can accommodate a cow. Pepper the sides with ovals of glass and you can even kid yourself that this is a car, and not just any car but a city car, a youthful car, a vehicle that embodies the urban spirit of freedom to move around. Of course, if you're also the person who has six crates of live chickens to move around, you might also find it useful, but the Renault 4 was designed as an Everyman's Car.</div><div><br /></div><div>However, if you felt that the luxuries of a rear quarterlight window and a chrome grille were too much of an extravagance, and you didn't want to get your hubcaps dirty driving down farm tracks, you could lower the price even more and buy a Renault 3, the poverty-spec version of the '4, but in the Sixties even French farmers turned their nose up at such austerity measures. The Renault 4 was cheap enough already, there was no need to drag its new name through the mud by making it look like some sort of van. </div><div><br /></div><div>Renault were very keen to point out that it wasn't a van by releasing a van version a year later, called the Fourgonette or "little girly van" if we translate the French appropriately. By unbolting the unpretentious body and slapping a massive box on the back instead, you could squeeze in even more agricultural produce, and waft an even more potent stench along the tree-lined roads before eventually arriving at whatever slaughterhouse you were destined for. Unlike the '3, the Fourgonette was an instant success, and helped push the image of the Renault 4 as a capable mover of stuff for the working classes. And with nothing in the way of extras to go wrong, it could almost be considered reliable too, as long as you serviced the engine every six thousand miles and didn't expect to go faster than 65mph.</div><div><br /></div><div>With this elemental recipe for a mechanical donkey, the Renault 4 slogged on year after year with almost nothing in the way of changes, just like its competitor from Citroen. In some grim battle to keep the average quality of French cars to a minimum, they steadfastly refused to improve anything on their designs, lest they raise the cost of the vehicles to an unacceptable level.</div><div><br /></div><div>But times change. The stereotypical French village became increasingly under threat as farmers realised they might have to start working for a living. Electricity came to town, standards were raised, and the demand for smoky tin boxes dropped. The cost of manufacturing, both in labour rates and the value of steel, meant that the price of the Renault 4 couldn't stay rock-bottom for ever, and by the time of the 1978 revision its price was comparable to those of contemporary superminis like the <a href="http://sticksout.blogspot.com/2010/04/citroen-visa-17rd-c15.html">Citroen Visa</a> and <a href="http://sticksout.blogspot.com/2009/10/renault-5-campus-renault-express.html">Renault 5</a>. If one wanted a second family car, or a little car to learn on, the spartan interior of the 4 simply couldn't compare to the plastic and vinyl on offer elsewhere. Even the creation of a GTL edition with a 1.1litre engine couldn't bring it up to Eighties expectations of speed, let alone comfort, while the engine noise was absolutely deafening. What's more, the chrome grille had been removed. How can you sell a car in the Eighties with no chrome grille?</div><div><br /></div><div>Yet the Gallic inertia towards change, or simply Renault hating the average consumer, meant that the Renault 4 managed to stay in production for an astounding 33 years before finally calling it a day in 1994, but before you breathe in a lungful on non-oniony air, bear in mind that the tooling for more Renault 4's had been dispersed around the globe. For three decades factories in Ireland, Autralia, Mexico and Italy churned out the plain little wagons until eight million of them cluttered up the streets with their nasal whine and cocky posture.</div><div><br /></div><div>In its time it spawned a number of successors in both the Renault 5 and Renault 6, and made the hatchback style the ultimate small car design. Yet the final models were cobbled together from leftover spares in a factory in Slovenia; a relatively ignoble end for such a popular car. Upon its passing, its position in the French stable was filled by the completely unrelated Renault Twingo, but its place is automotive history is secured as Renault's most produced model ever.</div>Richard Tathamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06002386845513033206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9148510170346130773.post-37575717382729298332010-06-10T16:50:00.007+02:002011-03-20T11:32:07.531+01:00Volvo 480 Turbo<img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_o3TklBOxC5Y/S8h5lS6QB_I/AAAAAAAAATM/YPhCN6C8D-I/s320/Volvo480fr.JPG" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 225px;" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5460748229825005554" border="0" />The image of Volvo has always been one of a genteel conservatism. There's no outright snobbery involved in the brand, but those loyal to the Swedish manufacturer do seem to conform to a stereotype that may or may not be flattering. There's no posturing involved like other premium-priced models, no aggressive marketing designed to target a particular consumer. The Scandinavian manufacturer simply let its innocuous boxes appeal to innocuous people, as long as they had money to pay for it.<div><br /></div><div>That's not to suggest that Volvo's are luxury cars; you don't expect leather and wood trimming when you sit in one, but it's definitely not at the lower range of the market, rubbing shoulders with disposable tin like Fords and Opels. They were sedate, safe saloons for accountants, offering a cosy way to move boxes of files and the family Retriever around without any particular sense of urgency. Cardigans were an optional extra from the factory.<br /><div><br /></div><div>Don't be fooled, however, into thinking Volvo's are slow; they're perfectly capable of keeping up with Audi's and BMW's (well, the smaller ones anyway), it's just that the owners have no desire to do so. While the German saloons excel in bullying other road users onto the hard shoulder, Volvo likes to plod along, knowing how much power it has and utterly refusing to use it, because it just wouldn't be sensible. As the Mercedes roars past honking his horn and shaking its fist, the Volvo owner will make a light tutting sound, and shake his head. In motoring terms, they are the embodiment of the word "comfy."</div><div><br /></div><div>So when you hear that Volvo had produced a sort of, well, err, something along the line of a sports car, then the silence is only broken by the sound of teaspoons clattering onto saucers. "A sporting car?" enquires the husband, lowering his newspaper. "From Volvo? My word, really, this is really quite intolerable. I shall write a letter of complaint at once."</div><div><br /></div><div>Volvo knew their target market, and what it would and would not accept. Which is why, on an average day in a nondescript ceremony they announced that they had built a Shooting Brake. A what? Hold on.</div><div><br /></div><div>A long time ago, sporting gentlemen sat themselves on a simple, open wagon with long benches down each side, and let themselves be pulled around the forests and fields until they were in the appropriate place for shooting. With shotguns resting on their laps, knees warm under tartan blankets and flasks of brandy and whisky being passed around, it was all very much the quintessential country scene, and these open wagons, or brakes as they were called, were the lowest sort of rough-and-ready vehicles the moneyed classes were prepared to ride on. </div><div><br /></div><div>Even if you're off out for some country fun, the prospect of spending hours staring at the back end of a horse loses its appeal. And despite the Eighties yuppy penchant for buying their way into genteel society, the average consumer shied away from actual mud and turf, so a real wooden-sided wagon wasn't exactly what was wanted. Some sort of combination, like a sporting estate car was in order, and if you're looking for an estate car, you look to Volvo. </div><div><br /></div><div>This wasn't Volvo's first foray into the concept of a sports car; twenty years earlier Volvo had sold the 1800, rightly considered a classic these days. The trouble was timing; they released that car at exactly the same motor show as the Jaguar E-type, and given the choice, very few people went for the Swedish option. Price didn't help either; the 1800 cost more than the Jag in the UK, thanks to export costs, even though Swedish cars at that time were right-hand drive. In a bid to make the car seem more impressive, Volvo played around with the 1800, making a very small run of 8000 Shooting Brakes, called the 1800ES, before shutting down production in 1974.</div><div><br /></div><div>That 1800ES was very much in the mind of one young designer when the call came from headquarters in 1978 that maybe they should have another go at making something sportier. Codenamed Project E12, Volvo Headquarters in Sweden decided to give their Dutch counterparts a test, and commissioned the team in the ex-DAF factory (which Volvo had bought a few years earlier) to come up with something radically new. The Dutch knew that they had to impress their Swedish overlords, or the whole factory would face closure, despite their ability to churn out the dull little Volvo 340. A sword of Damocles was hanging over them; develop a replacement for the Volvo's small car platform, or face the axe.</div><div><br /></div><div>With that threat, and the radical brief of making a front-wheel-drive car, the Dutch team set to work, sketching out bold lines, rakish angles, acres of glass and pop-up headlights; all the marks of a serious Eighties roadster with none of the traditional elements that make up a Volvo at all. And a young designer by the name of John de Vries, returned to the old 1800ES as a source of inspiration. The short wheelbase was visually extended with large side panels and stretched windows, with the rear chopped off with a masterstroke of flat glass that opened up as a frameless tailgate. It was an daring design for the conservative manufacturer, but it won high praise from the Swedish top brass, and was put forward into production.</div><div><br /></div><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7eW54tXYiLHTvbyCBgh4H9Dm1Ms59aQbc794W0NCVvycIMKIq4lvkYvMiaLFfclVcFtbtJ-sBeAn2mNcF4YR_LnUeL3BskqSs3QCjoM5nqB9jp9NL8winNkmVyZ60r62OSv_iMgVsodpB/s320/Volvo480side.JPG" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 225px;" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5460748235947857410" border="0" /><div>Unlike the cumbersome and wallowing <a href="http://sticksout.blogspot.com/2008/11/volvo-240-saloon.html">Volvo 200</a> series, which was the standard brick being churned out by the company, the little 480 was to have a much more rev-happy and sprightly engine, courtesy of Renault. The little 1.7 litre unit was squeezed under the rakishly sloping bonnet alongside a turbo unit, with the whole setup tuned by Porsche engineers for optimum power. Since the back end of the car would now be "dead" because the power was at the front, the rear suspension would be handled by the English mechanics at Lotus. This thoroughly European effort was done to entice the Americans into spending their hard-earned dollars on the finished product, and to that end it was held together with an intricate web of cabling that controlled all sorts of technological gadgetry. </div><div><br /></div><div>Considering this was Volvo, the electronic toys fitted to the 480 were things to make your life more practical. Alongside the airbags and ABS were useful gizmos like speed-variable wipers that automatically turned on at the rear if you engaged reverse, and door-timed headlights that stayed on for 20 seconds after you got out, to help you put your key in the front door. How thoughtful. </div><div><br /></div><div>The trouble was, it was all very new territory for the Swedish manufacturer, and from the initial 1986 launch, tweaks and revisions were continuously made to get the car working properly, but the maze of electronics proved frustratingly stubborn. While the car never actually broke down, any number of on-board systems could go on the blink at whim, and even at idle the little 1.7 engine sounded cholic. Topped off with a disappointing exchange rate meant that the sporting Volvo would never get to see the other side of the Atlantic, and without American sales the model was effectively doomed. Even the introduction of a 2.0 engine in 1993 couldn't raise much interest, and two years later the model was cancelled, with only 80,000 units made.</div><div><br /></div><div>Despite its sloping profile and short wheelbase, it never became a driver's car like it's brand rival, the Volvo 340, which should go some way to explaining why one would be sitting forlornly on steel wheels with rotting wheel arches in a Warsaw back street. Without the performance to match the low nose and sleek lines, this most un-Volvoish of Volvos could never be considered a serious sports car. It was just too serious.</div></div>Richard Tathamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06002386845513033206noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9148510170346130773.post-9189921494286335142010-06-02T17:43:00.012+02:002011-03-18T17:56:46.478+01:00Zaporozhets ZAZ-968<img src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_o3TklBOxC5Y/SWDnU9mINGI/AAAAAAAAAG0/PBI307AL3oU/s320/ZAZ968front.jpg" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 281px;" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5287480309850846306" border="0" />There was a time when the borders of Poland stretched from the Baltic coast as far as the Dnieper river, following its sinuous curves all the way to the Crimean peninsula. In those Golden Times the country, or the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth as it was known, was one of the largest countries in Europe, and a mighty force to be reckoned with. It embraced a multi-cultural society of Poles, Lithuanians and Ruthenians, defended itself from oppressive invaders, and enjoyed economic prosperity thanks to its exploitation of serfs and peasants. It fostered arts and sciences, maintained a diplomatic neutrality and led to the first constitution in Europe. All in all, it was a generally wonderful place to be. But there was one problem on it's eastern border, one trouble that couldn't be quelled. Cossacks.<div><br /><div><div>Cossacks are a noble warrior tribe, a militarised group of Slavs who don't recognise any authority than their own. Fearsome on horseback and worthy seamen, they proved to be willing mercenaries for any number of East European nations through the ages, and piratical raiders when unemployed. Politically, they fell under the control of the Commonwealth, but little could be done to reign in their terror, especially their attacks on the Ottoman Empire. They would plunder and ravage at whim, always to return to their fortress settlement of Zaporizhia, by the rapids of the river Dnieper.</div><div><br /></div><div>Officially, they were registered and employed as a battalion of elite soldiers, but by the middle of the 17th century those Cossacks became a menace, and through a series of revolts and incursions they destabilised the entire Commonwealth and sparked off the Deluge, a string of political and military events that would wipe Poland off the map. For the Cossacks, this was their attempt to be recognised not just as an underclass or military unit, but as a separate nation state, which they called the Zaporizhian Sich.</div><div><br /></div><div>Since those times, Zaporizhia has calmed down somewhat, using its coastal waters to unload shipping cargo rather than captured booty, but the area still maintains a reputation for bucking the trend, for doing things their own way, and that can clearly be seen in the ZAZ-968.</div><div><br /></div><div>Fast forward two hundred years, and the Communists have taken over the region. Desperate to get the Cossacks off their horses and into cars, they converted an agricultural factory into a production facility and set to work on their new project, the Zaporozhets. Reminiscent of the Fiat 600, the ZAZ-965 was a hunchbacked little lump with many similar features to its Italian doppelganger, most notably the rear-mounted engine. It wasn't exactly a technical revolution, which is no surprise since it came from the far more mundane Moskvitch design office. But the Cossack engineers had more ambitious plans, and from their design centre in Melitopol they created a unique engine for the pint-sized car. The MeMZ V4 750cc engine was unlike anything else in the Soviet automotive arsenal, and its compact structure perfectly suited the tiny engine bay at the back of the ZAZ. It wasn't powerful, but it was air-cooled, and that made significant savings on complexity as well as weight, and allowed the miniscule ZAZ to roll off into the Great Meadows with a herd of 27hp.</div><div><br /></div><div>The little ZAZ showed that the principle of a Ukranian People's Car was certainly achievable, and the factory worked hard to expand its options. In 1966 it unveiled a bigger saloon platform, the ZAZ-966, which bore an uncanny resemblance to another air-cooled Sixties saloon, the German NSU Prinz. But the Ukrainians couldn't leave it like that. The Cossack attack is fast and light, quick strikes, and even though the 966 wasn't a big car, it's engine needed a lot more power than 750cc could deliver. So MeMZ enlarged it, making it first 900cc and then 1.2litres, gave it an ever-so-slightly different nose, and called it a ZAZ-968.</div><div><br /></div><img src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_o3TklBOxC5Y/SWDnVfn-UuI/AAAAAAAAAG8/X9v2o8wTQO8/s320/ZAZ968fr.jpg" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 225px;" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5287480318985392866" border="0" /><div>Released in 1971, this was the car that everyone knew simply as the Zaporozhets, and many alive now still remember the glorious times when their grandfathers owned one of these distinctive machines. Those rear vents quickly earned the car the nick-name "Uszy", or Ears, and they were responsible for sucking the air into that rear-mounted engine, and it's those little quirks that have earned the car such a loved-and-laughed-at reputation.</div><div><br /></div><div>Because the car was designed to be the ultimate People's Car, simplicity was the byword of design, making the car as ergonomic as possible to fit into the peasant lifestyle of the Ukrainians, and the Soviet Union as a whole. Internal heating was provided by a separate petrol burner with its own tank, so that the engine didn't need to be run to keep the cabin warm. The wheel rims mounted directly to the brake drum, with bolts around the edge, to save on weight and metal. And by making the car was so light, the little engine needed to be revved hard, so the gearbox gate was redesigned with first gear standing out on its own, down and to the right. That way, it would be much easier to shift between second and third gear when negotiating the potted Soviet roads. Handling could be improved by filling the front cargo bay with rocks.</div><div><br /></div><div>The car was a peasant uprising of a machine. There were never enough cars to satisfy the needs of the Soviet Union, but the ZAZ became the icon of underclass motoring, with its simple design making it perfect for invalid carriage conversions. Its basic setup could be adjusted for those who had lost a limb or two in battle, with both the accelerator and brake hand-operable. And with such a reduced design, it carried the ultimate weapon; price.</div><div><br /></div><div>The Zaporozhets was such a cheap car that, when exported, it still cost less than the <a href="http://sticksout.blogspot.com/2009/03/skoda-105s.html">Skoda 105</a> or the <a href="http://sticksout.blogspot.com/2009/09/polski-fiat-126p.html">Fiat 126</a>, and workers up and down the country were desperate to get their hands on one. This would never be a status symbol like the big <a href="http://sticksout.blogspot.com/2010/01/gaz-24-volga-mk-ii.html">GAZ Volga</a> sedans, but it quickly became a cultural icon, and even contemporary owners of the cars, thirty years afterwards, claim their ownership with pride rather than embarrassment. The general public have more ambivalent feelings towards the car, but most people have at least one story to regale of the time they encountered the strange machine from Zaporizhia. However, like the Cossacks, it's great to talk about the ZAZ, but the idea of having to rely on it instils us with fear. Like their ancestors, the Zaporozhets had a reputation for unreliability, and you never knew when it would turn around and leave you stranded and unsupported, or worse.</div><div><br /></div><div>For that reason, the ZAZ has left behind a cultural legacy of both scorn and admiration. All of the criticisms, such as a lack of power or poor build quality, are exactly the things that endear the car to its owner, in much the same way as other People's Cars like the <a href="http://sticksout.blogspot.com/2009/01/trabant-p601-11.html">Trabant</a> or the <a href="http://sticksout.blogspot.com/2009/01/fsm-syrena-105.html">Syrena</a>. And just like those two, the more Zaphorozhets tried to improve the car, the less likeable it became. In 1980, power was increased by the clever men at MeMZ, who managed to squeeze 50hp out of the already gasping engine, but at the cost of those distinctive ears that give the ZAZ-968 its charm, and the 968M was a poor replacement.</div><div><br /></div><div>The looting days of the Zaporizhian invader have long since ended. Just as Zaphorizhia was flooded by the Kakhovka Dam, inundating the Great Meadow with a deluge of its own, so too did air-cooled engines fall out of favour against the unstoppable tide of water-cooled engines. By 1994, the ZAZ-968M was a dusty relic of the late Sixties, and no amount of gimmicks and cheapness could prolong its execution. As it bowed out, its shoes were filled by the smaller, and also-but-slightly-less outdated <a href="http://sticksout.blogspot.com/2008/11/zaz-1102-tavria.html">ZAZ Tavria</a>. And with its demise, a worthy enemy, or charismatic ally, passed into legend.</div><div><br /></div></div></div>Richard Tathamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06002386845513033206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9148510170346130773.post-84135329976811097732010-05-25T19:06:00.008+02:002011-03-15T20:13:41.260+01:00Bentley Turbo R<img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2wapXftPtIK4k3iTQhXH08mR8gGqKNwalBbGQ4lZJfLkQNYUlTMK8SWdEwM62LUNMvWQh2Wqqjj1htqp-cX1J75Tv-4cv1Ybn6yAyuLaUbeamICmM_jZPHOGQTQs1dFjynKW1sFC7OAUN/s320/BentleyTurboRfr.JPG" style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 225px;" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5584052587002762114" /><div>There was a time when turbo-something was about as cool as you could get. I had all sorts of plastic toys in my childhood arsenal that offered mega-this and ultra-that, but you could guarantee that anything with turbo slapped on the front was the supreme leader. These days, its presence on the packaging of razor blades and skin creams somewhat cheapens the effect, but back in the Eighties the only way to make something unsurpassable was to turbo it.</div><div><br /></div><div>But what to do if you're already the maker of the most impeccable, sublime and ultimate machinery out there? Surely you can't just put a garish sticker on the back declaring it to be "turbo" and hope that an Arab will spend 20% more on it, just because he wants to be the coolest sheikh in the Sinai peninsula? Surely?</div><div><br /></div><div>That was the dilemma facing the men down in Crewe, at Rolls-Royce headquarters, in the late Seventies. Being primarily an aeroplane manufacturer, the company had gone bankrupt and been nationalised in 1971. Desperate to redeem some sense of profitability, the automotive part was spun off as an independent company called Rolls-Royce Motors Ltd, and dragging Bentley with it, soldiered on in dire need of a new model to resuscitate its fortunes.</div><div><br /></div><div>In 1980 that model came, in the form of the Rolls-Royce Silver Spirit. An entirely new car, it was rolled out as the ultimate luxury saloon, and fully lived up to the Rolls-Royce reputation. Yet the question of Bentley remained. For decades the marque had existed as the cheap version of whatever Rolls-Royce was making at the time, but the new owners of the firm, Vickers, rolled their sleeves back to their burly forearms and muscled in. No longer was Bentley going to live in the shadow of the Spirit of Ecstasy; it would bulldoze its own path through the luxury car market and make its own statement.</div><div><br /></div><div>In that manner, the Bentley Mulsanne was released. Each frame lovingly worked from steel by hand, the Silver Spirit clone would share the same 6.75 litre engine as its sibling and its predecessors, with the only appreciable difference being that it wouldn't carry the Parthenon on its nose. Rolls purists may argue at this point that without the famous radiator grille, the car is nothing, but for Bentley it meant everything; most importantly the opportunity to cut loose the ropes that bound it to its bigger sister.</div><div><br /></div><div>The Mulsanne moniker comes from one of the most famous straights of the Le Mans track, and under that name Bentley set its sights purely on performance, in the manner its founders conceived fifty years previously. With that in mind, the engineers analysed the carburetted engine and weighed up their options. The solution was simple, and it was snail-shaped.</div><div><br /></div><div>An engine breathes. When you press the happy-pedal, you're not really doing anything with the fuel; you're controlling a little flap that regulates how much air the engine is allowed to suck in to make its explosions happen. In simple old engines, that draft would also suck fuel out of the carburettor, in much the same way as blowing across a beer bottle makes a noise. The more air, the more fuel, and the more noise you get from the engine. That means more power.</div><div><br /></div><div>But there's a theoretical limit to the amount of air an engine can suck in all by itself, so anything you can do to push more air in will ultimately improve the performance. You could go for a supercharger, an electrical motor driving a fan, like the <a href="http://sticksout.blogspot.com/2008/06/lancia-trevi-volumex-vx.html">Lancia Volumex</a> engines, or you can use a turbo charger. Turbos are a pair of fans; one in the exhaust, pushed along by the gases leaving the engine, which in turn drives another fan pushing more air in the other side. More air pushed in makes more gas come out of the exhaust, which makes the fans turn faster, which pushes more air in until you reach epic levels of power, and all of it at no extra cost to engine efficiency.</div><div><br /></div><div>Or at least that's the theory. The downside is the octopus tentacles of pipework needed to make the whole thing work, and a little thing called turbo lag; the time between pressing the accelerator and the turbo having any effect. Aside from that, a turbo is a cheap way to get superior performance from an engine, as long as the engine is strong enough to cope with it.</div><div><br /></div><img src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_o3TklBOxC5Y/S9R2ztgStkI/AAAAAAAAAUE/beNxApKJLbo/s320/BentleyTurboRside.JPG" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 225px;" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5464122878667699778" border="0" /><div>The 6.75-litre V8 was more than capable, and in 1982 Bentley fitted its first turbocharger to the Mulsanne, christening the car the Mulsanne Turbo and in that way allowing it to carve out a fearsome new direction for the company. While Rolls-Royce modestly understated the power output of their cars, declaring them to be simply "adequate", the Bentley versions proved downright brutal in their power delivery, forcing up to 50% more out of the engine than Rolls' engineers had done.</div><div><br /></div><div>This may seem like advertising hogwash, "new TURBO, with 50% more!", but Bentley were so confident that they modified the car extensively to make the Turbo its own model, and in that way 1985 saw the launch of the Bentley Turbo R, a 5000lb monster with 300hp to thunder it along, making the Rolls' 200hp pale in comparison.</div><div><br /></div><div>If a Rolls-Royce is somewhat akin to driving a palace, the Bentley Turbo R is a fortress, fully armed and ready to fight. That's not to say it's not refined; tapestries and marble statues are guaranteed, and the Bentley is capable of the luxury you would expect from a hand-made saloon, especially one costing more than its Rolls rival. But plant your foot and this monstrous beast transforms into attack mode, squatting down on its stiff suspension and developing a throaty roar that belies its exquisite, classical exterior. Always ready to make a dig at the opposition, Bentley claimed they would need an extra 35hp if they wanted to achieve this performance with the Rolls grille on the front, since the chrome portico caused so many problems with the aerodynamics. In that way, Bentley were better of without it, blending their radiator shroud in with the surrounding paintwork.</div><div><br /></div><div>Its presence on the market turned Bentley around, with that paltry 5% sales surging up to 40%, and by the Nineties, when this particular model was built, Bentley was on a level pegging with Rolls-Royce in production terms. That's not to say uptake was dramatic; less than 6000 Turbo R's were made before the model was phased out in 1996, but with each one lovingly crafted by old men with flat caps, hand stitching cow hide into sumptuous leather and trimming every available inch of the interior with walnut, you wouldn't want high sales volumes. One of the most reassuring elements is the exclusivity of owning such a machine, and in this case that exclusivity can be yours for just 90,000 zlotys; this one's for sale.</div><div><br /></div><div>This Bentley may have been the first to sport alloy wheels and a turbo badge, but don’t let those flashy Eighties signs fool you into thinking this is anything other than a thoroughbred. The model went on to greater and better things, but as the car that brought Bentley back from the brink, the Turbo R could be argued as the most important Bentley in eighty years, and wears its badge with pride.<p></p></div>Richard Tathamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06002386845513033206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9148510170346130773.post-62902266958859439062010-05-17T15:11:00.004+02:002011-03-13T22:07:00.789+01:00Lancia Delta GT i.e<img src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_o3TklBOxC5Y/Sd0OCHKlb-I/AAAAAAAAAR8/wo9ThpFYpaU/s320/LanciaDeltafr.JPG" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 225px;" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5322425764067766242" border="0" /><div>The word "rally" conjures up a number of images, mostly political leaders shouting furiously at </div><div>their supporters, or protesters gathered together under badly-spelt and poorly-painted banners. But it also has a connotation with cars, and not just any old cars but the most furiously powerful vehicles ever devised, cars that make your blood curdle, that make your muscles clench, that drag your skin away from your face as they claw another horsepower out of their fearsome engines.</div><div><br /></div><div>Rallying, in motorsport terms, is the most aggressive form possible, demanding drivers to throw one-tonne machines down roads so narrow the navigator has to breathe in. On one side of that road will be a towering rock face of punishing, unforgiving boulders; on the other a sheer drop to the valley floor below. The car will have to scrabble its way across sand, gravel, mud, snow and asphalt to finish mere seconds in front of its rival, and that's if it finishes it all. Mechanical failures and serious accidents are common.</div><div><br /></div><div>In that way, it has a lot in common with driving through Warsaw, whose residents feel that every stretch between traffic lights is a rally stage, to be completed in the quickest time possible. If that means bombing along at over 100km/h in the city centre, then so be it, and the pedestrians had best scatter if they know what's good for them. With bone-shattering bumps and crumbling asphalt, the city streets are unforgiving, and many a driver has shattered the alloy wheel of his company sedan in one of the capital's notorious potholes.</div><div><br /></div><div>The Lancia Delta takes all of this in its stride. It would chew up the Polish roads, spit them out, then laugh. It might look like a mud-encrusted flaky white hatchback to you, but in its veins runs pure vitriol, a manic desire to be hurled sideways around corners, flicked this way and that around bends, and slid right on the edge of tolerance across the most inhospitable of terrain, for that was what it was designed for.</div><div><br /></div><div>I can tell, you don't really believe me, and it's not hard to see why. The blocky little lump parked on a main street in Warsaw is someone's urban commuter, a disposable chunk of Eighties metal that slogs the same tired route day in, day out. No-one would really believe this was a thoroughbred stallion, let alone a warhorse. If it weren't for the chunky headlights and chrome grille, you could even kid yourself it was a Seat Ibiza, and I wouldn't hate you too much for saying something so insulting. After all, all cars of that period look the same. Or they do if they've been designed by Guigiaro.</div><div><br /></div><div>Responsible for both supercars and superminis, Guigiaro pioneered the "folded envelope" concept whose angled wedges would dominate car design for more than a decade. Car upon car can trace their lineage back to his desk, including a large number of the rotters that litter Warsaw's streets today. The entire Seventies production of Volkswagen, including the<a href="http://sticksout.blogspot.com/2008/06/volkswagen-scirocco.html"> Scirocco</a>, <a href="http://sticksout.blogspot.com/2009/09/volkswagen-passat-b2.html">Passat</a>, <a href="http://sticksout.blogspot.com/2009/01/vw-jetta-a1.html">Jetta</a> and Golf are his ideas, if you're looking for someone to blame, along with Poland's Pride, the <a href="http://sticksout.blogspot.com/2009/11/fso-polonez-mr87.html">FSO Polonez</a>. But when he wasn't sketching out the shells for shopping-trip slugs, he was designing some of the most magnificent cars of the time, including the BMW M1 and <a href="http://sticksout.blogspot.com/2009/02/audi-ur-quattro-10vt.html">Audi Quattro</a>, whose name is synonymous with the word "rally".</div><div><br /></div><div>The Quattro and the Delta are only a year apart in age, with the little Lancia first seeing daylight in 1979 and the acclaimed Audi rolling out one year later. And bloodline aside, their initial designs give them little in common, but both found themselves competing head-to-head in the international stage, for in 1982 was another birth; Group B rallying.</div><div><br /></div><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEXyYJbwTjaYbzbzTXR0cUV74HnzjORdKJwIsUYY3ZgNehFZenYblwzPSsJsTxA7_V7kbnxIoDPEey4n_VfXNARtaYXRpvWeeMfGLSSYuhsbu_XI0pXd-kBgE2XXXBUmZl7Yzq7rJF4mtR/s320/LanciaDeltaside.JPG" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 280px; height: 210px;" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5322425763346735202" border="0" /><div>Group B was the classification for the most brutal, powerful and comprehensively crushing racecars ever designed. I won't bore you with the details, but the rules were extremely lax as far as races go. Manufacturers had to produce as few as 200 examples of their given car in rally format, and while there were four classes for engine size, power limits were non-existent. Every year saw more and more power squeezed into the tiny frames, and the results were frightening. Lancia themselves produced the Delta S4, a four-wheel-drive ball of fury with 480hp kicking under the bonnet that launched its driver, Henri Toivonen, to a number of rally wins and, ultimately, to his untimely death in Corsica. After just four years, Group B was abandoned for simply being too powerful.</div><div><br /></div><div>While that Group B variation was the most powerful Delta, it bore little in common with the main production cars. The far more famous model was the Delta HF Integrale, a leviathan of motoring that dominated world rallying for the five years after Group B finished, claiming 10 wins of 11 races in 1988. Its many guises masked a 2.0 engine that, in its final evolution, produced 212hp as just a standard roadcar, although the cars are so tuneable that its not unheard of to achieve more than double that figure, since Deltas are still raced today.</div><div><br /></div><div>The GT i.e was the most perky model of the most mundane form of the Delta. With only a 1.6 engine up front and no turbo, the meagre engine bay was instead filled with the historic Fiat twin-cam engine, just like the bigger <a href="http://sticksout.blogspot.com/2008/11/fiat-132.html">Fiat 132</a>. The i.e tags denoted fuel injection, a desperate attempt to squeeze a few more horses from that engine, and in that manner give the Delta a whopping 107hp; not the sprightliest of cars, but the best available without resorting to rally-level modifications, and in that way your average commuter can feel like he's having a rally experience, without having to pay for one.</div><div><br /></div><div>Those rally versions are now serious collectors items, with the Integrale variants carrying astronomical pricetags. But those non-supercharged, non-turbo'd, two-wheel drive cars received less than supportive views from the suburban press; its angular form was all too similar to a slew of other city hatchbacks with similar racing pedigree, and with such lowly underpinnings it was unable to cash in on the international renown of its sportier variants, and couldn't hope to compete in the showrooms in the way it did on the rally stages.</div><div><br /></div><div>For a car that enjoyed a Car of the Year award at its birth and a twelve-year production run, these early Lancia Deltas are a surprisingly rare sight on the streets, especially in a country where every road is a mixture of asphalt and gravel. But for the Empress of the Rally, it has at least one admirer in Warsaw and, seeing her here, at least one more.</div>Richard Tathamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06002386845513033206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9148510170346130773.post-264657319112144882010-05-09T21:07:00.010+02:002011-03-08T07:59:36.352+01:00Austin 1800 Mk I ADO17<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWb0AM_0AQT1wNdgJiZtyNwTzddXj9qB4paU5eR31o-_76aPyp5HsQmdQGUT3cqZSN34RIpM82g2nURlnukO88ruP_xl3SfvCoos4D0_yT2Vae1yf4rnaS7YspVJv_h76vfKNGz20ZC0H0/s1600-h/M5110063.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 280px; height: 210px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWb0AM_0AQT1wNdgJiZtyNwTzddXj9qB4paU5eR31o-_76aPyp5HsQmdQGUT3cqZSN34RIpM82g2nURlnukO88ruP_xl3SfvCoos4D0_yT2Vae1yf4rnaS7YspVJv_h76vfKNGz20ZC0H0/s320/M5110063.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5322029445738857938" border="0" /></a>Lightning bolts. Chevrons. Diamonds, circles, stars, wings and curious squiggles. The world of automotive badges is an intriguing one, littered with incomprehensible symbols. The idea, of course, is to convey the personality of the manufacturer by tying its image to some story deep in its past, or to imbue each vehicle with some intended personality. A creature is often chosen, be it the leaping cat of Jaguar or the mythical griffin of Vauxhall. The intent is invariably to promote strength and nobility, with the most popular beast being the horse which adorns the bonnets of both Porsche and Ferrari. The idea that the virile horse might be substituting for a quality lacking in owner is, of course, wholly unfounded, and the owners of red sports cars are not compensating for anything. Nope. Not at all.<div><br /></div><div>If the badge has been removed, the culprits are usually kids, building up a collection of exotic nametags from the world of motoring, a bit like scalp hunting. Psychologists may write hundreds of papers a year postulating the root causes of both kleptomania and collecting, while little research is done into the victim's problems. A denuded bonnet can easily lead to an identity crisis, or worse, and this British classic suffers from one of the worst illnesses of all; Multiple Personality Disorder.</div><div><br /></div><div>As introductions go, ADO17 isn't the greatest of titles to have on your business card, but considerings its confusingly long list of pseudonyms there's little else the car can be referred to as. You see, the ADO17 (along with its little sisters the ADO16 and ADO15) was the ultimate in a business concept called Badge Engineering, and it lies at the very heart of why you don't see British cars around that much today.</div><div><br /></div><div>Jump back in time to 1958 and take the business card of one Alec Issigonis, designer of the iconic Morris Minor and head of design at BMC, the British Motor Corporation. BMC itself was a monstrous sprawling agglomeration of British marques, most notably Austin and Morris but also MG, Wolseley, Riley and Vanden-Plas. Morris had bought these last four, and had then been bought out by Austin, leaving the corporation with manifold factories, models and designs, all competing with each other yet encompassing 39% of the British motor industry.</div><div><br /></div><div>Alec Issigonis was drafted in to change all that. Employed by BMC in 1955, he was charged with producing a standard fleet of three cars; small, medium and large, that could be made by all of BMC's factories as a family. The only differences would be cosmetic changes to appeal to each marque's specific market. Issigonis went to the task with gusto and penned the three cars at the Austin Design Office for construction by the late Fifties.</div><div><br /></div><div>Each of the cars he designed is exceptional its its own right, although ADO15 is by far the most famous of the three. Not necessarily known by that that name, since it wore a number of badges over the years, it was even launched with two monikors; Austin Seven, and Morris Mini Minor, or as the Poles irritatingly call it, Mini Morris. </div><div><br /></div><div>ADO16 followed a few years later, and went on to become Britain's best-selling saloon for 12 of its 13 production years. While not enjoying the same international fame or cult status as its little-yet-older sister, the ADO16 still lies in the hearts of many of the older generation of British drivers as the car their grandfather had, whether it was an Austin or Morris, 1100 or 1300 engine.</div><div><br /></div><div>Despite being planned first, the ADO17 was the last of the trio to roll out of its respective factories, but it bore underneath its exceptionally long frame the key points of the Issigonis family; a transverse mounted engine powering the front wheels. It seems like a tiny point to make, but it had a dramatic impact on every single sector of the car market, even today.</div><div><br /></div><div>An engine, especially your basic four-cylinder job found in millions of Volkswagens, Skodas and Seats today, is shaped a bit like a domino tile; longer than it is wide. But all of the power comes out of the short sides, at a massive rotating disc called a flywheel, and there's nothing you can do to make the power come out of the long sides. Because of this, cars before the three ADOs generally had great long noses to house the engine in with a big gearbox bolted to the other side of the flywheel, and all the power going to the wheels at the back. It was efficient but cumbersome, and it took a hell of a lot of space.</div><div><br /></div><div>Using some exceptionally clever ideas, the Austin team were able to strap the gearbox to the bottom of the engine, turn the whole thing sideways, and squeeze it all into a dramatically reduced nose. This is what allowed Issigonis's creative penmanship to design the Mini, with its distinctive piggish snout and miniscule length; there was no gearbox to smuggle along the length of the car. By upscaling the concept, BMC were able to make other cars with relatively small exterior dimensions, but massive amounts of usable space inside. Oddly, it was this space that was to be its downfall.</div><div><br /></div><img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_o3TklBOxC5Y/SdullT-NJ8I/AAAAAAAAAR0/Qu29kBj-UZM/s320/M5110062.JPG" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 225px;" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5322029445103298498" border="0" /><div>ADO17 was always planned as a sizeable car, pegged to enter the Medium sector where 1800cc engines were the norm. But even in that market it was a hefty beast, being six inches longer than its predecessors, and it looked it. Its bulky length rolled out of a factory in 1964 badged as the Austin 1800, although it almost immediately earned the nickname Landcrab for its thickset and stolid deportment. It's one of those original Mark I Austins that we see here; fortunately those thieving kids haven't been able to prise the name off the tastefully chrome-barred grill. </div><div><br /></div><div>The Landcrab was intended as the flagship model of the BMC empire, and it was later rolled out under other names such as Morris and Wolseley to satiate the demand that BMC anticipated. But the demand simply wasn't there. The British buying public of the Sixties saw no need for such a large car, and this was clearly demonstrated in the sales figures; despite having over a quarter of all car sales in Britain, ADO17 mustered a mere 3% of it. In so many ways, it was simply too big.</div><div><br /></div><div>BMC had on its platter a number of semi-luxurious marques; both Riley and Vanden-Plas were recognised as exemplifying a class of sorts, and the Landcrab's little brothers had been released under those brands. But with disappointing sales, the ADO17 was released under the far more mundane Austin and Morris brands; obviously to cater to the larger market, but robbing it of the elegance it so desperately needed. And there was no more room for the car to grow into either; it was already eating into the Big Car market occupied by its stablemate, the 3-litre Austin Princess, which it rivalled on both size and price.</div><div><br /></div><div>Unsurprisingly, the car was a flop. BMC's sloppy management of its various brands led to it being absorbed into the much larger Leyland Group in 1968, just four years after the ADO17's launch, and all plans to Brand Engineer the car further, with Riley and Vanden-Plas releases, were shelved. The new management had much more important things on their mind, like trying to make the Mini and the ADO16 profitable, for once. It wasn't until 1972 when attention returned to the Landcrab so that, eight years after its launch, it got an upgrade in the form of a 2.2 litre engine.</div><div><br /></div><div>But the damage was done. Despite its siblings selling in massive numbers, the ADO17 sold less than 400,000 in eleven years. Its confusing identity and equally radical personality pushed it far beyond what the public were prepared to accept, and in 1975 it conceded defeat to the might of Ford's offerings, the Cortina and Granada, and bowed out of the ring.</div><div><br /></div><div>The British Leyland Motor Corporation didn't last longer either; it's disastrous approach to model and marque management had brought it to its knees and in 1975 it was nationalised as British Leyland, a government-owned entity making up 40% of Britain's motor industry. With it, large swathes of automotive history was wiped away; no more Wolseleys or Rileys would be made, and both Austin and Morris are long since gone and unlikely to return.</div><div><br /></div><div>For that reason, the badge removed from this car could be any from the BMC group. They are all equally important, and the lack of of them on the bonnet of any car, either classic or modern, is something we all should miss.</div><div><br /></div><div><div><br /></div></div>Richard Tathamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06002386845513033206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9148510170346130773.post-88814343023025902882010-05-02T16:46:00.008+02:002011-03-04T22:31:55.733+01:00Ford Econoline Club Wagon XLT<div><div><div><div><div><div><img src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_o3TklBOxC5Y/S8h4volONkI/AAAAAAAAAS0/b8hxC3nyFf8/s320/FordCulbwagonfr.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5460747307929450050" border="0" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-right: 0pt; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px; " />The sun dips slowly downwards, touching gently the cloud of dust above the horizon. Everything is brushed with liquid gold; a slow, heavy luxury that warms and soothes. Oranges turn to greys as the sun continues its journey. It takes its time, building the fuzzy anticipation until, with a final kiss, it slips away and the deep blue sky rushes in behind it.<div><br /></div><div>Enjoying it all from the comfort of your armchair, you turn to your wife and smile, and fetch yourself another drink. It's a balmy summer's evening, and watching a sunset is the finest thing imaginable. </div><div><br /></div><div>For Poles, the beginning of May is an incredibly long weekend, bringing not one but two bank holidays. The First of May is a day off for almost everyone in Europe, but the Third of May celebrates Poland's, and Europe's, first Constitution, outlining freedoms for all men under the Republic. Poles celebrate this in the best way possible; they go to their dzialkas, sit in the sun, and get drunk.</div><div><br /></div><div>The dzialka concept can be hard to fathom for Westerners. The dzialka itself is a piece of land, usually just a bare patch of grass left to turn itself almost into a meadow. Within its grounds may be a small wooden cabin or shack, but even in 2010 the concept of running water and permanent electricity on your dzialka would certainly mark it out as a luxurious one. That's not to say some people don't build magnificent brick houses with full bathrooms and kitchens with a tree-lined avenue leading up to it, but by making the dzialka too comfortable, you're somehow missing the point. A dzialka should hark back to the days before towering concrete blocks and modern conveniences, when every Pole lived off the land in peace and harmony with nature. And beer.</div><div><br /></div><div>Therefore, the armchair you sit in should be an old one, with the arm a bit worn and one leg a bit too short. It shouldn't be a heated, tilted one made of leather in an air-conditioned cabin screened behind one-way privacy glass. That would be just a bit too luxurious, which is to miss the point entirely. Simple pleasures, that's the key. And, I really must stress, beer.</div><div><br /></div><div>When the Ford Econoline was released in the States in 1961, it took the van world by storm, much as its sister, the <a href="http://sticksout.blogspot.com/2009/03/ford-transit-mk-iii.html">Ford Transit</a>, had done a few years earlier in Europe. It's cubic profile and internal spaciousness made it perfect for chucking stuff in the back and moving it across the country. In fact, it made stuff-moving so pleasing it quickly became a hobby, and youngsters up and down America worked out how much fun can be had with a van with a mattress and a crate of beers in the back. </div><div><br /></div><div>These casual meets quickly became known as Vanning. Young men enticed young women into the back of their Fords, met up with other vans, and drove off someplace quiet to listen to stadium rock beneath the stars. It was an idyllic version of traveller-camping that goes back to the wagon trains of American Westward Expansion, only with Fords instead of horses. The culture that grew up around Vanning quickly turned to customisation, with carpets, mirror balls, lurid paint jobs and porthole windows all par for the course. I'd love to say these were innocent times, if it weren't for the fact that a large number of Americans were conceived this way.</div><div><br /></div><div>Those early Econolines from the Sixties are now serious collectors items, but they were replaced in 1968 with the shape people recognise today. Just like the Ford of Germany's Transit, the Econoline earned a nose at the front the engine and a more pronounced cab shape, becoming the quintessential form that we recognise as vans today. Being based on a truck chassis the E-series, as it became known, allowed it to share all the mechanical parts from its pick-up sister, the F-series. Together, the E- and F- have utterly dominated the American truck sector of the market for decades.</div><div><br /></div><img src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_o3TklBOxC5Y/S8h4vb1SnZI/AAAAAAAAASs/Txf9rBDOxG8/s320/FordClubwagonside.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5460747304507186578" border="0" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-right: 0pt; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 225px; " /><div>The Club Wagon was a development of those E-series. A passenger rather than a cargo van, the Club was a padded, cosseted minibus that gave comfortable seats, floor AND ceiling carpet, and curtains to every model. That way, you could order your customisation from the factory, and not have to worry about dripping paint or malfunctioning stereos, and you could have whatever garish coloured stripes and weird glass straight from the options list without any risk of getting your hands dirty. For those who simply wanted everything, Ford made the XLT, which this one is, which offered the ultimate in trim; air-conditioning both front and back, cruise control and premium sound systems; in fact, everything you'd need to make Vanning a casual, leisurely experience.</div><div><br /></div><div>In that way, Vanning itself grew into a more cumbersome and heavy beast. With the increased wealth of the average van owner, so too grew the market to exploit it, and National Van Meets were soon organised with live bands, fun fairs, competitions, and of course beer. These mass events were commercialised, televised, and regulated to provide good, clean fun. And with the arrival of massive chromed wagons sporting factory metallic paint and plush interiors, they also became child-friendly. The van was no longer a rough-and-ready teen machine, passion wagon or love truck; it was a mature, adult and even luxurious vehicle that let you appreciate the simple things without all the risks associated with damp mattresses.</div><div><br /></div><div>That's not to say that the Club Wagon XLT isn't a "real" van. These earlier models are still bought today by teenagers in awful condition for a few hundred bucks, and treated like dirt because they don't meet the even-more-luxurious standards of today's van-owners. Mid-Eighties ones such as these (identified by the blue oval on the nose instead of the F O R D lettering) aren't even considered collectors items like their earlier brethren, but the yellow plates on this one highlight that at least its owner considers it a classic. As it should be; it might be a pampered sort of Vanning, but a solid wagon such as this still embodies that spirit of going out on the road and finding like-minded people to have a drink with.</div><div><br /></div><div>And as the sun sets, from my own wobbly, scruffy armchair, I raise my beer to that.</div></div></div></div></div></div></div>Richard Tathamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06002386845513033206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9148510170346130773.post-56480696635887511172010-04-25T19:12:00.007+02:002011-03-03T11:24:09.515+01:00Audi 100 C2 5S<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAsbYRqJz9eOpR-djnh-1oLjnVRPKR5iwDH-s0a7ZBmIEe_-rx0dvNNtBS99ZeCwxy9dgZRaTPHdxI1j7E6VknuKdYHb7gcBYHvGMhpwnHN-Bik19NcyX6KR3QubNplpyM-WcoBnnlRV8-/s1600/Audi100side.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 225px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAsbYRqJz9eOpR-djnh-1oLjnVRPKR5iwDH-s0a7ZBmIEe_-rx0dvNNtBS99ZeCwxy9dgZRaTPHdxI1j7E6VknuKdYHb7gcBYHvGMhpwnHN-Bik19NcyX6KR3QubNplpyM-WcoBnnlRV8-/s320/Audi100side.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5464124235542732546" border="0" /></a><div>The story of modern Audis is a curious one. After WWII, no car wore the Audi badge until 1965 when Volkswagen resurrected it for a "new" mid-size saloon. This new model had been acquired during Volkswagen's buyout of a company called Auto Union, a name that harks back to an agglomeration of long-deceased German brands of which one was, of course Audi. Those four marques are represented by the magician's rings that grace the nose of every modern Audi today, and also represent Horch, Wanderer and DKW, and Daimler-Benz were glad to be rid of them when it sold them to VW in 1964.</div><div><br /></div><div>This new model (known as the F103) became the template for all modern Audi's, as well as those Volkswagens that share the same platform. But the old brand name, Auto Union DKW, bore with it strong connotations of smoky, rattly two-strokes weaving their way through post-war rubble, and it was a reputation Volkswagen didn't want anything to do with. By reviving the Audi name, they hoped to add a touch of class to the production, and the DKW F103 was renamed the Audi 72 (signifying its power output.) 60, 80 and 90 soon followed, as variants of the same model, but Volkswagen had declared that no other Audis were to be built. Audi was to be a brand under VW, not a marque of its own.</div><div><br /></div><div>But VW weren't aware of the beast that lay within. When they bought Auto Union, they also bought the factory, and with that the engineers who worked inside, who were not happy with this decision. Unbeknownst to the VW overlords, they built an entire working prototype of a big-engined large saloon, ready for production, and presented it to the management in 1968. </div><div><br /></div><div>This rebellion proved phenomenal. That original Audi 100, designated C1, went on to become Audi's greatest-selling vehicle in its history, and the Audi name was cemented in the minds of Seventies buyers as a worthy consumer brand.</div><div><br /></div><div>For the 1976 upgrade, Audi needed something more. The 100 name no longer referred to the engine output, and a hundred horses just wouldn't cut it in the world of executive saloons. Volkswagen, still reluctant to show any sign of their own originality, went on the prowl for a new power-source and found it lurking under the bonnet of a Mercedes; unsurprising when you remember from whom VW had bought Auto Union in the first place. What they saw, growling away in the engine bay, was the OM617, special in that it had not four, or six, or even eight cylinders, but five. An inline 5-cylinder engine unlike anything else on the market, delivering power to saloons such as the Mercedes W114 and its 1976 replacement, <a href="http://sticksout.blogspot.com/2008/12/mercedes-benz-w123-300d-estate.html">Mercedes W123</a>. And coming from a luxury manufacturer, it had excellent qualities; it was smooth, it was powerful, it was eminently reliable. There was only one problem. It was a diesel.</div><div><br /></div><img src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_o3TklBOxC5Y/S9R4CDmfMqI/AAAAAAAAAUc/8tVANJHAtP0/s320/Audi100fr.JPG" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 225px;" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5464124224629060258" border="0" /><div>VW soon fixed that, and by the time of its launch, the Audi 100 C2 was charging along on all five cylinders, making it the first inline-five petrol engine in the world. And the number of cylinders wasn't the only big number it carried; 134horses of power, and a price tag to match, quickly put the Audi 100 in the top class of executive saloons. The wonderful metallic model here, the 5S, was the top level of that top level, and commanded a purchase price of 24,000 DM in 1979, or $113,000 in today's money.</div><div><br /></div><div>The price quickly set Audi apart from its Volkswagen stablemates; despite a similar design, the C platform was the next step up from the B on which the <a href="http://sticksout.blogspot.com/2009/09/volkswagen-passat-b2.html">Volkswagen Passat</a> was based, although Audi still saw room for extension. A top-of-the-line, high-class model was launched in 1980 with two bigger numbers; a showroom price of 30,000 DM and the name Audi 200.</div><div><br /></div><div>With these two weapons, the Audi fleet was perfectly poised to capture a significant part of the market. That phenomenal engine gave it equal chances against the sporty BMW 5-series, whilst offering a level of refinement comparable to Mercedes' E-Class and unsurprisingly, the Audi 100 racked up heavy sales all the way into the Eighties. The turbo-charged 200 series even gave the S-Class and 7-series <a href="http://sticksout.blogspot.com/2008/06/bmw-7-series-e23.html">BMW E23</a> a serious run for their money both in the luxo-barge market and on the autobahns in general.</div><div><br /></div><div>With 900,000 produced, it's incredible to believe that the only example one can find is at a classic car gathering in downtown Warsaw. Polished to gleaming, this Ingolstadt icon is one of only a handful of Typ 43 Audi 100s still cruising around. The generation had to surrender to Audi's Vorsprung durch Technik philosophy, or Advancement Through Technology, and as the C2 gave way to the C3 in 1982, the old 100 found itself crumbling away in car parks.</div><div><br /></div><div>The reputation of the old Audi is a now a grandfatherly one; very much flat caps and pipes and slow Sunday afternoon cruises. And yet we shouldn't forget the significance of the Audi 100; there may have been only four rings on the grill, but there was a fifth one under the bonnet.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Richard Tathamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06002386845513033206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9148510170346130773.post-47427198320411992802010-04-17T15:25:00.018+02:002011-03-03T10:45:03.457+01:00Citroen Visa 17RD/ C15<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_o3TklBOxC5Y/SbKD8BxYXXI/AAAAAAAAAQc/h31BuUgdF64/s320/CitroenVisafr.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 225px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_o3TklBOxC5Y/SbKD8BxYXXI/AAAAAAAAAQc/h31BuUgdF64/s320/CitroenVisafr.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5310451977914178930" border="0" /></a><br />You stop mid-stride, feet slamming down on the pavement. Your hand is buried in one pocket, rummaging around in the way your school teachers told you not to. Not there. Other hand, other pocket. Panicking, you try your back pockets, heart-rate beating faster as you realise these are the trousers without back pockets. You breathe in. <div><br /></div><div>Don't worry, it'll be in the jacket pocket. Left side, nope, right side, come on, come on, it's got to be here somewhere. Tension mounts. You check your trousers again. You're patting yourself over like a bad mime or a cheap date. You remember picking it up, don't you. Don't you? And just as your chest tightens and you're about to utter a particularly vehement profanity, you feel it. Inside jacket pocket. You mutter a thank you to the sky, shake your head, and walk on. <div><br /></div><div>It seems that the smaller the object, the more important it is, which certainly applies to house keys and mobile phones. And one need only look at the two-dimensional bank card you slipped into your pocket to understand the name of this car. All angles, large quantities of plastic and a feeling you could lose it down the back of the sofa, it's the Citroen Visa.</div><div><br /></div><div>Poor Citroen. There was a time when they represented all that was good about French motoring. A sense of innovation that was eccentric without being incomprehensible, a sense of accessible flair, and a smattering of deliriousness. Any writer who says "a certain <i>je ne sais quoi</i>" deserves to be shot, as with Citroen you know exactly what it was. It was madness.</div><div><br /></div><div>Unfortunately in the Seventies, madness didn't get cars sold, and the company found itself being bought out by Peugeot, who came to the sensible, albeit dull, conclusion that Citroen really out to start making cars instead of fantasies for a bit. They tried to push Citroen's management into doing so, and I'd like to imagine Peugeot's management walking into the boardroom at this proposal to be met with scoffs, blank looks and at least one heart attack, interrupted by an engineer running in screaming "Mon Dieu, I 'ave eet! Let's build a car shaped like a doughnut, and powered by sardines!"</div><div><br /></div><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPiug8IfFlZ7lVD16SYJYi33s2iD0ElT3OBBiwD_QXr87JcCzcRt4wiPH9zdx5pyD8FiYLI_tI2wHCybunznm-rIu_kut_fGU9wLwUHqS6d5T5wSXN_bB6VR-tvS9Ktkehu7GEavfy2TcF/s320/CitroenVisaside.jpg" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 225px;" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5310451982854549042" border="0" /><div>This silliness couldn't be allowed to continue, and the Peugeot management kindly yet firmly led the Citroen team into some padded cells to calm down while they looked at what was available. At the time of the takeover, one of the only feasible projects Citroen had on paper was called Prototype Y, a draft of a supermini based on the Fiat 127. Considering Fiat had sold their 49% in Citroen a few years before, and had failed to answer its phone calls ever since, Peugeot shelved that project in favour of their own slightly more sober Project VD. Rather than being a plan to embarrass Citroen with some questionable diseases, Project <i>Voiture Diminuee </i>was a similar supermini based on Peugeot's successful 104, which had been released in 1972, prior to the takeover. </div><div><br /></div><div>Project VD, like all concepts, took a number of years from concept to production, and in the meantime Peugeot hurriedly launched a 104 clone called the Citroen LN. This was a stop-gap car to get the ageing withered Citroen Ami out of the dealerships, and the customers in, but due to the swift conclusion of Project VD in 1978, Citroen found itself with two superminis on its hands; the now-upgraded LNA , and the new Citroen Visa. Add to that the parent 104, and PSA (as the combined Peugeot Citroen entity is known) had three exceedingly similar cars in their stable.</div><div><br /></div><div>Line them up side by side and Citroen's real influence on the Visa is undeniable. Unlike the knock-off LNA, the Visa had some of that oddness quintessential to the brand, and this was visible from the porcine plastic snout to the coquettish lift of the rear wheel arch. Sitting inside was an equally warped experience. The dash gauges looked like two cheap travel clocks glued to the steering column, and where the indicator and headlight stalks should protrude was instead something called a "satellite"; a coffee-cup shaped device that housed all the switches and stalks needed to control the ancillaries for Rain, Road and Night, or PRN as the French acronym went. With one twist, you got washers, wipers, headlights, indicators and horn, showing the fantastic amount of thought Citroen put into their designs. They cared so much about your driving experience, they even tried to make turning on the headlights interesting. </div><div><br /></div><div>For the 1982 facelift, the outside was dulled somewhat but to compensate, an enormous range of engines was opened up. The Visa was already available with thrifty 650, 1100 and 1300cc engines, but a 1.6 GTI version was now also up for grabs. Called the Chronos, it snorted out 135hp and was capable of pushing terrifying 192km/h on those little 3-bolt wheels. Our prettily chrome-nosed edition is something far more practical, being as it is the diesel edition, and not just that but the RD which featured pretty much every optional extra you could get on a Visa, including a rear wiper.</div><div>Like any sane man, I'm not normally excited over diesels, and the general public weren't either. A tiny tiny hatchback with five doors and a diesel engine? What on earth? You must be some sort of Romanian goatherd, desperate to get his wife, kids and flock to the market on less than a litre of fuel to demand that sort of frugality.</div><div><br /></div><img src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-jjnxJ1oAoqM/TWrCnGWSVXI/AAAAAAAAAYY/c3s342Mca5I/s320/CitroenC15fr.JPG" style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 225px;" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5578485065426556274" /><div>How contrived. How impolitic. How financially sound. Citroen (with Peugeot breathing down its neck) jumped on the chance and set up Oltcit, a Romanian brand producing cheap versions of the little Visa for the local market. But how to make the Visa even cheaper, for the Eastern Europeans? Papers were shuffled, accountants were called in, and Prototype Y was resurrected from the discard pile. Still bearing its prototype design, the Oltcit was stuffed full of unwanted parts from other manufacturers, branded, and sold to the poorest of Ceausesu's citizens. </div><div><br /></div><div>And yet the whimsy of Citroen just couldn't let go. Knowing that they had unleashed a possibly normal (if low-quality) car on the world couldn't be forgiven, and within two years the Oltcit had two chevrons stuck on its nose, and was brought to the West as the Citroen Axel. If they couldn't make the car mad, Citroen figured, they'd make the business side of things insane.</div><div><br /></div><div>Therefore, in 1984, the PSA group found itself selling four superminis under two brands based on three designs using two families of parts, with the end result that all four cars looked really very similar. And even worse, PSA bought out Chrysler, released a Talbot supermini called the Samba, again based on the 104. This was madness to the extreme, and the Citroen management must have been cackling in Gallic glee.</div><div><br /></div><img src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-uc95yiMZFX4/TWfCeFV1iDI/AAAAAAAAAYQ/30KEpLiX6ps/s320/CitroenC15side.JPG" style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 225px;" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5577640485607278642" /><div>The only success that can possibly be attributed to this sprawling family was the van derivative. Considering the myriad names on offer, something had to be done to bring the unruly clan to order and, when launched, the van was called simply C15. Launched only a year after our diesel Visa, with the same "lively 1769cc engine" as the sales talk goes, the C15 went on to phenomenal van success, having a twenty-year production run of nearly 1.2million units in all. All of the outre interior was gone, the rear wiper abandoned and even the chrome trim discarded, but the plastic wheel arches that belie true dieselness were kept; one of the few style touches our Viva and C15 share.</div><div><br />Added up, there were nearly twice as many derivatives produced than there were genuine Peugeot 104s, yet of those the most populous was the Citroen Visa. For such a quirky little car, very few of them remain, so to see such a top-flight model (albeit a diesel) maintained with such care shows what Citroen really gave us. The smallest things really are the most important.</div></div>Richard Tathamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06002386845513033206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9148510170346130773.post-30512465256703315422010-04-11T15:16:00.008+02:002011-02-23T22:37:15.131+01:00VAZ 2104 / Lada Riva Estate<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_o3TklBOxC5Y/SbKCB1OO3qI/AAAAAAAAAQM/uf8ImyfRWwE/s1600-h/LadaRivaKombiside.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 225px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_o3TklBOxC5Y/SbKCB1OO3qI/AAAAAAAAAQM/uf8ImyfRWwE/s320/LadaRivaKombiside.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5310449878601490082" border="0" /></a>Using numbers as names is a precarious business. It's very hard to get enthusiastic over a 530i or an i30 if there's no name to tell you whether it's cute or manly, firm or fragile. The Nokia N97 doesn't sound anywhere near as good as the HTC Hero, regardless of quality, and very few people would buy a perfume whose name was also its barcode. Audiophiles can only rattle on for hours over the merits of any particular piece of hi-fi equipment because their passion for that object is strong enough to see past the obtuse sequences of digits to the beauty underneath. More casual consumers and appreciators need something more accessible, more tangible, a Proper Name to cling to when we regard an object, especially something we intend to buy. People who enthuse too freely about the 68020 and its superiority over the 68000 rapidly find themselves isolated at parties because of their incomprehensible jargon. And also because they generally smell of onions and sweat, but that's another matter.<div><br /></div><div>Of course, in the automotive world there are some manufacturers, especially at the top end, who still insist on digital identification. The product catalogues of BMW, Mercedes and Volvo are spattered with numbers, and the only clue the uninformed reader has to their interpretation is that bigger is usually better. At the lower end, where the quality of the product isn't quite so evident, an impersonal sequence of digits doesn't do much to drive sales. Fiat and Renault managed to work that one out before it was too late, unlike Rover, and even Alfa-Romeo has the decency to give their prettier cars equally pretty names. That's not to say that all names are appropriate (the Mitsubishi Charisma is anything but), but at least when you discuss models with a salesman, the only number that really matters is the price.</div><div><br /></div><div>Another important number that should never be revealed is a lady's age. When that number reaches a certain value in Poland, it becomes unimportant and her birthday alternates to a "back-up" birthday called a Name Day. Since most Poles are named after saints in the Catholic faith, every calendar date is the feast of at least one of these religious characters, and thus the lady can be treated to flowers and cake on a particular day of the year without having to reveal her vintage.</div><div><br /></div><div>Such frippery as names and saints was wasted on the Communist authorities, who tried to stamp out such pointlessness by forcing the church underground and giving things only practical, logical identifiers. Thus we have a BA3-2104 staring at us in the parking lot; some devil's code of Cyrillic and numeric that leaves foreigners confused until, BAM, the flash of realisation. "It's a Lada!" comes the cry. Usually followed by mocking laughter.</div><div><br /></div><div>BA3, or AutoVAZ as it's written in English, is the manufacturer specifically established by the Soviet Authorities to build copies of the Fiat 124. From its 1966 inception, the snappy Fiat was winning design awards for its sensible, utilitarian design, and the Soviets needed a new car to replace their ageing and decrepit Moskvitch 408. So, calls were made, deals were signed, and in 1970 the first Ladas, known as VAZ-2101, rolled out of a factory the other side of the Volga river.<div><div><br />Although VAZ was established purely to sell the 2101, the company was granted the name "Zhiguli"after a Russian mountain range, with the aim of making the car seem more Soviet and less Italian. But like all numbers, 2101 never really caught on in the local parlance, and the 2101 quickly earned the moniker "Kopek". The estate version, 2102, was called the "Deuce", while the bigger 2103 was called the "Trio". </div><div><br /></div><div>But don't let the numbers confuse you. The Lada was more than just a clone of the Italian design; all in, the Russians added over 800 "upgrades" to the design, to help it survive in the harsh Soviet climes. Aside from monstrously strong suspension upgrades and radical engine re-designs (chain-driven valves instead of pushrods, if you know what that means), the entire body shell was made of thicker grade steel to help it survive the rough roads. Things that a Westerner would laugh at, like a crank handle to start the engine if needed, quickly become touches of genius when you consider how you yourself would feel in the middle of Siberia, in -40 degrees, with a flat battery. Combine that with a comfortable, if somewhat spartan, cabin, and the 2101 earned itself a fairly decent reputation, and the decision was made to export the car overseas.</div><div><br /></div><div>Fast forward to 1980, and even the Russians realise that the Lada style is beginning to look a bit, well, old-fashioned. Trapped between the need to repay the foreign loans, and the wisdom of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it," VAZ implemented a facelift of the range. The 2103 had already become the 2106, with a new range of engines, headlights and grilles, and these upgrades were passed down to the lower models respectively. The 2101 became the 2105 and, confusingly, the 2102 became the 2104. At this point, some bright spark at VAZ realised that there was no way on earth the poor Western mind was going to get to grips with all these numbers, and the entire range was exported under the name "Lada Riva", the brand we all know and laugh at today.</div><div><br /></div><img src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_o3TklBOxC5Y/SbKCB9ddcnI/AAAAAAAAAQE/CaZebipB9bQ/s320/LadaRivaKombifr.JPG" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 225px;" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5310449880812843634" border="0" /><div>The 2104, or Riva Estate, is rendered in Russian as "Четвёрки" and translates as "Quartet", a charmingly musical name for a car shaped </div><div>like a cheap piano. Released in 1984 (making it the most "modern" of the Riva stable), it was quickly put to use as the most capable of luggage-haulers. This one still bears the faded and worn stickers of a Warsaw taxi, a sign that it has worked a hard life and a probable explanation for its curiously lopsided stance in the car park. Yet its presence in Warsaw car park at all is even more curious, when you look at the deeper history of the car.</div><div><br /></div><div>Skim through any chronicle of the Riva's origin, and the same car will keep coming back; the Fiat 124. Read the next line, and another car is mentioned; the Fiat 125. At first glance, these two Fiats are identical, but the trained eye sees the three extra inches the higher-numbered car boasts in length. What you don't see is the raft of other mechanical differences in engines, brakes and suspension that mark out the 124 and 125 as fundamentally different cars. Yet without the 124, the 125 would never have existed, because it is itself a development, and from that again comes the Polski Fiat 125p, equal progeny of the 124 and a cousin of the Lada Riva. Or first cousin once removed, if you like.</div><div><br /></div><div>Even without the family ties, the number of Lada Rivas in the world is staggering. Russian Ladas alone have topped over 13.5million, and although the '5 is due to be phased out, the '7, or luxury edition, is still going strong. Add to that all the clones still being constructed in places like Ukraine and Egypt, plus the original run of Fiat 124s that inspired them all, and the number goes well above 15million, making it one of the most produced cars of all time. This places the Riva in the realms of the Volkswagen Beetle and the Ford T as true People's Cars.</div><div><div><br /></div><div>From a Western perspective, today's Lada Riva is laughable, being as it is a Sixties design carried on into the 21st century with very little changed. And yet its continued production (yes, they're still being made) highlights the purely practical nature of the car. They aren't even equipped with an odometer these days, partially because of the added expense, but also because it doesn't really matter. These cars are maintained from so many scavenged parts from older vehicles that the mileage of any given vehicle could never really be proved. And with so many produced, even the older models can be made to look younger than they are, if needed.</div></div><div><br /></div><div>One should never mention her age, but the lady Lada just turned 40, and for all the jibes made about the Riva, it wouldn't hurt to break with Communist tradition and celebrate a number, just this once.</div></div></div>Richard Tathamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06002386845513033206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9148510170346130773.post-5600616231285936992010-04-03T15:29:00.006+02:002011-02-22T20:52:58.716+01:00BMW E31 8-series<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_o3TklBOxC5Y/SbKAQpRYdMI/AAAAAAAAAP8/09n0FW96RAs/s1600-h/BMWE31fl.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 225px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_o3TklBOxC5Y/SbKAQpRYdMI/AAAAAAAAAP8/09n0FW96RAs/s320/BMWE31fl.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5310447934068257986" border="0" /></a>Under Communism, money was scarce. Not necessarily because Communism is a poor model of economy, but set right down in Marx and Engel's manifesto is the idea of a brutally heavy tax to equalise all workers; anyone who earns anything above the status quo gets taxed back into submission. The concept was that the wealth of an economy was judged not on raw cash, but on goods, a "production unit", as it were, whose effective translation means it's not how much you have, but what stuff you've got. In the West, we had another name for that way of thinking. It was called the Nineteen-Eighties.<div><div><br /></div><div>Still, it's generally acknowledged that the Communist approach to stuff-acquisition was flawed, and this heavily-taxed population could do little more than barter with each other for the meagre goods that were in circulation. If you had money, you bought every non-rationed item in the local shop as soon as it was delivered, and spent the next week trading your new stash of toilet paper with the man who bought all the soap the previous week, or exchanged a few rolls with the man who had all the light bulbs from a month back.</div><div><br /></div><div>The excess money that Poland's pitiful private sector earned was sucked into the vacuum called ZUS; Poland's department for all matters of Social Insurance. Established to redistribute wealth to the needy, it quickly grew into a bloated and corrupt organisation with a habit for transferring money straight into the pockets of its employees; a tradition us in Warsaw saw maintained last year, as the president of ZUS was arrested on six charges of corruption.</div><div><br /></div><div><div>Of course, back in the days of Communism when nobody had anything, any luxury at all was conspicuous. Any display of wealth was treated not just with a jealous sneer, but with an outright contempt; no-one could amass anything of substantial worth without having some sort of inside connections to the establishment, and therefore shiny Western cars went hand in hand with state-level corruption. It's little wonder, then, that such a flagrant show of largesse should be parked outside my local ZUS office.</div><div><br /></div><div>The BMW E31 (yes, the next model after the <a href="http://sticksout.blogspot.com/2009/08/bmw-e30-325ix-touring.html">E30</a>), was nothing less than a supercar. Penned as a replacement for the ageing 6-series coupe, the E24 (two-door sister of the <a href="http://sticksout.blogspot.com/2008/06/bmw-7-series-e23.html">E23</a>), it was a wholly new development aimed at an entirely new market called the 8-series, supplanting the 7-series as the most luxurious BMW available.</div><div><br /></div><div><div>It might only be one number higher, but the 8-series was leagues ahead of anything else the German manufacturer had made before or, some argue, since. With nothing smaller than a V8 in the nose, and the majority weilding V12 5-litre engines, this super-cruiser tipped the scales at nearly two tonnes of sculpted angles, computer-designed to squeeze the prodigious bulk through the air stream. It was a veritable orgy of technology, involving hydraulic rear steering mechanisms (yes, four wheel steering on the top models), full fly-by-wire control and an integrated network to operate the most basic of accessories. Even the electric rear windows had two motors each, which automatically raised the glass once the car passed 100mph. With this level of equipment, the E31 wasn't just sporting, it was a level of sumptuousness unrivalled in its field. The nearest competitor, the Mercedes SL, didn't even come close.</div></div><div><br /></div><div>The target market of this unparalleled piece of machinery was the top-notch banking class; the extreme end of the pay scale who could afford to drive such a ridiculously over-powered piece of machinery. BMW alone spent over 1.5bn Marks ($1bn in today's money) bringing the E31 into existence, and expected buyers to pay accordingly. In a country like Poland, where the free market was stifled by Marxian taxes, the only people with that kind of money were those with government ties.</div><div><br /></div><div>Yet, if the Entwicklung (evolution) number of the 1989 E31 comes right after the 1982 E30, what happened in the intervening years? Why did clients have to wait most of the decade to take collection of this ultimate machine?</div><div><br /></div><div>To answer this, we have to step back even further in time to an unpronounceably-named man called Paul Bracq who became head of BMW's design department in 1970 and two years later unveiled one of the most jaw-dropping shapes in motoring history; the BMW Turbo. This concept, of which only two were ever made, is considered so influential that it was still winning design awards twenty-two years later. It really is a ravishing piece of work, and if you haven't used your search engine of choice to find a picture of it, do so now. Designated E25, the BMW Turbo bloodline is directly visible in the E31 as well as in another incredible concept, the M8; a motorsport-tuned version of the 8-series capable of delivering a pant-wetting 550hp. Its existence was denied by its constructors for nearly twenty years until, in 2008, BMW confessed that they had indeed built every teenager's wet dream, they'd just been keeping it to themselves because they didn't think they'd ever be able to sell it. </div><div><br /></div><div>This seems a rather peculiar way of thinking, as even the intense level of computer-aided design that went into the M8, and the E31, hasn't been able to mask Paul Bracq's exquisite flair for design. And yet sales of the E31 through the Nineties were never as high as BMW had hoped. Although 5000 orders were placed as soon as the car was displayed at a 1989 motor show, little more than 32,000 were ever sold during the entire production run, and although most 8-series were sold with the more powerful V12 engine rather than the V8, BMW knew that they'd hit some sort of limit on the level of automotive outrageousness people would pay for, and that to add a ludicrously powerful Sport Edition (M8) on top would be madness. </div><div><br /></div><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKMgv9d5Z3CdOw2tqUgv9CNhzV9qhIsqL-u5J_TygwEqgKH4Zak40QBgV8qnlsyeC10OWRIUAcRYl5PpBrq_pIPishh2F58fQf8JXtR1yoAOQ9XCtqvSw5c4BY1rbj2p_OCadUkbcjN2fw/s320/BMWE31front.JPG" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 225px;" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5310447930228455394" border="0" /><div>Sitting on mis-matched alloys with the doorhandles pulled off and the headlights ripped out, this supercar is in a very sorry state, and it's little wonder why. Even basic maintenance items like suspension and brakes can empty your savings account, and should the car need any of its electrical niggles sorting out, any owner has to be prepared to dig deep. Even driving one around can drain your wallet faster than any government bureau, believe it or not, and that's without the expense of repairing the Nikasil issues that plagued earlier cars; low-quality fuel in the States and the UK burned their way through engine linings, costing BMW thousands in insurance claims and recalls. </div><div><br /><div><div>The 8-series found itself at the top of a very lonely market; far too heavy and large to be treated as a sports car, but far too expensive to maintain as a daytime cruiser. While its sublime smoothness and handling made it great for those motorway miles, as soon as it entered town roads the fuel gauge would plummet; consumption figures over 25litres per 100km (that's 11 mpg, or 9.5 for the Yanks), and all that delicious surging power went to waste in a cloud of burnt exhaust gas. And in Poland, where motorways still aren't really in existence, there's little point in owning a car that capable of devouring them. Add to that the level that this particular unit has degraded to, and you'd find yourself needing a government-sized welfare package to maintain, let alone restore it. Which might not be a problem for the owner; maybe he knows someone on the inside...</div></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /><br /></div></div></div></div>Richard Tathamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06002386845513033206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9148510170346130773.post-68565690426714100282010-03-28T16:55:00.011+02:002011-02-21T21:52:28.208+01:00Fiat Bertone X1/9<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_o3TklBOxC5Y/S8h6sIWEiaI/AAAAAAAAAT0/2JqsASyO_4k/s1600/FiatX19side.JPG"><b><span class="Apple-style-span"><img style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0pt; margin-right: 0pt; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 225px; " src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_o3TklBOxC5Y/S8h6sIWEiaI/AAAAAAAAAT0/2JqsASyO_4k/s320/FiatX19side.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5460749446759614882" border="0" /></span></b></a><div><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal; "><span>When I was at school, we learned about alkali metals. For those of you who spent your chemistry lessons asleep, those are the ones that react with water to create a sizzling fizz like indoor fireworks. Of course, under Communism, kids never got to see this, but at the school I went to we were allowed, with an enormous amount of supervision, to drop a sliver of sodium or lithium into a dish and watch the sparks; if the teacher was feeling especially generous he'd drop a nugget of potassium into a specially-shielded pool, to be greeted with an impressive bang and equally loud shrieks from the girls.</span></p><p><span class="Apple-style-span">It's those sorts of experiments that remain in the mind years after we finish our schooling; we might not remember the theory behind it all, or the real-world applications of such knowledge, but we carry with us for decades afterwards the memory of the light and the acrid smoke, the fire alarms going off and the standing around outside while the atmosphere in the laboratory clears.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span"><span>The more radical the experiment, the bigger the bang</span>. It was with that notion in mind that Fiat dropped a particularly metallic object into the motoring pool at the end of 1972, with a flash so big it took 17 years to fade out. That experiment was Fiat's X1/9, the biggest-selling mid-engined sports car of all time.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span">The year as a whole was filled with experiments; the Turin-based automaker had already released the rolling-skate <a href="http://sticksout.blogspot.com/2009/09/polski-fiat-126p.html"><span>Fiat 126</span></a> and the urban cruiser <a href="http://sticksout.blogspot.com/2008/11/fiat-132.html">Fiat 132</a> at car shows that summer but, like the more dramatic of presenters, had left its most potent metal until last. The X1/9 was unveiled in an independent ceremony at Fiat's race circuit in Sicily, where motoring journalists from all over the globe were given the chance to get their own hands on the experimental little sportster.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span">In Fiat's Periodic Table of cars, the X1/9 was something of an oddity. At the time, many European manufacturers were still in two minds over whether the engine should go in the front or the back, although the consensus was still for sports cars to have the powerplant in the nose, dangling ponderously over the front wheels. But when asked to design a new sports car to replace Fiat's aging 850 Spider, bodymaker Bertone came up with something spectacular. By ripping out the guts of a Fiat 128 and turning them back-to-front, they were able to position the engine behind the drivers seats, delivering power to the rear and creating as near to 50/50 weight balancing as possible. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span">This was unlike anything else Fiat was making at the time, which is possibly why it maintained its development moniker all the way through into production. Most of the manufacturer's stable was made of traditional three-box saloons, supplemented by the occasional derived sportster and tiny city-cars with air-cooled engines snuggled into the boot. The idea of a series sports car in the same class as the Porsche 914 was a massive leap for the manufacturer, and it's easy to see why finding a name inside the traditional numbering sequence would be at least difficult, and at most, inappropriate.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span">The X1 moniker was Fiat's internal designation for concept cars, with the X1/1 becoming the Fiat 128 to which this radical new sports car owed its internals. And like Italian kisses, X came swiftly after X, with three more concepts achieving production in just three years: the Autobianchi A112 (X1/2), the executive Fiat 130 (X1/3) and the Fiat 127 (X1/4). </span><span class="Apple-style-span">And that's not including the Lancia MonteCarlo; another X project that was delayed for fear that it would step on its little brother's toes. X1/8, as the Lancia was known, would be pushed back to X1/20 and ultimately released into the Lancia Beta family, where it remains a cousin of the <a href="http://sticksout.blogspot.com/2008/06/lancia-trevi-volumex-vx.html">Lancia Trevi</a>.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span">Coming from such a potent group, one would expect the X1/9 to have an explosive personality; indeed, contemporary reviews often called it "the baby Ferrari", and journalists enthused about its direct and responsive handling and sideways cornering. And yet, the X1/9 didn't prove to yield the smoke and flash one would have expected from a company used to making lightweight motors. Sitting that far down in the elemental table, the X1/9 was one heavy metal.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span">American nervousness about crash protection had escalated in the late Sixties, and a new series of safety regulations were introduced to bring down fatalities. Bertone, knowing how important American sales would be, pulled out all the stops to reinforce the frame of the targa-topped car, stiffening it all round without compromising the exquisite styling. They did such a good job that only one other car (the Volvo 144) passed the safety regulations, and when the Americans realised that none of their own fat floppy motors qualified, they dropped the standard at just the wrong time. The X1/9 entered the ring at 900kg, pushed along by a 75hp 1300cc engine; much better than the <a href="http://sticksout.blogspot.com/2009/01/saab-sonett-iii.html">Saab Sonett</a> but still rather weak for a sports car, and strangled to death by US emissions regulations that brought its power down to a feeble 66hp.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span">It took the chemists at Fiat five more years to get the mix right, with a bigger engine added no earlier than 1978, and even then only upping the power to 85hp. Part of this was due to the production agreement; Bertone moulded the shells on one side of Turin, then shipped them across the city for them to be stuffed with whatever engines and gearboxes Fiat had left over from their 128 production line. When that was replaced by the Fiat Strada/Ritmo, the X1/9 got their engines too, being such an parts-bin model that it even shares its headlights with the</span><span class="Apple-style-span"> <a href="http://sticksout.blogspot.com/2009/09/polski-fiat-126p.html"><span>Fiat 126</span></a>. In 1981, Fiat got bored with this arrangement, and threatened to pull the plug on the whole concept, but Bertone stepped in and agreed to take over assembly at their smaller factory. In that way, the X1/9 was able to last all through the Eighties without the Fiat nametag, but with a five-speed gearbox to compensate.</span></span></p><img src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_o3TklBOxC5Y/S8h6rkocgZI/AAAAAAAAATs/XCP5XTs_hI8/s320/FiatX19fr.JPG" style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0pt; margin-right: 0pt; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 225px; " alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5460749437173006738" border="0" /><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span">It's one of those Bertone models that we find parked out on a spring afternoon in Warsaw, just the way an X1/9 should be; with the paintwork gleaming and the top down. And while its Bertone badge is rather subtly placed on the C-pillar rather the boot, it flagrantly displays its yellow plates front and back, superfluously, since this car is a recognisable classic from any angle. It's only marring is the enormous deck of the front spoiler; another hangover from American safety regulations from a nation that proved itself completely incapable of making, or even accepting, a car this pretty.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span">The bang may not quite be as big as was hoped, but experiments go, it certainly got the girls squealing, and when you get right down to it, that's all that really matters.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span"><b><br /></b></span></p></div>Richard Tathamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06002386845513033206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9148510170346130773.post-14435892574499431912010-03-11T11:38:00.008+01:002010-09-11T14:57:43.343+02:00Skoda Favorit 135<img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_o3TklBOxC5Y/SRlg9U6XT1I/AAAAAAAAAFc/-mylSnZrFag/s320/SkodaFavorit135fl.JPG" style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0pt; margin-right: 0pt; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 225px; " alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5267347845888298834" border="0" /><div style="text-align: justify;">On the huddled estate I live on, there's a muddy path worn between two disconnected lengths of paving, as if two building teams started at each end of the neighbourhood, but never quite met up. It's a barren bit of ground, so overshadowed by trees in the summer and frosted over in winter that nothing grows there. It's just a forgotten little clump of brown in the patchwork greyness of my neighbourhood.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Surrounded by such drabness and the steady rhythmic plodding, my mind numbs itself to its surroundings. In that state I don't pay attention to the German saloons and old Fiats dumped for the night in the neighbouring car park, especially on early mornings when I'm already late for work. They're such familiar features that they get filtered out, and it wasn't until, from the corner of my eye. one tiny difference made itself known to my morning brain and I registered for the first time what exactly I was seeing.</div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The Skoda Favorit is the kind of car you pass day in, day out, without ever really noticing what it is. It was a forgettable little patch in the company's history, and barely made a splash in the motoring world as a whole, being just another cheap hatchback in an already bloated market that offered nothing new to Western consumers. It bore the same angular profile as many of its contemporaries, with its only feature of note is the flying arrow badge on the bonnet.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But for its parent company, it was a revolution; this was the first front-engined front-wheel-drive car Skoda had made, and for a small state-owned manufacturer it was a remarkably tidy effort, with none of the quirks typically found in Communist design bodgery. The original conception was presented as far back as 1982, but typical committee tardiness over the specifications delayed the project by five whole years while it continued to pump out the same tired variations of the <a href="http://sticksout.blogspot.com/2009/03/skoda-105s.html">Skoda 105</a> despite their dwindling sales. By the middle of the decade it was inevitable that the old cars had to be replaced, and fingers were finally pulled out, machines installed, and in 1987 the first Favorits left the factories to, well, not much applause at all, really. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_o3TklBOxC5Y/SRlg9t1KZVI/AAAAAAAAAFk/s_HEenK8hss/s320/SkodaFavorit135side.JPG" style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0pt; margin-right: 0pt; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 225px; " alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5267347852577367378" border="0" /><div style="text-align: justify;">The hatchback concept had become formulaic by the late Eighties; angular cabins with snub noses were available from any number of Japanese and European brands at the time, with little more than the shape of the headlights determining which particular marque had made any particular motor. The only real variation for the Favorit was the particularly chunky C-pillar that hinted at something more to the car, especially parked alongside a <a href="http://sticksout.blogspot.com/2008/11/zaz-1102-tavria.html">ZAZ Tavria</a>, which is of exactly the same vintage. And yet the Skoda's styling came from the pen of the Bertone group, one of the world's most famous designers of sports cars. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: justify; ">The dowside of these early Favorits, despite the hearty mechanicals and Italian coachwork, was the factory process that still harped back to the older rear-engined Skodas. With Communism in its death throes there was very little incentive to modernise anything about the production process, and the first generation of Favorits to leave the line (including this one) suffered from a flurry of mechanical ticks that made them occasionally unreliable. The carbureted engines never really broke down, but the overall flimsiness of the cars turned high-speed driving into a spirited experience. But for all this, the Favorit was a hearty little motor, and its estate sister, the Forman, added a whole new level of urban practicality to the platform.</div><div></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The ability to meet Western standards, even if they couldn't exceed them, made Skoda that much more attractive to foreign investment come the Communist collapse, and in 1990 the firm was bought outright by those vampires at Volkswagen who latched on to the Favorit with unbound enthusiasm. While binning all the rest of Skoda's range, the car Favorit instead received a reverential treatment, continuing for another four years with a host of sympathetic upgrades including fuel injection and catalytic converters to add a bit of German efficiency to their new acquisition. </div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The Favorit is an an important bridge linking the tired and ridiculed cars of the Communist era to the post-buyout Volkswagen-derived Fabia. In and of itself it's no technical masterpiece, treading the same worn path as all the other manufacturers of its time, but as Skoda's last unique model before being swallowed by VAG, it's a car that doesn't deserve to go unnoticed.</div><div><div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></div></div></div></div>Richard Tathamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06002386845513033206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9148510170346130773.post-88269273015508544622010-03-07T15:27:00.020+01:002010-09-11T00:53:42.457+02:00Renault 9 1.4/ Renault 11 TXE<img src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_o3TklBOxC5Y/SbKErQ8A2jI/AAAAAAAAAQs/EU2CRxq3xWs/s320/Renault9fl.JPG" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 308px; height: 232px;" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5310452789439158834" border="0" />When asked to name which period of the 20th century contributed most to the world of style, certain decades spring quicker to the mind than others for their suavity, taste or flair. But turn the question around and ponder which of the decades inflicted the worst eyesores onto the aesthetic world, and the finger of accusation is almost always aimed at the Eighties for its atrocious crimes in the name of fashion.<div><br /></div><div>In 1980, padded shoulders and power suits had replaced all the frill and frippery of the Seventies, and a clean minimalism was taking over. Tastefully grey offices, solid black furniture; the Eighties was a concerted international effort to suck every molecule of happiness out of the world in one massive slurp. Electronic music was doing its level best to kill off any pleasure obtained through music, and if it weren't for the balls-out rocking of Heavy Metal and the carnal acts that went with it, we'd have all died out years ago under a wave of celibate epicenism. Combine that with the global fear of the newly-identified HIV, and it's a wonder anyone in the Eighties wanted to have any physical contact at all.</div><div><br /></div><div>Unfortunately for us, at the peak of this joylessness Renault managed to squeeze out two new babies onto the market; the twin edition 9 and 11, designed to tap into the small saloon market that was growing at the time, electing to win the title of Dullest Car Possible. They succeeded.</div><div><br /></div><div>These days, making a dull car is easy; anyone with a wind tunnel and a laptop can do it, which is why everyone is. But at the end of the Seventies the Art of Bland was in its infancy; designers were still getting their hands dirty with ink sketches and clay mock-ups, and even with the largest of committee-driven design processes there was still a chance that a modicum of charisma could creep in and imbue the product with some sort of personality. To test whether it was possible to destroy any last vestige of emotion the designer ever had, Renault spent 14.5 million hours on discovering the most comprehensive method of fun-removal possible, and pitted their rigorous joykill system against the best of the best in modern design, one Robert Opron.</div><div><div><br /></div><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwVTTfCCZdWwrbB3COaQrEte_bqsSp9FX8QJxNPcjUnvQSU5D4G_HCUqAzowECFhqbF2Bv0UwuQ6dvtrJ-0tQxFRSz-RuWZBCPpGgDThlT2AiPcjZi89EgMh908MdbL7KPZ7uMVnljmJvX/s320/Renault11side.JPG" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5310455450832567714" border="0" /><div>Opron had been the creative force behind some of the most majestic French vehicles in existence, most importantly the Citroen SM and the <a href="http://sticksout.blogspot.com/2009/02/citroen-cx-25-trd-turbo.html">Citroen CX</a>, before the level of artistry forced the parent company to collapse in on itself in 1976. Following that implosion, Opron was brought in to lead Renault's Project L42, the special mission of which was to design a four-metre-long saloon that would be Renault's first attempt at a World Car (why, I have no idea; the <a href="http://sticksout.blogspot.com/2009/01/vw-jetta-a1.html">VW Jetta</a> was already 4.2 metres long, and the 9 and 11 were targetting the same market sector). With the benefit of hindsight, this seems a fairly sensible thing to do; all the other manufacturers were doing just that, and the Japanese were having a fair success getting their units into the lucrative American market. But Renault had just had their fingers burnt with the really rather lovely Renault 14 (which the public hated), and needed a rigorously-planned solution to their problems. None of the slapdash paint-on-canvas-after-breakfast-in-bed approach to designing a car; they would meticulously and thorough poll the car-buying public on every possible aspect of their dream saloon, and then do the most crushing thing possible; feed the results into a computer.</div><div><br /></div><div>The Renault 9 (the saloon) was the first car from the diamond-nosed manufacturer to feature CAD heavily in the design process. The result was the perfect balance in mundanity; lots of straight lines and flat planes that it was essentially featureless; there was absolutely nothing about the Renault 9 that could cause offence to anyone in any way at all. It was perfectly proportioned; nose just long enough, windscreen angled just so, boot sticking out just so far past the wheel arch, but not in any shapely or flirtatious way. The New Romantic movement that was sweeping Europe at the time had washed any element of gender from the Eighties, and the Renault 9 was caught up in this whinging plod of androgyny, completely de-sexing its design and leaving the 9 sterile. It might as well have been sold inside a giant condom.</div><div><br /></div><img src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_o3TklBOxC5Y/SbKHGGlOe7I/AAAAAAAAAQ8/ttwO361rQro/s320/Renault11fl.JPG" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5310455449538952114" border="0" /><div>It must have been painful for a man such as Opron to see his creative flair emasculated in this way; to have his hands bound so tightly in the name of consumer satisfaction, and any penchant for curves and waves utterly eradicated by a bleeping blooping computer. However, the endeavour paid of, and those seven thousand man-years committed to the project resulted in the Renault 9 winning the 1982 Car Of The Year award, sweeping the floor with its rivals, which included among others the <a href="http://sticksout.blogspot.com/2009/09/volkswagen-passat-b2.html">Volkswagen Passat</a> and the <a href="http://sticksout.blogspot.com/2008/06/opel-ascona-c-16.html">Opel Ascona</a>.</div><div><br /></div><div>The Frenchman's lust for curves was finally unleashed with the 11, the hatchback version of the sedan 9. This model was permitted a rounded glass bubble over the tailgate that turned the sober librarian image of the 9 into a slighter perter office secretary, but one so flat-chested and thin-lipped your wife wouldn't be the least bit jealous. Paired together, the 9 and 11 utterly dominated the blandwagon market, disappearing into traffic jams and cluttering up car parks all over the globe before disappearing in a whimper in 1989.</div><div><br /></div><div>Despite the current penchant for Eighties retro, it's doubtful whether art students in the future will laud the 9 and 11 as masterpieces of the Golden Age of Plastics; these cars are so instantly forgettable that I'd be amazed if anyone remembers them now, or even recognises the few that remain. Even Renault's pathetic attempt to add a Gallic flair to them (with the wholly inappropriate "Broadway" trim level for this particular 9, and the long-distance 1.7litre TXE version of the 11) couldn't add enough sparkle to add them to the cultural consciousness, and a 1985 facelift known as <i>Phase 2</i> did nothing to imbue them with any charm borrowed from the revamped <a href="http://sticksout.blogspot.com/2009/10/renault-5-campus-renault-express.html">Renault 5</a>. In this sense, as Dullest Car Possible, these two Renaults are victims of their own success, and, like ra-ra skirts and Michael Jackson's white glove, will hopefully never make a comeback.</div></div>Richard Tathamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06002386845513033206noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9148510170346130773.post-14042674371927549032010-02-09T16:01:00.008+01:002010-09-10T20:08:45.190+02:00Ford Escort MkIII 1.6D<div><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5292278457376449250" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: pointer; HEIGHT: 239px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVS0K-oBwHW9aYkEbGNYjOM0KX01ILtmzKWbCT_gfQd6nJkK5vcn3EEfEXW_xCGA9Z2K8gU0xuWLg2XGc38gx5N_8jVHneZ8X2YWOtPgZqm15WMTm6QFOlj-gqq0vfykQLG78rZNxPDXNJ/s320/FordEscortMkIIIfr.JPG" border="0" />Cakes. Shoes. Paint. The naming of shops in the Communist era was done with such directness that it brings a certain charm to them. No peering through gaudily-dressed shop windows in a desperate bid to ascertain what this place sells; it's written for you in foot-high letters; Alcohol. Even now, you can stroll down any street in any town and find, though faded and peeling, the Polish word for something mundane like "Doors" or "Insurance" or my personal favourite, "Foodstuffs." It's delightfully practical, and brutally honest.<br /><div><br /></div><div>Of course, come the new millennium a large amount of those shops were swept away; without the protection of a totalitarian state, "Shoes" had to compete with the far more modern "World Of Shoes"; a delicious idea that a globe's worth of footwear could be crammed into a dingy little shop on a Polish high street. Similarly, the Barber had to give way to the Health Salon, and all the little delis, cobblers and locksmiths have been forced out and replaced by branches of a foreign bank of some kind. And all those shop fronts are being clad in violent tones of perspex and lightboxes, slick advertising posters and one actual product, with the price-tag removed. Such is the price of progress.</div><div><br /></div>In the midst of all this contemporary slickness and drama, the honest block of an Eighties motor stands out like the tower blocks around it. Slotted neatly into an endless row of silver blobs sat a tomato-red boxy saloon with a quiet, unassuming presence. "I'm a car," the Ford Escort says. "I'm not pretending to be a rocket ship or a sofa or your new best friend, I'm a transport mechanism. See? Four wheels, five doors. Job done." It might as well have been called the Ford Vehicle. <div><br /><div>The history of the Ford Escort does not need to be elaborated upon by me; in the UK alone it sold over 4,000,000 units over its six-and-a-half revisions, so you can guarantee that there are nearly as many fan clubs, forums and websites dedicated to every minute detail of the car's existence, from the dog-bone-faced MkI all the way up to the final MkVI Gti in 2000. </div><br /><img src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_o3TklBOxC5Y/SXHzOY4uc4I/AAAAAAAAAI4/TvZZAKE1srw/s320/FordEscortMkIIIrear.JPG" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5292278465661137794" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: pointer; HEIGHT: 239px" alt="" border="0" /><div>In between came every variation possible; two-door, four-door, cabriolets and combis, from the most thrifty of trim levels to the best moulded plastic money can buy. It was a car that utterly dominated the market it was aimed at, and you were as likely to see an unwashed student rattling to university as you were a pin-striped estate agent on his way to a million-pound transaction, and for all the alloy wheels and go-faster stripes that adorned any particular unit, its honest working-class attitude shone through. There was no pretension about the Escort, unless you requested it from the factory.</div><div><br /></div><div>Those distinguishing features that marked out the models of "discerning customers" were the small, blocky chrome letters stuck on the back like fridge magnets. XR3, RS 2000, Mexico; obscure digits to everyone else, but to those of us who grew up in a McDonald's carpark sometime in the last twenty years, these little badges were as direct as the signs for "Shoes" and "Paint". They spoke volumes to us about fuel injection, cross-flow heads and all the other auto-erotica that drives male teenagers wild. Boy racers dreamed of getting their hands on bodykits and fat exhausts; we stuck food trays under the back wheels to practice doing doughnuts; our first foray into "tuning" was fitting our first air filter to one of these things. As as we dreamed about handbrake turns and screeching away from traffic lights, we scratched away the "1.3 Popular" stickers that belied the humble mechanics of the only models we could afford, and looked on in envy at the young office worker who had saved up for a real, genuine XR3i. </div><div><br /></div><div>With the current trend towards Eighties nostalgia, those rarer models are now collectors items, with satin black and red-trimmed models commanding serious money among the matured ex-car-park crowd. But with so many of these old cans still rattling around, the bog-standard models can't even be sold; I swapped my old one for a couple of pints before moving to university, despite being completely rust-free. </div><div><br /></div>For all the memories those "straked" rear lights (yes, straked, that's what Ford call them) invoke in us ex-owners, for Escort novices there's not much appeal. There's no more reason to love these old Fords than you would love an umbrella or a doormat; handy to own, but immediately replaceable. They were simple four-pot motors that let you lurch and jerk your way through suburban traffic, with the occassional motorway cruise, all accompanied by the nasal drone of an English-built engine. Reliable, economical and comfortably dull. Nothing cute or quirky, just a means to an end.<br /><br /><div>To find an immaculate, rust-free example of a car that's at least 25 years old usually marks out that the car is a particularly cherished member of the family; its black number plates denote it hasn't changed owners within the last ten years. And yet the model isn't a rare one, or a collector's classic; in fact, those three little digits of 1.6D represent the most economical of engines imaginable; a diesel that could comfortably achieve 70mpg. Seventy. Look at that. A car with absolutely no resale value at all, that can propel you a hundred kilometres in just 4 litres, or a thousand kilometres to a tank. Admittedly, it would do it in a sluggish and deafening manner, but that level of fuel frugality makes this, one of the rarest of all the classic Fords, arguably the most valuable, and undoubtedly the most practical.</div></div></div>Richard Tathamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06002386845513033206noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9148510170346130773.post-51207715226327759222010-01-20T16:50:00.008+01:002011-02-23T22:43:52.783+01:00GAZ-24 Volga Mk II<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_o3TklBOxC5Y/SXH-payXUnI/AAAAAAAAAMI/UJcKDMPJnxQ/s1600-h/VolgaGAZ-24fr.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 225px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_o3TklBOxC5Y/SXH-payXUnI/AAAAAAAAAMI/UJcKDMPJnxQ/s320/VolgaGAZ-24fr.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5292291024655700594" border="0" /></a>You're walking home from a day in the office. You haven't done much; hammered out a few pages on the typewriter, enveloped a few letters and stuck them in an out-tray, sipped ersatz coffee from a glass mug with Olga the receptionist. And now your hands are deep in your pockets and your shoulders braced against the wind.<br /><br />Chin pressed against your breastbone, you round a corner, and that's when it happens. An arm grips your elbow, something hard and angular presses into the small of your back, a hand comes down on your head and you're half-pushed, half-shoved through the door of a long black sedan. If you haven't been koshed around the back of the head or been wrapped up in a sack yet, chances are your current view will be the interior of a GAZ-24 Volga from the back seat, with two suited gentlemen pressing you in from either side.<br /><br />If it weren't for the inopportune circumstances that led to you being in such a position, you might find you actually enjoy being on a Volga's back seat. The rear bench was roomy enough to accomodate two muscular thugs and a malnourished dissident, and the 2.5litre engine would have had enough muscle-power of its own to get you whisked off to an interrogation chamber quick sharp.<div><br /></div><div>Of course, the insinuation that the Volga (or Boat, as the Russians called it) was a vehicle only for the KGB isn't wholly fair; the authorities had almost exclusive use of far larger vehicles like the GAZ Chaika and the monstrous ZiL limousines, but for back-street kidnappings, their ostentatiousness would have been their failing; for a quick snatch-and-grab job you want a mid-sized saloon with straight lines and no defining features, something that can be parked in the gloom without attracting any unwanted attention. With that in mind, the Volga excelled itself; it was almost made for the job.</div><div><br /></div><div>The very existence of the GAZ-24 can seem confusing to some; if the autocrats had their massive limousines, and the proles were being served with the newly-made Moskvitches and <a href="http://sticksout.blogspot.com/2010/04/vaz-2104-lada-riva-estate.html">Ladas</a>, what need could there be for a mid-sized sedan? Who would need it? Who could afford it? Where was the rationality of making such a car? It seems head-scratching when you think about it in basic supply-and-demand terms, but that just shows that you don't think like <i>Homo sovieticus. </i>The Volga name was etched indelibly into the Russian minds as representing wealth and success; a luxurious dream that only a chosen few could hope to attain in their lifetime. Few did, which only helped to maintain the revered status of these saloons. That's not to say they didn't deserve such veneration; in one of Russia's rare attempts to do a proper job of something, the M24 was a decade in the making. Looking at one now, you could almost believe they succeeded.</div><div><br /></div><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigkCVN9AxxMwYd4ZNA9TXfrtyfvNjPdzwZF3pIvMpbIwHcJaQXVSlTvJ2-55V6l5eW2X8vFSRhCvp5apfDZQ9NYkW2tbZXoJKU4kg0X1Xjm4dtC5U9sAhxf6nmnY2GlpEbGJybKH3m78hD/s320/VolgaGAZ-24side.JPG" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 224px;" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5292291023544603986" border="0" /><div>The Russian concept of the luxurious Volga started with the <a href="http://sticksout.blogspot.com/2009/03/gaz-m21-volga.html">GAZ-21</a>, a replacement to the post-war Pobieda, and yet work on a replacement was already being sketched out two years later in a bid to keep pace with the American design factories. And in keeping with the rapidly changing technologies and tastes, GAZ experimented with aerostyle fins (as seen on the Ford Fairlane), various engines including straight- and V-6s, and even pillarless body styles. This flirting with western decadence had a deeper relationship underneath; Mother Russia had a real desire to get its products onto the Western market, and had to find a viable solution to meet those demands, even if every whim and fancy of America meant sending the Volga prototype back to the drawing board; out went the hydraulic transmissions and unwieldy engines, and the acres of chrome and garish body lines; every angle was sobered up, every accessory toned down. It wasn't until the late Sixties that the Russians felt they had got to grips with what the West wanted, and suitably sober and practical GAZ-24 "Volga" finally entered production.</div><div><br /></div><div>Its presence on the streets may be head-turning, but unless an orange TAXI light glowed from the roof, a wise pedestrian would keep his gaze averted from whatever civil servant or government official was driving, or being driven behind the leaping gazelle on the bonnet. Which is a shame, as for its time the GAZ-24 was a remarkably modern vehicle, matching practical and sturdy mechanicals with a contemporary tasteful body line. It even, astoundingly, had a high build quality that allowed taxi drivers to rack up 300,000 miles in the things, although, considering their worth, they were lovingly maintained during their operating lifetimes. It even lent its underpinnings to the <a href="http://sticksout.blogspot.com/2008/06/raf-latvia-2203.html">RAF Latvija 2203</a> van with varying amounts of success, with the drivetrain surviving unchanged well into the Nineties. </div><div><br /></div><div>The GAZ-24 is an institution in Russia; even now it embodies that dream of unobtainable living to a Western standard, and the very few examples left over are still treated with pride and respect To find one parked up in Warsaw as an advert to a restaurant is, in that respect, either a typically Polish snub to all symbols of the old Union, or, perhaps, the slightest nod of recognition that not every gift from the Soviets was a bad one.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Richard Tathamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06002386845513033206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9148510170346130773.post-318058016097777502010-01-05T16:44:00.019+01:002010-04-27T09:46:46.064+02:00Subaru Libero<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_o3TklBOxC5Y/SXH9P53GKgI/AAAAAAAAALg/W395oFlN_2o/s1600-h/SubaruLiberofr.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 224px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_o3TklBOxC5Y/SXH9P53GKgI/AAAAAAAAALg/W395oFlN_2o/s320/SubaruLiberofr.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5292289486808820226" border="0" /></a>Working out where East and West are should be relatively easy. West is where everything is developed and futuristic and made of plastic and freedom, and the East is hard and cold and poor and polluted. This is relatively simple when you are in Poland's situation, where West takes us towards Old Europe and East points us towards Russia. For the Americans, it's not so simple; New York is on the East Coast, but if you keep heading in that direction you get to Europe, which is in the West. And California is West, but go too far and you get to Japan, which is East.<br /><br />At that point, definitions of Easternness and backwardness collapse, as the Japanese are far more advanced in almost every way except perhaps socially. The modern world's appetite for electronics and reliable cars would never be sated if it weren't for their industriousness, and aside from an inpenetrable language and some extremely dubious adult entertainment, they're an extremely pleasant nation to deal with.<br /><br />The Japanese have an unwaning fondness for the small and cute; Pokemon, Hello Kitty and a rainbow of other candy-coloured cartoon characters are testament to their love of the minute. Combine that with their passion for technology, and you can start to appreciate how their auto industry developed the pocket-sized yet admirably practical <span style="font-style: italic;">Kei</span>-class trucks; <span style="font-style: italic;">Kei</span> meaning "light." I'm not sure if this is about being light-weight, or light-hearted; to look at them, you would never take a van of this size seriously.<br /><br />That peak of Eighties Japanese gadgetry was the cartoon "Transformers", where humble household objects morphed into powerful beasts, and it's of this mindset that the Subaru Libero was born. Unleashed in 1983, it was Subaru's latest incarnation of their K-class van which had been running in various guises since 1961 as a multifunction tool for carting goods and people through Japan's ever-thickening traffic. Their tiny size, minimal fuel consumption and cutesiness had warmed them to the hearts of the East Asians ever since, and they benefitted from reduced parking costs as well as tax breaks. While superminis like the Morris Mini and the Citroen 2CV were little more than a Sixties fad in Europe, Japan had fallen in love with pocket-sized motoring, and an early romance had bloomed into a full-on, serious relationship.<br /><br />At some point in the early 1980s, Subaru had a demented desire to imbue every single one of their products with four-wheel drive, and that included their <span style="font-style: italic;">Kei</span>-class Libero van. This resulted in the mechanicals being ripped out of the Subaru Justy and put into the Libero backwards, so that the engine was rear-mounted and the driver could be afforded something of crumple-zone in the event of an impact. Now, while this may be useful in a mountain-goat sense, lugging crates of produce up and down Japanese many hills and having something to headbutt with, the urban practicalities (and tiny fuel tank) mean that, on the whole, 4WD just isn't that much use; it's murder for highway driving, and saps power from the drivetrain which is only powered by a 1.2litre unit at the best of times. So these little Liberos came with a switchable lever to disengage the 4WD system when needed. Which was all the time.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_o3TklBOxC5Y/SXH9g-EYGBI/AAAAAAAAALw/8LzZfuZGnRk/s1600-h/SubaruLiberoside.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 224px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_o3TklBOxC5Y/SXH9g-EYGBI/AAAAAAAAALw/8LzZfuZGnRk/s320/SubaruLiberoside.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5292289779996039186" border="0" /></a>That main transmission layout did have some uses. Having a horizontal three-cylinder engine relatively low in the body meant that all sorts of cumbersome, top-heavy luggage, such as people, could be squeezed into it without upsetting the centre of gravity. This also afforded Subaru to plant on an extended roofline complete with glass visor area, making the Libero look like a VW Transporter that's shrunk in the wash. Unfortunately, it all proved so well in giving mountain-dwelling tourists a view of the spectacular scenery that Subaru decided to make the 4WD system a permanent thing, ditching the selecting lever and employing a single clutch instead.<br /><br />These sorts of technological advances epitomise the <span style="font-style: italic;">Kei</span>-class. When the Americans need more power they simply expand the size of their V8s; the crafty Japanese were instead experimenting with injection and turbos as well as their miniscule transmissions, which meant that even the naturally-aspirated 1.2 engine here could squirt out an efficient 52hp; more than enough for the 900kg this thing weighs.<br /><br />In fact, these things are so practical it's surprising more of them aren't seen on the roads West of the East or East of the West of the East or wherever Poland is supposed to lie on the political map these days. Indeed, it was exported to a variety of places; it's a Libero in Europe but as a Domingo in its home ground, and in the UK it's known as a Sumo, which is ironic considering its weight. What we do know is that America, by far the largest consumer of imported vehicles, has pretty much outright banned <span style="font-style: italic;">Kei</span>-class vans for a number of reasons. And before any anti-Yank diatribe about oil dependency forms in your brain, some of those arguments have some grounding. The teeny tiny wheels and that high top just aren't suited to the flat, open and windy terrain of the US, nor the engine to the yawning distances vans have to cover to get anywhere. But worst of all is the metal; to keep weight to an absolute minimum, the steel was pressed astonishingly thin, with two results. Firstly, any premise this thing might have of a crumple zone is an understatement; this thing would fold up like a chocolate wrapper on impact, especially if it were to come into contact with America's biggest selling truck, the F150, which weighs in at over two tonnes; far too much for our Sumo to wrestle with. The second, and far more devestating in the Polish climate, is that salt takes literally minutes to chomp its way through the skin of these little vans, and the sad explanation for this sorry little heap sitting in a Polish car park.Richard Tathamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06002386845513033206noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9148510170346130773.post-85602977582604770822009-12-05T16:23:00.007+01:002010-04-24T23:38:26.486+02:00Mercedes-Benz W126 560SEC<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_o3TklBOxC5Y/SXH4Ts9M86I/AAAAAAAAAKQ/RG3tib9U0SU/s1600-h/MercW126560SECfr.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 225px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_o3TklBOxC5Y/SXH4Ts9M86I/AAAAAAAAAKQ/RG3tib9U0SU/s320/MercW126560SECfr.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5292284054506107810" border="0" /></a>Money. Big fat dirty piles of the stuff. Cash, notes, coins, cheques, shares, bonds, futures, drafts and derivatives. And gold.<br /><br />The Polish currency, the Zloty, is supposed to mean "Gold", which is amusing if you've ever held one of those pressed stainless steel discs in your hand. A zloty will buy you a chocolate bar, not much else. Two will get you a can of the cheapest tramp-fuel lager. A quarter of a million will buy you a small apartment in a city somewhere, but with average salaries in Poland still only around 3000 a month, it would take 83 years of saving before you could buy one. Unless, that is, you had some way of buying things with money you don't have. Which is what banks are for; lending money to people who can prove they don't need it.<br /><br />In the Eighties, making money from nothing was the name of the game. Bankers bought things that didn't even exist yet, like next year's potato harvest, then sold it on at an even higher price to someone else at an even later future date, lining their pockets with the profits before the seeds have even been planted. This is known as a futures contract, but meant for the traders a lucrative bonus at the end of each quarter.<br /><br />This greed (and remember, greed is good) needed to be translated into something physical eventually; there's only so much cocaine you can shove up your nose before bits fall off. For those whose wealth was only surpassed by their levels of taste, Mercedes-Benz offered the pinacle of Eighties yuppie motoring: the W126 560 SEC.<br /><br />The W126 had been launched in 1979 as the second "Sonderklasse" vehicle in the Mercedes fleet. This "S"class was the flagship, the cream of the cream car designed for dignitaries and diplomats. Stretch limousines, sedans, bullet-proof editions; all was made available to the top brass and high society with a gentle not of the head from Stuttgart. But when the demand came for a roadster, the Germans excelled themselves, swooping the sedan wheelbase into a magnificent pillarless coupe without compromising any of the interior opulence. And in 1985, an all-new aluminium 5.6 V8 was engineered and fitted straight to the W126, making the 560 SEC the most exorbitant Mercedes of the time, without becoming a gauche footballer's car. It oozed style and, well, class, which made it perfect for the monied elite who were steering the worlds political and financial futures.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_o3TklBOxC5Y/SXH4T3yAfaI/AAAAAAAAAKY/qwKzc5gnj74/s1600-h/MercW126560SECside.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 225px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_o3TklBOxC5Y/SXH4T3yAfaI/AAAAAAAAAKY/qwKzc5gnj74/s320/MercW126560SECside.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5292284057411943842" border="0" /></a>That's not to say that the car was futuristic. Many other cars offered the same things as the W126; multiple airbags, aluminium panels, traction control, in-car phone. But having them all wrapped up in one sumptuous coupe and propelled along by 272hp, that was something else, something divine. No other car on the road could offer such ferocity and grace in equal measure. And being a coupe, this was for a generation of moneyed powermen who eschewed the chauffer and got themselves behind the wheel, free to tweak and fiddly with every gadget available. To finish it all off, a heavy coat of that exquisite paint colour, Champagne Metallic.<br /><br />This kind of luxury doesn't come cheap. Prices started at $70,000, which could easily shoot over $100k if you ticked all the boxes for optional extras. Sure, modern S-classes go far beyond that, but this was $100k when the average Pole earned $20 a <span style="font-style: italic;">month</span>. And the only aluminium a Pole would get his hands on is the strange Communist currency that was circulating at the time. And the Polish currency at the time wasn't doing well; hyperinflation kicked in at the end of the Eighties, with the Zloty trading at a wallet-fattening 9600zl to the dollar.<br /><br />So what is a car in a class of its own doing on a Polish side-street in the nation's capital? The only plausible explanation would be another rapid devaluation, this time in the worth of the W126. While the original purchase price would be $150k in today's money, a clean 560 SEC (remember, the best W126 ever made) can be had for as little as 5000 dollars - that's almost 97% of the value of the car gone, in just two decades. And yet the Coupe is still immensely driveable; cars of this calibre might be surpassed by technology but they don't go out of date, and the relatively small run of just 22,000 units means that finding a big-engined Coupe is a rarity that should be cherished rather than debased.<br /><br />The W126 is certainly admired among car enthusiasts, and almost reverred by Mercedes aficiondos, as being a modern classic. The replacements, with all their smooth flowing curves and fat banker bloat, just don't have that pin-stripe edge that the Eighties Mercedes does. Production finished less than 20 years ago, but for this particular car, that Champagne still has its fizz.Richard Tathamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06002386845513033206noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9148510170346130773.post-32446418662064364522009-11-20T16:03:00.014+01:002010-04-19T08:07:54.145+02:00FSO Polonez MR'87<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPKRmvFfYc3LqhXYzAQQU0l2_w4s-TiELqL_5gi_qH-yZgnXeXFIPAIPmqIMKjW5e9eVJMweonqm2gJDKKmnciw0kNMnRrA1fjzv6iWmTEu6-YP7-hljkUpSiqjHe-WRM7RuMNxF1nv1iM/s1600-h/FSOPolonezfr.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 225px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPKRmvFfYc3LqhXYzAQQU0l2_w4s-TiELqL_5gi_qH-yZgnXeXFIPAIPmqIMKjW5e9eVJMweonqm2gJDKKmnciw0kNMnRrA1fjzv6iWmTEu6-YP7-hljkUpSiqjHe-WRM7RuMNxF1nv1iM/s320/FSOPolonezfr.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5292278929731805890" border="0" /></a>It's snowing; bitterly cold, wind whipping at your face with icy shards. You turn up your collar, hunch your shoulders against the wind, and wait. Maybe you'll light a cigarette and let the hot acrid smoke warm you up. You're frozen inside, and not just from the winter. You're waiting. Watching, and waiting. This is the reality of the Cold War.<br /><br />The spy movies of that era would have us believe that for the Communists it was all quaffing vodka, slurping caviar and bedding women. And for Lieutenant Slawomir Borewicz of popular Polish show "07 Zglos Sie" (07 Report In), it was. Especially the women. Borewicz was the no-nonsense dry-humoured cop, the lover <span style="font-style: italic;">and</span> the fighter who floored thugs and ladies in equal measure; eloquent, dapper and handy with his fists. The comparison between 07 and his obvious namesake, 007, are manifold.<br /><br />He was the quintessential Polish hard man, and he drove a Polonez. The two go hand in hand. When other policemen were charging around in smoky old Fiat 125p's, Borewicz could cruise up in his angular Polonez, with its distinctive sharp lines and elegant whiteness, step out of the driver's door and shoot a stony glare that stopped men in their footsteps and undid women's bras from 50 paces. What a hero. What a machine.<br /><br />That's what's great about TV. That wonderful two-dimensional screen can gloss over all the cracks and tarnish that lie on the surface, and never have to show the murky, cold and often harsh reality that lies underneath. The Polonez wasn't glamorous, wasn't glamorous at all; far from it. But that doesn't mean that the cameras can't take something rotten to the core and try to make it a sex object. Which is how the first edition Polonez came to be known as the "Borewicz."<br /><br />Both "07" and the Polonez were government-commissioned projects to tart up something for public relations. In the former case, "07" was an attempt to make the Militcja, the Polish Polish Force, more appealing to the population following incidents where striking factory workers had been shot at and killed by the forces. For the Polonez, the groundwork was to make the stolid Polski Fiat 125p look like a modern machine, something in line with its Western contemporaries.<br /><br />So time to call in that master of sharp lines, Giorgetto Guigiaro, for another square-peg-in-the-round-hole solution. This is the man whose folded-paper technique had already created such iconic machines as the BMW M1 and the Volkswagen Golf, as well as Bond's aquatic automobile, the white Lotus Esprit of <span style="font-style: italic;">The Spy Who Loved Me </span>fame. What Polski Fiat received from such an accomplished designer was one of the cast-off prototypes for the first <a href="http://sticksout.blogspot.com/2009/09/volkswagen-passat-b2.html">Volkswagen Passat</a>. Underneath, everything was the same as the car it was intended to replace. Same Fiat 125 chassis, same Fiat 125 engines, same Fiat reliability, only now dressed up in a pretty hatchback shell riddled with crumple zones to pass American safety tests.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_o3TklBOxC5Y/SXHzpLSDefI/AAAAAAAAAJA/QG3TiQ3jCkQ/s1600-h/FSOPolonezfront.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 225px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_o3TklBOxC5Y/SXHzpLSDefI/AAAAAAAAAJA/QG3TiQ3jCkQ/s320/FSOPolonezfront.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5292278925865744882" border="0" /></a>That's not to say the Polonez couldn't have been a James Bond car; it too was a self-destructive chain-smoker with a drink problem, primarily thanks to the 1.5litre carbed engine. For those who did manage to secure themselves an FSO Polonez (not a Polski Fiat, as the Italians weren't prepared to lend their name to such a product), the feeling was heroic. You were in the most modern car available in Poland. Yes, the horizontal gear stick did protrude straight through the dash into the engine bay, but if you arrived in one, women would open their hearts (and their legs) to you. But it was all a ruse, a clever disguise. Under the sharp cut of that white jacket was something tough and brutal and crude, something that couldn't be trustd. It's therefore rather apt that this abandonned example should be found on a street called Twarda, or Hard.<br /><br />The first Polonezes were churned out of the Warsaw FSO factory just a few kilometres upriver from here in 1978, with the name plucked from a readers poll in a popular newspaper. Despite the antique mechanicals (the Fiat 125p was already ten years old at this point) there were <span style="font-style: italic;">some</span> modern touches, like foglights, seatbelts and a rev counter. But most of this was just gloss; in actuality, because of the strikes and period of Martial law, the 125p was produced alongside the Polonez for thirteen years, until being phased out in 1991, which meant that an awful lot of part sharing had to be done to make production efficient and, of course, cheap. But despite having that shadow of an older brother looming over its shoulder, the Polonez did benefit from a few periodical upgrades. The rear quarterlights on the C-pillars mark this one out as an MR'87 or "Aquarium" model, the first major body revision for the car in eight years. Well, that and a tiny little flick at the bottom of the tailgate, to glue the "1.5 SLE badge onto.<br /><br />In the end, the Polonez proved to be more Bond than Borewicz. While the tough Lieutenant retired from our screens in 1987, the Polonez instead went through a transition (a la Sean Connery to Roger Moore), with the bodyshell refaced in 1991 to become the Polonez Caro; a slightly smoother, softer version (with Ford, Rover and Peugeot engines to choose from) that continued on until 2002 with essentially the same 125p floorpan. Far more of those more modern Daewoo-subsidised Polonezes can still be seen on the roads today, but for this grizzled old stalwart, the road is run; rust is a major issue, and FSO workers were often not given gloves whilst handling body panels. This is 07, Reporting Out.Richard Tathamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06002386845513033206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9148510170346130773.post-84544009720878227782009-10-30T16:30:00.006+01:002010-04-20T07:48:47.868+02:00Renault 5 Campus / Renault Express<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUfOycjlJINK5USNKagFRFbLo8jXuOf_9CtZ93NvIdDvRxvkrSY5IkEuUf9SFh9qKjQ2qsvR_Ka6I_BDz7u4cv2diftK-iRl3wc82aUDVL4GH4BKZmL8ovBDw44N_siZ_JQBV5TVze59If/s1600-h/Renault5fl.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 225px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUfOycjlJINK5USNKagFRFbLo8jXuOf_9CtZ93NvIdDvRxvkrSY5IkEuUf9SFh9qKjQ2qsvR_Ka6I_BDz7u4cv2diftK-iRl3wc82aUDVL4GH4BKZmL8ovBDw44N_siZ_JQBV5TVze59If/s320/Renault5fl.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5292285887831915202" border="0" /></a>Do you remember that first love? The awkward sloppy kiss at the school disco, or that first band where you bought all their albums and had their posters on your wall. Or, most importantly, that first car that you polished and washed and cleaned and then filled up with McDonald's wrappers before crashing it into a tree.<br /><br />Ten, twenty, thirty years later, you're all grown up and you drive something sober and serious, you listen to established bands and you're married. But you never let go of that first love, that youthful spark of joie de vivre, that running around without a care in the world. You were young, you had no sense of taste or style but that didn't matter; you were just having fun.<br /><br />You know it was a silly fling, you know the flaws of that relationship and that it would never work out. But sometimes, you catch yourself on your favourite auction site, just checking up on the prices of that first car, just making sure it's still available, out there, yours if you want it.<br /><br />For many, that feeling is reserved for the Renault 5. Not for me personally, of course (I do have a modicum of taste), but there's been at least one hot hatch in our lives that we hark back to with a wistful look in our eye. And this was Hot Hatch that started it all. There's no need to go into the details of how the R5 came to be and how much it owes to the Renault 4, as there are a thousand fan sites out there documenting every element of the R5's conception. Suffice to say that, as early as 1972, Renault had got the recipe just right, and launched the supermini to rapturous applause and years of successful sales followed.<br /><br />It can be difficult to comprehend just how perfect the Renault 5 was; indeed, the only criticism that could be levelled at it, and somewhat unfairly, was that it only three doors rather than five - something that should have been brushed aside with a Gallic scoff but, with the Volkswagen Golf and Honda Civic both boasting more than four doors, Renault needed to get back into the game. Their first market of young professionals had grown up and had kids, and they expected their Renault 5 to grow up with them, so in 1978 they established the supersecret Project 140, and assembled a number of prototypes ranging from the futuristic to the communistic in terms of taste, none of which appealled to the consumer, who just wanted a Renault 5 with five doors.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_o3TklBOxC5Y/SXH5_L0c_7I/AAAAAAAAAKo/LjzJnyXBq1U/s1600-h/Renault5side.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 225px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_o3TklBOxC5Y/SXH5_L0c_7I/AAAAAAAAAKo/LjzJnyXBq1U/s320/Renault5side.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5292285901036912562" border="0" /></a>So in 1984, Renault did just that. No changes, no modifications, they just carried on making the Renault 5, only this time it was called the Superfive or rather, SuperCinq. It excelled itself.<br />Of course, there were upgrades to the original design, not least the engine range which for such a simple car was simply phenomenal. Starting at a mere 950cc, the R5 had a full 1.7litre shoehorned under the bonnet at one stage offering 95 horsepower, more than double that of the smallest engine. That's not including the unique rally version, which had the engine behind the drivers seat and planted 400hp to the wheels.<br /><br />This passion for uniqueness is peculiar to Renault, and their fondness for Limited Editions, saw the Supercinq adorned with 34 different varieties of Eighties-style dayglo decals in triangular fonts with palm trees. This particular little unit is a Campus Edition, which means nothing in itself but gives a little clue about the origins of the beast. It's not French.<br /><br />After 18 years, the Renault 5 was getting on a bit and younger, more dynamic engineers were working on the Clio with all its va va voom and variable valve timing and other mechanical wizardry modern teenagers drool over. But the Renault 5 couldn't just be cancelled; it had become a class icon, especially amongst urban youths venturing to university. So the entire production was transplanted to Slovenia, where they continued making the Renault 5 at the same time as its successor, only pulling the plug in 1996. For any other car manufacturer, this would be madness; offering a car for sale when you've already made its replacement, but the love affair with the Renault 5 was so strong that it just couldn't be forgotten. Those Nineties Campuses all rolled out into the Mediterranean sunshine, which may explain why this one still looks so shiny.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiarrceEaJXew21A_3vphVKo-Yy45i0UgAjek9Pr5_pHxBWCLkyKu44y8NUdgarNUW_8Nv2pOXiTbFe_5_BVJYJiZ-ZekodsSyEtgdBWycRW7zKndaj5GwQqoaqsqqP7o5f4f_ptWvMlnQW/s1600-h/RenaultExpressfl.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 303px; height: 227px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiarrceEaJXew21A_3vphVKo-Yy45i0UgAjek9Pr5_pHxBWCLkyKu44y8NUdgarNUW_8Nv2pOXiTbFe_5_BVJYJiZ-ZekodsSyEtgdBWycRW7zKndaj5GwQqoaqsqqP7o5f4f_ptWvMlnQW/s320/RenaultExpressfl.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5292287432024858802" border="0" /></a>But there's also that blot on the Supercinq's history and that's the Renault Express. An ugly little van botched together from a Renault 5 and a horsebox, it's like a Supercinq with stretchmarks; something so bad that even with its windows left open, no-one wanted to steal it. It was a foray into the market of MPV, where the Renault 5 really grew up, into the fat wife with three kids instead of the cute girl you had a crush on all those years ago.Richard Tathamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06002386845513033206noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9148510170346130773.post-89145760310421084182009-09-30T16:53:00.010+02:002010-04-16T14:07:22.469+02:00Volkswagen Passat B2<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaYVM2UCBMP_qecd0pp7n8Jme6y3DwSaEBUoBDpIwKGffDupGDxdgFTqSCYrBsv5YtXAB1dCkGmNZ5xWgFvl5Fx4WzSqL0FtrujEfmiPtqcQFXFVPOtfY9e7O7NVgRAu3WpB-LG892uA90/s1600-h/VWPassatB2fr.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 225px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaYVM2UCBMP_qecd0pp7n8Jme6y3DwSaEBUoBDpIwKGffDupGDxdgFTqSCYrBsv5YtXAB1dCkGmNZ5xWgFvl5Fx4WzSqL0FtrujEfmiPtqcQFXFVPOtfY9e7O7NVgRAu3WpB-LG892uA90/s320/VWPassatB2fr.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5292291591161563986" border="0" /></a>Germans have a funny habit of taking things over. I'm not quite sure what propels them to do it, but there must be some inward drive that forces them to interfere, to meddle. Yes, their way of doing things is probably more efficient than yours, it'll be the most reasonable, the most <span style="font-style: italic;">logical</span> way of achieving a Solution, sorry, solution, but it'll be so pragmatic that it won't be enjoyable. Like when playing the board game Monopoly, Germany is the father who insists all fines go to the bank, rather than to Free Parking. It's what the rules say, but it's just no fun.<br /><br />When it comes to playing monopoly, Volkswagen are pretty good. Having earned a fortune with their childish Beetle, they aquired Auto Union and NSU, and by the Seventies the mighty conglomerate were just cottoning on to the idea that air-cooled engines just weren't that cool at all, especially not when it comes to big family cars. They'd aquired NSU's big family car, the K70, and were building that alongside their own air-cooled monster, the VW Type 4. But the public just weren't buying them. They weren't really playing with the Audi F103 either; in fact, despite having factories all over Germany making big saloons, the public were just uninterested in the toys Volkswagen were making. People needed something practical, serious, functional, reliable; they wanted four cylinders up front, four gears on the floor, four wheels and four doors. Nothing more.<br /><br />Volkswagen took notice, and all the silly Sixties eccentricities like air-cooled, two-stroked and rear-mounted engines were out the window. In their place, VW developed Platforms, a production technique where the fundamental mechanicals and chassis of a vehicle remain the same, while the outer skin can be warped and shaped into two distinct products, in this case the Audi 80 and the Volkswagen Passat.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_o3TklBOxC5Y/SbKDNyyo47I/AAAAAAAAAQU/HizSxob7WQA/s1600-h/VWPassatB2side.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 226px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_o3TklBOxC5Y/SbKDNyyo47I/AAAAAAAAAQU/HizSxob7WQA/s320/VWPassatB2side.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5310451183618941874" border="0" /></a>Leap forward to the beginning of the Eighties, and you'd be amazed at how much VAG, the newly-named Volkswagen Audi Group, has advanced. From pottering post-war rotters they'd built a powerhouse of sharp-lined city slickers (the Golf and <a href="http://sticksout.blogspot.com/2009/01/vw-jetta-a1.html">Jetta</a>), superb sportsters (the <a href="http://sticksout.blogspot.com/2008/06/volkswagen-scirocco.html">Scirocco</a> and <a href="http://sticksout.blogspot.com/2009/02/audi-ur-quattro-10vt.html">Audi Quattro</a>) and their big Audi 100 saloon was popular with the monied classes. Even the Audi 80 was selling admirably. But something was up with the platform-sharing Passat B1; where the Audi had sporty GT trim options, the Passat was a slug, crippled by 1.3 and 1.5 engine options that struggled to propel the heavy beast up to autobahn speeds. Where the market had previously demanded prudence, Volkswagen had pushed that to levels of parsimony, and Passat sales suffered for it.<br /><br />So, when the B2 platform was announced, and the Audi 80 was logically upgraded to more modern engines and suspension and brakes, the remarkable decision was taken to do the same with the Passat. Even though Audi had a Sedan, a Coupe and an Estate, sorry, sorry, <span style="font-style: italic;">Avant</span>, in their range, someone somewhere figured it made sense to duplicate all of that and give it the Passat name. Which leads us to this motley selection of B2 Passats dotted around Warsaw; used, abused and unloved.<br /><br />The thinking behind this manufacturing masterstroke was that Volkswagen didn't want to jeopardise Audi's reputation as a luxury brand, which is why the Audi B2 Avant never made it onto the production line. The market need for a family saloon with a big box wedged on the back fell instead on the shoulders of the B2 Passat, which became known as the Passat Variant, and is the most popular of all the old Passats still rattling around. Released onto an unsuspecting world in 1981, it quickly fell to the bottom of the VAG stable, surpassed in almost every aspect by its siblings.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_o3TklBOxC5Y/S8gikaMrruI/AAAAAAAAASk/QIU7MVTMyMI/s1600/VWPassatB2Coupeside.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 280px; height: 213px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_o3TklBOxC5Y/S8gikaMrruI/AAAAAAAAASk/QIU7MVTMyMI/s320/VWPassatB2Coupeside.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5460652557089877730" border="0" /></a>The Coupe version, for example, was incomprehensible. With the Golf, Scirocco and Audi Coupe swamping the market, where on earth was the rationale behind selling an outmoded curvy "fastback"? And the Passat was anything but fast; even the tiny 1.6 diesel engine from the Golf found its way under the bonnet, and that feeble 54hp took 22seconds to get the car to 60mp/h. Fortunately, Volkswagen realised just what a ridiculous model the Passat Coupe was, and withdrew it in 1985.<br /><br />But the Sedans and Variants marched onwards, achieving a global presence, if not dominance, under the names Quantum, Santana, Carat and Corsar. Their bog-standard trim, frugal fuel consumption and unassuming presence earned them a place with price-conscious consumers in developing countries like Brazil and China, where they are <span style="font-style: italic;">still in production today</span>. In Europe, thankfully, the entire B2 platform was shelved in 1988 and the old Passat quickly and quietly swept under the carpet or, in these cases, behind the Curtain.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_o3TklBOxC5Y/SXH_KkVt2JI/AAAAAAAAAMg/tE__d3BQqTY/s1600-h/VWPassatB2side.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 225px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_o3TklBOxC5Y/SXH_KkVt2JI/AAAAAAAAAMg/tE__d3BQqTY/s320/VWPassatB2side.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5292291594155579538" border="0" /></a>Maybe I'm a bit harsh on these old wagons. They were practical rather than pretty, and their function for many low-end consumers was unquestionable. But you need to have some fun if you want to have function; the Audi and VW might be playing on the same board, but they're definitely playing by different rules.Richard Tathamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06002386845513033206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9148510170346130773.post-85494668607860396232009-09-11T15:59:00.000+02:002010-04-15T19:56:31.138+02:00Polski Fiat 126p<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_o3TklBOxC5Y/SXHynzVsZlI/AAAAAAAAAIg/S8TaMCVEc64/s1600-h/Fiat126front.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 239px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_o3TklBOxC5Y/SXHynzVsZlI/AAAAAAAAAIg/S8TaMCVEc64/s320/Fiat126front.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5292277802747061842" border="0" /></a>Matka Polka is a wonderful phrase. Translated it simply means Polish Mother, but so much is lost in that little translation that an entire article is needed to describe such an enormous idea. All the culture, all the vitality, all the history of a nation, encapsulated into a tiny phrase that itself is applied to the perfect role model for generation upon generation of Poles.<br /><br />During all the many trials and occupations in Polish history and the terrible loss of all the fighting young men, it was the Polish Mothers who were responsible for passing on all that Polishness onto their children; making sure that their offspring grew up knowing exactly what it meant to be Polish.<br /><br />In the Polski Fiat 126p, Matka Polka did herself proud. Known affectionately as the "Maluch" or "Baby", the Little Fiat sums up everything for Communist-era Poles; every memory, every event, every story has a Maluch in the background.<br /><br />Paint the picture. It's the early 1970's, and Communism is in full swing. Big concrete blocks everywhere, heavy control over every aspect of life, massive and rapid price increases for simple items; it was not a good place to be. Even owning something so fundamental to western culture like a car was limited; the few <a href="http://sticksout.blogspot.com/2009/01/fsm-syrena-105.html">Syrenas</a> or <a href="http://sticksout.blogspot.com/2008/06/fso-warszawa-223-estate.html">Warszawas</a> that trickled out of the factories were granted to only the most ardent Party supporters. Poles became restless, and vented their fury in a serious of protests and riots that led to 42 deaths and countless wounded. The fallout led to the resignation of the First Secretary, Gomulka, to be replaced with the dynamic young face of one Edward Gierek. He offered a modern Poland, where consumer goods would not be so heavily limited, and specifically offered the cornerstone of modern mobile population; a cheap car.<br /><br />The Little Car That Could was a triumph. In a deal scraped together with Fiat of Italy, Polski Fiat purchased the rights to manufacture the 126 from new under its own name, and the two countries started pumping out the 600cc motor with surprising speed. But while the Italian invention was simply a replacement for the more iconic Fiat 500, the Polish product was a character in its own right; its identity became twinned with Gierek's new, modern, urban Poland of consumerism. The car itself was something completely new; not a rehashed unit built on old mechanicals but a proper Turin-fresh design that looked 1970s, drove 1970s, smelt 1970s. It was a beautiful bouncing baby.<br />Like any growing family, having a Maluch was a commitment. Workers scrimped and saved for years to buy one, and when they did the Maluch became a member of the family, a loved companion and faithful friend that would be expected to live with you for years and years.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_o3TklBOxC5Y/SXHyod3ptUI/AAAAAAAAAIo/jatzBgoLHLc/s1600-h/Fiat126rear.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 239px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_o3TklBOxC5Y/SXHyod3ptUI/AAAAAAAAAIo/jatzBgoLHLc/s320/Fiat126rear.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5292277814163780930" border="0" /></a>Many did. Despite being a city car, those 12-inch wheels carted Poles to Zakopane for winter holidays in the mountains, to Hel and Swinoujscie for summers by the beach, and up down the spine of Poland as city workers visited their village-based mothers every Easter. It was the epitome of freedom, the sign of a New Poland being born.<br /><br />The next steps of that rebirth are well-known; the money Gierek used to fuel his industrial renaissance was borrowed heavily from the West with heavy interest, and was grossly mis-spent by the central authorities, leading in a straight line to the firing of workers, the Gdansk shipyard strikes of 1980 and the rise of Solidarity. But in the background of all this; the rise, the fall, the martial law, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the freedom of Poland, the Fiat 126p chugged on; that little icon of Polishness encapsulating all that pluck and grit and we-won't-die hardcore attitude that Poland is so admired for.<br /><br />In 1987, the fifteen-year-old motor came of age. In a fitting analogy of teenage hormones, the old air-cooled motor was changed for a 700cc water-cooled unit, and the 126p became the 126-bis. But this and another <span style="font-style: italic;">eight hundred</span> modifications to the car were short lived; over-heating forced the 126-bis out of production in 1991; in that way, the bis can be seen as the emo, black-nail-varnish Fiat. More power, more grunt, but a lot more tempremental with it. But you know, with kids, it's just a phase, and the 126p soldiered on. In 1997, at the age of 25, the name Maluch was officially adopted by the manufacturer for the car in recognition of the warm place in Poles hearts it had earned. In 2000, at the grand age of 28, the Fiat 126p finally moved out of its parents' spare bedroom and into retirement, leaving behind over 3million examples of its progeny.<br /><br />Any Matka Polka would be proud of the little baby that blossomed under Poland's nuturing care, and the sight of two such children huddled together on a side street, ten years after production ended, still puts a smile on many Poles' faces. Everyone has one tale to tell of a family trip, or a first car, or a first kiss in the back seat of one of these machines. Such a little car meant so much, to so many.Richard Tathamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06002386845513033206noreply@blogger.com2