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Ford Granada Mark II

2010-06-25T19:10:00.015+02:00

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.

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.

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.

The car itself was standard fare, with the straight lines and large cabin space a known formula, proven to have worked on both the Cortina and the Escort, which is no surprise considering the brainpower that had gone into them. 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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

Renault 4 GTL

2010-06-17T16:53:00.008+02:00

"Another glass, Jean-Jacques?"

"Merci, mais non, I 'ave to get zees onions to ze market for tomorrow morning."

"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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 Citroen Visa and Renault 5. 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?

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.

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.

Volvo 480 Turbo

2010-06-10T16:50:00.007+02:00

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.

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.

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."

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Unlike the cumbersome and wallowing Volvo 200 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.

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.

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.

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.

Zaporozhets ZAZ-968

2010-06-02T17:43:00.012+02:00

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Zaporozhets was such a cheap car that, when exported, it still cost less than the Skoda 105 or the Fiat 126, 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 GAZ Volga 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.

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 Trabant or the Syrena. 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.

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 ZAZ Tavria. And with its demise, a worthy enemy, or charismatic ally, passed into legend.

Bentley Turbo R

2010-05-25T19:06:00.008+02:00

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 Lancia Volumex 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Lancia Delta GT i.e

2010-05-17T15:11:00.004+02:00

The word "rally" conjures up a number of images, mostly political leaders shouting furiously at

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 Scirocco, Passat, Jetta and Golf are his ideas, if you're looking for someone to blame, along with Poland's Pride, the FSO Polonez. 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 Audi Quattro, whose name is synonymous with the word "rally".

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.

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.

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.

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 Fiat 132. 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.

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.

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.

Austin 1800 Mk I ADO17

2010-05-09T21:07:00.010+02:00

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Ford Econoline Club Wagon XLT

2010-05-02T16:46:00.008+02:00

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

When the Ford Econoline was released in the States in 1961, it took the van world by storm, much as its sister, the Ford Transit, 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

And as the sun sets, from my own wobbly, scruffy armchair, I raise my beer to that.

Audi 100 C2 5S

2010-04-25T19:12:00.007+02:00

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.

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.

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.

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.

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, Mercedes W123. 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.

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.

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 Volkswagen Passat 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.

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 BMW E23 a serious run for their money both in the luxo-barge market and on the autobahns in general.

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.

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.

Citroen Visa 17RD/ C15

2010-04-17T15:25:00.018+02:00

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.

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.

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.

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 je ne sais quoi" deserves to be shot, as with Citroen you know exactly what it was. It was madness.

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!"

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 Voiture Diminuee was a similar supermini based on Peugeot's successful 104, which had been released in 1972, prior to the takeover.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

VAZ 2104 / Lada Riva Estate

2010-04-11T15:16:00.008+02:00

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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".

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.

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.

The 2104, or Riva Estate, is rendered in Russian as "Четвёрки" and translates as "Quartet", a charmingly musical name for a car shaped

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

BMW E31 8-series

2010-04-03T15:29:00.006+02:00

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.

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.

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.

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.

The BMW E31 (yes, the next model after the E30), was nothing less than a supercar. Penned as a replacement for the ageing 6-series coupe, the E24 (two-door sister of the E23), 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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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...

Fiat Bertone X1/9

2010-03-28T16:55:00.011+02:00

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.

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.

The more radical the experiment, the bigger the bang. 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.

The year as a whole was filled with experiments; the Turin-based automaker had already released the rolling-skate Fiat 126 and the urban cruiser Fiat 132 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.

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.

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.

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). 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 Lancia Trevi.

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.

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 Saab Sonett 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.

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 Fiat 126. 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.

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.

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.

Skoda Favorit 135

2010-03-11T11:38:00.008+01:00

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.

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.

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.

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 Skoda 105 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.

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 ZAZ Tavria, 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.

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.

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.

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.

Renault 9 1.4/ Renault 11 TXE

2010-03-07T15:27:00.020+01:00

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.

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.

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.

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.

Opron had been the creative force behind some of the most majestic French vehicles in existence, most importantly the Citroen SM and the Citroen CX, 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 VW Jetta 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.

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.

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 Volkswagen Passat and the Opel Ascona.

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.

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 Phase 2 did nothing to imbue them with any charm borrowed from the revamped Renault 5. 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.

Ford Escort MkIII 1.6D

2010-02-09T16:01:00.008+01:00

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

GAZ-24 Volga Mk II

2010-01-20T16:50:00.008+01:00

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 Ladas, 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 Homo sovieticus. 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.

The Russian concept of the luxurious Volga started with the GAZ-21, 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.

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 RAF Latvija 2203 van with varying amounts of success, with the drivetrain surviving unchanged well into the Nineties.

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.

Subaru Libero

2010-01-05T16:44:00.019+01:00

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.

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.

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 Kei-class trucks; Kei 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.

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.

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 Kei-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.

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.

These sorts of technological advances epitomise the Kei-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.

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 Kei-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.

Mercedes-Benz W126 560SEC

2009-12-05T16:23:00.007+01:00

Money. Big fat dirty piles of the stuff. Cash, notes, coins, cheques, shares, bonds, futures, drafts and derivatives. And gold.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 month. 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.

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.

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.

FSO Polonez MR'87

2009-11-20T16:03:00.014+01:00

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.

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 and 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.

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.

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."

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.

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 The Spy Who Loved Me fame. What Polski Fiat received from such an accomplished designer was one of the cast-off prototypes for the first Volkswagen Passat. 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.

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.

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 some 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.

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.

Renault 5 Campus / Renault Express

2009-10-30T16:30:00.006+01:00

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.
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.

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.

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.

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.

Volkswagen Passat B2

2009-09-30T16:53:00.010+02:00

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 logical 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.

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.

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.

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 Jetta), superb sportsters (the Scirocco and Audi Quattro) 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.

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, Avant, 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.

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.

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.

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 still in production today. 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.

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.

Polski Fiat 126p

2009-09-11T15:59:00.000+02:00

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.

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.

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.

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 Syrenas or Warszawas 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.

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.
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.

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.

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.

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 eight hundred 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.

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.

BMW E30 325iX Touring

2009-08-31T08:27:00.009+02:00

Right, yes, sorry, it's been a while. I'd love to say that this was because I sold my car and therefore felt hypocritical writing about others', but in actually it was just summer-inspired laziness.

This new flurry of activity must indicate something then. Actually, two things. Firstly, the poetic crumbling of leaves that indicates the beginning of Autumn, and the far more important factor that I bought another car.

Having previously owned an Audi (and therefore, by default, a Volkswagen) and a Mercedes, I decided to top off the German family by buying a BMW. But I'm not quite sure which one I've ended up with.

The one in the photos here is definitely an E30. This means that it was the 30th Entwicklung (design, basically) from the BMW studios, and specifically the second incarnation of their incredible 3-series of baby sedans, leaping forward from the roaring success of the shark-nosed E21 that had opened the market for small executive cars. But that's about where my certainty ends.

The E30 was designed and launched at the peak of the yuppy era; 1985, when everyone west of Berlin was snapping their braces against their pinstripe shirts and yelling "BUY! SELL! BUY!" into their massive portable phones. There was absolutely no way this brand of vehicle (including what's said about BMW drivers) was going to find a buyer in Poland; even the most corrupt bureaucrat wouldn't be stupid enough to display his wealth in this kind of style. Therefore, the only way a mid-80s tycoon saloon could end up here is in the murky world of grey-market imports.

Around 2004, when the EU border ballooned and absorbed Poland, a floodgate of cheap mechanical rubbish rapidly became available to those who had the ready cash to buy it. Remembering that the Germans will mortgage a kidney to afford a new car every three years, the second-hand market over there was bloated; five-year-old motors with only a few kilometres on the clock were selling for little more than scrap value, and the practical Kraut approach to business made form-filling and international transactions a doddle. And Germany actively encouraged Poles to export their junk; it added another rung to the bottom of the car trade ladder, and meant that Germany could bypass the increasingly stringent rules on car recycling and waste processing. Ho ho, das ist gut, let ze Poles deal viz ze problem, ya. Hans was chuckling all the way to the bank, and a village-born Pole could get his hands on the western motor his father could only dream about.

Which is how an utter Frankenstein like this BMW would trickle its way across the border. I'd been looking for an E30 for a few months, and every example I'd seen so far was either a turbo diesel with a blown turbine, a dog-slow 1.6 (autumn mist accelerates faster) or the excellent Invisible Edition, where you turn up to someone's house to view the car and he's not in. And his phone is switched off. At this point I'd given up any hopes of being picky or economical, and was snooping around for the wallet-draining 2.5litre 170hp thunderwagon, when I got emailed an advert to this car.

Not only was it diamond black, and had that luscious burbling six-cylinder lump under the messerschmit nose, but it was an iX. X! BMW's tentative foray into the Quattro-busting all-wheel-drive market; an exceptionally rare version of an incredible car, and often loaded with all the optional goodies too. And the price was unbelievably cheap. Deceptively cheap. I should have known, really.

I was at the buyer's house 24 hours later, in central Pomerania, being raced around a medieval city in a tatty white Fiat by a greying old Communist factory worker and his sausage dog, who offloaded me outside an unassuming lock-up where the car was stored. Examining it for the usual flaws and failings, the old tyres were kicked, rust picked at and fluids checked. Then it was time for dirty knees to check the underbelly mechanicals.

A gearbox and engine are the first things you look for, and yes, they were there. And if you've ever driven a BMW, you should know that there's a massive metal pole under the car sending power to the back wheels. That was there too. And the rear diff, sending that power sideways to each rear wheel. But this was an iX, supposedly. There should have been a front diff too, and drive shafts to each wheel to make them turn. They weren't there.

"This isn't an iX."
"Yes it is."
"No it isn't, there's no front drive shafts."
"I don't know about that, I'm not a mechanic, but look at the paperwork. 325iX."

I looked. Yes, the paperwork said it was a 325iX. A 325iX with an engine capacity of 1996cc, or a good half-litre less than it should have. Now normally this would send alarm bells ringing in the mind of any buyer who hasn't had a gearbox dropped on their head, but I'd travelled all this way, the car wasn't a 1.6 and it wasn't invisible. With standards that low, I was still interested, so we went for a test drive.

We burbled around town to test the brakes and warm up the engine before heading for the town bypass for a swift blat to get her up to speed. And by the time the speedo showed me we were thumping along at 100kmh on the skinny old winter tyres, I was already charmed. The M20 six-cylinder engine under the bonnet was free-revving and gurgling happy at cruising speed. It wouldn't wheelspin, but for a comfortable bruising cruiser, this not-quite 325 was already putting a smile on my face. But negotiations still had to be done on the price.

Summers are frequently damp in Poland, roads are new, and most Poles really have no idea to handle a roundabout. I'm English. We invented roundabouts. I knew what I was doing here.
The bypass terminated at a roundabout, and the owner suggested I turn around and head back the way we came. Which sounded good. It sounded even better to take that roundabout at a little over 60kmh in third gear, just to see how the four-wheel-drive system would cope.

At this point, I'd love to paint a magnificent picture of tyre squeal, edge-of-traction drifting and cars veering to either side with their horns blasting, but that just wouldn't be true. More accurately would be the ever-so-gentle sideways spiral we described in the outside lane as the back end stepped out and I fumbled with the slow slow slow power steering rack to compensate. I failed. Facing the oncoming traffic (there wasn't any) I looked at my passenger and reminded him;

"It's not an iX, is it."

I got 1000zl off the asking price.

I'm extremely grateful that I did. Having got the thing home and consequently torn it apart to build a repair list, the amount of Polish bodgework is both frightening and admirable at the same time. From the home-installed LPG system (which lasted all of a week before being ripped out for potential fatalites) to the piece of wood where the rear electric window motor should be, this car has had a lengthy and scarred history at the hands of owners who could not afford to maintain it. Such is the peril of owning a car like this, where even the smallest in BMW's range commanded prices of 12,000GBP for the four-door when new, and 17,000 for the estate; that's around 40,000GBP in today's money. Little wonder that Poles would wait for 15 years of depreciation to kick in before trying to get their hands on one. But even with the price reduced to its barest minimum, the murky supposition that the car has not actually had its mechanicals stripped, and is in fact a 320i and had an identity transplant, shows the darker side of this inter-EU exchange. "Come to Poland," ran an early '90s tourist witticism, "your car's already here." Stolen cars could disappear behind the Iron Curtain, where paper-based systems and non-centralised regional offices guarantee any vehicle's identity be lost beneath the rubber stamps and endless photocopies of bureaucracy.

For all that, the sharp-lined E30 was an instant classic, and the Touring even more so. Conceived by bored workers from a 2-door shell and the back half of a Volkswagen Golf, the Touring was cobbled together by bored factory workers to shuttle parts around. The story goes that passing executives were so impressed by the sporty-looking hearse that its own production line in the 5-series factory in Dingolfing was established for the more luxurious motor. Those original 2-door tourings are rarer than any other E30 (only three are known to exist), but even the humblest Tourings earned respect for their stiffer shells, all-round disc brakes and better suspension all round.

Add to that list the leather interior and turbine alloys I sympathetically upgraded to, and I can kid myself that I didn't really want an iX anyway. And once you've gone round a roundabout steering through the side window, you quickly realise, Quattro ist fur sissies.

GAZ M21 Volga

2009-03-24T20:17:00.010+01:00

Step out of Warsaw Central Station and one of the most noticeable buildings you'll see is a 200m colossus of sandstone reminiscent of the Empire State Building, imparted as a gift by the Russians in 1955. Its proper name is the Palace of Culture and Science, but it is (un)affectionately known as the Wedding Cake. It's a monstrous construction that for the last half-century has loomed over the Varsovian skyline, and has only recently been humbled by the constant upthrusting of more modern skyscrapers on the surrounding vacant plots.

Western tourists don't usually see the disharmony between the Russian-built Palace and the surrounding city, as it's all too easy to lump in all the ex-Bloc countries (of which Poland is the largest) under the moniker of 'Russia'. My old primary school geography book didn't help; its crudely-sketched map of Europe carried a clean black swipe of ink somewhere from Nothern Poland to the Black sea, and everything to the right of that was a massive bloody sprawl of garish red, and that charming legend, U.S.S.R. The R was for Russia, we were erroneously informed, and thus a generation was conceived that couldn't see any distinction between Russia, Communism and the Soviet Republic.

Now, should you happen to voice your ignorance in public, the following weeks spent recuperating in a Polish state hospital should ensure you never refer to Poles as Commies, Ruskies or Soviets ever again, especially considering Poland was never included as part of the U.S.S.R. Loathe as they may the Germans for their wartime atrocities, a far more powerful word for the hatred they harbour against the Russians is required. It's unjustifiable in the forgive-and-forget 21st century culture we're supposed to be living in now. but nevertheless, Poles are almost sadistically proud of the abhorence they feel towards their East Slavonic cousins, which makes encountering an almost beautifully preserved example of one of their most iconic motors outside a thoroughly Polish restaurant almost incomprehensible. It would be a bit like having a Kubelwagen parked up outside a Jewish bistro.

The GAZ should feel eerily familiar; if you can remember the Warszawa, the spiritual granddaddy of Polish automobiling, it shares a direct ancestor to the GAZ-21, both being spawned on the back of the previous GAZ, the M20 Pobieda. But whilst the Poles had to make do with churning out M20 clones well into the 1970s, the mightier weight of Mother Russia took the next steps in terms of developing luxury saloons, and the result was the first edition GAZ-21, launched in 1956 and christened after that other symbol of Russia's staggering size, the Volga river which, like my geography books, chases a stark line through western Russia on its way to the Caspian.

It was a sizeable beast, like most things Russian; the Palace remains the tallest building in Poland, after all, and Moscow has seven similar structures.) And unsurprisingly, like the obvious source of inspiration for the Palace, the GAZ borrows heavily from American design cues of the time, albeit delayed by a few years. Where it did differ though, was its posture. Yank-wagons were low-slung wallowing boats designed for the most cushioned ride on the miles of smooth '50s highways being constructed; the Volga instead boasted a massive ground clearance and independant front suspension to cope with the rutted and holed trans-siberian lanes, and phenomenally, a radio as standard to while away the mind-numbing hours it takes to cruise across Kamchatka. There were also some ingenious engineering elements. Some were practical, like having the parking brake operate on the driveshaft rather than the wheels (making the wheel assemblies lighter, good for suspension), and others not so ingenious , like the fourth pedal; an almost ludicrous device that pumped up a central lubrication system for injecting grease onto all suspension and steering joints when needed. That might sound marvellous to start with, guaranteeing supple joints on even the longest journeys, but the downside was the habit of pumping grease all over the city streets as well, which makes a miracle how any of those 30,000 first editions ever survived.

Fast forward to 1962, skipping a generation, and the initial weirdness (like that pedal) and the last remants of any left-over Pobiedan mechanisms have finally been removed, to leave us with the paunchy, punchy motor standing here. If you have never seen a GAZ-21 before, the stylish haunches, massive chrome flashes and the aggressive snarling toothy grill will have you sni faster than you can say "Polyushka Polye". You'll stoop down at the bonnet end to admire the graceful and elegant prancing deer, whilst your finger, lucky person that you are, completely fails to translated the three Cyrillic characters that spell out the acronym of Gorkovsky Avtomobilny Zavod, or the Gorky Automobile Plant of Nizhny Novgorod, through which the mighty Volga river flows. But don't be fooled by the chrome and flash and three-bulb lights; underneath is a tank of a vehicle, rugged enough to chug its way across the entire Union.

Despite the snow and the salt of at least forty winters, this Volga is in unsurprising condition, by which I mean the paintwork is gleaming. One of the best things about these cars was the devotion that went into the metalwork to protect it against those harsh winters, demanding that the 1.1mm thick steel was etched and dipped twice in phosphate, primed, then coated in thick layers of synthetic enamal. Couple that with an iron-lined aluminium engine block and a design so simple you can fix it even when half-blind on home-made vodka, and you've got a true titan of Soviet motoring. In fact, it's a design so rugged that the engine and a fair portion of the mechanicals lived on for a few more decades under the skin of the UAZ-469.

Over its lifespan 640,000 units sauntered out of the N-N factory, and 75% of those were third-series 21's like the one here. A few estates were also cobbled together as the M22, and even an extremely rare, and absolutely terrifying, line of M23s were secretely manufactured. Cosmetically identical, the M23 housed a stomach-churning 5.5L V8 under the bonnet, and was used exclusively by the KGB for covert snooping and snatch-and-grab missions. Not knowing whether the GAZ behind you was an incognito agent who had declared you "disposable" put an added thrill into seeing one. Outrunning one wouldn't be an option; whilst the vanilla M21 had 65horses on tap, the M23 could muster 160hp. One can only be thankful that a mere 603 of these terrifying machines were ever built.

Now, as thrilling as statistics always are to bedroom mechanics, there's one important factor about the Volga that is lost on many. It was the machine that the proletariat aspired to own, a cowering beast of might and labour that promised freedom to move across the vast expanses of the Soviet Union. It replaced the Victory as the true people's car, and yet, considering its launch price of 5100 rubles, less than 2% of the country could afford to buy one.

Even more shocking is that previously quoted production figure of 640k If you want to split hairs, it's 638875, but so many were rehashed from spare parts and homebrew chassis that the real number isn't really known. What IS known, however, is that the only other Russian (not USSR) produced motors at the time, the far more mundane Moskvitches 407, 403 and 408, added up to about 467,000 all told. And you can also forget AutoVAZ, who wouldn't get round to rattling out the Lada Riva until 1970.
Once you've done your number-crunching, it means that, for the entire 1960s, there were only 1.1million cars, give a take a few thousand bloc imports, to serve Russia's 130 million people. That's 0.85% of the population having access to a vehicle, or one car for every 11 people. How's that for some-are-more-equal-than-others?

It is primarily for this reason that the GAZ-21 is such a cultural icon in the ex-USSR; only a car so desirable, yet so unobtainable, could develop into such a cult of personality. But if you have to love the Russians for something, love them for this.

Peugeot 305 SR

2009-03-12T21:08:00.005+01:00

The populace moaned and wailed. Women, clad in black, bawled into handker-
chiefs, sobbing uncontrol-
lably, while the menfolk hung their heads and murmured quiet prayers. Services were held in the wake of the tragedy to pacify the troubled souls affected by the sorrowful events.

1978 was the Year of the 305. Upon its release, the feeling that something great had died was tangible. Even sitting behind the steering wheel gave one an overwhelming sense of loss; it was simply that bad. For every customer that drove away in one, the dealership would light a candle and stand a moment in silence.

Of course, to suggest that floods of women lay wreaths on the streets of Europe for this is possibly the most tenuous link I've ever made. In truth, 1978 was also the Year of Three Popes, as Pope Paul VI passed away and his successor, Jean Paul I, was found propped up in his bed only thirty-three days later, both from heart attacks. Catholics worldwide were quite understandably mournful. Mother Church had been rocked to her very core twice in one year, and there were even rumours of foul play and poisoning over the unexpectedly sudden death of JP1.

From the death of one leading institution to another, and with it, the birth of something else. Following the share buyout of Citroen in 1976, Peugeot had gone on to swallow the debt of the ailing Chrysler-Europe, and with it a most unholy trinity was formed; the anathema to modern motoring that is PSA Peugeot Citroen. This unrighteous terror was embodied in its entirety by the soul-destroying 305. Even looking at one is enough to make you cross yourself.

And thus it was that two groups, Catholics and car-lovers, joined together in weeping at the passing on of something great. From an automotive perspective, the loss of Citroen and the miracles they were able to muster is a pain that French engineering still feels, and modern cars wear their chevrons like stigmata. For the Catholics, of course, there was still hope; aside from the life eternal and the promises that go with it, there was the more pressing earthly concept of electing another Pope to continue the tradition. In that regard Poland was ecstatic, although for reasons possibly selfish rather than truly religious. Cardinal Karol Wojtyla of Krakow was swiftly elected to the Papacy, and thus a new era was ushered in as the first (and so far, only) Polish Pope was inaugurated as Pope Jean Paul II.

Now, at the risk of having my front doors battered down by angered Catholics, I'm well aware that the Popes have done some good things for the world, but advancing the march of modern thought, intellectual freedom and scientific discovery are not high on their list of achievements. Neither can be said for PSA Peugeot, who in the 305 created some sort of motoring limbo; a three-box purgatory devoid of flair and untouched by any sign of a master creator or higher power.

The idea of the 305 was simple; a comfortably normal saloon that would steal market domination from the big leaders like the Ford Cortina, but without being too radical or outre like the Citroen CX. The result was a Eurobox that managed to tick all the boxes on paper, but raised little more than a yawn in the flesh. Mechanically it was a 304, the hatchback-sized runaround that had sidled its way onto the market in the previous decade, whilst the skin was reminiscent of the far more definitive 504. Now, considering Peugeot had accumulated the entire research division of Citroen, as well as the rotting corpse of Chrysler Europe (including the Rootes group, Simca and the Spanish manufacturer Barrieros), is a cobbled together shell of '60s partsbin technology really the best that France could come up with? Where was the march of progress? Where was that sprinkle of herbs that make French produce that little bit more digestable? For the love of all thats holy, even the engine selection was insipid; power for the 305 came from a massive choice of two engines; a 65hp 1.3, or for the SR (that's the luxury version) a 75hp 1.5; both light aluminium blocks, that's true, but mated to little four-speed 'boxes that Peugeot claimed in all serious could get the 305 up to 95mph, but in reality were simply cheap compromises not to rob the far superior 504 of any of its glory.

This battered shell is one of those SRs which, when launched, was more expensive than a 504. Justified as an Executive edition, it came with such opulent extravagances as a tachometer, headrests, one of those stuffed lumps in the middle of the back seat to rest your arms on, and even black rubber strips down the side. Yes, those were "luxury features" not available to the more mundane GL and GT versions. A map light, plus laminated and tinted windows, were also available options, and the French can only rue that they hadn't invented dogging at that point. Or maybe they had. I'd rather not continue that train of thought.

As you can see, Peugeot really pushed the boat out with the 305. Even a facelift in 1982 wasn't enough to make it interesting. Despite all this, sales weren't actually that disappointing - some reviewers even had the audacity to compare it to a contemporary BMW, to which I can only presume their eyes were weeping from an excess of onion vapour.

This is one of the few cars I can think of that should dwell in its own induced limbo for an eternity; not so much for its crimes against motoring, but for being, like an unchristened child, soulless. Let us pray that it is never resurrected.

Ford Transit Mk I/II

2009-03-08T17:01:00.008+01:00

One of the ongoing memories of Communist Poland is that of the shopping experiences. Family members would take it in turns to spend the morning queueing outside the local Spolem shop (a co-operative) to buy whatever it was the shop had in stock that day. Such were the conditions of a shortage economy; people worked and had money, but there was simply nothing to buy except mustard and vinegar. Lots and lots of vinegar, which is why Poles are often so sour about the past. Whatever stamps you had available (like ration cards of the war years) would be used up when they could be, meaning one would stumble home with 24 bars of soap, swapping them with other people in your apartment block for toilet rolls, toothpaste, or whatever had trickled into the consumer supply line over the past month. This also explains why Poles drink so much herbal tea. Under Communism, proper tea is theft. Baddum tish.

So if you did want something other than potatoes and tinned ham, a chain of cash-only stores, called Pewex (a ridiculous acronym of Przedsiębiorstwo Eksportu Wewnętrznego -Internal Export Company) were established by the state bank, for two reasons. One, to appease the increasingly irate populace with access to Coca-cola, jeans and aftershave, whilst also removing foreign currency from circulation. All goods had to be bought with Dollars or German Marks; both illegal at the time, which meant that the bank exchanged those currencies for, effectively, Pevex vouchers.
So in those horrific martial-law days of the Eighties, there would simply be no need for any sort of man-and-van shenannigans. The total produce of Poland was being shipped off to the West to pay off the exorbitant loans the country took out in the Seventies, and therefore goods vans, local supplies and your typical delivery driver dealings were completely redundant.

This should play out as providing the stark contrast needed to understand why Poland never developed the Ford Transit, and why seeing a single Western van, let alone two, is a remarkable event. Yes, the Soviet overlords had deemed it necessary to build vans in the 1960s like the FSD Nysa and FSR Zuk, but even when new those vans were horrendously dated in comparison to Ford's finest. There simply wasn't the entrepreneurial drive (in the legal sense, at least) for a small businessman to require a tough, dependable van to shuttle goods around all day, and certainly not at the levels of ease and comfort that the Transit afforded.

It all started in the mid 60s, when the two Fords of Britain and Germany realized, belatedly, that they had been competing not only with Opel and Rootes but also with themselves, on a number of markets, and especially the commercial. Most vans of this time were, like the Polish equivalents, little more than boxy cubes with an engine up front, resulting in sluggish performance, wallowing vomit-inducing bodyroll under load and a rattly, if not deafening, cabin experience. The Ford Thames, the Transit's precursor, was as guilty of this as all the rest, and thus it was that the prodigal son, Henry Ford 2nd, combined the forces of Britain and Germany to make an all-new model that would push the entire genre forward. Thus it was that, in 1965, the all new Ford Transit rolled simultaneously out of factories in Britain and Germany, straight out to the buyers who between them had placed 3.6million pounds-worth of pre-orders. A phenomenal debut by anyone's standards.

This is waxing lyrical, of course, because it's just a van. Or rather, it's THE van. Transits are the vans that all others compare themselves to; they're the benchmark to which the Bedford CF (or Blitz; Opel cottoned on to the UK/Germany blend idea too, eventually) and Leyland Sherpa could only aspire to. The snub-nosed bonnet was a marked departure from the flat-front (VW Camper style) glazed boxes of the '50s, and made a distinctively American impression on the market, which lent an air of glamour to the proceedings. Add to that Fords insistence on comfort as well as practicality, and you find not just engines taken from Ford's car department, but seats, and soft suspension, bolted onto a ladder chassis and leaving, rear of the cab, a low platform that can be utilized into countless possibilities.

Overall, 18 different bodyshells of the Mk I and II Transits were made available, from flat-bed pickups to cavernous Luton box vans capable of moving a five-year-plan's worth of goods. And with production averaging out at a million units a decade, they really shouldn't be as scarce as they seem to be. Yet wandering around Warsaw's pre-war trade district, the sight of these pig-nosed beasts still comes as a shock. In this case, it was stumbling across two examples from the beginning and end of thier era; A stubbier-nosed late '60s piggish Mk I minibus sits around the corner from a mid '80s long-snouted plasticated long-wheel-base Mk II panel-van. Despite the vast differences in body style, panel shape and facial features, these two generations are effectively the same van, operating with the same underpinnings and moulded around that intrinsic principle of Transits - "I want to cram as much stuff in the back as possible."

And cram they did, until the seams burst. Transits were workhorses, and despite being popular, never endeared themselves in a cutesy sense in the way that the vile Volkswagen T2 did. A popular quoted statistic is that more bank robberies involved Transits than any other vehicle, leaving many to a fate of ending up a burnt-out shell on an industrial estate somewhere. They were battered, abused and worn-out, ending up as diesel-smeared hulks left rotting on back roads or smashed up in banger races. Their time came to an end in 1986, when the far more common wedge-nosed Transit muscled in to take over the reigns, advancing the concept of stuff-lugging even further. Look carefully at the photos and you can even see one cheekily in the background.

I even had a camper version of the Mark I Transit for a few weeks. More body filler than actual body, the V4 engine up front was enough to crawl me up and down the South Downs of England at a steady 70mph, thirty years after it had been first built. It was stolen and crushed a month later (the police giving me little sympathy, what with it not being taxed or insured, but still, it was parked on private land), and I still get fond memories of that bus driver's position and the massive fibreglass shell on the back.

These days, like the Pevex vouchers, their tradable value is relatively worthless, but check out those chrome wingtop mirrors on the MkI. Contemporary vans simply weren't that stylish, and if you can make a van glamorous, you must be doing something right.

Skoda 105S

2009-03-04T16:41:00.008+01:00

The story goes that three brothers, Czech, Lech and Rus, three sons of a dead king, went hunting for land together after receiving a disappointing inheritance. The eldest and strongest, Lech, set up camp in the Eagle's Nest, a lush verdant plain now called Poland. The surly Rus founded Ruthenia, to the east, and if you can't guess which country the wily Czech founded, you might as well stop reading now, turn off the internet and kill yourself.

Occasionally a winged arrow will find itself flung over the Moravian mountains from the Czech Republic to Poland, and will land slap-bang in the middle of the Eagle's Nest. This time around, it's in the form of a the Skoda 105 S.

At a time of ICBMs, microprocessors and fibre-optics, there was little wonder that a company like Skoda would want to produce something modern, advanced, daring enough to tug the little Bohemian firm into the 1970s, and decisions were made to try and replace the S100 range of rear-engined, RWD cars whose technology was considered old-fashioned even when new. The flying green arrow desperately needed updating, but the Commie overlords stamped "nyet" on the paperwork that would allow a more radical design to be implemented. It was felt back at Iron Curtain HQ that a front-engined FWD car would be too modern; yes, it would show the West that Soviets could make cars like if they wanted to, but it would also be an admission of failure. All of the slow, heavy hulking Ladas and Zaporozets, and especially the newly-released Wartburg, would be made to look even more cumbersome if a small Moravian motor started nipping up and down the Carpathians.

And so, instead, the S100 project was carried over to another decade. And another. And another. It did so in Skoda's 742 package, which was the name for the 105 and its sisters, 120 and 125, all introduced in 1976 and running out of steam in 1990, when the company was neutered by those bastards Volkswagen and their broad bland brush.

Considering the adversity of the establishment towards technological advances, its no small feat that Skoda managed to make the 105 as well as it did. Not allowed to bring in any technologies from its bloc-brothers, Skoda were forced into the mend-and-make-do mentality which has oft produced some rather ingenious little designs. The old powerplants from the S100 and 110 were kept, but this time a front-mounted radiator and enough plumbing to make a cow's intestine look simple were hooked up to pump cool water from one end to the other, accompanied by a pleasant gurgle and an in-cabin heating system (whether it was desired or not.)

This little grunter is a 105, which not only hides a wimpy little 1046cc engine behind those forlorn headlamps, but also bears the apologetic S on the rear badge, marketing it as the lowest of all possible trim levels in the entire Skoda range. That is as low as it got at Skoda; an S added to the end of the car, because absolutely everything else had been discluded. Whilst the humorously upmarket 105L (luxury, ho ho ho) got TWO dash clocks (speed and rev) and an interior light, the 105 S made do with a single linear speedo and whatever glow you could get from the oncoming traffic. Oh, and that internal furnace of a heater, which could get the cabin up to 60 degrees, in case you couldn't afford a summer holiday on the Adriatic coast. This is true poverty-spec motoring.

By 1983, all the glorious chromework on the top models had been ditched for dull black plastic, but this car is pre-facelift, being this glum straight from the factory. With its mismatched green bodywork and home-added roofrack, it's obviously led a working life, tramping around with its 46 horses, lugging Czech's produce along broken roads at an adequate, and frugal, pace.

Considering its conception as a begrudging descendant of '60s technology rather than a completely new model, its borne out its long history rather well. Pointing and laughing might have sullied the Skoda name for many a year in the West, but the single factor that even the lowest-trimmed weakest-engined poorest-assembled Skoda is still slogging on 30 years later should cause some critics to re-estimate its true worth in the annals of motoring. When collectors value the most desirable fully-specced editions for prosperity, the humble little 105S can hold its snout high, proclaiming that it doesn't need heated leather seats or a passenger-side wing mirror to make it into the history books.

Mazda 626

2009-02-28T16:21:00.004+01:00

Polish food isn't exactly a culinary wonderworld of delicate tastes and subtleties. There's no light sprinkling of herbs, or rare magic ingredients. Nor are there flamboyant frying pan techniques or bizarre eating habits. In fact, all you need is a couple of root vegetables, and a part of a pig that the pig didn't know it had, warmed up until soft enough not to require teeth and then wolfed down with gusto. Hearty, filling, but never going to earn a Michelin star for services to gastronomy.

The Japanese invasion started with the sushi craze of the mid 1990s, when a few flush businessmen realised that pork and cabbage, breaded pork and cabbage, or pork sausage and cabbage weren't going to dazzle international investors at the working lunch. Now every new office block in the city has a mandatory sushi restaurant inside, serving up raw versions of the fish they catch hundreds of kilometres away.

Of course, it's nothing like real Japanese cooking, in the same way the curries over here are bland watered-down pastes rather than face-searing explosions of spice, because Poles can't stomach anything with too strong a flavour. Hundreds of years of turnips and white bread haven't exposed them enough to the obscure, strange or downright weird. Seeing an old Mazda is therefore an event, if you know a bit about the company.

Most people lump Mazda in with Honda and Toyota as makers of those comfortingly boring boxes that shuttle you from home to work to the shops to home to work to home to the cemetary without requiring anything from the driver in terms of emotion, which seems unfair what with them being, until recently, Ford's experimental test zone for new techonologies. Especially engines.

By the time Mazda had got themselves going as a proper post-war car manufacturer in the 1950s, they took on ideas that would have cowed most Europeans in terms of design. Most importantly they worked with the snigger-inducing Wankel, or rotary, engines. If you don't know what that is, imagine a piece of Toblerone ratting around inside a giant Tic-Tac. No pistons like a regular engine, no up-and-down boxer's-fist motions, just a triange rotating round and round inside a rounded egg, producing (theoretically) THREE TIMES as much power per cylinder, and at less capacity. This means that the 1.1litre 2-rotor engine in the legendary Mazda RX-7 sports coupe was the equivalent of a 2.0 V6, and could kick out 110hp if needed. 110hp from 1.1 litres, at the same time the VW Polo was pumping out 40hp from the same capacity. That is monstrous.

This was scarily advanced for the Americans, who were far more comfortable with pre-war technology like leaf sprung suspension and pushrod engines. Mazda tried to market their motors in the States, but it just wouldn't work; Americans eschewed them on the grounds of, ironically, fuel efficiency and reliability, and thus Mazda (25% Ford at this point) went to work on a more humble machine.

An introduction of this length is something of an apology for the Mazda 626, whose four-cylinder SOHC engine and rear-wheel drive were, strangely, so perfectly suited to American requirements that the innocuous Jap import sold surprisingly well against its competitors the Honda Accord and Toyota Corona. This first-generation 626 was almost exactly like its domestic version, the Mazda Capella; a mid-sized saloon at home but a compact in the States, with plain, unassuming features and a pragmatic approach to motoring. The engine (lowered from 80hp to 75 in the name of cleanliness) was compared in contemporary reviews to BMWs engines for power delivery and smoothness, without requiring a hard Bavarian attitude from the owner. All in all, it was a satisfying mouthful of motoring, but nothing to salivate over.

This 626 sits on knackered tyres with a smashed rear windscreen and a motley selection of rotted seaweed-coloured panels. One original wheel still clings to the rear quarter, but this car is unlikely ever to see road time again. The Japanese's continuous demands for improvements saw the 626 revised year after year, with the first generation facelifted after three years and replaced with a completely new model after five, which makes getting spare parts awkward if nigh-on impossible. Not that its a big loss; I'm a firm believer that Poles need to brighten their lives up a bit, and letting this automotive stodge wallow among the squat '80s blocks it was targetted at seems only fair. As far as tastes go, I'd rather have heartburn than no heart at all.

Audi Ur-quattro 10VT

2009-02-18T09:08:00.005+01:00

You've probably heard the word Quattro at some point over the last 20 years; if not slapped on the back of half of Audi's production run from 1980 onwards, then at least on the menu of your local pizza parlour, followed by the word "formaggio." Whether or not you've heard of "Ur-" before is something else, but as a rule of thumb it represents the sound that comes out of your throat the first time you lay your eyes on an Audi Ur-quattro. Whatever else comes out of your mouth is usually unprintable.

The Ur-quattro is the original layout of the driving system that revolutionised driving as we knew it. Prior to 1980, you had the option of a tried and tested rear-wheel-drive option to push you round corners, or rorty little hatchbacks that had their grunt up front. These two styles of power delivery required two very different driving styles, especially when it came to sports driving where power sliding and Scandinavian flicks were used to throw cars around curves at the highest of speeds.

When you do either of those, you're effectively and deliberately losing traction to make the car spin. You upset the car's grip to make the nose face in the direction you want, then floor the throttle and hope your tyres grip to tug you in the right direction. If you hadn't initiated that spin, and just tugged the steering wheel in the direction you wanted, your immense momentum would just hurtle you onward in a straight line and off a cliff; the downside of which means you don't complete the race and all your mates call you a loser. Not cool. Of course, you could have dabbed the brakes or at least eased off the power, but where's the fun in that? This is a race.

But what if ALL FOUR WHEELS were delivering power? What if every single horsepower your engine could muster could be delivered to the wheels all the time? Then you could just point and squirt, and your front wheels would tug your nose whilst the rears followed though the curve, because you've got twice as much surface to grip you to move you along. And if that curve has snow, or mud, or loose sand, and one wheel starts to slip, what if that system compensated by pushing more power to the other wheels? How cool would that be? Maximum power with maximum grip, all the time. That's where the Urq comes in.

Apart from representing the drooling sound you make when you see one of the Giugiaro-penned oblongs, the Ur- component is German for "original" or "the first." True to their nature, the Germans had realised that this car really was something dramatically new. No other series production car (except the Jensen FF which no-one had heard of) had been granted four-wheel-drive, primarily because the complexity of torque-sensing centre diffs didn't seem to add any advantage to the car's performance, instead sucking way too much power from the engine. Audi overcame that by supplanting a 5-cylinder 10V powerplant under the bonnet; a 2,144cc turbo-charged lump which, as a massive coincidence, just sneaked under the 3-litre limit for Group B rallying (once you take the turbo into account.) With 200hp under the bonnet of even the virgin street versions, it was more than competent for the average driver.

In the rallying world it went down a storm, proving that the added weight and power-loss inherent to more complicated transmissions were more than compensated by the enhanced traction needed to hurl around mountain corners and snowy slopes at ball-shrinking speeds. The car was simply phenomenal, and is still remembered as fondly among rally enthusiasts as the heroes who drove it; Stig Blomqvist, Hannu Mikola, Walter Röhrl, and the only driver whose sexiness equalled the machine, Michèle Mouton.

So it comes as a little shock when, on a surprisingly sunny lunch break, you find one of these leviathans of motoring parked up on perished tyres in a back-street Warsaw housing estate. Peering through the glass, I could make out the digital dash and the awesome pair of diff-lock switches, that give you the ability to lock up a pair of axles so that they act like a normal road car and not an off-roading monster. This is especially useful on fast straights like autobahns, where you want equal power to both sides of the car rather than having one slip all the time (such as on corners.) This allows the Urq to make the best of both worlds, Bahn-storming Monday to Friday and then hurling around Scandinavian gravel at the weekend. Also was the flat black panel of the LCD dash, a knicker-droppingly cool green display to show you just how fast you took that last corner. Ahh, you say, ticking off the items on your Beginners Guide To Amazing Cars, so this Urq was made in 1983. Well done, pat on the back.

I was on my hands and knees nosing around underneath this thing when the owner's mother came out asking what I was up to. Now normally in that situation you'd blush, stammer out an apology or try and bluff your way out of the situation in some way. But for a car like this, I asked outright if the car was for sale.

"No." The reply was simple. She wasn't being rude; there was a smile on her face, that motherly smile of tired exasperation and inward pride. She told me there's a note left on the windscreen at least once a week from people desperate to get their hands on the Urq before it's too late. "One more Polish winter outside and this car will be worthless," I tried to coax her, pleading with my eyes for her to give me the guy's number. She just rolled her own eyes back in the way little old women can sometimes. "I know that. You know that. He knows that too, but my son is an idiot" is what that eyeroll said. Still, she took my number and no-one ever called me back. I'm not really surprised.

Owning any Audi of this style makes you feel part of true motoring heritage, whether it's one of the incomprehensively awesome Sports Quattros that the Urq developed into (basically an Urq with 30cm chopped out of the middle, a steeper front windscreen and a blood-curdling 500hp under the bonnet, plus the most impressive set of spoilers ever to grace a car), or the more mundane Golf-engined Audi Coupes, which shared the same outside skin (minus the flared arches) and none of the mechanicals, meaning you can have all the cool factor with none of the running costs associated with driving a Quattro. Or at least, thats what us Coupe owners say, or said, seeing as I sold mine last week. Which means I'm in the market for another car.

Even with a flush of used notes bulging from my pocket, this Urq would be a serious money pit for any restorer. Putting aside the diabolic state of the exterior (yeah, yeah, it'll buff out) the mechanicals underneath are nigh-on unobtainable these days. With only 11,452 cars produced over 11 years, and all of them driven to their limits, the chances of finding enough spare parts to get this behemoth of Group B rallying back on the road would be a financial nightmare. But if you were to throw any amount of money at a car, it deserves to be an Urq; not simple, but simply one of the greatest advances in motoring in the last 30 years.

GAZ-69 / UAZ-69

2009-02-04T16:07:00.014+01:00

Cruise around most European capitals, and you'll find some monied district where the local residents comb their hair on Sundays, wear trousers with ironed-in creases in the evenings and drive around in massive, pointless 4x4s to take little Tarquin to his judo classes. I'm not starting a class war, but you'd have to be blind to have not noticed the Chelsea-tractor phenomenon of the past decade; manicured and coiffured individuals snorting their way along perfectly smooth tarmac in a car that thinks it's a truck. Designer dirt, and all that.

Not in Warsaw. Yes, there's a district filled with "gated communities" where your nose has to be raised to a particular angle before you can move in, but the SUV invasion hasn't hit yet. Poles, quite simply, aren't that stupid. For a country that's 80% mind-numbingly dull sandy plains, there's very little justification for balloon tyres and two-foot ground clearances, and seeing as Poles would rather eat horses than ride them, you're not going to be towing many horse-boxes around either. Therefore, driving around in a shiny, sporty alloy-wheeled Tonka toy will not impress anyone, at all. Anywhere.

Which means that if you can get your hands on a proper off-roader, there must be a reason, and in Poland, it's that other 20%. The rugged hills of the Carpathians (or Tatra Mountains, as the hills in these parts are known) are a playground of skiing routes, wolf-prowling meadows and gushing streams - perfect for throwing around an ex-military invasionary jeep in.

The brightly-coloured UAZ-69 here is the perfect example of one of those weekend toys. There's no spray-on mud or silly-coloured brake callipers; the whole thing is garishly painted as if Noddy had been conscripted into the Warsaw Pact forces. Because that's what this truck is for - invading. The GAZ/UAZ-69 was Russia's post-war military jeep, the light (in military terms, at least) off-roader conjured up to mobilise the Soviets' post-war troops.

GAZ and UAZ are a pair of automotive manu
-facturers in Russia; GAZ operating out of the sneeze-inducingly named Nizhniy Novgorod, 200 miles east of Moscow, and UAZ being another 200 miles east of there in Ulianovsk. While GAZ might be the more famous of the old Soviet manufacturers, producing anything from cars to trucks to amoured transports, it was UAZ that churned out the largest number of the formidable 69, which is why, if you stare at the bonnet edge in the picture above, you'll see stamped into the metal three Cyrillic letters. Aside from that, UAZ and GAZ 69s are identical.

It's this approach to status symbols that cheers me up about Poland. The locals will whinge and moan about how poor they are, how much Communism shafted them up, how it's just not fair; then they'll buy one of the old military vehicles that terrorised them, paint like a children's cartoon, and rag it up and down the Carpathian foothills chasing sheep, throwing up clouds of dirt and blue smoke from the sidevalve engine, then getting drunk on homemade alcohol. There's such a delicious sense of irony in using one of the ex-overlord's toys for such wanton abandon that it puts a smile on my face to see a GAZ being used in this way.

When it actually comes to troop invasions, you wouldn't really want to depend on a GAZ-69 these days. For a tonne and a half of motor, 55hp is not really going to see you border-hopping the other side of the world any time soon. And if you really rev the nuts off it, you'll get up to 56mph, which in a canvas-topped leaf-sprung motor can be stomach-emptying at best. But the plucky Russians with their if-it-aint-broke attitude churned them out of the UAZ factory until 1972, when it was replaced with the UAZ-469. That left two thirds of a MILLION of the rugged off-roaders rumbling their way around the world, serving in any military force friendly to the USSR. They were the basis of anti-tank units, rocket-platforms, even amphibious cars like the GAZ-46.

So plenty of modifications were available for the old beast, and it's not uncommon for the run-of-the-mill two-door versions (the ones that trickled down to civilian ownership, at least) to have the more modern Polish S21 engine put it, or even a 2.4D engine from an old Mercedes. But the mods will all be practical - massive wingmirrors from a Scania truck bolted on and a home-made breather snorkel for water-driving, rather than chrome strips and heated leather seats. Indicators tacked to the front wings almost as an afterthought. The brutal honesty of this vehicle is what appeals to me. No-one's trying to impress, or show off, or preach over how safe Quentin is on the school run. A UAZ owner is more likely to harm himself, by dint of being deranged enough to drive one down the side of a mountain. In the dark. In winter.

Further west, an old jeep like this would have been lovingly restored to its drab green paint and driven around historical re-enactments by bearded old men who smell of cheese and onion. But that's just not the Polish way.

Citroen CX 25 TRD Turbo

2009-02-01T15:43:00.013+01:00

One of the biggest general whinges of motoring consumers over the past 20 years, now that cars are reliable and practical and (American cars aside) economical, is that they're boring. It's not an entirely fair comment, considering all the hard work that goes into the modern commitee-designed motors you see trundling around towns these days, but I can also see the flipside. What happened to those cars that were the sordid, twisted passion of one man? Those concepts of really pushing the envelope, daring to be different, trying it upside down to see if its better; where did they go?

An ex-bomb site-turned-car-park in the middle of Warsaw's business district would be the answer to that question; an unfitting grave for that most outre and flamboyant of car manufacturers, Citroen. For a certain period between the '50s and '70s, Citroen could be relied upon to warp your mind in terms of what cars could provide, following that engineeering train of thought that the French are sometimes capable of, and that the rest of us find incomprehensible.

Released in 1974, the Citroen CX was a cornucopia of trinkets and pleasures, wrapped into a sultry sleek lozenge of swooshing curves and smooth flanks. Turning its prodigious nose up at accountancy, target markets and customer purchase profiles, the first series came not just with that famed Citroen suspension (no barbaric springs, just a plumbed network of hydraulic fluid chambers that bulge out to compensate for the wheel bouncing), but power disc brakes and the world's most impressive speedometer - a rotating barrel that lined up your speed with a fixed marker. Clutching your single spoke steering wheel, you could devour the heavy miles of a French motorway as effortlessly as eating your morning croissant.

That's not to suggest that this sumptuous comfort and quirky form came at the expense of performance. If you peer through the grime smeared over the rear of this CX, you'll see a sequence of letters and numbers that, in another tongue, declare this to be the fastest diesel of 1985. Combine that with variable speed-dependant steering and you get a large comfortable saloon which is great on the straights and not unstable on the corners either.

Even the arse end of this languid monster received techno
-logical excellence. Based on the patent of a guy called Baron Reinhard von Koenig-Fachsenfeld (who, you must admit, had one of the coolest names in the business) who worked in the field of aerodynamic developments, the CX has something called a Kamm tail - a slipstream feature named after the German professor who developed the Baron's ideas further. The basic principle is that, once body designers had worked out that a horizontal teardrop shape was the slipperiest, sleekest shape for a car, cost-cutting stepped in and found out that lopping off the bulb end of the drop didn't affect air turbulence at all, and saved materials and manufacturing costs into the bargain. Kamm tails are not that uncommon these days (look at the Ford Focus or Honda Civic, for example) but for a saloon spawned in 1974, it was daring, bold, cheekily rakish.

Now, as with all gimmicks, you again hear the usual tirade; "more gadgets, more things to go wrong." Not so with the CX, which featured as an example a concave rear window; the airstream moving over it created an airwave that auto-cleaned the glass, removing the need for a rear wiper. How cool is that? Well, alright, not very cool in the smoking-Gualloise-on-Champs-Elysees sense, but I'll admit that it impressed me when I heard it.

The demise of Citroen was an unsurprising one; a combination of far too much cash spent on research projects (Wankel engine, anyone?) and not enough cash coming in from regular car sales. Quite simply, Citroen couldn't have made a regular car if they'd tried - it just wasn't in them, in the same way it's just not in a Frenchman's blood to be teetotal. They'd pumped so much money into these projects that, even though the CX itself was an excellently selling car in its class, its class wasn't the type of car people post-oil-crisis wanted to buy. And with little cash left over to develop more models, Citroen went bankrupt.

Which is a shame. Citroen fanatics rate the CX as the last "true" Citroen, as if it were the last bottle of absinthe to contain actual wormwood, before Peugeot came along and took all the fun out of it with their platform-sharing and economy-drives and bloody Talbots, rebranding Citroen as the "budget brand" and churning out the CX, relatively unchanged, until 1991. Tack on Peugeot's slapdash approach to build quality, and all the turbodiesels and GTI badges couldn't save the CX from the reputation that "it looks better with the bonnet up."

There's no fun in seeing one of the last great quirks of European motoring laid up on its haunches in a snow-covered car park; even more so when this particular car park is earmarked for development and should be cleared by the end of the year. Hopefully they'll place something here as innovative and eye-catching as its current tenant. It would be a shame to see another practical but boring apartment block replace a true momument.

VW Jetta A1

2009-01-27T11:33:00.008+01:00

Germans have a sense of humour. Of course they do. See, they made the Volkswagen Golf, and then they made a pick-up version of it and called it a Caddy. Ho ho. Das ist verr funny. You see? Germans can make jokes too, just like other humans.

Now forget the Golf. This is a completely different car. No, really, it's not a Golf. The headlights are too square. But it's got a VW badge on the front and it's really blocky and angular. Which means it can't be a Beetle, so it must be a Golf. Simple, isn't it?

That's the trouble with the Jetta. When your maker is one of the worlds largest most famous car manufacturers, it can be a hard life not living up to the fame and glory of your siblings. And that name, Jetta? What's that got to do with sport? Is this some sort of joke?

Not really. The Mk I Jetta had a five-year lifespan as Volkswagen's comfortably small four-door, and it was a job it did admirably. The recipe, in typical German design, didn't include much in the way of flair or grace, just an honest earnestness towards its duties that it did without fail. Positioned awkwardly above the sporty little Golf and below the solid saloon of the Volkswagen-owned Audi 80, the Jetta was the mechanical bridge offering a more upmarket and sedate option to its vicious hatchback sister, without robbing any of the *cough* luxury credentials of the larger Audi. There were three trim levels depending on just how much cash you did have (without quite affording the Audi), but I won't bore you to details about which had the chrome strip and which one had the four horn buttons on the steering wheel. That would just be embarassing.

Think, if you like, of the Golf as a leather-jacket tight-jeans street-strutting punk. The Jetta is its science-fiction reading computer-club brother with National Health thick-frame glasses on. Underneath, they're identical; same squirty 8v engines, same suspension, same floorpan, but by adding that boot to the back the Jetta became that little bit more sober, more pragmatic, more unassuming. Which is why I like them.

Your basic line Jetta came with a range of engines, from the bog-standard 1.3 to the mighty injected 16v 1.8. The 1.6 litre engine in this one here would have soldiered on for miles and miles on a full tank. Frugal little beasts were these, and this little unit shows the scars of a long and meaningful life in the hands of someone who wanted all that firm solidity that VWs are famed for, without the brash little upstart attitude that comes with a Golf. After 25 years it's been laid up in a car park, this one now wears its hero badges of seven shades of silver spray paint (including some generous slapdash overspray on the driver's window) and plenty of crumbling flaking body filler, testament to a lifetime of being battered, patched up and sent back out to work some more. And if you take a look at the photos, there's only one wing mirror. Not that one's been ripped off; simply that only one was fitted. Why would it need one?

There's something eager about the Jetta. Something in those square lenses that pleads "Use me, use me! I'm German! I need a function in life!" - a statement that saw the subsequent models become the biggest selling cars in their class in America, and selling strongly too in Europe. It's a shame the original A1 Jetta came along as an afterthought; that boot end is like a tail waiting to be wagged; the obedient servant pleased to see its owner again. Hopefully this one will see a few more hundred miles yet.

FSM Syrena 105

2009-01-25T12:15:00.006+01:00

If you skip back a fair few months, I mentioned that the grandaddy of Polish motoring was the FSO Warszawa, the mighty behemoth that got Poles behind the wheel again after World War II. It was a monster of a car, and unwieldy to your average potato-picker, which is why the Communist overlords of the 1950s decided that Poland needed a car for the common man. Something to show that Poland had equal prowess to Western countries. Looking back now, it seems a bit of a cruel joke. You can imagine the presidents of East Germany and Ukraine elbowing Poland in the ribs and smirking "Go on, Poland, YOU can do it, you show the Italians you can make something better than the Fiat 600", and then rolling around the floor with tears of mirth as Poland actually tries to do it. Enter then stage left, the pantomime horse; the FSM Syrena 105.

It should say something that, of the two prototypes commissioned in the early '50s, that it was the wood-and-canvas model that was chosen to enter production, as FSO simply didn't have the machines required to form sheet steel. The Syrena 101 (the first production model after the imaginatively-numbered Prototype 100) then rolled out of the FSO factory in Zeran factory in 1958 sporting a hunchback skin of hand-beaten steel (the wood-and-canvas model shook itself to pieces during a 5000km test run), spurted along by a two-stroke engine scavenged from an East German water pump.

Within seven years, another three versions (102, 103 and 104) had been knocked up, featuring such massive improvements as an exhaust silencer and a whole extra cylinder, temporarily robbing an old engine from Wartburg as part of the trade-over for the Warszawa 210 designs (the FSO prototype that became the Wartburg 353) before settling on a home-brew powerplant, the S-31. 842cc's of smoke-belching power were squeezed into the space under that hideous wart of a bonnet, allegedly capable of lurching the 1-tonne bulk up to 120km/h.

With such awe-inspiring power, the car, and its owner, were quickly dubbed "Krolowa Szos." Learning to say that is about the same level of difficulty as learning to drive the gloriously preserved vehicle here. It means "King of the Road," a phrase used to express the freedom it interred on the original owner, and I must be firm in making sure the tongue-in-cheek nature with which it is used is translated over to English.

You see, I've had one of these, or rather, the van-bodied version called the Syrena Bosto. A few years back, when I was more carefree and idiotic, I signed up for something called the Mongol Rally; a "race" of endurance from London to Ulan Bator, with one simple rule - the engine of your car has to be smaller than one litre. Think about it. You need to maintain a steady plod in a simple machine over 13,000 kilometres of road, dirt track and desert. Surely a solid-chassis'd car with leaf springs, 15" wheels and an engine containing seven moving parts would be IDEAL for this. Right?
Probably, yes. But not the Syrena. After roaring alont the length of Poland at a steady 65km/h (the top speed) for a day, the car bent its gear selector forks reversing out of a car park in the Czech Republic. That's not before losing the speedo, the exhaust and the dashboard electrics along the route; a mere 700km. I forced it to seven different mechanics that afternoon, who all laughed me out of their forecourts.

Despite all this, the original 105 was in high demand, and by 1972, the car was such an embarassment, sorry, was selling so well that production was moved to the enhanced facility of FSM, the Factory for Small-engined Cars, down in Bielsko-Biala. This new Syrena had the redeeming feature of normal hinged doors as opposed to the suicide variants sported by its predecessors. There were other magnificent items like the free-wheel handle under the steering column that acted like a hand clutch. You don't want to engine brake on a two-stroke motor because, with no fuel being fed in there's no oil either, so every time you go down a hill you yank the handle and hope the brakes don't fail. Which they do. Most Syrena owners have fond memories of installing wheel cylinders at the side of the road every 200km, or of the queues to collect the monthy petrol ration with every container the household owned to keep the engine burbling on that little bit longer. And lets not forget, this was in a planned economy, where cars were awarded to the individual on the basis of need or merit. Owning a Syrena was a status symbol. At this point, words simply fail me.

Somehow, possibly as a nasty government trick to divide the proletariat even more, there did actually appear something called the Syrena 105 Lux. Before you go expecting something luxurious like a cigarette lighter or a cup-holder or even a brake servo, the monumental feature of the Lux was a floor-mounted gearstick, which meant that the previous frantic struggle to find a gear from the gate-less selector on the steering column was now moved south. You still had to keep your arms up to hold the enormous steering wheel steady (a Syrena's steering is so vague you'll feel like a 1940's film star) or you'd career into a tree.

Astoundingly, two thirds of all Syrenas ever made were 105s, and between 1958 and 1982 half a million had been cobbled, bashed and bodged together when FSM eventually decided that, car for car, there was no point making the Syrena when the same amount of metal could make three Fiat 126's. At that point the last 105 rattled out of the factory and, 27 years later, one has ended up as a battered shell in a Warsaw carpark. Despite the smashed drivers window and the fact the car has been stood for a month, it's a testament to the sheer awfulness of this vehicle that nothing has been stolen from it. The seats are in, the wheels are on, even the engine is inside; the tramps who cart away old plumbing and refrigerators have turned their noses up at it. In that way, forgetting the Syrena is the kindest thing for Poland to do.

As a small extra, a few Syrenas took part in, and completed, some Monte Carlo Rallies. It is at this point that I'd like to point out that my 700km Mongol Rally section therefore counts as the longest and most successful international rally entry for the Syrena ever. Who's King of the Road now?

Merkur XR4Ti

2009-01-18T17:34:00.002+01:00

"Mare-koor, from Germany", drawls the deep 40-Marlboro's a day voice on the advert, as a familiar looking jelly-mould speeds through the desert, sweeping up clouds of amber sand and roaring head-on into a trio of foreign competitors. That's how America was introduced to the XR4Ti, an exoticly foreign sounding and slightly futuristic looking saloon from across the waters. There's even electronic drums and a power-metal guitar playing in the background, just to add a bit more drama. It's like a car advert mixed with a trailer for Top Gun; in fact, if the camera had zoomed in on the windscreen, you'd probably have seen Kenny Loggins inside. Wearing Aviators.

For anybody in Europe, all of this would have laughable. Who the hell would go to all that trouble for what was, essentially, a Ford Sierra? But remember, this isn't a Sierra. No, really, it isn't. Look at that bonnet logo. Click on the picture if you need a really closer look. Merkur. See? Mare-koor. Obviously different.

You can forgive people for trying too hard to promote the Ford Sierra. Any car that tried to fill the shoes of the Ford Cortina/Taunus was going to have to offer something special, and the overly rounded form of the new Ford didn't exactly meet expectations. Sure, it had all the technological advancements of a completely new car, but that dropped-ice-cream look didn't go down too well with the executives who wanted cars as angled and horizontal as their shoulder pads. Aerodynamics and low drag sounds good, but what the 80s was all about was hard, brash statements and shark-like aggression, not gliding through the air with a whisper. To be fair to the designers, the Sierra was simply too new; it didn't have anything in common with anything else in Ford of Europe's range, or even with its competitors. It would take time for people to get used to it.

It was four years after the initial launch of the Sierra that Ford of America decided people, hmm, well, possibly, maybe, had got used to it. The initial grumbles with the car had been ironed out, sales were on the up, and Ford had noticed just how many people were buying up European cars. A European Ford might be able to bite back a chunk of the market from the competition, and so plans were made to bring the Sierra to the USA.

Knowing American tastes, the Sierra would need to pull out all the stops if it was to wow an American audience, so the biggest engines were looked over to get the most power down from that rear-wheel-drive layout. It seems weird to think that a land famed for its overpowered gas-guzzlers with shocking fuel efficiency should be so stringent on foreign imports, but either way the big monster available to the Sierra, the 2.9 V6, was deemed too polluting, and an alternative had to be found. Meanwhile, the bodyshell was sent to German metalwork mentalists Karmen, for some performance enhancements.

In 1985 then, the Merkur XR4Ti arrived. All the trimmings of the European XR4i were loaded onto a structurally reinforced shell, implanted with a 2.3 litre 180hp turbo engine, then had a German-sounding name badge slapped on the bonnet (sorry, hood) to show off its engineering excellence. What this really meant is that Ford had so much faith in the XR4Ti that they weren't willing to risk their own brand’s names on it, instead creating a semi-fake brand to market the car. Merkur, you see, is simply German for Mercury, the quasi-luxury brand of Ford sold out of the same dealerships as Lincolns, which in itself was suffering from a massive identity crisis at the time.

They didn’t exactly fly out of dealerships. Every reviewer raved about its excellent handling (which was odd, since the Sierra was famed for being rubbish with corners) and lack of turbo lag, and enthusiastic clued-up buyers bought their share from their local dealer, but most people simply had no clue whatsoever what the XR4Ti was, or even who Merkur was supposed to be. Even the dealers had to be trained how to say the brand name, and many were simply unenthusiastic touting a car that robbed them of far more profitable sales of stablemates the Mercury Sable and Lincoln Town Car. For the image-conscious ‘80s consumer, plastic side skirts and that double rear spoiler were just a step too far in the tasteless direction to be forgiven. A disappointing 42,464 cars rolled away from the showrooms in four years; Ford had expected to sell 20,000 in 1985 alone.

Had the XR4Ti actually stayed in Europe, they’d have been immensely popular. A lot of the technological advancements went back to Ford of Europe for their touring car and RS programs, and American tuners found it easy to tighten up the body roll and pitching that were the only grumbles performance-wise. Had the intercooler from other Fords been added to the Merkur’s engine as standard, performance would have been upped to 210hp – more than the Sierra Cosworth, lusted after by boy racers all over Europe. And at least one, here in Poland, has pricked his ears up and taken note; it might look like another rotten executive saloon from the ‘80s, but that little Merkur badge makes a hell of a difference.

Saab Sonett III

2009-01-11T16:22:00.006+01:00

It doesn't matter how much work on your own car you do, or how mechan
-ically perfect you think it is; when it comes to the annual check-up, the testers will always find something that needs replacing. This year for mine, it was the front tie rod ends; the rubber elbow joints that connect the steering rod to the wheel assembly. A few years of Poland's winter salt was all it took to put more cracks than a Plumbers Convention into the rubber. Considering the nuts holding them on were also rusted solid and Polish mechanics are so cheap, I lurched my motor off to the nearby garage to have the tie rod ends swapped and the geometry aligned.

When you've got pneumatic tools (and a big selection of hammers), the job can be pretty quick, so I mooched around the forecourt sipping vending-machine coffee and listening to the Tourettes level of swearing coming from the mechanics whilst waiting for the work to be done. After a few minutes, one of the garage bay doors rattle up, and an orange lozenge comes burbling out.

My coffee went cold as I gawped and stared. It's not often that I see a car that I have absolutely no clue at all as to what it is, and I spent the next ten minutes sniffing as close around it as the mechanics would let me. In between the swearing, I managed to glean that this was a Saab Sonett III, from 1974, one of the last ever made. This particular one had been dropped off by a local driver in the classics rallies, and was his pride and joy. I'm not surprised.

Driving my own rust-bucket home, I couldn't get the Sonett out of my head. That teardrop snout, the Coke-bottle hips, the low slung bucket seats and pop up headlights; none of that was Saab. Saab make cars that look like crocodiles. They don't make pint-size roadsters. How the hell could this rasping little sports coupe have snuck out of Scandinavia without anyone noticing? Why was it slinking around back-street industrial-estate garages? If this was a Sonett III, what the hell happened to the other two?

The Sonett III, it seems, is really the final version of a 10 year evolutionary period. Yes, there were two prede
-cessors, but hardly what you or I would call a production run. The Saab Sonett Super Sport, or Sonett I, was an experiment in advanced design for Saab, and reared its dropped head at the 1956 Stockholm Motor Show. It never entered mass production, and only six are known to have existed worldwide.
For whatever reason, Saab sat on the idea for ten years before constructing the Sonnett II; a glass-fibre rebodied Saab 96 with the same two-stroke three-cylinder motor underneath the tilting bonnet. This was inevitably swapped for a more sensible Ford V4 (again, the same offered on Saabs other cars) but the Sonett II was still not a serious production. With its Opel GT-esque swoopes and gouges, the eclectic mish-mash didn't sit well with prospective clients, and less than 2000 units were assembled before its dramatic redesign as the Saab Sonett III, put into construction in 1970.

Looking at the specs on paper, Saab ticked all the right boxes. This fibreglass fancy weighed only 810kg - the same as a Trabant - yet had 65hp to hurl it up to 103mph. A lightweight pocket rocket with a sharp dynamic design (think Bricklin SV-1 or Fiat X1/9) from a company that started out making jet engines; where could this possibly go wrong? Why didn't the Sonett succeed?

Part of the problem can be attributed to Saab's image. They were then, and still are now, pleasantly practical saloons. "Responsible performance" is the byword of Saab, and you can't help but feel that no matter how much power or how many turbos Saab slap under their alligator bonnets, they'll never have the level of mental illness required to make a really good sports car. Unless drunk, Scandinavians simply aren't psychotic enough for that. The V4 of the Sonett III was no exception - it usurped the old oil-burning two-stroke for no other reason than Saab thought it was more pleasant for drivers not to have to mix fuel additives every fill up. This meant that nearly 50kg was added to the nose of the car for no particular reason, which many Saab purists feel upset the balance of the car from the more lightweight two-stroke.

Despite that, no serious criticism of the Sonett can be leveled; the fibreglass form is lovely to look at, the lumbar seats more than comfortable than the harsh buckets in contemporary sportsters, and you're not buying some odd-shaped plastic kit from a garden shed British supplier but a fully assembled product from a large European manufacturer. But for the early 1970s consumer, the massive hike in oil prices were simply dampening the buzz of owning completely impractical vehicles. When the whole sports car market was suffering a downturn, the Sonett III with its 1500cc (1700cc later on) should have been just what the industry doctor ordered, but for all that it just wasn't want people expected, or even wanted, from a Saab. You can drool about the 0.31 drag coefficient or the 12-second 0-60 time, but if you're a teenage boy with minimum bedroom-poster space available, telling your mates you've got a Saab on your wall just isn't going to impress anyone. So after only 10,000 units, the Sonett III was phased out, and it remains the Swedish manufacturer's only foray into the world of sports cars. More's the pity.

Trabant P601 1.1

2009-01-01T11:32:00.009+01:00

If you wanted something to represent the West's idea of what life under Communism was, it would be hard to find anything more epitomising than the Trabant. The depressingly practical yet structurally flimsy product of a planned economy more than aptly encapsulated contemporary opinions of what was going on in Eastern Europe, and the Trabant became the butt of all the jokes aimed at Ladas and Skodas too.

As with any planned economy, the People Need Transport question was answered in the flimsy little package of the Trabant. The round eyed little rattler was spawned from the Zwickau factory in East Germany, as early as 1955. It was dubbed the AWZ P70, under the ingeniously practical nomenclature that P meant Plastic and 70 represented the smoky 700cc engine underneath. Yes, plastic, or Duroplast as its manufacturer calls it, which bears an uncanny resemblance to fibreglass. The P-70 was little more than a plastic-bodied IFA F8 (the F9 would become the Wartburg, our Trabi's big sister); a pre-war design desperate for an update. Enter then, the first proper Trabant - the AWZ Trabant P50. A monocoque Duroplast shell with a feeble 500cc engine, the P50 is our embryonic Trabant. It introduced all the soft curves, frog eyes and lightweight chuckability into the 1950's attitude of car design, and the 18-hp three-geared drivetrain was almost twist-and-go-like in its simplicity.

Understanding just how crude the history of the Trabant is should then explain the enduring charm of the P-601. By 1964, when the P601 came out, other countries had small cars that were smarter, cleaner and more powerful. The Morris Mini the 2CV, the Fiat 500; all were using four-stroke engines at this point, and it was only the suffering lack-based economies ("you can't count on anything") of the Eastern Bloc that still depended on the blue-fug-producing two-strokes. The Trabant is a product of this lack; the Duroplast used for the body is a recycling of cotton and resin waste products from other heavy industries, and yet still there were waiting lists of up to 12 years for a new Trabant, because production output was so slow. This also meant that used-car prices were higher than those for new models; the immediate availability added a premium value to the poison-yellow death traps.

One of the few boasts any Trabant owner can make is that each machine was hand-assembled; videos of mulleted and moustachio'd Germans pounding on panels with rubber mallets to make them fit should show you just how much energy went into each Trabi to get them on the road in the first place. The other is the famous Elk test; if you haven't heard, new cars taken to Sweden where they are driven at speed towards a moose. At the last moment, they make a few hard turns to avoid the beast, and the car is measured in terms of controlability and safety. Mercedes' baby A-class attempted this in 1997 and fell over, injuring the two occupants. The Trabant passed with flying colours, which is what keeps it alive in rally circles today.

Little happened over the 27 years of Trabant production until 1988, when one of the maddest ideas ever was put forth. As Perestroika reared its ugly head and the choking toxic two-stroke fumes wreathed Berlin, the decision was made to ditch the engine in favour of a clean and cheap 1.1litre Volkswagen model left over from the Polo. Great in theory; a small, simple recycled car made of parts-bin mechanicals for the new economy. In practice, dumping 40hp into an 800kg car made for a twitchy barely-controllable drive. Combine that with the Duroplast concept where crumple-zones become disintegrate-if-its-a-bit-chilly zones, and you have a car which, if the accelerator is tapped a little too vigourously, will result in a toxic pile of burning resin smouldering against the Berlin Wall. Little wonder then that by the time production shut down in 1991, only 40,000 P601s had the Polo engine ; only a few thousand more than the original AWZ P70. By the reunification of Germany, Trabants were held in such low regard that they were swapped for packs of cigarettes, or left abandonned by the side of the road to rot. Only Trabants don't rot; that Duroplast is 100% non-biodegradable, which made getting rid of them even harder than buying them in the first place. A recent plan by Budapest City Council to swap Trabants for a year's free public transport yielded 200 Trabis to the local scrapyard; 120 of them were then recycled into spare parts for the remaining models rattling around.

It's hard to shake off a Trabi; the warm glow of nostalgia has burned away the fog of exhaust smoke, and short of smashing one into an elk, they'll be with us for some time to come.

Mercedes-Benz W123 300D Estate

2008-12-17T23:00:00.008+01:00

If a shaven-headed no-necked gold-chained beer-swigging blue-collar worker walked into a car dealership, he'd ask for an Opel Astra Estate. That's right, a big-arsed version of a popular saloon car to carry all his painting-and-decorating tools around in. Or his fat wife and chubby kids. Or a load of old furniture to go fly tipping in. That's what estates are for.

Which is why the more, shall we call them, aloof manufacturers, don't make estates. Audi make an Avant, which is supposedly aimed at crating your latest wine purchase from Italy to Austria, whilst BMW make a Touring, which is better designed for being thrown sideways around the Nurburgring. Mercedes, on the other hand, just use the letter T. This can stand for Touring if you so desired, or it can be Transport, or even Towing A Horse, but it is not for esTate. Or Kombi either. That would just be too gauche.

That's not to stop people referring to them as estates, of course, because some people just don't know any better. And that's the universal appeal of the W123 - it was the Mercedes that people could actually afford, wanted to buy, and felt good doing so. It was a luxuriously large saloon with just enough chrome to back up the snobbery, but not enough leather to mark you out as a pretentious loser. And nothing oozed practical sumptuousness more than the estate, with its acres of glass, conservative upright stance and direct, crisp body lines. Just look at those alloy wheels - you wouldn't even know they were alloy if I hadn't told you. That's saved you getting down on your hands and knees to rub your moistened finger around the rim, waiting for that ringing sound.

The W123 is the Mercedes that doesn't mind mucking out the stables on a Sunday afternoon; the Shire horse that still looks good in front of the carriage, and in that case it puts the Avant and the Touring to shame, seeing as its as comfortable lugging gallons of Pinot Grigio over the Alps as it is hooning through Africa on the Safari rally. So what makes this such a thoroughbred workhorse?

If you ask most W123 owners, you'll hear lots of "lasts." Last of the handbuilt Mercs, the W123. Last of the true Mercs (before the Chrysler costcutters stepped in and cheapened everything.) But definitely last of the REAL Mercedes, which means hand-designed, hand-drawn, with no computer-aided moulding to take the edges off or smooth out the soul. No fine-line designing of eking the design specs out to the limit, this was the Mercedes with that little bit more. This was when the Germans said "yes, yes, vee haff made out preziess kalkoolations, but vee vill add a liddul more, juzt in case." And "a liddul more" in this case meant a whole extra cylinder. That's over-engineering for you.

However, 3.0 diesel lump under this bonnet would have managed less than 90hp without a turbo, but that was more than generous compared with the 2.0 diesel previously offered, which only yielded 55hp. Fifty-five horsepower, to shift 1400kg of steel. You must be joking. Compared to that, 88hp is a whinnying, snorting mustang waiting to leap out of the corral.

But even if you've plumped for the 200D or the 240D (which didn't have that fifth-cylinder advantage) that over-engineering added a majestic calm to rolling along the autobahn. Encased in your better-than-leather MB-TEX vinyl seats, floating on the nitrogen-charged self-levelling suspension, letting the undulations of the road and the rythmnic roar of HGVs overtaking you soothe you into aristocratic peace, that's what the W123 was for. A Gentleman's tourer. I've had a 200D, with all its spluttering and droning and heavy fuel consumption, and when I thought I'd save a few pennies by using biodiesel, which instead stripped out 30 years of accumulated gack from the fuel tank, how did the W123 respond? By filtering it out with TWO fuel filters. TWO. Unscrew them, chuck them out, swop in the new pair and rumble onwards again for another 2000km. That's over-engineering, and it's that philosophy that lets Greek taxi drivers chug more than a million miles out of their W123's.

For the Poles, the W123 was the most majestic motor you could aspire to own in the 70's and 80's, and was christened the Beczka, or Barrel; primarily because you needed to carry that much fuel around with you to keep it going. But if you need something to drive you to an OPEC country and back, the W123 should be just your cup of T.

FSD Nysa 522

2008-12-06T11:11:00.011+01:00

If you've ever heard of Geopolitics, you'll know that Poland sits in an area called the Heartland. If you haven't, it basically means that whoever has control of Europe and Asia has control of the world, and whoever controls the Heartland controls Europe and Asia. So the philosophy goes, anyway. The Heartland, then, is the Breadbasket; the fertile land which feeds the population. Think Nineteen-Eighty-Four. Think Eurasia. Of course, it's an outdated philosophy nowadays, but it helps explain a few things about just how big the Soviet Union considered itself, and why it felt it necessary to take over Poland. One solution for all, and all that.

So when you take a sizeable country, like Poland, and look at its needs, you can categorize them quite simply. Poland needs cars. Bam, new factory, in Warsaw, called the Car Factory (FSO,) making one car - the Warszawa. Great for ferrying people around (considering it's the size of a boat), but cumbersome if it's just you on your own so, boom, FSM, the Small Car Factory, making the Syrena. Need to shuttle a few tonnes of coal to a remote village? You'll need a Star, courtesy of FSC, the Heavy Goods Factory. And if you just need a pick-up, get a Tarpan, the bastard offspring of FSR, the Farmer's Car Factory.

It should come as no surprise, then, that once production was up and people needed to buy things in shops (yes, Communism was bad but it wasn't ALL empty shelves and martial law) you'd need a Delivery Van. And lo, in 1952 the powers-that-be created the FSD, the Delivery Car Factory, churning out the all-new Nysa N57.

Well, that's what the Communists would have you believe. In actuality, the N57 was just a Warszawa M20 chassis and engine shipped off to a mountain village to be rebodied by the Nysa Steel Body Shop. By 1968 however, the designers had advanced enough to scrap almost all the Warszawa-derived stuff in favour of heavier-duty gear (nine-spring clutches and independant front suspension with multiplesprings, amongst other things) and called the final project the N521/522.

The 521/522 were the final evolutions of the Nysa, with the only clear differences being a 10cm higher load height for the 522, plus a 4-speed gearbox instead of three, and (wait for it) a better air filter for the engine. Or at least, that's what the handbook says. In reality, the true beauty of the Nysa platform for both 521 and 522 was its versatility. Once the Warszawa chassis had been ditched so that the engine could be placed further forward, the Nysa became a van of such practicality that, despite a few cosmetic changes, it remained essentially the same over its 44-year lifespan.

This particular 522 is a T-series, meaning 8-seater minibus. There were also 2-, 4- and 10-seater versions (F, C and M series), plus ambulances, refrigerators, half-body flatbeds and boxvans. Some came with side loading doors, some had complete transparent plastic roofs for tourist buses, but they were all 16" wheeled, 51 horse-powered monsters thundered along by that Polish power-plant, the S-21 engine. Beloved by factories and militia alike, the 522 was a common sight on Polish roads along with its FSC offspring, the Zuk.

But the conversion to Capitalism was not kind to Nysa, and after a third of a million units, the FSD was absorbed into the greater FSO structure, ditching the Nysa 522 so that the factory could make the Polonez Truck whilst the part-share twin, the Zuk, took on both the van and minibus roles by becoming the FSO-Daewoo Lublin. But you still see a few of these frog-eyed boxes, standing proud on side streets just like this one. And whilst most were unloved workhorses, patched together over the years until there's more fibreglass than sheet steel and more taped-over cardboard than actual glass, you do occasionally see a gleamer like this one, with polished paintwork and at least one shiny hubcab still attatched.

Volvo 240 Saloon

2008-11-22T14:49:00.008+01:00

Cross the river from Warsaw's Royal Palace, and you get to Praga Polnoc. Yes, there is a place called Prague, in Warsaw, because Poland is better than the Czech Republic. Apparently. The Polnoc bit means either North, or Midnight, depending on which you prefer. Such are the vagaries of the Polish language.

Praga does not have the best reputation of Warsaw's districts, unless you find stab wounds a fashion accessory, in which case Praga Midnight is the coolest place in town. The area has never really considered itself a true part of Warsaw though, instead being the murky cousin who lives on the Eastern bank; home to Communist sympathisers, workshy benefit scroungers and bears. Not the vodka-swilling fur hatted Russians, but the grizzly type, who live in a specially designed concrete run next to one of the busiest junctions in Warsaw.

With assualts, pollution and carnivores to contend with, one should enter Praga with caution. Most people opt for either a stout sturdy stick as a deterrent, or one of the 50ml bottles (two shots) of vodka that can be bought locally for a pound. Or, as someone else has done, arrive in a canary yellow Volvo 240.

Volvos are one of the most unthreatening manufacturers in the world. Attributed to antiques traders and librarians, the simple reliable oblongs have been shuttling Swedes in and out of forests for decades, cocooning their owners from such risks as avalanches, black ice and elk. There's no Saab-style aggressiveness of snarling raked grills, just an unimposing functional block that can be relied on and ignored, like an Ikea coffee table. Wrapping the whole thing up in that shade of paint also makes it look like a cubist banana.

The 240 was one denomination of the entire 200-series range of cars which lasted from 1974 to 1993; a production run so succesful that it outlasted the model designed to replace it (the 700-series.) And despite only a third production run being estates, the blocky 200-series became the modern icon of a Volvo - square, sturdy and safe. So what formed the basis of that reputation? The Volvo Experimental Safety Car.

A test bed for the technologies that would morph the old 140 into the 200-series, the VESC incorporated all-important features like crumple zones, self-collapsing engine mounts and four-wheel disc brakes, but with the practical application of using those then-expensive systems onto a mass-production affordable motor. And over the course of the 2.8million production run, more and more features would be added to keep the Swedes safe. A truss bar ran across the top of the B pillar, to stop the roof deflecting more than 75mm in the even of a rollover. All doors contained tubular steel side-impact bars. The fuel system must be fully intact in the event of any collision, and all sharp edges must be rounded off. Like the church of St Cyril that stands behind it, this 240 was a monument to sanctuary - hewn from stone but shelter from the storm.

Of course, moving a cathedral is an equally monumental effort to building one, and the 2.0litre pushrod engine in this number, despite pushing out 124bhp, would be a rather thirsty number. Which is why you should look closer at the pictures. Spot it?

Twin petrol filler flaps. Poland has the highest number of LPG-converted cars, and this guzzler is no exception. Which is hardly surprisng, considering the drinking problems of the locals, bears included.

Fiat 132

2008-11-15T11:07:00.007+01:00

Poland has an odd affinity for Fiats. The Communists struck up a fair few deals with the Italians post-war to build the 125 saloon and 126 city-car, and prior to that had built the Fiat 508 under licence in 1932. It still continues to make the modern Fiat 500 in the old FSM factory down in Bielsko-Biala.

And these cars have a certain pride of place for the Polish driver. The FSO models Warszawa and Syrena may be 'proper' Polish cars, but it was the ubiquitous nature of the 125p and 126p (that "p" is important) that endears them to the heart of most. Your father, or his father, had one, or you had one at university, and have fond memories of rebuilding the engine at the side of the road, or of near-accidents, or of having the windscreen wipers stolen. Despite being Italian, the Polski Fiats were as Polish as shipyard strikes.

In the homeland of the 125, however, they weren't that gratefully received. The Italians considered them as little more than a stopgap between the rapidly aging Fiat 1500, and this, the Fiat 132. It was supposed to be the flagship model, encorporating all the wonderful features of Fiat's sports heritage in a 4-door saloon that can carry the wife, kids and the weekly shop. Some sort of representative of Fiats as a whole - stylish yet lightweight, practical but cheeky with it. In the Fiat 132 though, that just isn't there.

Putting the 132 alongside the model it was intended to replace, it's not too easy to see the differences. Sure, the rake of the nose is sharper, lending a BMW E21-style aggressiveness to the image, but this is subsequently stolen by the almost fairy-light size of the headlamps, which were blanked altogether in 1981 into faceless square units. A range of sporty wheels may help visually, but those wheels were steel heavy pressed steel, maintaining the large unsprung weight of the car and not doing the standard three-box saloon any favours in terms of handling. In fact, considering all the promises made with the Fiat 125, the 132 comes across as a bit of a let-down.

The beauty of the 132, then, must be more than skin-deep. Put aside your dislike for harsh square lines for a moment, and take a look at the mechanical aspects, and you'll start to get more of a feeling as to what Fiat intended with this model. Engine-wise, twin cams came as standard, starting off with the 98hp 1.6 as the base model (the one in this particular car) all the way up to a 2.0 injected monster with 122 on tap, pumping out to the same live axle rear drive that the 125 had. Combined with safety features like impact-collapsable steering columns, for Fiat it seemed like a step in the right direction. For Poles, though, who already had things like four-wheel disc brakes, the 132 was a step backwards, and for overseas buyers who had the option of the Ford Cortina/Taunus or other, cheaper, Japanese equivalents, the Fiat was never going to be a serious competitor.

It's not exactly easy to enthuse over the 132 - it certainly doesn't hold a place in the heart of the average Pole as much as the 125p did. But then again, it was the first Fiat partially assembled by robots, so one can forgive its lack of emotion. So where did they go so wrong? What is it that the 125p had in spades that the 132 lacked so much? Maybe it's that one word that pops into your head when you talk about Italian cars: passion. The 125, somehow, had it. The 508 had it. Even the new 500 has it, but the 132 didn't, and without that little spark, what sort of foreign romance would it be?

ZAZ 1102 Tavria

2008-11-11T11:16:00.009+01:00

1988 was a happy year for some. For the Soviet Union, the mighty Buran shuttle was launched, Estonia declared itself a sovereign state of its own, and Mikhail Gorbachev's economic restructuring, known as Perestroika, began.

For the sturdy eastern republic of Ukraine, all three of these were significant. Ukraine at that point was a significant industrial powerhouse for the Soviet Union, having constructed not only the magnificent Buran shuttle itself (twice the size of America's shuttles) but also the Antonov-225, the shuttle carrier and world's largest aircraft. It was also home to a significant number of the Soviet's vehicle manufacturers - KrAZ, LAZ, LuAZ and ZAZ, and was rightfully considered a Rather Important Area. It also had some making up to do over the rather embarrasing Chernobyl incident.

All that productivity would see its end with Perestroika. No more Five Year Plans, no more planned economies; things would come down to an almost-Western supply and demand style economy, where factories only produce what the market can afford to buy. And there wasn't exactly a huge demand for space shuttles, or 600-tonne-capacity planes in the domestic market. As cool as it would be to go to the local cabbage shop in a six-turbined Antonov, what people really wanted was cheap, economic, reliable transport and the available model, the air-cooled rear-engined ZAZ-965, was by then a shuddering monstrosity of '50s technology in a 70's shell. ZAZ needed something modern, new, technologically comparible to the market economies it would be competing with, if it had any hope of weathering the economical reforms.

By "modern" of course I mean "what Ford did with the Fiesta ten years previously." Enter the ZAZ 1102 Tavria, a wedgy little box with a 1.1 litre engine, squirting out 51hp was competitive with its micro-class companions like the Talbot Sunbeam or Lada Samara; the little ZAZ had McPherson Struts and a five-speed gearbox, technical revolutions for a country like the Ukraine. In its defense, it was planned at the end of the 1970s, but deemed at that point "unnecessary" for the grand old USSR, and temporarily shelved. The financial demands of Perestroika, however, brought it back off the shelves and into the factories, where it was churned out alongside the old ZAZ-968 until that model was retired in 1994.

Of course, with Estonia getting riled about its status in 1988, and the other satellite countries in the Union grumbling, it wouldn't be long before the Soviet Union collapse would shake Ukraine's economic might to its foundations, and despite its productivity, ZAZ wouldn't escape the fallout; with its protecting overlords running for the hills, the company had little room to manouvre in terms of development. The little ZAZ Tavria therefore remained in production for the next twenty years, spawning a booted version (the Slawuta), an estate (the Dana) and even high-body Courier-style vans and pickups.

There's no surprise this little model has ended up in Warsaw - being only 200km from the border, the economical little runaround would have no qualms bouncing its way through the crumbling heartland of post-Soviet Poland. Even less so when you consider it stands only 5km away from the FSO factory, owned 20% by parent company UkrAVTO... who coincidentally own ZAZ too.

BMW 7-series E23

2008-08-30T17:10:00.001+02:00

A few hundred years ago, before Communism and Hitler and a reputation as plumbers, Poland had kings. Well, sort of. They were elected, which meant that the local lords would gather in a field and choose which of the foreign princes that showed up would serve their own interests best.
Of course, this wasn't democracy, it was anarchy. The dukes, nobles and other assorted aristocracy had their own interests at heart, and would therefore choose the weakest of the contenders to manipulate to their own whims and fancies. , The fatter, wealthier and lazier the better. These historic meetings took place in Wola, in a field outside the city proper, and it is on a road called Elekcyna, or Election Street, that I found the BMW E23.

If you've never understood BMW's confusing number system, the E codes represent every model developed, but not all E's necessarily entered production, as E stands for Entwicklung (evolution). That means that there were twenty-two models between the code's introduction in 1967, and the hulking 7-series seen here from 1977. Those ten years included the magnificently aggressive E21, the swanky businessman's E12 and the gloriously humungous E3, known as the Big Six and the direct precursor to the rotting hulk of the E23.

With a lineage as proud and noble as this, it would usually be considered a crime against history to allow a Crown Jewel to tarnish on the pavement like this matt black box, but in these circumstances, the Poles have yet again elected in Wola the least able to rule. If you know your history of Poland, there was Augustus II, elected not just for his strength but for his love of the finer arts. Beauty and power combined, he's the E3. His elected son, the foppish chinless dandy Augustus III, is the E23, who had to abdicate after unanimously being declared rubbish by his peers.

The Big Six line of BMWs was introduced as the large-scale luxury model in an attempt to rally its flag against that pretender to the throne, Mercedes-Benz, and it succeeded. The E3 earned a stalwart reputation as a heavy cruiser with sporty capabilities and Bavaria's best in terms of refinement. The sharp-faced upstart conceived to replace it was the newly-designated 7-series E23. Little is known of the E23's pre-coronation versions and prototypes, but by the time it took its seat of power it was a bloated drunkard hiding under levels of gaudy chromework and acres of leather. The rear end suffers the ignoble droop of similar period Jaguars, and the Big Six reputation of the engine was drowned by a thirsty carburretor setup that required a retainer of servants to keep the thing topped up.

If you were going to cruise from your duchy of, in Augustus' case, Saxony, and in the E23's case, Bavaria, to your newly aquired territory, then of course, you have to do it in style, and in fairness the E23 is not the ugliest offspring of BMW's loins. Unlike Prince Harry, you can at least see who its parents were, and even though you'd rather have the trimmer two-door sister, E24, the 7-series has enough heritage to know when to act regally. Power was wielded through an array of large six-cylinder engines ranging from a commanding 2.8l to an imperial 4.5l, marshalling a cavalry of 250 horses behind that aristocratic nose.

The Black Prince rusting here has already been stripped of its heraldry, with that posterior debadged. Squinting through the begrimed windows an autobox can be made out which would certainly have sapped most of the strength from even the hardiest of engines. The distinctive kidneys of 1977 were detatched from the bonnet around 1983 and added to the grille in an attempt to smarten up the sagging profile, but it wasn't enough to please the electorate. Optional extras were little more than gaudy trinkets, with electric seats and onboard computers being little more than bloated pomp and gaudy trinkets; more flesh to weigh down the already bulky form. The tow-bar on the back also betrays this more as a Shire horse than a war horse.

It would take the revenue of a small fief to bring this BMW back to its former self, but there is only so much taxing an electorate can take. It may have the required number of kidneys, but it takes a stronger than usual stomach to come with the overly rich E23, which is all gut and no glory.

Lada Niva

2008-08-20T17:11:00.007+02:00

Most mornings, on the daily grind from the western suburb of Bemowo to the centre of Warsaw, the tram will rumble its way along, crammed with pale-faced commuters pressed armpit-to-face in grim preperation for a steady day's moaning. This is life as usual in Poland, where complaining is the national hobby.

To leave Bemowo , one has to traverse the small area called Kolo, home of the infamous Kolo Flea Market. Five days a week, Warsaw's pensioners plod their way around a bombsite of tin shacks and car boots loaded with fresh produce, arming themselves with canvas bags of potatoes and onions before cramming themselves onto the commuter trams. Why on earth pensioners need to buy their vegetables at exactly the same time the entire population is trying to get to work I have yet to figure out, but it provides ample opportunity for the workers to get theirgrumble-faces ready, and for the old harridens to prove that, with fifty years under Communism, they would be seasoned enough to win Poland a gold medal at Moaning. Bags of carrots bash the knees of sharp-suited businessmen, the heady odour of pickled cabbage mingles with the secretaries' perfumes, and the schoolkids refuse to give up their seat for 15kgs of tomatoes. What was once an uncomfortably busy tram now becomes reminiscent of Indian trains where live chickens flap around the unshod feet of dirty children. Of course, it's not that bad, but it's good enough to spoil the mood of everyone unfortunate enough to need public transport. Although when I say 'spoil the mood' I ony mean drop it from "tetchy" to "downright waspish."

At the weekend, however, the market becomes an antiques fair, where the same retired patrons hawk the last remants of Poland's heritage to tourists, opportunists and illegal exporters, who nose around the horse brass and battered silverware for the possible bargain. Prices are haggled, toothless proprieters smile and sigh, and the old family portrait is sold to supplement Grandma's meagre pension. Poland's history is traded not in gold, but in kilos of vegetable produce. One could almost believe it's a sad sight that the most treasured objects, accumulated by scrimping and saving throught the Socialist years, now slip through one's fingers for a song, but when you get a closer look the tat on sale is essentially worthless. Radios that can only pick up long-dead frequency bands, incomplete sets of cutlery and unremarkable oil paintings.

The market is surrounded by a myriad of one-way streets, a nightmare for parking but a wonderfully quiet escape from the market bustle. And it was down one of these, perched high on its rims above the other squat low family saloons, that I espied the Lada Niva.

The more affluent suburbs of Warsaw boast shiny off-roaders aplenty, parked up on the streets where the hardest driving challenge they face is the supermarket speed humps. In the slighter poorer Kolo district you wouldn't expect a Porsche Cayenne or a new Range Rover, but I certainly wouldn't expect Russia's cheapest 4x4 to be showing its lumpy appearance here either. But then again, the Niva isn't a hairdresser's excuse for a vehicle or a banker's pretentious statement. It's a rugged little shell with a weedy little engine and not even a chassis underneath to hold it all together. Christ, even a Suzuki Vitara has one of those, and yet the Niva has a semi-serious reputation as a decent off-roader.

Most of the finger-pointed laughing at the Niva is deserved. It's a cheap compromise of Fiat-derived mechanicals and Russian-developed styling, which comes together in a squat, ugly little package that is uncomfortable and slow. Something about the design makes it look like the yellow-and-red Fisher Price roller skates of the '80s.

And that may be the right comparison. Launched in 1977 as Lada's first non-Fiat, the cheapness of the Lada stands out as a defining factor which it flaunts rather than hides. Included from the dealer would have been a 21-piece tool kit for inevitable road side repairs, the interior doesn't show a single attempt at styling, and the front end is simply functional. Square hole for the radiator grill, headlights either side, indicators on top almost as an afterthought. With such sparseness, its no wonder there's no chassis underneath - box steel would be an unnecessary extra cost.

What marks the Niva out as special is the fact that all the traits that Lada attributed to simply keep the costs down and the weedy 78hp engine chugging along are now considered standard in the SUV world. Coil spring suspension and permanent four-wheel drive were only offered on Range Rovers at the time, so how the hell did a part-Italian mostly-Soviet manufacturer put this all together in one cost-efficient little package? Who knows, but its a recipe that works good enough for the Niva to still be in production, albeit in Uruguay, and for off-roading enthusiasts to still snap them up.

It's all too easy to criticise the Lada Niva, and its flaws were evident to all, but in Kolo it's one of the most valuable relics around, andeven if the rock-bottom prices don't represent their true value, it's hard to complain about a Niva when you look at its modern competition. It's not the best city car, and it's not the best off-roader. It's not pretty, and the interior is cheap, but as the forefather to modern SUVs, it's certainly a lot better than its modern offspring.

FSO Warszawa 223 Estate

2008-07-20T18:04:00.003+02:00

Get yourself comfortable. This one's going to be long. I've been delaying it deliberately because the Warszawa is such a monster to handle that it takes time to build up the courage to write about them.

For those who don't know history, or indeed geography, Poland is sandwiched between Germany and Russia. Seventy years ago, that was a rather unfortunate position to be in, and after the smoke had cleared and the blood mopped up, the once-proud capital of Eastern Europe's largest country, brooded over by its new Communist overlords, lay in ruins.

What once had been a thriving city of palaces, factories, trade and culture, was a rubble-filled shell, and the Russians were eager to fill in the craters with their own monstrous designs, but to get anything going, you need to get the peope moving. And in post-war Poland, the only wheels on the streets were those left behind by the invaders. A mad mix of pre-war and military vehicles from all over Europe lay scattered and wrecked by the roadsides, their gasps drawn from them by enterprising Poles until the very last.

So the Russians, nice chaps that they were, licensed their own beast, the GAZ M20, to Poland with the rights to manufacture it. The M20 then was known as the Pobieda, which in Russian means Victory; not a wholy appropriate name for the Poles who, having been raped by Germany felt themselves doubly shafted by the Russians for not preventing the destruction of Warsaw. It was then decided that a subtle name change was in order, and the inspiration was obvious. The Factory of Passenger Cars was established, the Communists gave the order, and production commenced in 1951.

It took a few years for the Polish engineers to tinker with the designs enough to make the car unique to Poland, and in the meantime they satisfied themselves with just copying the Pobieda perfectly. But by 1964 the FSO Warszawa 203 was ready to roll off the production line. The Russian hump-back design was humped further into a proper boot, the front grill was flattened to a less agressive mouth, but most importantly the M20's sidevalve engine was redesigned into the S21. Note that down, as it's the most important number in Polish automotive history.

Considering the pain and anguish that had demanded the cars construction in the first place, it would be a pretty low blow for anyone to find fault with the Warszawa. But those insufferable Frenchmen over at Peugeot protested at the use of the numbers 2, 0, and 3 in that particular order, and therefore the Warszawa was rebadged as a 223.

For a country as shattered and brutalised as Poland had been over the previous 150 years, it's hard not to be cowed by the physical presence of its first automotive product. The particular hulking beast in the photos I found laying dormant in Srodmiescie, downtown Warsaw, at the top of the Vistula escarpment. A 223 Kombi, its massive bulk looms across the river to the FSO factory from where it came, thirty-five or more years ago. It is a formidable vehicle, dwarfing everything around it with its presence. What it lacks in style or grace is compensated by sheer amount; the sheet steel alone is nearly 2mm thick. Like the surviving 19th century tenements that surround it, time has mellowed the paintwork and crumbled the edges a bit, which to the car itself and the city in general adds a modest majesty. You get the feeling that another fifty years would petrify the car rather than rust it, cementing it permanantly into the character of the town.

A monster of this magnitude is unwieldy, and its location in the narrow cobbled backstreets of Warsaw's old town centre betrays the reason why you never see these any more. Such a leviathan simply could not be maintained - the fuel cost alone was beyond the means of most Poles on a ration book, and they usually only lumbered the streets as taxis.

There's something both magnificent and horrific in these cars; their American-styled lines hardened somehow into a more solid force. But don't mistake this for a cold-hearted Cold War byproduct - at the heart of the Warszawa beats the mighty S21 engine. This is a 2.1l 4-cylinder redesign of the Russian's earlier engine, the M20, but given overhead valve treatment instead of at the sides. Like any Pole, it drinks heavily, but it pushed out 70bhp which was more than enough to send this tonne-and-a-half beast, with cargo, lurching around the country. In fact, the engine was that much better than its predecessor that it saw life not just in the Warszawa but in almost every other vehicle Communist Poland ever produced. That one powerplant was solely responsible for almost every single passenger car, van, truck and tractor in Poland for a period of thirty years, and can still be heard rattling around inside farmer's trucks today.

Every single car built in Poland today owes some of its existence to the Warszawa; it's the Godfather of Polish motoring.

Wartburg 353 Estate

2008-06-18T14:59:00.005+02:00

It's very hard to comment on a utilitarian object. I imagine it would be similar to reading a blog about light bulbs, comparing and contrasting the light output, ease of installation, likelihood of burnt fingers upon removal. In fact, there's probably already a blog out there covering this stuff, if you're interested.

The Wartburg 353 fits in that category. It's so practical, so unpretentious, so frank in its statement that I can't help but like it. The statement being, of course, "I move stuff around."

If you want to get from A to B, the simplest and cheapest way is via Wartburg. It's a three-box car with the corners filed off to stop anyone getting hurt, with a pingy little two-stroke engine up front. Suspension is simple and the lights look like they were glued on as an afterthought.

If this car had been built in the West, it would probably have been marketed as "bold" and "assertive" and all the other rubbish reviewers use when they try to make something sound exciting and edgy. The Wartburg isn't any of that. It put out a crippled 50bhp that could propel it over 100km an hour if you had a free weekend. And if it was wet, you'd better hope A-B was a perfectly straight line, as in the rain the wheels might as well have been made of sugar.

The simplicity of the design betrays the lengthy origins behind the Wartburg brand and the 353W in particular. Spawned in 1966, the 353 was built by BMW. No, sorry, this is an EAST German car, so that's EMW. Either way, the base model is actually of Polish origin, being most of the mechanicals and the shell from the never-produced FSO Warszawa 210, of which the only definite produced example resides in a factory about 1500m from where I found this Wartburg.

Unsurprisingly then, comrades of consumption in the old DDR were, well, not exactly anxious but definitely eager to get their hands on the car. With the factory struggling to pump out 100 cars a day, some customers had their names on the delivery list for 10 years before receiving their blunt-nosed little oil burner. Had Poland not agreed a deal to produce the Fiat 124 instead (oops, I mean the Polski Fiat 125p) then the Warszawa 210 would have been stolidly rattling around the roads too, although probably with the same 2.4litre 4-cylinder engine tjat powering everything else in Poland at the time, rather than the Wart's little 3-cylinder two-stroke.

Instead, this decaying example in varying shades of matt paint and filler represents, if not the bones then at least the cartilage of the old German Democratic Republic. The Wartburg went through the wringer with Volkswagen who failed to make it profitable in the new Capitalist market, and Wartburg, like 8500 other DDR state companies, was sold off to Opel and the factory flattened.

In much the same way, it is completely uneconomical to own a Wartburg these days, and the solid matter of their existence and purpose weighed up against so many Deutchmarks (or zlotys, or even the Mickey Mouse Money that is the Euro) is a sad sight to see.

Volkswagen Scirocco

2008-06-17T16:08:00.008+02:00

There's a pigtail bridge in Warsaw that takes you from the sedately cobbled and palace-lined Royal Route down to the riverside, and it's called Diamond Street. It was and still is used as a rally stage by classic motoring veterans who race up its coil, pivot round on a handbrake turn and then roar back down to the awaiting thunder of applause and cheers. Riding your bike down it, then, is a simple pleasure of wind-in-your-hair speed, bouncy buttock-clenching corners and a revelation in anatomical intimacy between yourself and your chosen ride.

It's a street that demands the driver's attention, so when I saw a perky 80's wedge parked up at the second bend, I was so distracted by it that I braked too hard, skidded, hit the kerb and discovered an even more emotional intimacy between my body and the pavement. While my vision reasserted itself, I wondered how a VW Golf had got so squashed and stretched, until I realised it was a Mk I Scirocco.

You can't really imagine a more perfect place for a car like this. Designed specifically to sports-test the embryonic Golf technologies of 1974, it was a thoroughly German take on the idea of a coupe. Multi-faceted and clean-cut, like the best of diamonds its purity comes with its simplicity. With no need for gauche tasteless extras like air-con or power steering (and with no legroom for rear passengers or boot underneath the hatch), the Scirocco was solely for throwing around twisty city streets, skinny tyres squealing and driver bouncing with fear and glee. The story of how the Golf took all of that, made it more boring, and then went on to revolutionise the motor industry is a story so well documented I won't dull you with it here, but its one that regularly omits the section about its older (by three months) and sexier sister.

What the Golf had in spoonfulls, the Scirocco had by the shovel-load. Hand-forged at Karmen rather than churned out by Volkswagen themselves, the Giugiaro folded-envelope sketch was wind-tunnel perfected into the little city slicker with German precision. Over its lifetime it had Audi engines chucked into it, GTI badges before the Golf did, vented disc brakes; it remained the rolling test platform for almost everything the Golf was to have with such worldly proclaim, but pulled it off with just that little more polish.

So while its yappy little upstart sibling became a religion, the wide and menacing Scirocco was doomed instead to cult status. Squint carefully at the 1978 cult classic film "Dawn of the Dead" and you'll see the four survivors of the zombie nightmare racing round a shopping centre in a silver Scirocco. And that is about as iconic as it ever became, until the idea was overhauled in 1981 and the Mk II was born.

Despite the Mk II being the more recognisable and reknowned, both for its blockier stylings and power characteristics, there were nearly twice as many Mk I's produced, with over half a million growling out of Osnabruck in 7 years. That's 200 a day, and yet now there's estimated to be less than 2000 in the world, according to German vehicle licensing statistics. So where did they go?

If you go by word of mouth, horrendous rust problems (those front wings had no plastic linings like the Golf did) and dismal brakes were major contributers, even though the brakes received far better reviews than contemporary sports coupes like Porsche. The one in Dawn of the Dead had an intimate moment with a concrete pillar inside the shopping mall, while most of the rest were so heavily modified by eager yet inept teenagers that they fell apart from shame. Finally, there was simply no way it could compete with the Golf, whose GTI version was essentially everything a Scirocco had and more. Trapped between the little sister and the bad boy cousin in the form of the Audi 80 Coupe (from the VAG group too), there was nowhere for the Scirocco to go in its current form but six feet under.

Like the zombies that gave the Mk I Scirocco its brief moment of recognition, VW has announced that the platform will be returning from the dead in exactly the same idea. They're poised to release a stretched Golf with Golf engines and Golf running gear, but unlike the Mk I it will be wrapped up in a shell from the current "post-abortion foetus" design school that typifies the VAG group. While the first Scirocco was so delightfully simple it "upgraded" from two windscreen wipers to one, the Mk III will undoubtedly have cup-holders, heated leather seats, sat nav and all the other gadgets that will make a tear down Diamond Street feel like a stroll through a shopping centre. If only contemporary designers had the one thing the new Scirocco craves - braaaiiiiinnsssssss.

Opel Ascona C 1.6

2008-06-14T10:45:00.009+02:00

It's difficult not to notice the Opel Ascona, even from a distance, for a number of reasons.
Firstly, this one's bright green. Secondly, it doesn't bare the proud red griffin on the front like it should. And thirdly, its conspicuous in its abscence.

Addressing those things in order, it's not too often you see a multi-shaded scabby old motor in a severely dubious shade of grun with brown rust and grey filler splattered about the place. Especially not in Powisle, home of the Warsaw University Library. With its genteel air of riverside apartments, tree-lined avenues and views across to the Royal Palace, this is not the usual haunt of a ropey old Opel.

And Opel it is. For an Englishman like myself, this is confusing as it ought to be a Vauxhall Cavalier, with its distinctive heraldric badge. At the end of the day, both companies are GM, but I'd like to point out that GM bought Vauxhall first and therefore all Opels are Vauxhalls, and I don't care if they're built and designed in Germany, Japan or Australia - they're still all Vauxhalls.

For a car this badge-engineered, you'd think its continued presence on the roads of Europe would be guaranteed. After all, 1.7m units were churned out of factories in Russelheim, Luton and Antwerp, and sporting its lighting badge it was the biggest selling car in Western Germany. It also sold as the Holden Camira, the Isuzu Aska and the Chevrolet Monza, in various engine configurations, body styles and trim levels.

The example in the photos is a 1.6 S hatchback, spurting out 82bhp of fury from its single-carbed powerplant. It's one of the very early models, before they tried to prettify the line with different grills or clear plastic indicators. What that means is that, as it stands, it's at least 24 years old, with all the battlescars to prove it. The interior might be a hideously dated mess of brown vinyl and tweed uphostery, but mechanically it was perfectly suited 1980s motoring, with its front-wheel drive and transverse mounted engine.

This car was designed from the ground up to be GM's most stable platform; all versions of the J-platform on which the car is based were meant to compete in the fleet markets for regular heavy commuters. While the Kadett and Astra went toe to toe with Ford's Fiesta and Escort in the small car section, the Ascona put up a valiant effort not just against the Cortina/Taurus, but against that love-muscle supplement of the city suit, the Sierra. And performed admirably too, racking up the miles, and the sales, among middle management in countries all over the world.

Rather alarmingly for a car this popular then, is the fact that in Britain it is one of the most scrapped cars of the last 30 years. It is this that makes the Ascona so noticeable - that really, it should still be so profilic on the roads that you don't notice them. The ones that are still knocking around are mainly in the same condition as this one too; a roll of gaffer tape and a tube of instant gasket away from a safety certificate failure. About 10 minutes after I took the photos, I saw the same car struggling its way up the Warsaw escarpment to the city proper, fat old man behind the wheel, wisps of blue smoke curling behind. There was no love between the driver and the car, just a simple working relationship between man and beast.

The Opel Ascona is a failure of its own success. Sold in the thousands, it was never going to be recognised as a classic, or indeed as anything special. It was bought, used, abused and dumped. So take a good look at the revolting paintwork and garish indicators; production dried up 20 years ago, and rather than being put out to pasture, like the sheep dog of yore, too many of these have been taken to the end of the field and shot in the back of the head.

It's worth noting that the Daewoo Espero, assembled in Warsaw's FSO factory directly over the river from where I found this Ascona, is little more than a tarted-up version of the same car, built on GM's J-platform. It's still very much a common sight on the roads of Poland, and owes its continued existence to the furrows ploughed by its hard-working older sister.

Peugeot 304

2008-06-13T22:13:00.008+02:00

I'm not a big fan of French automobiles. Now now, before you climb onto your high horse and cry "of course you don't, you're an Englishman," let me assure you that I've thought long and hard about this and have come to the conclusion that you're probably right.

I've owned a fair few frog motors, but not enough to claim to be an expert on them. I'm not going to point to their continuous track record of unreliability, and I'll even give a nod of admittance that French manufacturers produce some of the most innovative, extraordinary and downright revolutionary designs in the long history of car production. The simple fact is that despite all the hydropneumatics, one-spoke steering wheels and inboard disc brakes, I just find it rather difficult to feel passionate about these vehicles.

It is undoubtable that most of the head-turners on the roads for the past 50 years have been French, and I do even now harbour a guilty desire to buy a Renault Avantime, even though I have no clue what I'd do with a two-door MPV. I like looking at the Matra Rancho even though I know that it's a Matra, and last week I accidently slapped my girlfriend in the face whilst driving, overenthusiastically pointing out a Renault Fuego, the likes of which I haven't seen in yonks.
But when I lie in bed at night, I don't lust for a Gallic hatchback or curvy cabriolet. For all their va va voom, they leave me soulless.

What dragged my eye to this otherwise charmless Peugeot 304 was actually its paintjob. GOLD. Luxurious Midaslike gold. Not the lacklustre silver that so many contemporary saloons are slathered with, but a shiny, reflective, everything-I-touch gold. A colour so intrinsically linked to opulence and exclusivity that in the 1970s, almost every other car on the road seemed to be gold. Its ubiquity became the butt of jokes, so much so that when I bought a 1978 Vauxhall Viva and phoned up the insurance company to get a quote, the woman at the other end asked me what shade of gold it was. When I told her it was red she commented "ooh, the luxury edition," and giggled at me. Phwoar.

Gold, for all its monetary charm, lends more to our nostalgic view than any rose-tinted spectacles could. The distant sepia of time-stained photographs recall a sentimental twinge of gold to our fondest memories, when long summer holidays were bathed with slanting rays of liquid sunshine, when you held your first sturdily solid pound coin, when things seemed to glisten that much more than they do now. The gold alloys on a Subaru WRX just don't evoke the same emotion that huge panels of rust-succeptable steel sprayed in gold do. So when you finally see a little old hatchback tucked next to a massive chequer-plated 4x4, some little inner part of you will smile sentimentally.

But not specifically for the 304. For all its swage lines and chrome work, it was little more than a gap filler between the baby 204 and the giant award-winning 504. The drawing-board idea must have seemed perfect; a small family car with simple but solid mechanicals, designed to suit 1969 tastes. What that physically translated as was robbing all the old motors, disc brakes and suspension from the middle aged 204 and planting them in a cut down 504-styled body; a real mouton dressed as lamb, if you like, which couldn't really compete with the far more French Citroen GS, released a year later. Not that it was a bad car, per se, it just didn't really offer much to the world.

While your modern motor is available in CloudEdge Silver, Smoked Silver, Ditchwater Silver and I Can't Believe It's Not Silver, plus a myriad other hues and shades of that dull steely tone, gold takes true bravery and nochalance to carry off. The boxy bruisers of the 70s could justifiably swagger in it, but not the timid little 304. This car is a Fool's Gold, if you will. The Pyritical Peugeot.

UAZ-469 (31512)

2008-06-11T22:14:00.000+02:00

The Communist Tonka. Known in the Russian-speaking world as "Kozel", meaning Goat, primarily because it'll go anywhere, but also because it's a stubborn bitch and "kozel" is not a particularly pleasant word in Russian. And the UAZ is very much a swear word of the vehicular world; insulting, uncouth, ill-mannered and certainly not for polite company.

You normally have to be on the receiving end of a Russian invasion to experience one of these vehicles, but seeing as I was strolling around the abandonned 19th century Bemowo Fort (one of a ring of defensive structures erected by the Tsarist overlords around Warsaw during that particular occupation) then I don't really deserve to be surprised by such a display of Russian might.

The UAZ-469 went EVERYWHERE, and still does. To use words like Jeep, Land Rover or SUV in its presence are to demean its very existence. This is not some prancing pretty-boy offroader with alloy wheels, Xenons and cup holders; this was the no-nonsense mule of the Warsaw Pact states, held back only by its need to drink up 24litres of fuel for every 100km it rattles along the road.

And rattle they do, along with roar, bellow, squeal and groan. And thats what they like, too. Unlike the current fad for shiny brightwork and spray-on mud, the UAZ is very much of the "treat em mean, keep 'em keen" school. Abused, mistreated, having their nuts revved off as they're thrown carelessly through fields of both farm and battle, the UAZ will lap it up and chortle for more. And even if you do bend, snap or ruin something, part of the design brief was that it should be repairable with a stout stick and a large hammer. With this sublime simplicity, it's even been known for Land Rover owners to try and pinch parts from UAZes to improve their own vehicles.

With this much power and capability at hand, it didn't take long for the public to clamour for their own model of the otherwise military-only UAZ, and year by year a few trickled their way into the hands of private owners. Eventually a UAZ-469B roared its throaty way out of the factory with reduced ground clearance and other differences, for the civilian market.

I only had a chance to poke my head around this dilapidated example for a few minutes as I didn't want to get bayonetted by a possessive security guard, but the one in the pic, despite being sat idle for a while, could no doubt be hurtling its way around the fortifications without too much work, a thought both thrilling and chilling in equal measures.

With its simple fearsome supremacy, the UAZ-469 is one of the last remaining diplomats of the Cold War mentality; the idea that brute force massively applied can crush opponents into submission. For that reason alone, its no wonder that this one has taken refuge in the weed-strewn car park of a military fort, as its active service in Poland was as one of the cars of choice of the loathed ZOMO, the equally brutal and suppressive Communist Riot Police force, whose atrocities have still so far gone unpunished. Painting it yellow still does not soften the fact that it has "Security Office" tattooed on its flanks, and I doubt that there is little love lost between this Soviet dominator and its host country.

For now then, this faded example of Ulyanovsky Automobilny Zavod's finest lies dormant in its fortress, awaiting its inevitable return to arduous, angry and enthusiastic service.

Skoda Rapid Coupe

2008-06-08T22:15:00.012+02:00

Back in 1981, Skoda was a Communist producer pumping rear-engined saloons out of Czechoslovakia factories to the amusement to the western world. We've all heard the jokes, and the only relief was when we all pointed our fingers at a Lada instead. Indeed, Skoda Rapid was considered an oxymoron to those who wouldn't stoop to riding in one.

Of course, some of the comments levelled at Skoda might have been deserved; by the 1980's a lot of the technology involved in putting them together still dated back to the 1960's, and the whole idea of an engine in the rear driving the wheels was laughable. Who the hell could pull up at home, open the bonnet and take out the family shopping? Christ, most Englishmen (or rather, their housewives) would die of embarrasment.

In fact, the idea of a serious rear-engined, rear wheel drive vehicle was ridiculous. Sure, it's good enough for the charmingly laughable Fiat 126p, but the only truly driveable car available to the consumer in 1984 was the Porsche 911; a sports car within the financial grasp of just enough people to earn itself a reputation as a seriously enjoyable driving experience. Hanging onto its coat-tails then, those plucky few Skoda Rapids that made it off the forecourt were quickly dubbed the Poor Man's Porsche. Weighing in at 840kg, 58bhp was enough to get wheelspin, and the Block from the Bloc still has a firm following amongst purist and tuners alike, being as much a joy to throw around corners sideways as its sturdy Stuttgart sister. And remember, Porsche is just the dark horse of Volkswagen, the company who have succesfully stripped all the emotion out of Skoda in the last 18 years.

This particular Rapid I found whilst desperately trying to get away from Bemowo, and seeing it's plastic-bumpered posterior put a wry grin on my face. It's one of the later facelift models, which saw the powertrain overhauled and, more drastically, the dumping of traditional Commie frogeyes for the Estelle's chunky block headlights. Whether or not this is a 130, 135 or 136 is not really an issue, as the difference amounts to four horsepower, a pittance of torque and probably some plastic bits of trim 3mm wider somewhere, which some pedant will eventually point out to me unasked. Considering how many of each model were made though, and that Poland back then was a cheap as chips state, chances are this is the bog-standard 130.

If you squint at the pics, someone's deliberately removed the Skoda badge from the front, and they had been properly removed from the back too. You'd almost think that someone was embarrased to own a Skoda, and I'd much rather think it's so that the car could have a respray from a loving owner instead. But then, ho ho, of course it's had a repspray, it's 20-odd years old and was held together with chewing gum from the start. Oh, you wit. Tell me another.

And then, once you've wiped the spittle from the corners of your mouth and slapped your mate on the back for a joke well told, remember that the Rapid name has pedigree, winning the 1936 Monte Carlo back when Porsche could only make glorified Beetles. And even if they did rust, and couldn't normally hold their own against their technologically advanced western brethren, or weren't that endowned engine-wise, there's no need to go denying a motor like this of the admiring nod it deserves. A Skoda Rapid is a wonderful take on the Coupe form, and in burgundy red it demands recognition in exactly the way modern Skodas don't.

RAF Latvija 2203

2008-06-06T19:04:00.015+02:00

Bemowo is one of Warsaw's most western suburbs. Constructed on the unused aprons of a military airport, its regimental stacks of Communist blocks reflect the concrete slabs the town was built on. Wide roads and a dedicated tram loop envelop clusters of aparments whose long shadows shelter primary schools, gyms and a charmingly modern church. Like the conscripts in the military academy at the town's lip, Bemowo's residents rise with the sun, march to the trams and file themselves off for a hard day's work.

With life this plain and organised, there's therefore not much point traipsing through the speed-humped tarmac lanes that coil themselves between the tower blocks, and for most of the week, lines of dull silver late-90s cars stand bored and unwanted in the carparks. It wasn't until last weekend when good weather and the subsequent exodus to the lakes and forests left Bemowo alarmingly empty. Which is how, stuck in the city, I stumbled across a crumbling dark blue van that looked like it had been assembled by a drunk Communist 30 years ago.

The RAF Latvija minibus is exactly that. Despite the appropriate military acronym, RAF actually stands for Rigas Autobusu Fabrika, a light truck assembly plant in, unsurprisingly, Latvia. Making vans for Soviet Union State purposes (ambulances and taxis mostly, or if your family had more than five kids), RAF used technologies from the Russian GAZ cars to build 2-tonne transport platforms for 50 years. By 1976, the factory could churn out 17,000 examples at its Jelgava plant, and that model was the GAZ M-24-based Latvija 2203.

When the Jelgava factory opened, however, the GAZ-24 that provided the technology of the van was already eight years old, and no amount of steadfast Communist hard work could turn the RAF Latvija 2203 into a master in light goods transportation. The cast iron 2.5l engine only kicked out 95bhp, and it's location under the front passenger seat didn't help in terms of exhaust fumes. Slow, heavy, and with the tendancy to poison its patients with carbon monoxide, the 2203 was useless as an ambulance (despite 30% of production models being them,) and with drum brakes all round to halt its massive 2.5t bulk, it would occasionally require another ambulance to attend to the carnage inflicted by the van's design.

In the Polish market, there was simply no way the foreign RAF could compete with the more agriculturally designed (and locally produced) Nysa and Zuk vans, which makes the sight of a Latvija in a military suburb raise an eyebrow as high as the 12-storey blocks that surround it. Of course, they were exported all over the Bloc during their 23-year production run, shuttling officials, mail, interrogation victims and corpses around such far flung places as Cuba, Bulgaria and Iraq, and can still be seen in the background of some war reports today, despite RAF's bankruptcy in 1998.

It was hard enough to identify this particular example anyway, what with the broken remnants of the cursive Latvia logo hanging off the nose and the grill badge faded beyond legibility. It was only the angular bullnose poking out with sad, watery headlights that drew my attention in the first place. Slavic winters have not yet rotted this thing through, but the fact that most of the engine is strewn over the back seats, and the view from the cab to the brick paviers below tell us this van won't be carrying any more patients (or victims, if you prefer) any time soon.

As a hulking angular Communist chunk, however, I couldn't think of a more fitting resting place.

Lancia Trevi Volumex VX

2008-06-06T17:48:00.004+02:00

The car that inspired this whole online debacle.

Whilst out for a wander among Warsaw's crumbling industrial ruins, I saw through the chinks in a fence a pale blue wreck. Windshield gone, grill gaping wide and one front light smashed like a defeated boxer, I initially thought it was an old Volvo 200. It couldn't be a Peugeot 305 (although it deserved to be) and so I clambered through a gap in the fence to take a closer look.

The Lancia Trevi was not a car I had ever heard of, as I spat on my rear finger and wiped clean the badge on the boot. Spawned from the same line that created the far more appealing Lancia Beta, it was a rather uninspired (Trevi is derived from Tre Volumi - three box) early 80s saloon that, visually, failed to live up to its stablemates like the Beta Coupe and the HPE (High Performance Estate.)

But Blandwagon it ain't. What made this particular Trevi so special was the weedy cavern where the 2-litre Volumex supercharged engine should have been. When it rolled out of the sun-scorched Turin factory 25 years ago, this beast would have spurted out 136 horses-worth of power to the wheels. Dull on the outside, but fierce under the bonnet, less than 4000 Trevi VX's were assembled and sold, despite it's brisk 190km/h top speed. Considering it's unpopularity at the time, the fact that this shell has survived this far is worthy enough of comment, and the argument towards restoration falls in the name of rarity.

This example, however, has been robbed of the two iconic pieces of construction that made it such a significant piece of engineering. The yawning maw of the engine bay was one heartbreak - the grim disaster of cables that represented the long-absent dashboard, riddled with recessed buttons like bulletholes, was the other. Instead, this Trevi is little more than a blocky lump of Italian panels filled with perished window rubbers and furry seat coverings. How the hell it got to Poland in the first place is a mystery, but the thought that such a rare Italian car has been grave-robbed to upgrade the engine of a Polski Fiat is too painful to bare.

The only chance of salvation would be to sacrifice one of the Trevi's more desirable stablemates of the Beta clan, but time, money and parts availability are, as always, strong factors in the face of this Trevi's continued future. When this entire area of Warsaw is redeveloped (which is happening at an alarmingly furious pace) this Trevi will be dug up, squashed and forgotten like the weeds around it.