‘Last real-world car that made me go ooh’

An abandoned search for a new car for my better half left me wondering where tomorrow’s everyday classics will come from. Or will a line be drawn in the post-millennial sand, this side of which is an automotive dark ages. There was simply nothing that offered any heart-tugging appeal amongst the grossly proportioned 4x4s or lumpy SUVS.

All hatchbacks appear to have been created using the same basic Design-a-car software, all with shared cues like an oversized grille, steep beltline, large triangular C-pillars that create blind spots you can hide a bus in, and ever-shrinking windows in the rear hatch. Hard to tell them apart.

There seems to be no design flare being used in anything with a price tag below £100k unless it is a sports car (off our menu). Retro stuff like the MINI and Fiat 500 don’t count as they merely ape past designs. Will that alone perhaps allow them a free pass into our classic world?

When I think about it, the last real-world car launch that made me go ‘ooh, want one!’ was the Alfa 156, and that was in 1997. I have since owned one of those and, though terminally rusty, it did still have that ‘ooh’ factor. And I will admit having a thing for the BMW i8, and would allow it future classic status, but it’s hardly an everyday PC car. Also, the same company, at the same time, produced the wilfully ugly i3, which kind of proves my original point.

I think we should be looking after the older modern classics, and making sure as few as possible are lost in the inevitable scrappage programmes that will be used to drive us into electric cars. Otherwise our scene will cease to grow.

‘We should be looking after older modern classics’