PHIL WHITE

THE MOTORING FUTURE

Aweek ago I was in a Halfords car park, watching my daughter swap her L plates for a set bearing a green capital P. cocktail of pride, happiness and wonder at quite how I can have raised this excellent human being coursed round my cerebral cortex. And I pondered what on earth she would drive during the next half century or so. Will it always be a car? Will it always have wheels? And if so, how many?

In his Editorial to the January issue of this magazine, Simon placed a picture of his own daughter alongside her new ride. It was a good choice, a 2011 Peugeot 107. My own progeny is now the pilot of a 2005 Toyota Yaris. Admittedly, the Peugeot is by far the smarter machine. Daughter’s Yaris has been rather patinated by the effects of UV light on red paintwork, and the effects of its former owner (my girlfriend) adopting a distinctly visceral approach to mapping the locations of every bollard in every supermarket car park she has ever visited. But the car was free, has proved its mechanical excellence over several years, and its scruffiness will effectively camouflage any minor abuse daughter may inflict upon it. She loves it.

It is also incredibly reliable. Key to this is something it shares with Ms Goldsworthy’s Peugeot: an assembly known to the world as 1KR-FE, lauded as sub-1.0-litre International Engine of the Year between 2007 and 2010. It really is a fine motor, a three-cylinder, 12-valve, non-turbo, chain-driven petrol engine developed by Daihatsu. Its 998cc develop 66bhp at 6000rpm, and 67lb.ft at 4800rpm. And will do it for many, many thousands of miles, as long as regular oil changes are observed.

Before the oil is added, the 1KR-FE weighs just 69kg. A 998cc BMC A-series engine’s mass is around 125kg, but even in twin-carb form it develops just 54bhp and 57lb.ft torque. The 50 years of development between the two units proves that sometimes less can be more. But not always – a classic Mini saloon weighs around 600kg, while the Yaris’ mass is about 970kg. Thanks to superior aerodynamics and half a century of drivetrain development, the heavier car is quicker, safer and more fuel-efficient than the Mini, but it certainly isn’t more entertaining. Not that the Yaris lacks charm. It offers a driving experience very similar to the Goldsworthy Peugeot, of which my editor writes: 'It is actually quite fun in a real back-to-basics way.'

But that is a 13 year old car. Our Yaris is 19, the same age as its new owner became this very day – I write this hiding in my office from her birthday party, which has taken over the house. The decades between the Mk2 Mini Cooper’s launch and that of the Mk2 Yaris saw superminis become vastly more competent and reliable, yet commensurately less involving and less enjoyable. Diminutive, everyday cars have continued the trend. I hired a Fiat 500 on a trip to Spain recently. It was a thoroughly decent motor, but I could only have engaged with it less if I'd been dead.

Two days after daughter achieved her licence, I visited a friend who is preparing to expatriate to his wife’s country of origin. He had a few parting gifts, one of which sits on the desk here. It is a copy of Motor magazine from 1982. What caught my eye – next to a Toyota advert – was a special section exploring the possibility of reviving three-wheel cars’ popularity. I remember this question coming up frequently in the 1980s, not only in car magazines but on television programmes such as Blue Peter and Tomorrow’s World. The idea that cars – especially in densely-populated urban environments – would do well to slim down and slow down, get lighter, leaner and more fuelefficient, is entirely logical. Lightweight three-wheelers such as the Reliant Rialto tested by Motor’s intrepid staff seemed like they could possibly be the answer to rising fuel prices and urban congestion. And the Ford Cockpit – a tandem-seat trike concept driven by a single rear wheel, realised by Ghia and unleashed at the 1982 Chicago Motor Show – looked like a sketch of the near future. But we had seen this before, when trikes flourished briefly in post-world War Two austerity, before being beaten into oblivion by increasingly-affordable, massproduction family cars.

In 1990 Ton van den Brink, a Dutch businessman, realised that the horror of Parisian traffic might be avoided if only the Parisians – and by extension city dwellers worldwide – could safely switch to tiny vehicles. Despite numerous setbacks, his company Carver persisted, and still markets a three-wheeled, wafer-slim two-seat vehicle that has a roof like a car, but turns into a corner like a motorbike following the twist of a steering wheel. It is the most fun you can possibly have in metropolitan traffic while remaining reasonably sure that you’re unlikely to die.

Will I one day ride tandem through a city in a miniscule hybrid of bicycle and car, powered by nuclear fusion, a passenger of my daughter? Or will I at some point be transported to a care home in a vehicle so huge that I can barely see her in the driving seat? And will she be actually driving it? The sad thing is, as I sit here wrapped in parental pride, I have absolutely no idea.

Will I one-day ride tandem through a city in a miniscule hybrid of bicycle and car, powered by nuclear fusion, a passenger of my daughter?