Steve Cropley
Instantly smitten by the new Alpine
TUESDAY
Big moment: first decent drive in an Alpine A110 on roads I know. This car has impressed road testers of every hue, the 600bhp lead-clog brigade as much as those (of an Autocar persuasion) who value delicacy, accuracy and control feel as much as a mechanical kick up the backside. By chance, I stepped into our test car an hour after delivering my own Mazda MX-5 to a dealer for servicing, so comparisons were illuminating. I loved the A110’s light and sensitive steering, which is saying a mouthful, and its brakes were simply sensational.
In 25 miles, I discovered a car that goes well, always feels light, always sounds wonderful and manages its gears with a smoothness and dispatch the last Clio Renault Sport I drove just didn’t. Different gearbox and different software, I’m told. My abiding feeling is just how great fourcylinder engines can be, and how brilliantly the best modern car creators shrug off constraints. This car wasn’t constrained by anything; it was a driver’s delight.
WEDNESDAY
As a Lotus lover from way back (ownership: seven cars in 30 years), I’m full of hope about the appointment of former JLR executive Phil Popham as CEO and head of commercial operations. Popham knows plenty about creating and selling special British cars, but I’m still concerned that Geely has yet to appoint a proper engineering figurehead. There are plenty of people who’ll have an effect on the Lotuses of the future – long-time design chief Russell Carr, Geely Group design boss Peter Horbury, Lotus chairman and Geely chief technical officer Feng Qingfeng, for three – but no one has been straightforwardly labelled head of engineering, which at Lotus is the centre of everything. Neither has there yet been any clear commitment to investing the much-mentioned Geely millions. Let’s hope the two things coincide, and soon.
THURSDAY
Honoured to chair a panel discussion on electric cars at Brooklands before a 150-strong audience packed into an auditorium called the Vickers Suite. Dreaded health and safety constraints limited our audience size: last-minute demand showed we could easily have housed 250 but for an inconvenient wedding reception in Brooklands’ biggest auditorium.
My job was made simple by the brilliance of my co-talkers, Chargemaster strategy director Tom Callow and Renault UK head of electric vehicles Ben Fletcher. Both are passionate, articulate, up-to-date experts on a complex and fast-moving subject – which is why they were still answering questions 45 minutes after the official Q&A session ended. What impressed me was that this audience, comprising people who usually come to hear tales of the past, was so prepared to put time and money into hearing about cars of the future.
FRIDAY
A perfect example of banal car-nonsense from wider media popped up today when reporters discovered VW was killing its latest ‘Beetle’. There was a predictable fuss about Hitler’s Porschedesigned ‘people’s car’ finally reaching its end, as if the unsuccessful Golf-based contraption bore any resemblance to the brilliant rear-engined original. As any fool knows, the proper Beetle died in 1974, superseded by the Golf, although a few cars were made in Mexico until 2003.
SATURDAY
Still so sorry, as I head for Prescott hillclimb, about the recent death of Barrie ‘Whizzo’ Williams, the much-loved, fast-in-anything wheelman with whom I once double-drove a Renault Zoe for fun. I’ll never forget either the man or his best advice, delivered after I proffered the classic indifferent driver’s question: what single thing will make me better? Whizzo’s reply was decisive and instant: “Look further down the road,” he said. In the years since, I’ve often proved that he was right.
No one has been labelled head of engineering at Lotus