Why he simply had to buy a Cortina
SATURDAY
People whinge about car dealers but I’ve got a fundamentally good opinion of them and their role in life. Someone has to show new cars in the flesh and, most important, to handle your ‘swapper’ once you’ve done a deal. I know it’s wasteful, but I’ve always hated the private sale model, where you stay in on a succession of weekends so a succession of trainee housebreakers can come round and explain how your car doesn’t meet their high standards. (Apologies, James Ruppert.)
Service departments I’m a lot less sure about. Took the family Fiat to our nearest official site for a service and MOT to be told it was going to fail on rear brake pads. They didn’t have the parts and I’d have to bring the car back – a big bind. When I suggested holding stock wouldn’t have been a bad idea, the service receptionist drove me briefly to a fury by explaining, as if to a fiveyear-old, that if they carried brake pads for all the models they sold, they’d need premises twice the size. But my fury soon gave way to sympathy for all big company bosses: imagine trying to run a car company well, knowing people like this are your principal contact with customers…
MONDAY
I’ve bought a Lotus Cortina – and I’m still getting over how extraordinary those words sound, even out of my own mouth. Don’t take this the wrong way – my whole working life has been aimed at saying what’s true about cars, all cars – but I was born a Ford fan. My grandfather owned and sold Model Ts, my first new car was a Cortina 1600E (Mk2 body) and I grew up in the first fast Ford era, from which Lotus’s superheated Cortina – and its supreme racing history – emerged like a missile heading for the stratosphere. So this acquisition is no less than the culmination of a dream. I apologise in advance, but I’m going to have to tell you about it from time to time.
TUESDAY
Had our first meeting with key members of Jim Ratcliffe’s Projekt Grenadier development team (see p14) and learned plenty of fascinating stuff about their plan to produce a vehicle that can replace the Land Rover Defender. My biggest surprise was their intention to use live axles front and rear. This must be the first car-sized vehicle in decades without any sign of an independent suspension, and I found that curiously reassuring. Defines the new 4x4’s planned toughness and off-road intent more than any amount of verbiage.
Now it can be told: I fell out with the company principal
WEDNESDAY
My first trip to Lotus in Hethel for several years. Now it can be told: I fell out with the company principal, who departed soon after present owner Geely took over, and couldn’t drag myself to the place for a couple of years. How things have changed – and not changed – in two years. Best news of all is that the hugely experienced and talented Russell Carr continues as design director and will be as squarely in charge as ever of the new cars Lotus is already creating.
But new stuff is everywhere. New five months ago was CEO Phil Popham, who brings an unimagined management stability. The fruits of Geely investment are everywhere. (This is the first time in Lotus history when they’ve honestly had enough money.) The infamous incomplete ‘skeleton building’, a legacy of Dany Bahar’s regime-before-last, is being completed. In short, anyone in need of a UK car industry news story should turn their eyes to Hethel, where it’s happening as never before.