ROBERT COUCHER
The Driver
Since I retired from my real job decades ago and took up a hobby job as a classic car motoring journalist, I’ve always determined to walk the torque by driving classic cars as my daily smokers. As editor of the now-defunct Your Classic magazine I drove to the first interview in my Rosso 1958 Alfa Romeo Giulietta Sprint and naïvely parked it plum in the MD’s private car parking space. I think the Alfa inadvertently helped land me the gig.
Later, as editor of Thoroughbred & Classic Cars ,I shipped my 1963 Porsche 356C over from Cape Town and it was my daily driver, international rally car and Historic racer for years until I parked it rather too aggressively on Copse Corner at Silverstone circuit. Then, soon after cofounding Octane in 2003, I purchased my lovely old Jaguar XK140 SE, which was immediately pressed into service as my regular driver and commuter and enjoyed on regularity rallies up in the Scottish Highlands as well as down to Barcelona and on numerous runs to Le Mans. Yes, it’s probably a bit noisier on the motorway than your average well-insulated commuter-mobile, but it munches the miles just as effectively and is far more involving to drive.
Some years ago, She Who Must Be Obeyed decided that we should take up the hobby of falling down mountain slopes on planks in the Alps, so naturally I had to find a suitable family wagon up to the task of handling icy roads. What fun! Of course, it had to be a (modern) classic 1991 Range Rover Vogue in Ardennes Green, powered by that sonorous 3.9-litre V8. Fitted with fresh winter tyres, our Rangie was brilliant at conquering steep Alpine tracks where modern softroaders were left flailing in the snow. But while its aluminium body panels looked pristine and the V8 engine ran like an ox, its last MoT test revealed terminal structural rot, so it sadly had to go.
If I had to buy a modern it would be a bog-standard, five-door Golf GTI. Classy, classless, capable and fun to drive: what else would you want or need? Naturally, when instructed by SWMBO to find another suitable family ski wagon, I went against my own advice and purchased possibly the most boring car in the world: a poverty-spec BMW 320i. In my defence, a Golf is just not capacious enough. We need a wagon that can transport skis, poles and clumpy boots as well as being able to negotiate snowy roads upon arrival. I found a low-mileage, history’d, six-year-old, petrol-powered 320i Sport Touring XDrive that ticks the boxes.
Fitted with new 225/50 Goodyear Vector 4Seasons All Weather tyres and loaded to the gunwales with Christmas presents, kitchen appliances, cosmetics, skiing and après-ski apparel, I – as transport-Wallah – was sent ahead on the 600-mile run to the Alps in the wagon while the ladies of the house followed in the comfort of an Airbus A320 (coincidence?) at their leisure. A 12-hour trip allows ample time to assess a motor car and my first impressions of this BMW F30 – actually an F31 as it’s a Touring – were… underwhelming, as expected. The 2.0-litre, twin-scroll turbo lump doesn’t really sound of anything. It produces an almost inaudible 181bhp and 199lb ft, which is pretty desultory by today’s standards.
But ever so quietly the bland eight-speed auto BMW began to reveal itself. The handling is taut, with beautiful damping and an athletic suspension set-up; hitting the SPORTS switch on the console actually brings it alive. There’s a SPORTS+ too, but let’s not go there yet.
With the light four-cylinder up front, the handling is super-accurate, with sharp steering, long legs, powerful brakes and 43mpg in absolute comfort. Clearly this package needs more power! Tooling along through France at 140km/h I pondered the F31 range: the next model up is the 328i, not with the traditional straight-six you’d once have expected but, for emissions reasons, this same 2.0-litre remapped to 240bhp and 260lb ft. A bit of seriously cheeky badge engineering led by the marketing department, not the engineers, that effectively detuned my poverty model from the next badge up!
I have subsequently learnt that Superchips offers an ECU remap (not an invasive re-chip) for around £500 to make my humble 320i match the 328i figures. All via a handheld Bluefin device. Maybe it’s time for a tweak: it could make that SPORTS+ button worthwhile, after all.
On arrival in the icy Alps I found snow that was wheel-hub deep but the four-wheel-drive BMW dismissed the tricky conditions with disdain, helped along by the clever Goodyear rubber. Impressive, so maybe I did make the right call. After all, it’s usually the quiet ones.
‘MY PORSCHE 356C WAS MY DAILY DRIVER – UNTIL I PARKED IT RATHER TOO AGGRESSIVELY ON COPSE CORNER’