THE MIDDLE LANE
Not everything was better in the old days, says TGTV script writer Sam Philip. But chocolate was
My first car was a VW Polo It was very cheap and it was very terrible to drive
It rusted It leaked The brake pedal and brakes had clearly experienced a significant falling out many years before and remained on strictly non speaking terms Acceleration was well it wasn’t At motorway speeds if you ever succeeded in attaining them its front wheels would occasionally lift clean off the ground Good feather light steering Bad everything else
It was a dog that Polo And this is where I’m meant to say that yes it was objectively awful but I loved it anyhow because it gave me true freedom and we formed a glorious memorable bond blah blah But we didn’t After a couple of months in my stewardship the Polo met its maker courtesy of a slippery country lane a large ditch and an utter absence of driver talent But in our brief time together trust me it was crap
That’s not mere hindsight speaking Even at the time to a year old with very low standards not just in cars that Polo felt like an ancient car And it wasn’t uniquely awful My mates all had cars of similar age similar value and similar terribleness Fiestas Clios the odd Citroen AX all devoid of brakes power or basic mechanical integrity They all felt ancient
But here’s the thing At the point I acquired it my Polo was years old That’s the equivalent for someone passing their test today of buying a car built in ! I can’t get my head around that A car isn’t ancient! It’s basically new right?
That’s not even a MkI Ford Focus It’s a MkII It’s the ‘spaceship’ eighth gen Honda Civic It’s the year that saw the arrival of the Volvo C the Kia Cee’d and the first Audi R OK so not many newly qualified drivers today will have an R as their first car but the point still stands those aren’t to my eyes at least pensioners Today’s old cars look much less old than old cars of old if you see what I mean
Maybe not Maybe as my wife helpfully suggested it’s precisely the sort of out of touch observation you’d expect from someone rapidly approaching middle age and failing to deal with the relentless march of progress and also when did Double Decker bars get so small? What’s going on with that? Back in the day size of a baseball bat they were Maybe to the youth of today an early C does look like the product of a bygone age
But even so you can’t deny that today’s year old Polo or Corsa or Fiesta even a properly daggy one will be a much better car in every way than its equivalent from a couple of decades back Or to put it another way crapboxes nowadays are much less crap than crapboxes used to be The arc of the car universe is long but it bends towards progress Things weren’t always better in the old days Apart from Double Deckers
Need more of the TopGear telly show in your life? All episodes are now free to stream on BBC iPlayer
“WHEN DID DOUBLE DECKER BARS GET SO SMALL? WHAT’S GOING ON WITH THAT?”