IT'S BEEN A GOOD YEAR

Once again the two marquee hypercars of our era stumbled through a year without getting finished and are now three years late. Chris Harris drove the first MercedesAMG One but it was clearly off-colour. Mercedes sent a letter to its buyers in the US, whose deposit money it had long ago taken, saying, ahem, it couldn’t meet emissions there after all, so it couldn’t be road homologated. The Aston Valkyrie hasn’t been tested by us or any neutral person, and while a few were delivered, they lacked the active chassis and aero modes central to its spec. They’ll be flashed ‘later’.

Their delay was down to hubris and overreach. Too many other cars have been slowed, in development or production, by chipageddon. The world semiconductor shortage sounds like a boring detail but it has derailed the car market. New cars are in short supply so nearly (and not-so-nearly) new ones have spiked in price as people scramble to fill the gap. It’s worst with cheap new cars as manufacturers put those scarce chips into their more expensive and profitable ones instead.

All this in a year when petrol, diesel and electricity prices went skyward, and interest rates on car loans too.

I suspect Paris 2022 will prove to be the death twitch of the old-style motor show. None of the German groups, nor Koreans, nor Japanese turned up to exhibit, nor the supercar makers. Even Citroen was absent. These days the manufacturers have a lot of data on where their customers are, and reach out to them directly, rather than just sitting in a giant shed trying to shout above their rivals. But if you want to see the new launches and concept cars, or you’re just a kid who loves getting close to supercars (we all were) then it’s rather sad.