THE MIDDLE LANE
Yes, times are a-changing, but not so fast as we might all imagine, says TGTV’s Sam Philip
There’s an old Mini parked on the street in front of my house Mid Seventies vintage in a shade of yellow I believe British Leyland called ‘Citron’ and the rest of us would call ‘Berocca Alarm’ Hasn’t moved for the last week or so quite possibly because it’s suffered terminal mechanical decline
Spotting the Mini for the first time tucked surreptitiously into a lineup of Qashqais and Kugas and Xs I wish I could say my first thought was “My goodness what a stellar example of British engineering genius” But it wasn’t My first thought was “Wow grandad you look proper old”
Unsurprising I guess The Mini’s wearing an old N plate which means it was registered in which means it’s nearly half a century old In car years that’s basically prehistoric
And conceptually it’s older still The Mini launched in and barely changed in its first years It’s a year old design No wonder it’s looking a bit please just let me die in peace
But as the days wore on and the Mini sat there small stoic yellowing increasing patina of pigeon crap more thoughts occurred First yup definite terminal breakdown only way that thing’s moving is on the back of a truck But also in the grand sweep of history maybe it’s actually shaping up pretty well?
“IN TERMS OF LAYOUT, EVEN GENERAL SILHOUETTE, MINI AND QASH ARE BASICALLY TWINS”
Because go backwards years from and you end up in The big automotive launch of was something called the De La Vergne a six seat bhp “motor drag” If you can’t picture the De La Verge fear not nor can literally any other human alive Suffice to say it didn’t look like anything recognisable today as a car It looked like a horse drawn cart that had lost its horse
Point is the leap from De La Vergne to Mini is far far greater than the leap from Mini to say Qashqai The Nissan might be eight times the volume but in terms of layout mechanical configuration even general silhouette Mini and Qash are basically twins ¡Schwarzenegger and DeVito twins admittedly £
I guess you wouldn’t necessarily hold up a Qashqai as the epitome of cutting edge motoring circa ¤¥¤ So let’s take something a bit more avant garde Hyundai Ioniq ? OK different fuelstuff powertrain at the opposite end of the car but beyond that fundamentally still Mini esque no? Two box shape couple of rows of seats pedals steering wheel all present and correct Show an alien an old Mini then show her the De La Vergne and the Ioniq and ask which is also a car she’ll go for the Hyundai
It can feel in these strange days that the car landscape is shifting at impossible speed old certainties sinking beneath the waves strange new realities rising in their place But cut through the noise and the fundamentals remain unchanged We’re not tooling around in autonomous hover pods Cars are still car shaped they’re still operated by arms and legs Below the frantic surface the tectonic plates shift slowly
Sam Philip is the TopGear telly script editor, and a TG mag and website regular for 15 years. Once wrote a Vauxhall Corsa joke that Paddy McGuinness described as “not totally crap”
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Jaguar launched its Formula E effort recently I went to the party Well I didn’t I went to the press briefing beforehand and became so downcast I departed no longer in a party mood Having listened to the briefing and asked a few questions I couldn’t see why Jaguar was bothering with Formula E at all On the contrary it might even be harmful to the brand’s future
Why have a racing team when JLR is driving Jaguar into the ground? All the current range is on life support No that’s the wrong expression These cars’ lives are not really being supported All the combustion cars are getting older and the facelifts and updates are threadbare That’s because they die soon from Jaguar will be reinvented as a modern luxury electriconly brand
Fortunately there is a modern luxury electriconly car the IPace But it too has been abandoned Which is odd because it’s delightful It came out in before the Audi etron The etron has since been given a choice of two battery sizes two body styles and three power outputs And then it had a facelift and more capacity for both those batteries and even a new name Q etron The Jaguar meantime remains one model And that’s it
Jaguar steadfastly refuses to give us clues about the upcoming range of cars apart from the label ‘modern luxury’ and expensive
“JAGUAR STEADFASTLY REFUSES TO GIVE US CLUES ABOUT THE UPCOMING RANGE OF CARS”
which means made in small numbers We have no evidence Jaguar has the slightest idea how to do the part of ‘luxury’ that goes beyond the product the edifice of ‘brand experience’ that makes customers feel special and strokes their egos
I asked Jaguar’s executive director of product development Thomas Müller how many models Jaguar will build and what they’d be like and however many times I rephrased the line of questioning he wouldn’t be specific All he really said was an enigmatic “You can’t compare the Jaguars with anything They’ll be a copy of nothing They won’t be stuck in the past ” But then he said how much he enjoys driving the Etype Sorry we all love it too but I really think leaning on that stuff will be Jaguar’s undoing This company has spent too long remembering the rakish sports cars of old white men It needs to move on
There was lots of talk about Formula E being good for technology transfer It teaches engineers to work fast and it will give critical lessons about energy efficiency battery software and thermal management and high voltage electronics Not component transfer to the road cars but knowledge transfer
But the team shouldn’t have been called Jaguar If they won’t talk of the road cars the racecars will be all the world knows of Jaguar And therefore the world might naturally assume that Jaguar isn’t about “modern electric luxury” but instead bone shaking carbonfibre sports cars Why not tell us a little about the new road cars which despite the Formula E entry don’t even have ‘sporty’ in the new brand definition so we don’t get the wrong end of the stick? It’s not like disclosure will harm sales of the current bunch They’re moribund already
TG’s eco-conscious megabrain, Paul Horrell, is one of the world’s most respected and experienced car writers. Has attended every significant car launch since the Model T