Carchive Special Edition: ’89 Jaguar Salesman’s Guide

I know this is not our regularly scheduled appointment, but welcome to a mid-week helping from The Carchive: special edition.

I don’t know how many of you have spent time mired in the murky waters of car sales, I’ve done my stint and am kind of pleased to be out of it. I’m ‘lucky’ enough to have only ever sold in the ‘prestige’ sector, first for BMW and later for Mercedes. During my time as a shiny suited, smooth talking, silver-tongued car-monger I trotted out line after line of beautifully scripted sales spiel, and believe it or not, in a healthy proportion of instances it returned the desired result.

Seeing this little pamphlet on eBay brought memories flooding back, so of course, I had to buy it and share it with you.

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Diecast Delights: 2001 Mercedes CLK DTM Race Car

Will I be hounded from Redusernab for admitting that I’m not actually the biggest fan of motorsport?

It’s like this: Seeing a DTM race live is one hell of an experience. Watching a BTCC Volvo 850 barrelling into Coram Curve, Snetterton from just 50 yards away is unforgettable. The machinery, too, is awe inspiring. I’ve stood next to Richard Petty’s Superbird on start up, been surrounded by ’80s Formula One cars idling in a paddock. It’s just that, like any other competitive sport, I can’t be bothered to follow it. Right now I couldn’t tell you what the Formula One championship standings are any more than I could tell you how Tottenham Hotspur are doing in the soccer Premiership League, if they’re even in it.

Next time I’m at a live motorsport event I’ll be grinning from ear to ear, and probably high on hi-test fumes, combing burnt rubber particles from my hair. Then, I’ll go home and probably not look at any of the race stats again, because it’s just not that important to me.

The cars are, though. Oh, God yes. Here’s a nice one that’s been in my collection for ages.

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When technology has the last word

During the hours between 9:30 and 17:30 I live on the cutting edge of technology. My MacBook is linked directly to mission control, fresh software patches coming through seemingly on the hour. Work necessitates this, and I’m fine with that. But come 17:31 and I switch back to my trusty Core i3 laptop and take a step back into the past.

I’m actually far from being a technophobe, I’ve simply found that incremental increases in technological complexity rarely enhance my life. Every now and then a significant leap will be made – I continue to enjoy 1080-line resolution courtesy of a Playstation 3, but doubt I’ll be embracing 4k for a good few years. Most troubling, though, is when I find technology actively obstructive. When it physically restricts my liberty. When it demands the upper hand and won’t take no for an answer. I’m already experiencing this with my phone. What if this insatiable, revenue-led insistence on unwanted media bombardment makes it across to cars, too?

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The Carchive: The ’99 Suzuki Carry

While all the other automotive websites reel and rally to attract clicks and page views, each biting from the same news sources, each speculating on the next bit of big news that may – or may not – matter, here’s that moment where we sit back and look at the things that definitely did. Welcome back to The Carchive.

“Swing low, sweet chariot, coming for to carry me home” was never used in an advertising campaign for Suzuki’s diminutive, long-lived series of small panel vans.  In keeping with, and concluding the the theme of tiny commercial vehicles that has accidentally been established within this weekly feature, let’s take a look at Suzuki’s miniature marvel for the Millennium.

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Check You Are Bumper Stickers

I’ve only ever allowed one bumper sticker on a car I’ve owned. It was on a Saab 9000 and exclaimed simply “Don’t be a dick”. Simple and to the point, though not enough, ironically, to prevent dickish behaviour from the tailgaters who simply couldn’t get close enough. Although I’m not keen on displaying them on my own cars, I’m generally tolerant of bumper stickers, if they’re sufficiently witty or have something interesting to say. Sometimes wit is all they can offer – I’m not mad on for those which serve solely to underline the allegiances or leanings of the driver, but everybody has a right to freedom of expression.

My one solid, steadfast rule, though, is that a bumper sticker should be properly thought through.  The one photographed above has clearly not been adequately scrutinised by either the people who made it, or whoever chose to apply it to their poor, unsuspecting Ford Ka.

If you’re gonna display a bumper sticker, please, please check it for spelling and grammar. What’s the most poorly executed bumper sticker you’ve ever encountered?

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Diecast Delights: A Peugeot 206 CC in 1:18 Scale

Yes, owing to overwhelming public demand, Diecast Delights is back!

It occurs to me that diecast models can be split into two distinct categories: those which act as miniature shrines of worship to iconic classics (see probably 95% of all 1:18 models out there) and those models which portray cars that were treated as consumer white goods, some of which are coming close to extinction.

Today’s model falls into the latter category. The Peugeot 206CC was a popular small coupe-convertible, but sixteen years after launch there’s nowhere near as many on British roads as there once was. It seems unlikely that they’ll ever become truly sought after, let alone recognised as classic.

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The Carchive: The Piaggio Ape 50

It’s Friday Monday afternoon, and time for our weekly trip into the recent past. After the Daihatsu Hijet and last week’s Citroen C15 it became apparent that a theme had accidentally become established (again). So, to conclude our look at tiny commercial vehicles, lets look at the tiniest.

So put on your white canvas suit and explorer’s hat, grab your machete, net and a stock of bananas and we’ll go hunting in the Urban Jungle, see if we can catch us an Ape.

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New Adventures in Hi-Fi- in a Rover

Picture the scene. A retired gentleman of advancing years, barrelling along a country lane in his big Rover, with the stereo wound up to eleven and “Ride of the Valkries” spilling from his open windows.

Such was my grandfather’s liking for loud music, ever since I took the car over it suffered from horrific distortion from the rear speakers, which meant that the only way you could listen to music at any volume was either to dial the bass back to -4 or to fade the sound right to the front; the speakers in the doors fortunately being marginally less ruined.

Since I had been living without that bottom octave for far too long, I decided that something needed to be done. And since I’m legendary for my unwillingness to spend any money where at all avoidable, I hatched a plan to bring the noise – frugally yet effectively.

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Carchive: The Citroen C15 Champ

It’s Friday night in Mistley, Essex, where we’ve polished off the Shiraz and are now moving on to coffee. Tonight’s classic DVD has been Volcano, released to variable reviews in 1997, which is coincidentally the year of this week’s classic brochure. After last week’s Daihatsu Hijet, inadvertantly I’ve allowed a theme to break out, having uncovered a rich seam of pamflets for lightweight commercial vehicles. Boy do you have a treat in store.

Tonight it’s the turn of Citroen’s loveable and slightly eccentric C15 van. The Champ, or so they claimed.

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A Hopeless Fantasy about putting New British Breath into MG

MG’s claim to Britishness has been pretty tenuous for a good few years now. Recent products that bore the octagonal badge and made it to UK roads have been marketed on the brand’s historical provenance, but the cars themselves had very little actual indigenous British content. They would arrive from China virtually complete and with just a few finishing-off jobs needing to be performed, like maybe fitting the ashtrays and hubcaps.  Just enough to merit a thin claim to “production”.

Now even that has ceased. As of September 23rd, MG ca are being imported to the UK in a fully constructed state. The final five minutes of ‘assembly’ at Longbridge will no longer be necessary, bringing the history of domestic MG manufacture to its conclusion once and for all. Of course, none of us are naive enough to believe that there really has still been a ‘real’ MG for at least a decade, indeed many would say there hasn’t been one since 1980 (Sorry Mr Harrell).

But does it have to be this way? Is there anything that SAIC MG- as it is now – could do to inject a bit of meaning into those famous initials? To reconnect with a heritage that now seems so distant? To relive the good old days when MG was revered around the world? To rekindle past glories? I think there is.

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