Episode 3 James May's Cars of the People

A lifetime ago, car ownership was a great privilege.

We can all remember our grandparents saying, "Only the doctor had one."

But, by the time I was born, having your own wheels was

beginning to look like an inalienable right,

and public transport was a hangover

from an earlier, less enlightened time.

So now definitions must be revised

if we are to separate mere motor vehicles

from the true cars of the people.

Hey-hey!

'This week - aspiration. The cars we always dreamed about.'

Boing, boing, boing.

'And how that occasionally meant a nightmare.'

If this is your small and tasteful gated community then I'm very sorry.

'And. finally, we arrive at the perfect people's car.

'Don't worry, it'll be finished by the time we get there.

'Also, two sales reps take their trousers off.'

Last week we discovered that Japan's greatest people's car

was a motorcycle.

Sorry about that.

At least Britain's greatest people's car was actually a car.

It just wasn't this one.

Look, I love Minis.

I've had three Minis, in fact, and I know the Mini was important,

but it's all been said 5,387,862 times.

Which is how many they made.

I could bang on for ages about how, in 1959,

the Austin Mini's inspirational design, blah, blah,

a new golden era of, etc, etc.

But I bet you've heard it all before.

So let's keep it mini.

I'll do you the executive summary.

Radical transverse front-engine, front-wheel-drive, packaging,

Issigonis, Michael Caine, Italian Job, classless, Twiggy,

string-pull door handles, sliding windows,

Peter Sellers, Elke Sommer naked, The Italian Job

water in the distributor cap, bypass hose, Marc Bolan,

also available as a van.

In any case, this week it's social mobility that interests me.

That's why I'd like to suggest that Britain's greatest

people's car is not the Mini but...

..the Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow.

And the story of its transformation from in-your-face aristocrat

to aspirational people's hero

is a lot more complex than a quickie in a Mini.

When the Silver Shadow was launched in 1965,

it was a radical departure for Rolls-Royce.

Now, it may not look it now, with its overbearing presence

and that radiator grille nicked from the Acropolis,

but this was actually a pretty modern car by anybody's standards.

For a Rolls-Royce, it was VERY modern.

Rolls-Royce, like Kim Kardashian's booty,

stretches back a long, long way.

A temple to tradition, luxury and class,

Rolls-Royce was the chariot of presidents, kings and tycoons.

Owning one sent a message to the rest of society

and that message was, "Naff off!"

But the times, the people, and car design, were a-changing.

Up until now, R-R had built cars the old-fashioned way,

on a separate chassis.

But the Silver Shadow was unitary -

the body shell formed the structural substance of the car so there

were no huge girders running underneath and this meant that,

even though this was smaller and lower than the car it replaced,

it actually offered superior legroom.

MUSIC: "Rollin'" by Limp Bizkit

Pretty much everything about the Silver Shadow

was new and radically hi tech.

There were high-pressure hydraulics to operate the new-fangled

disc brakes and the self-levelling suspension.

The seats, gear change, windows, air conditioning

and even the fuel filler flap were operated electrically.

Monocles fell out everywhere.

More importantly, Rolls-Royce had identified a new type of customer.

It wasn't the aristocrat of old, who just sat in the back

while his chauffeur stayed at the front and did all the work.

No, this was a new breed of self-made owner-driver.

Entrepreneurs, industrialists, and then famous artists, photographers,

pop stars, television personalities.

I can't think of anyone else I should mention.

It was boom time.

The Shadow said you were part of the boom like nothing else.

But a status symbol for self-made millionaires

hardly qualifies this as a people's car.

That came about from Rolls-Royce making a cataclysmic error.

To try to keep up with the demand from all those new money buyers

springing up all over the place, they over produced.

More Silver Shadows were made than any other Rolls.

That meant the second-hand market became saturated

and prices plummeted.

Eventually, over-supply meant that second-hand Silver Shadows

fell into the hands of the sort of people who perhaps weren't

prepared to give them the love that a complex hand-built car needs.

Because, contrary to popular belief,

a neglected Rolls-Royce will go wrong and it will go rusty.

So, while the prices of the cars came down,

if anything, the size of the bills went the other way.

Soon, shabby Shadows could be seen hanging out

in some very questionable company.

By the mid 1980s, a used Silver Shadow becomes

something of a badge of office for disreputable professions.

Scrap metal dealing, the specialist video industry, that kind of thing.

But move forward a couple more decades

and something interesting has happened.

The sick Shads have been put down or cannibalised for spares and

the sparkly survivors are driven by people who just appreciate

this thing for what it is - a lovely car.

People like this misty-eyed fool.

Now it's an equal opportunities car because everyone,

everyone, regardless of age or gender or race or religious belief

or political persuasion or class or income or profession

or dress sense or sexual inclination or hairstyle,

can drive one of these.

You simply cannot look bad in a Shad.

It's still faintly, almost comedically British

and yet somehow it's multicultural.

No other car does that.

When it came out in the 1960s,

the Shadow cost twice the price of the average UK home - about £6,500.

Today, a good one is yours for a 20th of the average UK house price.

So, from '60s millionaires to dodgy dealers to now pretty much

everyone, the Shadow has, in its way, represented the masses.

But there's one more reason I feel that this truly is a people's car.

Well, here's one thought.

That plethora of second-hand Shadows meant that it soon became

very popular, obviously, with the wedding car business.

And I can't prove this, but I reckon that more British couples

have taken their first car journey of married life

in the back of a Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow than in any other car.

And that makes it deeply significant in the lives of millions.

Meanwhile, back in the '60s, another car maker - a big one this time -

was about to unleash something that would get straight to the point.

It's a Mark 1 Ford Mustang and,

admittedly, it isn't a dirt cheap utilitarian runabout,

but it was a people's car nevertheless,

because it gave the people hope.

Launched in 1964 to almost orgasmic excitement across the pond,

the Mustang was actually based on the mechanical underpinnings

of a fairly humdrum saloon - the Ford Falcon.

But that was a good thing.

Because it was just a saloon car underneath,

the Mustang didn't cost much more than one.

And that was fantastic news if you thought you were condemned to

a life of family car dreariness.

And to be honest, if you'd grown up driving a European hot hatch -

in fact, even if you grew up driving a Rolls-Royce -

you'd find this fairly appalling.

It's cumbersome, it's crude, it's bouncy,

it doesn't really handle very well.

But then, you see, it's a Mustang -

it's untamed. It has a nice, feral quality.

Boing, boing.

Over here, we thought this was a great idea. Like nylon.

Ford of Europe saw the Mustang and they saw that it was good.

So they took the bare bones of their best-selling saloon and,

by 1969, had come up with - you've probably guessed it by now -

the Capri.

Ha-ha!

The Capri worked, and for exactly the same reason the Mustang had.

Here was the type of car that was normally the preserve of toffs,

playboys, rotters - a two-door coupe with a long and lascivious bonnet.

And now you could have one

for not much more than the price of a Cortina.

Look.

Look again.

Go ahead. Dream some more.

The new Ford Capri is very generous with its room and comfort.

To someone my age, the very expression "three-litre Capri"

is enough to make your heart go at least 50% faster.

At your Ford dealers now.

You are contemptuous of the needs

of family and luggage and all that sort of thing. You have a Capri.

Most of the car is in front of you

and that's the way it was with great cars back then.

I've often wondered which one was actually best -

America's or Europe's blue collar hero.

Well, much as I do like the Capri,

famous real-life owners of the Mustang include Jim Morrison,

Neil Armstrong, Bruce Willis and Tom Cruise.

Famous Capri owners include...

..Cliff Richard.

Plus, being American, the Mustang can handle more doughnuts.

Well, that would seem to hand it to the Mustang.

But hang on a minute. I've just thought of something.

Jackie Stewart had a Capri.

So did James Hunt, in fact. That gives it a bit more credibility.

And there's something else as well. As far as we can make out,

there's never been a car chase between a Capri and a Mustang.

Now, I'm sure there must be some polystyrene barriers and

plastic fruit stalls

and inexplicable piles of cardboard boxes

somewhere on this industrial estate.

MUSIC: "Ice Pick Mike (Bullitt Soundtrack)" by Lalo Schifrin

The Capri...

was great.

And Ford plays an important role in breaking down the old order.

Here was a louche car for every man -

a car that said something about you.

But not actually because of the contemptuously small boot,

not because of the rakish two-door styling or the vinyl roof,

or the two doors, or the exciting array of instruments.

Not even because of this beautiful, long bonnet.

It was actually because of this.

The badge.

Now, this is a 3000 E.

It might easily have been a 1.3L, or XL, or the XLR.

Or it could have been a two-litre GL.

Or a GXL, or even ultimately the Ghia.

This was still Britain.

You were still expected to know your place.

And Ford could tell you what that was with unprecedented precision.

My very first car was one of these -

a Vauxhall Cavalier Mark 1. Ha-ha!

Except, actually, mine wasn't quite like this

because I think this is a 1.9 GL.

Oh, yeah, proper upholstery.

Wow. The speedo on this one goes up to 140.

Mine was actually the very basic 1.6 L model.

It didn't even have a clock. But then, the previous owner had been

an industrial representative in t'North of England.

Now, your car is supposed to say something about you

and the 1.6 L said something very definite about him.

Every single blanked-off switch and missing feature was there,

or rather wasn't there, to remind him of his failure.

And that was exactly the point.

The company car - it was a peculiarly British thing.

Well, of course it was.

We had a class system in society, we needed one on the roads as well.

What do I like about the Astra CDi?

Well, it's an "i", and "i" means "important" these days.

There's no CD badge on the back and that's disappointing.

It's difficult for someone following to know you're driving a CD Astra.

Vauxhall, Ford, British Leyland, Talbot -

they seemed to be offering a world of magnificent choice.

You could have different engines, different trim levels,

two headlights or four headlights. But, in reality,

they were making the rungs of an automotive social ladder.

It was a system more arcane than the table manners in Downton Abbey.

So, I've enlisted two experts,

former sales fleet managers Ian and James,

who join me on a day that suitably represents

the glamour of life as a '70s business traveller.

THUNDER RUMBLES

When I was a lad, in the '70s,

one boy's father had a two-litre L

and another boy's dad had the two-litre GL,

and we knew instinctively that GL Dad was just more successful

with women and GL Boy would have better football boots.

It all started off very innocently with Ls

and then it all got quite complicated.

It was a bit of a psychological war, really.

Part of it is driven by ego.

Nobody sees what your pay cheque is

but they sure as hell see the GL or the L or the Ghia.

And, as you drove up the motorway and people passed you,

you'd instinctively look at the boot to see what his was.

And if he was doing better or worse than you.

'There's something very playground about all this.

'There's obviously all the usual comparisons

'you'd look for in a car.'

96 horsepower, not bad.

108mph, 0-60 in 13 seconds...

'But then there's the mystical L, XL, GLS,

'the leftover scrabble letters of aspiration that signify

'a whole baffling world of proto-bling.'

Boot light. Fog light. Electric windows.

'A real-life Top Trumps.'

It's got a clock.

This would be the car that typically was driven by the junior salesman.

Wood trim dashboard fascia. I don't believe it.

It does!

Vinyl roof.

I don't think I've seen one of these since

Peter Gabriel was still in Genesis.

Oh, man.

This is just glorious, this thing.

Oh.

'I might be worryingly overcome by velour seat envy.

'But when it comes to the ranking of electric windows above a vinyl

'roof, it's clear that this was the sort of debate that would

'have started bloody brawls in Happy Eaters up and down the M1.'

13.6 seconds to 60 and only 91mph.

Do you realise your car is so slow?

It may be slow but it is a Crusader so it has the stripes

and the velour interior.

Oooh!

I am going to put it in front of the Mark 2 Cavalier 1.6 L

simply on the basis of the wood, the wheel trims,

the coach lining and the crushed velour. Fair?

Well, yes, but in terms of sales appeal,

the Cavalier would have had it.

Really?

'Decrypting Ian and James's cipher of just what SLX or WTF means

'might as well be a scene from The Da Vinci Code.'

-The Cavalier was more appealing?

-Oh, I would've said so.

-Even though it was a more basic model?

-Yes, I would've said so.

So this badge hierarchy, actually, they got it wrong?

I think there is an element of it's the badge, it's also the time.

'I have fallen down the rabbit hole.

'Ian will now only answer me in a series of riddling clues.

'And it's doing to the inside of my head

'what the wind is doing for my hair.'

Well, chaps, that's been absolutely fascinating

and I am absolutely none the wiser but thank you very much anyway.

It's been a pleasure.

The thing is, this whole badging business, it was full of more

social pitfalls than a multi-denominational dinner party,

but what I do remember from my time as a teenager was that

the big company car war was between Ford and Vauxhall.

That's what matters.

So...

HE SIGHS

..let's have a race.

Cavalier or Sierra?

Which one was actually best?

Well, it's time to find out once and for all.

Here we have the two ultimate final editions of these cars.

The Cavalier Calibre and the Sierra XR4x4i.

And our reps, Clive and Trevor, are going to race down the runway

and back again to the start.

But there are several business challenges on the way.

First one back wins a box of wine...

from Austria.

ENGINES REV

Three, two, one, close that sale!

# One, two, three, four

# Roadrunner, roadrunner... #

It's an early-off-the-blocks for the Ford Sierra.

# Gonna drive past the Stop 'n' Shop

# With the radio on... #

Trevor and the Ford Sierra remain slightly ahead,

but Clive in the Vauxhall Cavalier

is just a Ginsters pasty-length behind

as our reps hit the first obstacle.

After putting on their jackets to make themselves suitably

presentable, they must press a pair of trousers

inside these roadside-standard B&B trouser presses.

And Trevor has reached his trouser press first

on this wonderfully bracing day

here on the North Weald Airfield racecourse.

Clive in the Vauxhall Cavalier

displaying some sloppy trouser technique, there,

but it's drawn them back level.

As the reps hit the gas,

it's Clive's Vauxhall Cavalier that's off the mark quicker,

but the Ford Sierra soon pummels the gap once again,

giving Trevor the advantage

as they approach the course's second obstacle.

TYRES SCREECH

Here, after putting on their jackets once again,

both men must photocopy

a vital annual sales and analytic statistics marketing report.

Trevor's appropriately jacketed, first in at the photocopier.

But he's forgotten the printer toner -

a rookie sales mistake unbefitting of his high-end company car.

Meanwhile, Clive's stolen the lead

and is well on the way to installing his printer toner.

Trevor appears to be using the shove-it-in-anywhere-he can

technique favoured by many away-from-home salesmen

in the 1980s.

# And I say roadrunner once

# Roadrunner twice

# I'm in love with rock'n'roll... #

Clive continues to look befuddled - I did not see this presenting

quite such a challenge to our two competitors today.

Oh, Trevor's just lost February to March of the marketing report -

they'll not be happy with that at head office.

And Clive's just got a face-full of printer toner!

But it's Clive in the Cavalier who has successfully negotiated

the photocopying, leaving Trevor languishing behind.

This could swing the race for Vauxhall.

Trevor's photocopies are a horribly smudged and blurred mess,

but he's back in the game.

It's the Vauxhall's race to lose as Clive is comfortably ahead

and already at the final obstacle.

After putting on his jacket once more he must retrieve his

pristinely pressed trousers, shave and then head for the finish.

Clive is first back to the Vauxhall Cavalier with the trousers,

but Trevor isn't far behind.

Trevor fast closing the gap now.

# Goin' a thousand miles an hour

# Gonna drive to the Stop 'n' Shop... #

And it's Trevor - Trevor, who is first away,

retaking the lead quite literally by the seat of his pants.

As Clive pursues

while frantically trying to remove his five o'clock shadow.

It may be too late, as both cars approach the line.

# That's right

# Bye-bye. #

Well, there you go.

20 years of bitterness, resentment, stress-induced illness -

20 years of social angst.

Winners drive Fords.

And it's very difficult for me to say that

as a former Vauxhall owner.

This is James May at North Weald Airfield,

-cold, wet, very

-BLEEP

-off.

But while our dads lay awake dreaming of velour seats

and wood-trimmed dashboard fascias, we, the teenagers of the era,

were indulging loftier fantasies.

Pin-ups.

Sam Fox, obviously, but also this kind of thing.

This was a time when the development of a pubescent boy

could be accelerated with a picture of a car.

Now, these are a couple of all-time favourites -

I put them up there when I was about 14,

and they're still there.

The Lamborghini Countach,

the Porsche 911 Turbo.

Phwoar!

# You got the touch... #

These unattainable beauties kept me going single-handedly through

the dark nights of those difficult years.

Launched in 1974 as the LP400,

the Countach remains a nodal high point in radical automotive styling.

And perhaps the most uncompromised expression

of what came to be known in the vernacular as wedge design.

The name "Countach"

is derived from an involuntary Italian ejaculation

meaning something like, "Cor, what a smasher, Luigi."

A reaction not even slightly diminished by the passage

of time and the metamorphosis of the original into this, the...

-Oh, hang on a minute.

-TYRES SCREECH

I've forgotten something.

'80s reality check number one -

having to tentatively reverse

and manoeuvre between bollards in a Lamborghini Countach

results in me looking neither gnarly nor bodacious.

Ah, well. It'll be worth it once I fit the piece de air resistance.

I don't suppose you've got the wing for the back?

-That one?

-Yes.

-Yeah, yeah.

-You know it slows you down...

-I'm not worried about that.

-No?

-No. It looks cool.

I'm borrowing this Countach from my mate Harry,

who actually decided to live the bedroom dream

of owning an '80s pin-up car.

-The thing is, when we grew up, we never saw these cars.

-No.

You had to buy the poster - you couldn't go on YouTube.

You couldn't see, you know... "Oh, look, I've seen a Countach."

I saw one in London, I was 18, 19 -

on the other side of the street was a blue Countach.

I had to take a picture, and this picture was in my photo album -

and then, very embarrassing, I then cut out a picture of me

and stuck me next to the Countach

so I could say, "Yes, I'm next to the Countach."

I want to make it absolutely clear

that these days Harry is a perfectly normal man, he's married,

he has a happy home life, he hasn't suffered from having posters

or indeed owning a Lamborghini.

This is a sensitive question at our age,

but has the wing made you more attractive to the ladies

than when you drive your Countach without the wing?

I think it just attracts more blokes than girls, actually.

-Really?

-Yeah.

-Desperately disappointing.

-Yeah.

The wing was absolutely pointless.

It doesn't work as a spoiler, it doesn't provide down force.

If anything, it accentuates the lift at the front.

But who cares?

It's bitchin'.

Rod Stewart had one of these.

And he had leopard print trousers and a massive train set,

so it's cool.

'80s reality check two -

pin-up cars look fantastic framed on sunset beaches.

They look slightly less good

being dragged through waterlogged ditches around Oxfordshire.

So, let's get this thing on the road, sharpish.

I don't care if you hate supercars,

or you hate the idea of being flashy, or excessive consumption -

look at this car on your screen

and tell me it isn't a thing of utter wonder and beauty.

Because it is.

Let's drop it down a cog and give it some beans.

Yes!

Well, that's quite terrifying.

Let's take this back to subsonic, before I Bobby Brown my trousers.

I suspect all this spray is actually giving my Lamborghini

a bit of a soft-focus look.

It's another great '80s effect, really. It's poster art.

Probably looks a little bit like a gentle porn film.

I'm off for some tryst somewhere.

Everything about the Countach was quite a bit more exciting

than the equivalent bit in your dad's car.

The engine in this one is a 5.2 litre V12,

developing 455 horsepower - that is actually quite a lot.

2 litre Granada had something like a hundred horsepower.

Meh.

There have been other amazing cars since,

but I'm not sure anything has ever seemed quite so modern

and quite so stunning as the Countach.

It still looks modern now.

The engine was behind you, and it had two radiators,

fed with air by scoops apparently from a fighter aircraft.

The rear tyres were the fattest ever fitted to a car.

The doors opened upwards like something out of Back To The Future.

The seats sported Miami Beach six packs,

and it had that wing - which was supposedly to stop it taking off.

It was unbelievably exotic,

and we were weak at the knees at the thought of it.

Now, at last, I'm in one.

And it is...

terrible.

It's an old car, now.

It's also a supercar,

so it's not very good round town.

But then, supercars aren't, are they?

It does about 15 miles to the gallon, which is terrible,

but I suppose Rod Stewart wasn't really interested

in the price of petrol.

The cold, hard, grown-up reality of it is,

unless you do happen to live on the sun-kissed shores of California,

then owning one of these things is utterly, hopelessly impractical.

Sorry, Harry.

The visibility is very poor.

The seats are uncomfortable.

The windows only open a couple of inches, look,

and the interior was designed by a man who loaded some instruments

and switches into a blunderbuss and then fired it at the fascia.

The engine is not, as it would be on a modern Lamborghini, fuel-injected.

It's fed by six twin-choke carburettors,

and that effectively means it has a carburettor per cylinder.

And setting that lot up to run smoothly

is a bit like trying to synchronise 12 mopeds.

Still, it could be worse.

They've closed the road.

I don't believe that.

Oh, God.

As I've already discovered,

manoeuvring in this Countach is a bit tight.

# You're sort of stuck where you are... #

I can't really see...

# But in your dreams you can buy expensive cars... #

The people who live here are going to be chuffed to bits, aren't they?

# Or live on Mars

# And have it your way... #

If this is your small and tasteful gated community,

then I'm very sorry.

The opportunities for smacking this on something are absolutely massive.

So difficult to see the extremes.

It's pretty difficult when you're driving along in a straight line,

never mind doing this sort of thing.

# In your dreams show no mercy. #

Yes, I know, it's for barrelling along a big, wide road,

not exploring the back streets of medieval England.

But even then you could still be going home to a maintenance bill

bigger than MC Hammer's trousers.

The suspension on this car is rose-jointed, like a racing car's.

What that means is, there aren't any nice, soft, forgiving rubber bits

in it, it's all just metal on metal.

They could wear out in as little as 800 miles,

so if you drove from London to Edinburgh and back,

you could be due for a very expensive undercarriage rebuild.

So, it was a great poster.

But actually driving a Countach is like discovering that...

Sam Fox is a drag artist.

# Gotta get back in time... #

But that was the point about supercars of the '80s -

we plebs were never meant to drive them,

we were just supposed to admire them.

When we grew up, there was an automotive drudge waiting for us -

badged L, or maybe E.

Wasn't there?

While we were kneeling in awe before those graven images

of Italian and German supermodels,

something very interesting was happening.

Performance was being democratised,

and this is where I first saw the true light.

The Ford Escort XR3.

Now, it is still an Escort - a very humdrum car -

but this one is different.

It has tricked-up suspension, a bit more power -

and those wheels.

Yeah!

Ignition...

ENGINE STARTS

..first gear, Spandau Ballet...

# Gold

# Always believe in your soul... #

Just about the time I started driving,

a bloke I knew bought one of these.

And from that moment on, he was virtually unapproachable.

He had an Escort XR3!

He must have had loadsa money.

Unlike the ethereal supercars, the XR3 was real.

A performance car that you could see, touch and, crucially, possess.

One of the things that made this car appealing was that it

sat in Ford showrooms alongside all those cars

that were secretly oppressing us - the Cortina L and the GL and the GXL

and the 2000E, all that hierarchical stuff, and then amongst it, this.

An Escort with XR3 on the back.

XR3 - it sounds like...

Well, it sounds like a space ship, doesn't it?

The XR3 wasn't alone on Planet Hatchback.

The early '80s saw an invasion of small,

souped-up cars propelled by no-nonsense advertising.

MUSIC: "Cars" by Gary Numan

The Thatcher years would end up being remembered

not as the era of the supercar,

but the time of cheesy synthpop and hot hatches.

Look, I'm not going to claim that a warmed-up Escort

was the foil to the supercar.

The Countach got to 60 in half the time, and was 70mph faster.

If this was a pub debate, that would be the end of that.

But there's another way of looking at this.

A hot hatch is just a car.

Driving one is no different from driving the regular version.

Hot hatches are light.

Hot hatches are modestly sized, so they're wieldy.

Meanwhile, '70s and '80s supercars were full of tricks and vices.

Not for the unwary.

PSYCHO THEME PLAYS

And one, above all, had a had a lethal reputation.

It's a 1975 Porsche 911 Turbo.

Just like the one on my poster.

Let's take it for a spin.

Turbo!

What a word!

It wasn't a new idea in engineering, to be honest.

Aero engines had had turbochargers for decades,

but it was the great hope of performance motoring.

In basic terms, a turbocharger made any given engine...

well, bigger.

"Turbo" means simply that an exhaust-driven impeller

charges the engine's cylinders with more fuel

and air mixture than they would get under atmospheric pressure.

So, you got the power.

Remember, the vast majority of what a car engine burns is, in fact, air.

So, if you can put more air in, and a little bit more fuel in -

wahey!

The turbo-charged 911 could reach 60 in 5,2 seconds -

a second and a half quicker than the non-turbo version.

Was there a catch?

Oh, yes.

Barroom philosophers will always tell you that the

Porsche 911 could bite back.

Part of the problem was the layout - the engine was right at the back,

so the whole car behaved like a giant pendulum in the corners.

But in the Turbo you had the added problem that the power

came on a bit suddenly.

But that wasn't all - the Turbo suffered from a massive time lag.

This meant you were never quite sure

when all that power would make itself known at the rear wheels.

And that spelt disaster for many a chinless yuppie

who'd invested your whole pension in one.

# Amadeus. #

There goes another stockbroker.

The thing is, even by modern standards,

this is still a very, very quick car -

but it's terrifying.

And that is exactly my point.

I've always said that I've never driven a car

that actually played any tricks on me -

I always knew I was being an idiot before the car told me I was,

but actually I'm going to revise that.

I think an old 911 Turbo DOES play tricks on you.

It really will catch you out.

For a nation growing ever more wealthy and upwardly mobile,

the 911 Turbo was peerless,

sophisticated and very, very desirable.

It promised us the world.

Well, either that or a terrifying short cut out of it.

To paraphrase The Rolling Stones, you can't always get what you want,

and if you try too hard, you might find...

yourself in a ditch.

Anyway, this has got me thinking - here is a Peugeot 205 GTI 1.9.

It is a definitive 1980s hot hatchback.

It can be a bit wayward at the limit,

but it's front wheel drive, so ultimately it's benign.

Over here is our Porsche 911 Turbo -

unusually, and probably rather briefly,

pointing in the right direction.

Now, in the hands of a professional,

the Porsche would be quicker around a race track - of course it would.

But what about in the hands of mere mortals?

The sort of frustrated fantasists who prostrated

themselves before the posters of that glorious era.

It's time to find out.

Here are our two sales reps from earlier on.

They've washed the toner off their faces

and smartened themselves up a bit.

Clive used to have a poster of the 911 Turbo on his bedroom wall.

Trevor used to have a poster of Bananarama,

so they are eminently well-qualified.

Now, how shall we sort this out?

In three, two, one, yah!

MUSIC: "Swastika Eyes" by Primal Scream

# Your soul don't burn You dark the sun

# Rain down fire on everyone

# Scabs, police, government thieves

# Venal, psychic amputees

# Parasitic, you're syphilitic

# Parasitic, you're syphilitic

# Swastika eyes

# You got swastika eyes

# You got swastika eyes

# Swastika eyes

# Swastika eyes. #

HE LAUGHS

So there you go. Just a little bit of extra power to the people

can topple the nobs from their high-performance pedestal.

Once again, the cars of the people gave us hope.

RAIN PATTERS

This is James May reporting from Rockingham Motor Speedway,

-cold, wet, and very

-BLEEP

-off.

The hot hatch is still with us, the company car almost forgotten.

But there is a legacy.

Gone are those ranges that were graduated as precisely as an engineer's ruler -

L, GL with a clock, GLS with a clock and a rev counter,

but if anything, the opportunities

for interfering with an individual car's specification have increased.

These are the ultimate expressions of it -

trendy cars that can be almost infinitely reconfigured to suit

the individual owner's taste.

The Mini comes in baffling variety and with very aspirational names

such as the Mini Bayswater or the Mini Hogarth Roundabout.

I made that one up, but you can get a Mini Clubman Bond Street.

The new Beetle Cabriolet,

the latest edition of the very car that Adolf Hitler had.

You can spend up to £35,000 on one of these,

including £10,000 worth of options -

amongst them, the Beetle clothes hanger, £21.50.

The Fiat 500 - now, apparently,

there are half a million permutations of all the options

you can have on this car. I'll not go through them all,

but they include a whiteboard on the glove box

and "balls" stickers for £190.

And we don't know what those are.

MUSIC: "Long Line of Cars" by Cake

So, in a way, this is more power to the motoring people than ever.

All the extras that defined the company car of old

are now in an options tombola.

As the old saying goes, give a man a fish and he will eat for a day.

Give a man a Fiat with 500,000 choices

and he won't work out the brochure in one lifetime.

The problem for me is that they are so unashamedly retro,

and retro design makes me uneasy.

It smacks of a lack of confidence, I think, by the makers

and to some extent by the buyers as well.

I mean, old cars, real old cars,

they're great, they're a warning from history, but new cars,

surely new cars should be new.

And while we're on warnings from history, here's another -

old being passed off as new.

The Bond Bug.

By 1970, things in Britain were looking a bit grim.

The empire had gone. We had to accept

that we weren't going to be a part of the space race.

We were beginning to retreat into a world of sci-fi and fantasy,

but it was OK because we could offer you a car

shaped like a piece of cheese that looked from the future.

It seems mad to think that this monstrosity -

it looks like Marge Simpson's tried to iron her own head -

was ever a car to aspire to own, but to a kid in the '70s, it was.

The Bond Bug was an attempt by Reliant

to make the three-wheeler appealing to a younger market

and actually, it did work

because when I was a kid, a bloke up the road had one of these

and we just thought he was the coolest dude in creation.

We would have fallen around laughing at anybody who had a Reliant

but a Bond Bug - Bond Bug was brilliant.

Reliant genuinely believed that the bug would...

well, drive a wedge into the sporty two-seater market.

Yes, really.

What do we like in a small car?

We like small tyres so there isn't too much grip,

we like a perky engine, and very sharp steering.

It has all of those.

It doesn't have fifth gear, though, and I keep going for it.

We also like a car to be bright orange with some black decals on it.

I think initially these cars were only available

to Tomorrow's World presenters, people like that,

but pretty soon they filtered down into the community at large.

And that's where the problems began.

It soon became clear that the bug

was nowhere near as modern as it made out.

One of the things that characterised the 1970s,

particularly in Britain, I think, is that we had technical ambitions

and aesthetic vision far ahead of our actual engineering ability,

so this thing, it looks like it comes from the year 2020,

but actually, it's pretty old-fashioned.

It's got a basic engine at the back, it's got four speeds.

It's only got three wheels, let's be honest.

It's not really a very interesting car,

not from a technical point of view.

There are only really three parts to the bodywork of a Bond Bug.

There's the basic tub itself, the hinged canopy part

and the little opening flap at the back - that's it.

Everything else is screwed or bolted in place.

Sometimes not that thoroughly.

There was no disguising it -

Reliant's Bond Bug was just dreary old Uncle Robin

in a funny party hat.

So, the bug was reversed into the lock-up of automotive oblivion.

Trying to pass off the past as the future fooled no-one.

If only they'd done it the other way around.

20 years later, the Japanese did.

They took the essence of the old and stuffed it with the new

to create the Mazda MX5.

What Mazda did with the MX5 was to take an old philosophy

and then drag it, willingly, as it turns out, into the modern world.

The MX5 was an instant hit.

A fun and affordable roadster

designed purely and unashamedly for the people's pleasure.

What a brilliant idea. Why did no-one think of it before?

This is a Mark 1 MX5, launched in 1989, and actually,

it is a piece of retro design.

It's very obviously a bit of a rip-off of the original Lotus Elan.

It even has the pop-up headlights, but the remarkable thing is,

on the Mazda, they pop up...

and pop back down...

together, whereas on the Lotus you often ended up driving around

sort of winking at people in a slightly inappropriate manner.

Most importantly, Mazda got that famous basic formula

absolutely right - the engine,

the driven wheels, the skinny little tyres, and all the rest of it.

For decades, the British and the Italians were

the champions of the small roadster.

MG, Fiat, Austin Healey,

Triumph, Alfa Romeo and Lotus.

These roadsters defined the spirit of motoring, but by the late '70s,

and not for the first time, European standards started to slip.

We were beginning to fall out of love with the roadster.

The designs were archaic.

The build quality was indifferent.

They had dodgy electrics

and hoods that leaked like government ministries.

The hot hatch was the new thing -

perky, more powerful versions of four-seat, three-door family cars.

The European roadster suddenly became an antique.

It was something to be driven only on a Sunday,

and even then only if you knew a bloke with a van.

And yet the Mazda, the same basic idea, was all the rage.

I know, because I've done it,

that if you stepped into an old '70s MG after this

it would feel like a damp postcard from an English seaside holiday.

Terrible.

I have to conclude that it was the cars that were at fault,

not the philosophy. The philosophy is brilliant.

The cars had just become annoying.

Thank God we've got the Japanese.

It's so simple - if you keep everything small,

everything light, you don't need hundreds of horsepower.

A little four-cylinder job will do.

And because this car is short, then, because of boring reasons to do with

physics and something called polar inertia, it will turn smartly.

It all makes perfect sense.

Why did we ever forget about it? Hmm?

And the roof comes off, and that trumps everything.

Now all I need is some sun.

I had one of these. So did my dad.

It's a sort of ageless car.

Anybody can drive it - a misty-eyed nostalgist who remembers

the lovely days of the '60s when it never rained, obviously,

and modern youngsters who simply want a simple, low-maintenance car

to have fun in.

It is a people's car. It's for all the people.

Most importantly, the MX5 worked.

It worked perfectly and it didn't leak.

Over three generations of this car, almost a million have been sold.

Small beer by people's car standards, I know,

but it remains the world's best-selling small roadster.

We talked about cars that gave the people hope.

And the MX5 helped realise the hopes of generations of roadster drivers,

the hope that you would reach your destination.

So the Mazda was good, because it worked,

but it was successful because of the way it looked,

because of the lifestyle it hinted at.

And if we go back to the Lamborghini we saw earlier,

that didn't really work that well, but look what it said about you

with its scoops and its wing and all this stuff here,

it was just fantastic.

We've been talking about people's cars of hope,

how choice gave us more freedom and made us happier,

but isn't choice really just another form of tyranny?

They are just... I know this is the sort of thing boring people say,

but they are just cars.

They're for getting from one place to another, from A to B.

So wouldn't life be easier

if we just had a car in the way that we have a National Insurance number?

But what would it be?

Not this hideous boogie bus, that's for sure,

and what is the perfect people's car anyway?

Is it just the cheapest car possible so more people could own it?

Is it a political instrument, a national statement?

Does it say something about the self

or does it work for the benefit of the whole? It's a tricky one.

The answer can be found somewhere that embraces the heights of modern

innovation while acknowledging the weight and experience of history.

In fact, we could have saved ourselves a lot of time and bother

because it's where we started in the first place.

So what is the people's car of the 21st century?

Well, I think there is one.

It's a practical, reasonably priced, five seater. It's good to drive

but it's not too big.

You can have a basic, frugal model or you can have a sporty version.

It's classless, it's tasteful, it's inconspicuous, it's well-made

and it's just sensible enough.

If you re-write the rules of the people's car for the modern age,

it fits perfectly.

And even though we live now in a world of overwhelming automotive choice,

I believe it is the only car the world actually needs.

It is, in case you hadn't guessed, the Golf.

Not a totes radical choice, I know.

But ask yourself, "Why not just have a Golf?"

Why hadn't I got one, in fact?

It's the second best selling car range in history at around

30 million and stretches all the way back from the current

seventh generation car to the original of 1974.

The Golf was designed to be the much belated replacement to VW's Beatle

and as difficult second albums go, it was a bit of a stormer.

Simple, attractive with Italian design,

good handling and an affordable price.

And it was a hatchback.

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

As things turn out, it still is.

Each new generation's stuck with the same simple recipe,

establishing the Golf as a wheeled staple.

Golf's are like potatoes, you wouldn't want to do without them.

Even though they're not really that exciting.

Hey! Allow to me interrupt this lovely filmic montage

while I talk about the GTI version of the Golf.

This is a Mark 2 GTI, from the 1980s.

I know it's not the mould-breaking original, but it's

the one all my yuppie mates had

when I was in my 20s and I couldn't afford a car.

So it's the one I resent.

To some people the Golf GTI is responsible for redrawing the

battle lines of the class war, especially in Britain.

And therefore it is an instrument of evil.

Maybe.

Mind you, if you've already produced the Beetle, you can

probably get away with it.

Remember what I was saying earlier?

How the hot hatch destroyed the old school two-seater roadster?

The Golf GTI was the main culprit.

It's tremendous, though.

Why didn't I have one of these in the 1980s?

And a job with a salary of pounds attractive.

As well as making me well jelly, the GTI shows what a durable idea

the Golf is.

As it manages to be a great car in its own right that's still

contained under the Golf umbrella.

Hang on a minute. Hang on. Stop.

I think I might have got a bit carried away with this idea.

You see, there have been 30 million Golfs built over the whole seven generation life of the thing.

There have been something like 40 million Toyota Corollas,

if you count every car that has the name Corolla on it.

But there are over a billion cars on the planet today.

So what's 30 or 40 million here or there?

The VW Beetle, the best selling single car in history?

There were only ever 21.5 million. So it barely registers.

In any case, there are over seven billion people on the planet

so in crude statistical terms, there's only one car for every seven people.

There aren't even enough seats to go around.

And, of course, one and a quarter billion of those people live in absolute

poverty, so have probably never even been in a car.

It's all nonsense, in fact. The motor industry has completely failed.

There is no car of the people.

But there's another way of looking at this.

The car as we know it only exists

because of a universal desire to possess it.

It began life as the preserve of the toffs, it was a proposition

so complicated that you needed to

employ a man just to drive it and look after it for you.

But now a century later, it's a consumer durable.

A disposable one at that.

Yes, there are still cars that cost a million pounds or more, but

they come to us riding on a groundswell of engineering achievement

that is fuelled by the demand for mobilisation for the masses.

So, in actual fact everything from the £1,500 Tata Nano all the way up

to the £1.5 million Bugatti Veyron Super Sport,

they are all cars of the people.

MUSIC: "Keep The Car Running" by Arcade Fire

# They know my name cos I told it to them

# But they don't know where

# They don't know when

# It's coming

# When is it coming?

# Keep the car running

# Keep the car running

# Keep the car running. #