Roof Racks and Hatchbacks: The Family Car Timeshift

GRACE DENT: One day, you're a free spirit making your own decisions,

speeding where you please.

You drive a two-seater sports car, you can put your pedal to the metal.

And then, suddenly, life changes beyond recognition.

BABY WAILS

Decisions are now driven by the toddler tyrant...

Bye-bye!

..who, let's be honest, can't even use the loo.

When you become a dad,

you're faced with this choice.

Either you completely accept that you're a dad,

because you will start to do dad things.

You will check radiators and make a noise when you sit down.

And you will also need a car that's reasonably practical.

Or you could still cling to having a Porsche that makes you feel young,

even though you're also covered in baby sick.

But just what constitutes

a reasonably practical, sensible family car?

It's got to be probably a five-door of some description.

Readily accessible rear seats

for those wretched baby seats, which I can never fix.

It's got to be frugal, it's safe, it's quick enough.

But sadly...

really rather boring.

TYRES SCREECH

Designers have strived to make these family cars desirable

as the modern family and its demands have evolved through the decades.

Some companies have gone to the wall, but others have struck gold.

A family car is much more demanding, in many ways.

If you want to accommodate style, as well,

we could just design a very ordinary square box and be done with it,

but it wouldn't appeal to people at all.

People are very conscious of design and style.

Saloon to estate.

Hot hatch to Chelsea tractor.

Choosing a family car is a major decision.

It's one of the last spaces where families get to BE a family...

..closely confined in this house on wheels.

The car's part of the family, isn't it?

It's almost like an indulged pet that you,

you know, you're proud of and you want to show off.

Those photos in the family album.

Every new car, everyone has to stand either side of it

and the badge of the car has to be on display.

So climb in and buckle up for the story of the family car.

The design innovations,

the road trips and, of course, the arguments.

-CHILD:

-Want to stop for ice cream.

-DAD:

-We're stopping in a bit.

-CHILD:

-My ear's hurting.

Because, for better or worse,

the family car is where every family really comes together.

# Whoa, whoa

# For the wings of a dove...

Isn't it?

# For the wings of a dove

# Whoa, whoa

# For the wings of a dove... #

It's the 27th of October, 1948.

And a gleaming Earl's Court is full is the newest and shiniest vehicles

to come off the British production line.

-REPORTER:

-The International Motor Exhibition at Earls Court

was opened by the Duke of Gloucester.

The fact that over 17,000 people attended on the first day

proves how car hungry the post-war public is.

This post-war public were about to witness an automotive spectacle

the likes of which they'd never seen before.

It was the Morris Minor

and it was going to open up a new world of family motoring.

-REPORTER:

-And here's something to goggle at.

A brand-new model announced only on the eve of the opening of the show.

Here we see modern lines,

blended with sturdy performance at very low cost.

Up to this point, cars had been the preserve of the wealthy.

But thanks to the Morris,

the car went from being a luxury item

to a family staple.

The Morris Minor cost only £358, ten shillings and seven pence.

The Minor was promoted as big-car motoring at small-car costs.

Even if it seems Lilliputian

in contrast to the huge family cars of today.

My pal John says that their Minor is jolly comfortable.

And there's masses of room for them and their luggage!

Bill Anderson tells me the Minor's the best car he ever had.

Marvellous on corners.

Bags of power.

Miles and miles per gallon, too.

Gosh! Everyone's got a Minor.

Not everyone, silly.

They've only made just over a million.

-Let's have the millionth and first, hey?

-Wow!

The Morris Minor was the first British car

to achieve a million sales.

And it marked the start of a new generation

of economical, small family cars

for dad, mum and their 2.4 kids.

Part of the Morris Minor's appeal was it's simple, no-nonsense design.

It's a three-box car with a compartment for people,

compartment for the engine

and then boot in the back.

And it was shaped like three boxes.

It wasn't a particularly efficient package,

because the boot in it was quite round,

so you couldn't get a lot of stuff in it.

But quite a tall roof - you could get people with hats into it,

which mattered in those days.

But cars were really rudimentary.

They were quite... They were metal boxes

with mechanics hanging off the bottom of them.

Motoring journalist Zog Ziegler

recalls how safety was also a foreign concept.

These cars were very, very flimsy.

They ran on tyres that wide.

The brakes were so poor you'd have to make an appointment to stop.

HE SCREAMS

The seats were so shiny that, if you went round a corner,

you'd slide across the whole bench.

You know, nothing held you in place.

It was all part of the excitement, part of being in this motoring club.

You can't imagine how exciting it was.

The Morris Minor did have indicators.

Although, well into the '50s,

drivers were still sticking their arm out of the window to signal.

But this vehicle and its rivals,

the Hillman Minx and the Ford Consul

were the great liberators of the early '50s,

offering freedom and an escape from everyday worries.

-REPORTER:

-This family, knowing all too well

what it means waiting for a bus.

These were the halcyon days,

when families didn't use their cars just to get from A to B.

They went driving...for fun.

Well, just imagine.

To suddenly have this thing,

the family car.

They could go on picnics.

And families did! They...

They took the car out purely to sit on Beachy Head

with a thermos of tea...

-Like a cup of tea?

-Lovely!

..and look at the view, because they could.

In the pouring rain!

They'd sit there, in the car with the children at the back,

eating their little sandwiches.

Just to go to Beachy Head because they had a car.

So I think that was liberating.

Once peaceful beauty spots

were now overrun with family motorists.

The car made a whole new set of leisure pursuits possible.

The Sunday drive,

the picnic...

..which was often an elaborate affair,

complete with tartan rug, camping stove, teapot

and a full set of china.

-JOHNNY MORRIS:

-Had a picnic lunch and then Dad went off to sleep.

Typical of the male animal, that.

Gorges itself into a stupor with food,

and then lies down beside the remains.

In the '50s, that one car was there for life's milestones.

# Got a house and a car and a wedding ring... #

We set off in it after our wedding.

We used it to drive our first-born safely home.

You used to buy a car many, many years ago

and it'd last you five, six years.

My father's cars lasted seven or eight years at a time.

So it had a big job to do.

-REPORTER:

-A car, they say,

is more than just a hunk of metal to take us from A to B.

It's a projection in steel,

of the sort of person we believe ourselves to be.

It's a piece of machinery on which we lavish our time,

our money, our energy.

Which we cosset and sometimes even fall in love with.

Like a first love, some people never forget their first car.

Brother and sister Chris and Amy have been part of a Morris family

for three generations now.

Every one of their beloved Morrises has its own name.

Well, this is Bluey.

She's so called because, officially, the colour is smoke grey,

but she's been re-sprayed at some point and she's a bit more bluey.

So...

And my car's called Phoebe and she's quite an unusual colour.

Sage green. She's quite special.

Chris and Amy's whole upbringing has been Morris Minor maintenance.

Due to the simple design,

the family are adept at keeping them on the road.

It was always Mum's job to sit in the driver's seat

and pump the pedal to bleed the brakes.

And as soon as I was big enough to reach the pedals,

I took over that role from my mum.

Anything that goes wrong, it tells you what's wrong.

Like, there's only certain things that can be wrong.

If the engine won't run, it either hasn't got fuel or it hasn't got a spark.

It's not that some sensor isn't working or anything. There aren't any sensors.

And I love the sounds they make.

I don't want a radio. I want to listen to the gurgling

as you go around corners and change gears.

You can't go anywhere in a hurry and you don't want to.

You're on holiday any time you're using a classic car.

Phoebe and Bluey are as much a part of their family as their partners.

It's a case of love me, love my Morris.

I'd had Bluey for only about six months before we started going out.

But even then, she...

she being the car,

had got under my skin and I knew that she was a keeper.

Fortunately, the same applied to Lil, my wife.

And she turned out to be a keeper, as well. So...

-AMY:

-That's not even a joke!

When I married my husband,

the colour scheme was dictated by my car.

She was, essentially, an honorary bridesmaid.

She matched the other bridesmaids. She just couldn't get in the church.

Coincidentally, my sister-in-law and I

are both expecting babies in the same month.

Erm...so we're going to suddenly have extra minors in our Minors.

They're going to be classic car fans, as well,

and we're creating the next generation.

BABY WAILS

WAILING CONTINUES

But families were already dreaming bigger.

We were getting a taste for space.

Families started to take driving holidays,

heading to places like Devon and Cornwall

and the family car needed extra room for luggage.

But we could also now afford to buy bigger.

The introduction of easier hire purchase in 1957

meant that a car could cost as little as £4 a week.

Families were ready for the estate.

-REPORTER:

-The estate cars attract much interest,

like this Ford Squire or the bigger Humber Hawk.

Modern estate cars more and more combine

the advantages of a family saloon and a serviceable van.

The modern family estate was a marriage of two cultures...

..the American station wagon

and the British shooting brake,

a car which, traditionally, took gentleman on the hunt

with guns and game in the back.

GUNSHOT

You could see the American influences

and a lot of those sort of brands,

Vauxhall, Standard, Morris, Austin,

they built estate cars.

But they weren't very practical.

It's not like you just had one door that hinged up.

They'd often have split doors,

so you'd have to put the bottom bit flat

and then the glass bit would open separately.

But they were load luggers.

And, erm...and Dad, with his sensible hat

and with a little bit more money to spend,

would have an estate car.

In Europe, it caught on, interestingly enough,

as a lifestyle car.

And people were using estate cars or wagons

because they were making a statement

that they have something else in their life,

it might be horse riding, it might be golf, it might be scuba-diving,

they can put all their stuff into the back of the car.

And so the whole idea of an estate car or wagon in Europe

is much more exotic than it became in America.

In America, it's mum's car for carrying the kids in.

The logical trend was for family cars to keep getting bigger.

But one manufacturer tried to convince us

they should get smaller, following the Suez crisis.

-REPORTER:

-In September 1956,

British troops went into action in Egypt,

when Colonel Nasser cut the oil pipeline to the West.

Petrol rationing was introduced

and family motorists were beginning to panic.

They didn't want to lose their new-found freedoms.

I think the increase is exorbitant.

The price is going to make motoring much more difficult

than what it is now.

And also, it's going to even restrict it

for the people on rations.

Do you think it's going to hit you?

It's going to hit us very, very hard.

Enter designer Alec Issigonis, the man behind the Morris Minor.

But could he create a new car for the family market,

and one that was small and ran on minimal fuel?

-REPROTER:

-The British Motor Corporation

took this problem as a challenge.

They realised that what such a family needed

was a fast, safe, low-priced car that was fun to drive.

Tiny economical two-seaters,

such as the Messerschmitt and the Isetta bubble car,

were popular in Europe.

Although awful to drive,

they could achieve more than 40 miles per gallon.

Issigonis' stroke of genius

was to create a family-sized successor to the bubble car.

But could it really accommodate a family of four?

-REPORTER:

-You don't believe it, do you?

Ah, but wait! Wait until you step inside the Morris Mini-Minor.

There's so much room for four people

and so much parcel space.

Everything stows away so neatly and easily.

Four happy people in a big, big little car.

Issigonis christened his creation the Morris Mini-Minor.

Within a few years, it became simply known as the Mini.

I'm old enough to remember when, at my prep school,

the headmaster's wife turned up in a turquoise Mini.

The Alex Issigonis Mini.

And I was already pretty keen on cars then,

and I was amazed by that thing.

I was amazed by it.

And it reinvented the car, in many ways.

It had a transverse engine at the front,

which meant it could be really short.

You didn't have the drivetrain

because the front wheels were driven.

It was so compact. It was cute.

It had great big pockets in the doors,

you could put bottles of milk in standing up.

The Mini was a design miracle, a TARDIS.

-REPORTER:

-Look what Austin have done,

to achieve an overall length of ten feet,

the engine is swung sideways.

Then there's front-wheel drive

and that means no transmission shaft or back axle.

Look at the extra passenger space this gives you.

And look at these luggage spaces under the rear seat,

because there's no rear axle

and in this full-width door cupboard.

Never has there been so much room inside a car

that takes so little parking space.

But despite the engineering, families took some convincing.

Cars were becoming a status symbol and the Mini...

seemed a bit cheap.

That car was not successful when it first came out

because people associated it with a lack of money.

They felt it was pandering to those who couldn't really afford

something more luxurious.

So, by the nature of people wanting to aspire to something better,

it wasn't that successful.

Until film stars and rock stars and footballers started to drive it

and then, by association, it became a very cool car.

-REPORTER:

-People do the wildest things to Minis.

And here come the Kinks with All Day And All Of The Night.

# I'm not content to be with you in the daytime

# Girl, I want to be with you all of the time... #

It took the patronage of Peter Sellers and the Beatles

to give the Mini a dash of glamour and celebrity.

And that was what appealed

to the new baby-boomer generation of families.

But according to car journalist Richard Porter,

once families had enthusiastically adopted the Mini,

they sometimes took things to the extreme.

There's a surprising amount of room in a Mini,

but I don't think the designers ever thought

they would get nine children in it,

which is essentially what happened.

And your parents would probably say,

"Oh, get Philip from your class to come along

"because I've seen that he's been eating a lot of Marathon bars

"and he's quite fat."

So he would be the sort of rudimentary 1960s version

of an airbag.

Even today, with modern seatbelt legislation and so much choice,

it's surprising how many families see the Mini as a viable family car.

It is a bit like giving birth, getting in and out of this car!

It's not easy to cram everyone in,

but it is easy to park and cheap to run

in today's overcrowded cities.

Maybe Issigonis was ahead of his time.

Jane Worthington never upsized her car when she had a family.

Like many others, she's formed very personal attachment to this brand.

Betty Boo was my first Mini. Then we had Bianca.

The one that's being rebuilt at the minute is just Michelle,

because it is a shell!

Then we had Terence, who was orange.

We had Rosie, Darren's Mini.

Mine's called Flossie.

She's pink all over - pink wheels, pink inside.

I went to live in New Zealand for a bit,

so I bought a Mini out there and he was called Rangi.

Mine's Merida...

because she's got a bit of an attitude.

And this one is Willie.

He wasn't in the best condition when I got him,

so it was Willie, won't he?

I didn't know whether he'd get me back home when I bought him.

More so than any other car, the Mini seems to have a personality,

which resonates with families.

Jane has had a Mini with her every step of the way.

I met my husband because I had a Mini.

So I bought a Mini as my first car

and I thought, I need some kind of boyfriend

that will help me do this car up,

so I went to a Mini club, that's where I met him.

We had a stretch limo Mini as the wedding car.

We had a cake that was like a car park

with Minis on ramps going up the car.

That was because it was all of our little Minis that were painted,

so we had those going round the cake.

We had Minis as centrepieces.

There was a bit of a theme going on, really.

And then we named our children after our Minis

and the designer of the Mini.

There were a few teething problems when the kids arrived.

It was a pain when we had the car seats, an absolute pain,

because we had a roll cage.

So to get the actual car seat in,

we had to have the sunroof fully back

and throw the car seat into the car

and then insert the child sort of through the sunroof.

Yeah, it was really, really awkward.

But Jane finds it easier to keep everyone in line in a small car.

Alex! For goodness' sake, get in!

When your kids are kicking off in the back,

all you have to do is turn round and smack, like that,

and then you can get hold of the kids and make them be quiet.

Whereas, if you are in a bigger car, you just can't do it,

you have to put up with the whinge.

Just couldn't imagine having any other car, really.

The Mini was designed as a city run-around.

It wasn't really intended for long journeys.

But the 1960s saw a motorway boom.

With the M1 under construction...

..long distance, high-speed driving was becoming more common.

More conventional family cars, such as the Morris Minor,

could barely top 60mph.

But in 1962, the Ford Cortina roared in,

boasting a top speed of 75mph.

It cost £573 for the standard saloon...

..but it looked big and had a fashionable air about it.

I think it's easy to overlook the genius of the name Cortina,

because we take it for granted now.

I think, if you're of a certain age, you remember the Ford Cortina.

It sounds normal, it sounds like margarine or something.

But actually, if you boil it down and you think about it in context,

in the context of when that car first came out,

Cortina sounded incredibly exotic.

It was somewhere abroad.

You know, they could've called it the Ford Addis Ababa

or something like that. It sounded incredibly exotic,

incredibly foreign but, at the same time, not too foreign perhaps.

Something to aspire to. I think it's a ski resort.

The Italian ski resort of Cortina

had been used for the Winter Olympics of 1956

and it was still very much in the public's imagination.

A sprinkle of European glitter,

combined with solid engineering,

made the Cortina THE middle-class family car of the '60s.

Although, in Italian, Cortina means...

curtain.

Ford also did something very clever.

They cottoned on to the fact that owning a car

was a way families could show they'd moved up in the world,

especially in identikit suburbia.

The Cortina designers appealed to the British obsession

with one-upmanship

by creating a Cortina pecking order to impress the neighbours.

The hierarchy within the range of the Cortina

was incredibly well thought out.

I mean, they had rooms full of people to calculate this stuff.

So the L had steel wheels and black rubbing strips down the side.

And that meant that, "Well, yes, OK, you've got a new car.

"Well done."

If you got up to the GL,

well, the rubbing strip had a chrome insert

and the wheels maybe had some kind of different design,

a little bit more stylish.

It was all about badge kudos.

You know, the more chrome letters you could have on your boot,

the cooler your dad was.

And then there were engine sizes and people would flaunt that.

1,600.

2,000cc.

It was all about that's how you could maybe stand out.

But then, if you went up to the GLS or even, heaven forfend, the Ghia,

you got a vinyl roof and alloy wheels

and the whole close would be peeking out from the curtains and going,

"Well, the Wilsons are doing terribly well, aren't they?"

# Now, I'm the one who's laughing

# Just like a hyena

# Cos I won't take nagging in my passion wagon

# That's my funky Ford Cortina... #

This door, Reg. Go on, Reg, in you get.

As Cortinas go, Mark Taylor's estate is the daddy.

I'm driving a 1972 Ford Mark III Cortina.

It's an XL version

which, back in the day,

was the top-of-the-range for the estate version

of the Mark III

and XL stands for extra luxury.

My father had a Mark III Cortina.

In fact, my father had all the Cortinas.

The Cortina was the perfect vehicle for a new holiday fashion -

the foreign road trip.

We went down through France into Spain as a kid

in my dad's Cortina.

And, oh, it was a huge adventure as a child.

My dad, my mum, my sister.

And he built a little bench to go in the back seat there,

so me and my sister, we could go to sleep in the back.

I will always have a Cortina in my life.

More and more families were starting to take holidays abroad.

Average paid summer leave in 1969 was 2.3 weeks,

but this increased throughout the '70s.

And for many families the two-week summer break

now no longer meant Bognor, but Brittany or Biarritz.

Cross-channel ferries saw a boom in customers.

Five million of us sailed from Dover in 1970.

By 1980, this had risen to over 10 million.

Even though just getting to the ferry

could be an epic journey itself.

HORN BLARES

The family road trip is an experience we all share...

..and the further into the '70s we got,

the further families were willing to travel.

We set off, map in hand,

with the car rammed to the brim.

It was a fairly complex routine in the early years,

when it was all four of us in the one car.

Me and Amy would get in the back of the car and sit in

and then Mum and Dad would pile stuff on top of us,

so you could just see our heads on a pile of luggage in the back.

It's amazing what you can fit in the cars,

considering there's a lot of curves

and you can't fit anything as conventional as a suitcase in,

but you can squeeze a shoe down a gap.

We got very frustrated

going through passport control at the Channel Tunnel.

They said, "Can everyone get out of the car?"

I was like, "Oh....!" It was like a ten-minute expedition.

We trapped ourselves for hours in that small box on wheels.

But it was here that the essence of being a family was laid bare.

For author Ben Hatch, these journeys helped define his childhood.

Most of my best family memories

are of being in the back of a car.

Some of the worst, as well.

But some of the greatest moments are

when you're all together there as a family,

you're setting off on your holiday,

it's a really sort of special moment.

You're having a little family sing-song or something in the car.

It is a bonding experience, I believe.

Of course, there was moments ten minutes in,

when Mum and Dad pulled over,

threatened to smack everyone in the back seat

and then turn around and drive home,

but battle-hardened parents developed clever tactics

to make the journey bearable.

My sister and I would have full-on fistfights in the back sometimes

when things got too boring.

So Dad devised this magical way of keeping us shut up in the back seat.

If we saw an ambulance on the journey,

my sister and I, we had to hold our collars

until we saw a four-legged animal.

So on an autobahn or on a motorway,

you wouldn't see a four-legged animal for some time.

Also, while we were thus doing, holding our collars,

we weren't allowed to speak.

And I remember sitting in the back of the car, I always got carsick,

so I always used to end up in pyjamas,

because I'd always have been sick,

and, yeah,

we used to have to do I-spy and it just used to go on forever.

No, it's not! It's the letter A!

All right, all right, all right...

Is that what you were I-spying? The letter A?

-Yeah!

-It's a bit tricky, that.

We devised a game called I Don't Spy,

where the thing that you're not spying

could be anything in the known universe.

So the game could last for up to three hours

with them trying to guess objects that they couldn't actually see.

Why have I ended up with A again?

A...

Hold on, ape. Nobody's said ape.

Ooh-ooh, ape.

Do you remember those I-spy books,

where you tick off cars that you saw

and there'd be sort of, like, 100 ticks

next to the Vauxhall Cavalier one.

And then you'd be desperately hoping

that you saw something incredibly rare and unusual,

like a Wartburg,

because that was sort of 20 points in your I-spy book.

I remember Travel Scrabble,

where you pushed the letters into little holes on the board.

Imagine all the fun!

The advent of the in-car cassette player

opened up a whole new world of possibilities

for family entertainment.

# Tired of waiting for you... #

I remember a brilliant holiday we had in the car.

It was probably the longest distance we'd done.

We got the ferry to Denmark in my dad's Talbot Solara

GLS with a vinyl roof.

Phwoar! It was lovely.

And as a family, we couldn't agree on what to listen to in the car

and the only mutually agreeable piece of in-car entertainment

was The Best Of ABBA.

# So when you near me, darling, can't you hear me?

# SOS

# The love you gave me, nothing else can save me

# SOS... #

And to this day, I'm a huge ABBA fan and so is my younger brother

because we just listened to ABBA on loop.

It's something that's worth remembering now.

The kids of today don't know how good they've got it.

Ben Hatch took the road trip to the extreme

when he embarked on an 8,000-mile odyssey with his young family.

It was sort of an insane idea that we had,

based on the fact that our son had just been born

and our daughter was three

and we had a little bit of time to ourselves.

My wife was off with maternity leave and we thought,

"Why don't we make a whole kind of adventure of it?"

It all fell apart in the first day,

when I think my daughter wet herself in the Elgar Museum

and then I lost the key to the roof box

that contained all our son's nappy changing facilities,

which meant we had to change him on the bonnet of the car,

using three lemon fresh wipes from KFC.

You have to have a low-grade car, really, I think,

if you're driving around with kids.

Otherwise you'd start feeling a bit precious about your car.

Ben turned the highs and lows of his family's road trip

into a travel blog, an On The Road for modern parents.

"They take it in shifts for the next 100 miles to cry out for a banana,

"sweets, cuddles, a treat.

"Phoebe is so bored outside Chollerford,

"when I look round at traffic lights,

"I catch her trying to touch her own eyeball.

"And Charlie is worse.

"He's playing Temple Run on my phone

"using his nose to swipe.

"We teeter on the edge of madness

"down tiny unmarked roads on he way to Kielder.

"The lowest moment coming when I take Phoebe for a wee

"in a field of live ordnance in Otterburn,

"a few feet from a chirpy sign warning,

"'Do not touch military debris. It might explode and kill you.'"

During the '70s, the traditional four-door saloon

gave way to a design popular in Europe - the hatchback...

..with a sloping hatchback boot,

which meant you could access the luggage compartment

from the back seat.

My dad was a very practical man and he liked the idea of a hatchback.

Sort of split the difference between a saloon, not so practical,

and an estate, slightly too practical, perhaps,

for his requirements

So a nice hatchback.

And he had two or three of those in quick succession

because they suited his needs,

which were mainly putting a buggy in the back

and then, on a Sunday, taking things to the tip.

British Leyland, Britain's national car manufacturer,

unveiled a new contender for the family market in 1973.

But during its development,

the designers had somehow missed the crucial hatchback memo.

British Leyland have got down to some really radical thinking

about what the family car should be for Europe in the '70s and the '80s

and here comes the answer - the Allegro!

And I must confess, when I first saw it,

it's a shape that didn't greatly grab me.

The Allegro, a family saloon, was the hatchback that never was.

BL, as they often did,

seized this defeat from the jaws of victory

by not making that car a hatchback.

It had a tiny little flap for the boot on the back

so it wasn't big enough to get a load of grass cuttings in

which is, of course, what your dad wants from a family car.

The Allegro became a scapegoat for everything

that was wrong with the British family car in the '70s.

But it wasn't just the design.

There was also a supply issue.

So even if families wanted to buy an Allegro,

they couldn't always get one.

-REPORTER:

-Yet a third dispute is delaying Allegro production.

On this car, Lord Stokes has based his hopes for major sales in Europe.

Now, with the tracks idle,

it seems that Europe must again be kept waiting.

All those in favour, please show.

CHEERING

You couldn't buy a BL car a lot of the time

because there were a lot of strikes.

And there were strikes at Ford, as well.

My dad wanted a Cortina in the '70s

and then ended up cancelling his order

because Dagenham was permanently not making cars

and standing outside around a brazier complaining about stuff.

British Leyland wanted to break into the European family market

but, instead, Europe broke into ours.

We joined the EEC in 1973

and the floodgates to foreign imports opened.

-REPORTER:

-A sleeping Britain awoke to find itself invaded.

The Germans were coming with their Volkswagens.

the Italians were coming with their Fiats.

We weren't just driving to Europe on holidays,

Europe was coming to driveways across Britain.

But would you get frowned on by your neighbours for buying one?

In suburbia, initially,

I think it was seen to be disloyal and one bought British

and you could have car stickers, you know, "I bought British."

And then some clever monkey would come along and he'd say,

"Yeah, I bought foreign

"and that's why my car isn't on the hard shoulder."

Why not give it a go?

Why not take a chance on that VW or that Renault or something

and risk the slight sneers from your neighbours

that you look like a bit of a traitor

because you'd had enough of your Maxi

piddling oil onto your driveway?

At least, you know, if your Fiat piddled oil onto your driveway,

it was exotic Italian oil.

The discerning 1970s family car buyer

now had a wish list as long as your arm.

We need the space.

One would like all the room that's necessary

for a family and a holiday.

Well, I go for the look of it, more than anything.

Comfort.

Speed.

We want economy. We want a reasonable price.

One would also like all the qualities of a sports car.

Good, safe seatbelt in the car for the kids or your wife.

And I suppose compactness.

But, erm...

so far, they haven't made it.

At the forefront of the continental newcomers

was a vehicle destined to become one of the bestselling cars ever.

It was a hatchback

and it had crisp Italian styling.

It was the Volkswagen Golf.

The Golf was...

The original Golf by Giugiaro, the Italian designer, was a phenomena

and it was one of my favourite cars when I was growing up,

when I was a young man.

And we aspired to it because it looked great. It was different.

It had a hatchback which made it practical.

It's a great piece of design in its own right.

The Golf became widely regarded as the definitive family hatchback.

With boot space big enough to fit a buggy,

it was sold as sensible enough for suburbia,

yet also racy.

He's off in that new car again.

-Hm...

-Wouldn't catch me in a Volkswagen.

-What's wrong with a Golf?

-Well, it's not exactly big, is it?

Actually, it's bigger than it looks.

He'll never get that lot in there.

Anyway, I don't like rear-engined cars.

The engine's in the front. It's water-cooled.

Come on, quickly. All in.

The back seat folds down, too.

Here, you seem to know a lot about his car.

Have you been in his car?

But Volkswagen upped the ante further...

..souping up the Golf to appeal to petrolhead parents...

..who wanted to hold on to a glimmer of youth.

Vroom! Vroom!

The Golf GTI revved in.

The GTI was a pioneer in hot hatchback...

..using fuel injection technology

normally associated with sports cars.

The Golf GTI came along, starting this boom in hot hatchbacks

and here you could have a practical car that, when you're on your own,

you could drive like you'd sat on a wasp.

I mean, dads around the world were just going, "Thank you! Thank you!"

In the day, it went to 60 in under ten seconds,

which was always a benchmark.

It was a real driver's car.

A real driver's car.

And it'd keep up with the best sports cars of the time.

We tend to think of the GTI as a boy racer car,

but VW had their eye on the family market,

even creating a five-door version.

Suddenly, you had all the aspects of a small family car,

the practicality of a hatchback,

which was relatively new in those days,

and the drivability of a sports car.

And this really appealed to a whole generation,

including myself, actually,

where, you know, it was one step up from the Mini.

You could actually get four people into it comfortably

and it had a lot of practicality,

but it was a cool car because it went.

Your dad could say to your mum, "It's very practical.

"It's got five doors."

And by the '80s, the stigma of buying a foreign car

had sort of ebbed away and so you'd say, "It's a Volkswagen.

"They're very well made, you know?"

And he didn't have to mention the 1.8 litre engine

and that it had over 100 horsepower

and it could do 0-60 in whatever time it was back then,

which seemed impressive.

Dad would have something to look cool in on his own,

something to go to the pub in and impress his mates

and something fairly rapid.

But before he went to the pub or before he went out on his own,

he'd make sure that any evidence

of children sitting in the back was removed

so babyseats were a no-no when Dad went out alone in his GTI.

The Golf GTI was the equivalent of taking your wedding ring off.

You could have a family car one day, sports car the next.

But let's not just make this about your dad.

David Challenger isn't the only speed freak in his family.

His kids love their GTI, as well.

Even if it nearly broke the bank.

We made a huge sacrifice.

When we first bought our GTI,

it was every single penny we earned to buy it,

insure it and fuel it.

Every single penny.

It was £5,000 exactly. That was a lot of money.

It was a lot of our earnings, as well, that was.

But it's just done everything that I needed it to do.

It's just something... Yeah, it was something I had to have.

You had the power,

you had the reliability

AND you could get children in the back,

so it was a perfect family car.

Me and him have been out in this a little bit, haven't we?

And he really likes this car.

It's loud. The noise it makes when it goes.

ENGINE REVS

And it's comfy.

-You like it? Yeah?

-Yeah.

I like the speed of it, as well.

-I like it because it goes fast.

-Kids like speed, obviously.

THEY ALL CHUCKLE

They're only about 120mph, to be honest, so they're not super quick.

But in 1984, when this was built, that was pretty rapid.

Yeah, that was pretty rapid.

One of the features is the Pirelli alloys.

They were quite a big GTI thing, especially in the early days.

The red stripe around the grille,

the red pinstripe,

was always an original feature and, obviously, for me,

you can only have a GTI in a three-door.

That's the rule. You have to have a three-door GTI.

It's safe because the kids can't open the doors

or wind the windows down and stuff like that.

It's good.

The GTI was what became known as a halo car.

It basically gave the Golf brand a bit of swagger.

What's happened with the family car

is they've become more and more interesting

because, if you take a standard car, people think,

"Well, I don't really want to give up my sense of independence,

"my sense of character that I might have had in a previous car,

"a sports car or something a little bit quicker."

It was important for the car industry

to create these halo cars like GTIs.

And what that does, it gives people permission

to drive something ordinary

because the halo car of that same family set

is actually very, very exciting.

And that's why these sports hot hatchbacks

and sports derivatives of saloon cars evolved.

You know, the association was that, "We're not boring.

"We might have 2.3 kids, but we're not boring."

And I think that's very important for people.

The family car of the '80s now seemed to have it all -

sports car power, practicality

and space for a family of four.

But there was one crucial thing missing

from the back seat of many family cars.

And that...was seat belts.

-REPORTER:

-In spite of the increase in the number of cars,

the number of people killed within all categories and ages

is decreasing,

with one exception -

children as car passengers.

You've just arrived with your three children

and the little one's standing up in the middle. She's got a good view,

but aren't you worried about her safety, standing there?

Yes, I am, as a matter of fact.

-But it's only because you've brought it to my attention.

-Yes.

Hello. That's a lovely, bonny baby you've got in their back there.

Is that carrycot she's in strapped into the car?

No, it's just...

Well, it's sort of just sat in behind the chair, really.

It's not tied in or anything.

-And she's loose in it?

-Well, yeah, we usually lie her down anyway.

-Yes.

Do you know that the most dangerous place for a small child to sit

-is in the front seat?

-It's in the front seat, isn't it, yes? Yes.

-Especially on Mum's lap.

-Yes.

Does that worry you today?

-Well, it does, but I've put my seatbelt on as well, you know?

-Yes.

-Do you put that round her?

-No, I put it round me.

It would be a bit tight for both of us.

What would happen to her, then, if you had a crash?

Well, erm...

Well, I hold her really tight, you know?

Although family attitudes to safety left much to be desired,

safety belts for kids were not enforced in law until 1989.

If you were one of the safety-conscious few

with big enough pockets,

there was a dream car waiting for you...

the Volvo 240.

Sweden's most famous export after ABBA.

Volvo were way ahead of the pack on safety engineering

and developed a prototype rear-facing child seat

as early as 1964.

-REPORTER:

-Children in a car should have the same protection as adults.

The safest protection

consists of the rearwards-facing child seat developed by Volvo.

Volvo were even introducing cars

which the centre armrest would convert into a babyseat.

Babyseats were unheard of when I was a child.

Now we have...

You know, safety belts were pretty much unheard of.

The Volvo was a tank.

Its bumpers dwarfed those of other cars

and it had a huge luggage space.

But its conservative image only appealed

to a certain corner of the family market -

Mr and Mrs Sensible.

Their whole advertising strategy was based around safety.

And it's funny how everyone thought that made Volvos boring.

You know, a Volvo was sort of what you got

if you were a little bit worthy and a bit...a bit too practical.

Almost other dads would go, "Well, I mean,

"I like a bit of space in the boot, but steady on!

"I don't need a Volvo 240. I'm not an antiques dealer."

Parents didn't wilfully choose unsafe cars,

but safety culture had long been fixated on the front seat.

Everyone, apart from Volvo,

seemed less concerned with what was going on in the back.

I don't think anyone ever goes, "I'd like your unsafest car, please.

"I've got one that's got a dagger in the middle of the steering wheel.

"Is there anything...? I don't know if there's one that, perhaps,

"has a few land mines in the back seat ?

"Because I like to keep my children on their toes."

Nobody ever thinks like that.

Volvo were way ahead of their time.

It's bizarre that not every parent in the country had a Volvo

because why would you put your children at risk?

Safety-conscious Dad aspired to his Volvo.

And petrolhead parents aspired to their GTI.

But what was Yummy Mummy dreaming of?

-REPORTER:

-Go shopping, go visiting, go to work, go to school...

Straight from the Gymkhana came another family car

which, like the GTI, cultivated the envy factor.

Its parent was the Land Rover,

which harked back to the shooting brake of the prewar era

with its country estate heritage.

-REPORTER:

-The Land Rover is like the type of man

Britain's countryside has bred for centuries past.

Strong and skilful, yet, on social occasions,

smart enough to hold his own with dignity and self-respect.

So just how did Range Rover,

which started life as a functional vehicle for farm and field,

kick-start the Chelsea tractor craze,

off-roading 4x4s used for the city school run?

The Range Rover was to replace

Farmer Giles' old beaten up Land Rover

and this was more luxurious, more go anywhere,

in the sense that you could take it into town

and on the motorway at some speed.

But it just had rubber mats on the floor and plastic seats,

so Farmer Giles could slosh a bucket of water through it

with all the doors open and get all the cow poo out

and then take his wife to the theatre.

The original Range Rover was very bare inside.

I mean, it was designed to be hosed out

and it was outside companies

who quite quickly cottoned on to the fact

that this car actually appealed to urbanites with lots of money

and started offering leather seats.

They could convert it to five doors, which it wasn't at that point,

so you could even be chauffeured in it, if you wanted to be.

And then, belatedly, Land Rover themselves

sort of, in their brilliant Brummie way went,

"Oh, people seem to be making money out of the Range Rover.

"Maybe that should be us."

From the mid-1980s,

middle-class families were aspiring to Range Rovers.

When parked on a suburban street next to, say, a Ford Focus, it said,

"We're an active family who go off the beaten track at weekends."

It was basically a projection of what the family wanted to be,

although not many could afford it.

The secret of that car's success is first of all

because it's just a very, very human thing - we like sitting up high.

And particularly if you've made a success of yourself

and you've got some money.

You like to look down on people.

It's a simple fact and there's nothing

that lets you look down on people quite as much

as a Range Rover.

I mean, I remember always sort of thinking, you know,

"It's quite nice up here,

"peering into people's bathrooms," as I drove by.

And also, and I speak from personal experience

in having a really ruined back since I became a dad,

trying to load a child,

particularly a wiggly, angry, crying child,

into a car like that rather than like that - down,

is so much easier.

You just want something high up. They make good sense.

But sitting up high in something akin to a mini tank

also made families feel safer.

The 4x4 shielded our precious children

from the urban jungle.

And people like to sit high

because it gives them that command position of the rest of the road

and, in some ways, it makes them feel safer, I think.

So this is a modern phenomena that really has picked up

from where the family car left off.

The Range Rover married safety and countryside social status

in a way that the Volvo 240 never could.

Manufacturers soon realised

that there was a 4x4-shaped gap in the family market.

It spawned so many others.

Every manufacturer worth its salt, everyone,

was making a big 4x4 luxury car for, as you say,

the yummy mummy outside the school gate.

Who, by putting on her hazard lights, can double park

because she's got her hazard lights on, so that's fine. Extraordinary!

# Well, you must be a mum with a car like that

# I really know your type well

# I see you driving your X5, your Vogue

# Or your Mercedes DL

# Oh, yeah

# Someone said safety was your main concern

# And while I know it's a factor

# Style's the main reason that you bought a Chelsea tractor... #

The 3:15 school pick-up is now littered with what car insiders call

the crossover -

big vehicles, 4x4 in style,

but with little off-roading capability.

Isn't the Crossover a '70s bra?

And it's a bit of a damn nuisance

because parking spaces are still just as small,

so you just get a sort of symphony of steel clanking into steel...

as you open your door in the supermarket car park.

Morning!

Oh, there's Auntie Jo.

Oh, Jan! Jan! Can you take her in for me?

-Because I've got to do the playgroup run.

-No worries.

We tend to make fun of these big tanks,

but they are not just vanity cars.

Families have been getting bigger,

both in the physical and the social sense.

More liberal attitudes to divorce and the rise in second marriages

meant roomier cars were needed

for a mix of teenagers and younger siblings.

Designers also had to work

within increasingly tight safety parameters.

People ask me now, "Why are cars getting bigger?"

Well, it's to do with safety.

It's to do with the amount of room we need inside

for impact and for airbags and all the good stuff

that's built in to stop people hurting themselves.

Now, cars have to withstand vast impacts,

so the designer starts with a great big lump of steel

front and rear for safety

and then a great big lumps of steel at the side

for side impact safety.

So the designer is so compromised.

Every generation of car...

Well, Golf, we're up to Mark VII or Mark VIII now...

Every generation gets flabbier,

wider, maybe a bit taller.

Because it can withstand more and more impact.

People are getting bigger.

And people are growing by an inch every 15 years or so

around the world, on average.

You know, our diets are changing and people are getting bigger.

They're also getting quite wide, as well, some of them,

so we have to make sure we've got a car which accommodates

the certain percentile of person

which, nowadays, is quite a large size.

A family cars are now 4-6 inches wider than they were 25 years ago.

All of these factors present a real challenge to designers,

who want to create family cars that are more streamlined.

The first family car I did was the previous Jaguar XF

and we were halfway through it and I turned round and told my boss,

"Actually, I haven't designed a saloon car before."

He looked at me rather horrified.

Because up until then, I'd just done sports cars

and so it was quite challenging.

We want the car to look sporty, because that is our heritage.

At the same time, it has to be practical.

It has to have room inside it.

And are one of the essences of a sports car, of course,

is the shape and the silhouette.

It has to look sleek.

Family cars, by nature, have to be quite practical and boxy, really.

And tall for room.

And so building that style

into something of these dimensions and height...

Because style tends to be about length

and SUVs, sport utility vehicles, tend to be about height,

so you have this contradiction of dimension

you have to deal with visually.

And so we try tricks to do that,

you know, whether it be in lines, forms, proportions...

The wheel size helps.

You know, the larger the wheel, the better the car looks.

Don't ask me why, it's just a designer thing, but they do!

And it gives the car a sense of confidence and everything else

that a sports car would have.

But, yeah, it's a tricky balance

and sometimes, of course, I'm sitting at my desk,

I'll be doodling, I'll doodle a sports car.

That's my default sketch, is a sports car.

It's ironic that sports car designers, like Ian Callum,

who once fed our long lost dreams of freedom

now have two get family-minded.

The family car remains a uniquely challenging vehicle to crack

but, if you do, the rewards are lucrative.

Much more so than for a niche sports car.

Our family car tells the outside world

what type of family we want to be,

whether it's a Mini for the retro-obsessed city family

or a Volvo for the safety-minded doctor's family.

But what happens inside that box is far more important.

The design of the family car mirrors our relationship

with our real family.

It's always a compromise

based on the competing demands of each family member.

And what Mum and Dad want isn't necessarily what the children need.

In this post-modern era,

where families are disparate and even in our own homes

we tend to gravitate to different rooms,

the family car is that one remaining space

where we can't escape each other.

We all need to take a road trip once in a while.