More Bobmobiles

Work on the Renault 6 continues at a steady pace and there will be an update soon. In the meantime, an envelope arrived a few weeks ago from Barry, who had been sorting Bob's photos and found some not just of our Renault but of various other cars he owned over the years. Looking at what he drove provides an interesting insight into his character: he seems to have been a Ford man originally before getting into Renaults, then towards the end of his life he had a couple of Vauxhalls. Even though he never married and spent his whole life living alone so he didn't really need two cars, there were times he owned more than one, and of course the R6 sat unused in the garage for more than 20 years while other cars came and went.

Retro Review: Ford Simulator

Although I work in the IT industry I've never really been one for games. I'd describe myself as a very casual gamer who maybe spends a couple of hours a month gaming, and I'm an impatient sort who wants to make quick progress so I tend to stick to simple fast-paced games. As a car enthusiast, naturally it is driving games that appeal most to me and nowadays there is no shortage of ultra-realistic games and simulators to suit all tastes. I grew up in the simpler time of the late eighties and early nineties though, and here I look back at a very odd, obscure and crude program (I hesitate to even call it a game) from 30 years ago that played a part in shaping my childhood.

What kind of super-realistic simulation awaits when I press the space bar?

Dream cars: NSU Ro80

You may have noticed a trend among my previous dream cars: they all have V8 engines, and let's be honest, what true petrolhead doesn't love a V8? This one is different though as it has an engine that sounds almost like a rude word and has no cylinders at all in the usual sense. Alas, that very same engine proved to be its Achilles' heel and caused its manufacturer to go bust less than 12 months after winning a well-deserved Car of the Year award.

Yes, today's dream is the NSU Ro80, a car so packed with innovations it was just too advanced for its own good and pushed the small company that made it over the brink into extinction just a decade after its launch. The Ro80 is celebrating its 50th birthday this year, something you'd find hard to believe looking at its fresh modern styling and the technology underneath, and I have long been among its admirers as it's just so radical and different from what anyone else was making at the time.

Would you believe this is a 50-year old car?
(By Spurzem - Lothar Spurzem - Own work, CC BY-SA 2.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8042301)

Magnum opus

The Renault Magnum in showland

If I was to ask you to name a typical British fairground lorry, chances are you'd say the classic duo of ERF and Foden, although with those marques gone for over a decade, nowadays Volvo, Scania and DAF are all making considerable inroads into showland at their expense. One manufacturer you probably wouldn't think of is Renault, and there are only a handful of this company's products to be found on the fairs and circuses of Britain.

The Renault Magnum however is one of my personal favourite types as it looks like nothing else on the road with its enormous boxy flat-floored cab and styling that must have been quite space-age at launch in 1991. My love for the Magnum no doubt comes from living in an area where my local fairs are frequently graced by at least one example, so this piece focuses on the Magnums I have photographed on the travelling scene in recent years.

A trio of fairground Magnums in one place, a very rare sight in this country

Unsung heroes: Suzuki Jimny

It has been quite some time since I wrote anything for this blog due to other things going on - I have plenty of new posts drafted in my head but just haven't had the time to write them down. Today the unsung heroes series makes its overdue return with an especially unusual and largely overlooked choice. Here is a car that wasn't even remotely advanced when it first appeared, yet has now been produced for two whole decades with no major changes. In this modern world of fickle consumers demanding new models every few years, that is really quite a remarkable achievement but has gone virtually unnoticed and totally uncelebrated. I'm talking about the Suzuki Jimny - many of you have almost certainly forgotten this ever existed so it may amaze you that at the time of writing UK customers can still buy a brand new one in basically the same form as the 1997 original!

The Jimny was nothing special back in 1997
(By Mytho88 (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons)

BL's alternative reality - part 3

Here is the third and final part of my alternative reality that could have seen British Leyland become the pride of Britain with a popular, desirable and well-built range of cars and a world-renowned image, far from the reality of a long-extinct but still tarnished brand and its infamous lineup of failed products. Part 2 took us through the 1980s as the group consolidated the reputation established in the previous decade, so here we take up the story from the 1990s through to the present day with British Leyland still very much alive and well as a dominant force in the global motor industry. Sadly I have no Photoshop skills, otherwise I would create renderings of these cars to illustrate this article as I can picture them in my mind, but read on anyway to see how I envision BL looking today.

BL's alternative reality - part 2

Into the eighties...

This piece is another 'might have been' scenario concerning the British motor industry, which follows on from one published back in February and is best read in conjunction with it for the background to what happens here. That article proposed an alternative 1970s British Leyland range based around the Maxi and Allegro, so this one discusses what might have happened when the group moved into the 1980s as a successful and market-leading British-run company, a far cry from the tattered and troubled reality.

British Leyland, a world-famous brand entering the eighties in excellent shape

The letters game

Whatever happened to proper trim levels?

Today I want to talk about something that has quietly and almost imperceptibly disappeared from modern motoring. Not so long ago your social standing would be made obvious to the world by the trim level of your car, those little letters on the bootlid that told everyone how well-equipped or otherwise it was. A lot of people may take them for granted and not give them a second thought, but these trim levels had far more importance than their stature might suggest - they said a great deal about the person behind the wheel and, particularly in the company car world, your success in life would be judged by your peers on what badge you had. Nowadays though, these traditional hierarchies have all but disappeared in favour of meaningless names, and I for one miss the days of designations like L and GLX, whose simplicity belied the connotations attached to them.

Dream cars: Chevrolet Firenza Can Am

Vauxhall Viva meets muscle car

Today the dream cars series makes a long-overdue return with a surprise new entry. This car is pretty obscure and I have known of its existence for little more than two weeks, but even in that short time I have already developed a strong desire to own one. It is another product of the fascinating but little-known South African motor industry, although this one is far more exciting and desirable than the dull old Sao Penza I have previously featured. It's a true muscle car in the American tradition but with the benefit of right-hand drive and a more manageable size, so what's not to like? It all started with a chance encounter at the recent Earls Barton Classic Car Meet, an event pretty much guaranteed to turn up something out of the ordinary...

No ordinary Firenza - there's a ridiculously big engine under the bonnet

A year of Maxi-ing

Time flies when you're having fun, and the weekend just gone marked the first anniversary of buying the Maxi. It's hard to believe a whole year has passed so quickly, so what has happened to the car in that time? It may have been overshadowed in recent weeks by the unexpected arrival of the Renault 6, but the Maxi hasn't been forgotten. To be honest, there really isn't much to report as it just keeps on doing its thing without a fuss.

The Festival of the Unexceptional was its first outing with the new wheeltrims