Range Rover field test

Modern Range Rovers leave me cold. I think they're hideous and vulgar and have absolutely no desire to own one. The original, retrospectively known as the Range Rover Classic, on the other hand has long been a favourite of mine and I think its simple, rugged yet elegant shape is a design classic that looks great. I'd never actually driven or even sat in one though, until now that is.

A proper Range Rover in what should be its natural habitat

The Saturday just gone was the fifth running of Hagerty Insurance's Festival of the Unexceptional and there will be a full report on that event in due course, but this year it was decided to make a weekend of it and hold an after party in the Field of Dreams for invited guests. A nice man called Ian from Hagerty owns the blue Range Rover that can usually be found at the events they sponsor, and when he turned up on Sunday I cheekily asked if I could have a go. "Sure", he said, "the keys are in it", so I clambered in and off I went across the field to realise my dream of driving a classic Range Rover.

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

Making more of the Maxi

British Leyland's alternative reality

 

As a fan and owner of the Austin Maxi, I have spent some time thinking about why it didn't achieve the success it deserved. BL didn't really know what to do with the Maxi and basically pushed it to the sidelines, but with a different attitude it could easily have formed the very heart of the range and spawned many more variants. One of the biggest reasons I came up with for its failure was the simultaneous existence of both the Maxi 1750 and the 1800 Landcrab, which seemed to be a pointless duplication that did nothing other than create internal competition, as the latter was basically the same car but with an older engine and without the benefit of the fifth gear or hatchback. This realisation provided the starting point for an entire train of thought that could have changed the course of British Leyland's history for the better!

The Maxi could have been so much more than this dumpy unloved hatchback

Had the Maxi been used as a direct replacement for the Landcrab, the Princess would then become redundant and extending this thought a little opens up the possibility of its place being taken by a whole series of Maxi-based cars using all of the E-series engine variations that existed in reality, from 1500 right up to 2600cc. The existence of these additional Maxis would then cause other models to develop in a more logical way to fit around them, rationalising the range and providing full market coverage that was equivalent to Ford, with the Allegro and Escort, Maxi and Cortina, and SD1 and Granada pairings all being direct competitors. Here's how things might have turned out in this alternative reality... 

Road Roving

In my most recent unsung heroes piece I suggested the Matra Rancho may have been the world's first crossover. As a production car that is probably true, but I have been reminded of another project that predated the Rancho by more than two decades. It never made production but came very close and had it done so could certainly have been considered an ancestral crossover. The vehicle I'm talking about is the Road Rover, which you may not have heard of before so read on for the full story...

CityRover - what if things were different?

One aspect of the car industry that fascinates me is the 'what ifs'. So many difficult decisions have to be made and it is interesting to ponder how things may have turned out had circumstances been even slightly different. A potentially fascinating case was recently raised almost as a throwaway comment on the excellent AROnline website so I decided to give this a little more thought. The conjecture was this: had the CityRover been successful, could we now see a partially recreated form of Rover Group in the ownership of Tata?