Alan Judd

Some at least of the 71 vehicles I’ve owned (68 if tractors don’t count) are probably best excused by a weakness for romantic impracticality. It was never inherent impracticality that attracted me but something else about them — rarity, unusual histories or locations, coincidence, the appeal of rescue. Hence the Daimler Conquest Century convertible, the Austin Gypsy fire engine, the Majestic Major mayoral limousine and the clump of stinging nettles in Oxfordshire marketed as a Series One Land-Rover. Recently there have been signs that the condition afflicts me still. The week began with a tour of the Rolls Royce factory at Goodwood, West Sussex.

The first lap of Le Mans last weekend passed in a daze. The thought of performing on that hallowed 14km (8–9 mile) circuit in front of thousands was bad enough, even for one who would have been content with the record for the slowest lap, but the thought was as nothing compared with the fact. I’ve no idea what people imagined as they watched the only tweeded figure on the circuit pressed into the cockpit.

Boris would have approved. He might have been envious. He might even have remembered the lunch he owes me. But I’d have let him off that just to have seen his face when he saw me at the wheel of a Routemaster bus. Since it is a vintage vehicle, an ordinary car licence suffices provided there are no more than eight passengers and no charge is made, and the drive is easier and yet more enjoyable than you’d think. With luck and the new mayor, we might see them on London’s streets again: Autocar has already reviewed an improved design that more than meets modern requirements. Built in London for London by Londoners, they entered service in 1954, intended to last 17 years. When production ceased in 1968, about 2,875 had been produced, mostly the basic 27.

Big, lazy V8 engines, powerful and durable, are as American as Coca-Cola and Stetsons. Europeans, with smaller cars, shorter distances, dearer petrol and high-taxing governments, have traditionally gone for fewer cubic centimetres and higher revs, which usually meant more stressed engines but better handling cars. There have been many exceptions, of course, particularly those manufacturers who imported big Americans and adapted them. Best known is surely the Buick 3.5 alloy V8 that General Motors considered too small for the American market. Rover’s managing director, William Martin-Hurst, spotted it powering a friend’s fishing boat while holidaying in America in the mid-1960s.

‘When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?’ John Maynard Keynes retorted to a critic. A pity he’s not here to ask the same question of the Department for Transport (DfT) when they lecture us on road deaths this Christmas. Four years ago The Spectator (22 November 2003) helped to initiate the wider debate about speed cameras, hitherto primarily a concern of the specialist motoring press and the RAC Foundation. The article attracted considerable attention, partly because of the figures it quoted for cameras, drivers caught, revenue raised and the fact that, of 419 Somerset police officers caught in one year, only one was prosecuted.

At Oxford I had a clerical friend, a mature postgraduate and student of 19th-century evangelism, who developed a temporary but consuming passion for car tyres. Unlike his more lasting passions for tobacco, alcohol and (I believe) cannabis, his enthusiasm for tyres was as great as his ignorance; he didn’t know a cross-ply from a radial. His fundamental ur-passion was really for easy ways of making money, and for two terms he thought tyres were the answer to life. He had been greatly taken by a probably apocryphal story about some Cambridge undergraduates who imported tyres from Holland and allegedly made £14,000 in one year (a great deal then) without having to see or touch a tyre themselves. That latter aspect appealed particularly to him.

Depreciation is to cars what compound interest is to us: it bites sooner and deeper than you think. In March 2006 my sister-in-law paid a main dealer £8,000 for a 2002 Renault Laguna Sports Tourer Dynamique, an 1,800cc estate equipped with air-conditioning, sunroof (the UK market is apparently the only one that demands both), alloys, CD player, and so on. It was a one-owner car with a full main-dealer service history throughout its 25,500 miles. In August this year, 17 months and 15,500 miles later, she sought to part-exchange it for a 2004 Mazda MX5. The Mazda main dealer offered her £2,000 for the Renault (What Car? gives £3,500 as the trade price). After protests he offered an extra £100 as ‘goodwill’.

‘I saw Eternity the other night,’ wrote the 17th-century religious poet Henry Vaughan, arrestingly combining the numinous and the mundane. ‘I saw Eternity the other night,’ wrote the 17th-century religious poet Henry Vaughan, arrestingly combining the numinous and the mundane. ‘I drove a Facel Vega the other day’ may not be quite as evocative, but in automotive terms it’s not much less likely. Around 3,000 of them were built during the decade 1954–64. They were boulevard supercars, bought by royalty, tycoons, Grand Prix drivers (including Stirling Moss) and glitterati such as Ava Gardner, Ringo Starr and Tony Curtis. It’s sometimes wrongly said that Picasso had one; he owned a Mercedes 300SL, but he couldn’t drive.

Is Gordon Brown the first prime minister who can’t drive since, well, since Asquith? Is Gordon Brown the first prime minister who can’t drive since, well, since Asquith? Hard to imagine the 1st Earl of Oxford and Asquith mastering a non-synchromesh gearbox. His successor and rival, Lloyd George, was out of office for 23 years and lived until 1945, so had plenty of time to learn; but neither cars nor driving are indexed in John Grigg’s definitive biography. In those days he wouldn’t have had to pass a test, of course, and anyway motoring (motorism to early enthusiasts) was such a minority pursuit that perhaps it shouldn’t be expected of pre-war prime ministers.

When I was a child Bristol was a port somewhere beyond Kent. Later on I discovered that in the plural — as in a nice pair of — it referred, mystifyingly, to mammalian tissue. Why not a nice pair of Wolverhamptons or Plymouths or Canterburys? But when I became a man I put away childish notions and ceased to see life as in a showroom window, darkly: I learnt that real Bristols were cars. I particularly liked the svelte, curvaceous beauties of the Forties and Fifties (the cars, that is), though subsequently my taste extended through later, straighter models as far as the elegantly understated 411 (1969–76), where it stops. Twice I came close to buying a Bristol, once journeying to Cheshire to view a 403, another time venturing into Surrey in quest of a 405 (1955–58).

New York Two men prostrated themselves before the new Freelander — in gratitude, presumably, for anything more reliable than the previous model — but it turned out that the turntable on which it was displayed had jammed. On the Hummer stand another man went from car to car covering the filler caps with sticky tape. I had no idea these were so desirable, but then this was the New York Motor Show and they were expecting 200,000 visitors. The filler cap is indeed satisfyingly chunky but the rest of the car looks as if it’s trying to be more than it is, like a man with shoulder pads. Over at Mercedes there was consternation when the roof leaked on to the C50 Sport Sedan.

‘Good neighbours I have had, and I have met with bad; and in trust I have found treason.’ ‘Good neighbours I have had, and I have met with bad; and in trust I have found treason.’ Thus spake Elizabeth I, that font of pithy regal eloquence who learnt such worldly wisdom without buying or selling a single car. (If she had, her merry quip — ‘I will make you shorter by the head’ — might have been deployed more frequently.) It’s usually easier to buy cars than sell them, of course, but it’s still an anxious process. Most of us like to think we’re getting at least what — if not more than — we’re paying for, and fear we’re getting less.