Another COTY winner

COTY jurors aren’t voting for Car of the Year. They are voting to look Green. Why else would they have elected the Ampera in 2012? They surely can’t have expected it to sell more than a handful. They’re not that stupid. No, they are spooked, along with governments round the world, by what WS Gilbert called greenery yallery Grosvenor Gallery foot-in-the-grave young men. Or women.

Opel and Vauxhall dealers, who hadn’t a lot of choice perhaps, accounted for the first year’s 5,000 or so Amperas. That sank to 3,184 last year and collapsed to 332 in the first five months of this, of which only 46 were in its German home market. GM Vice Chairman Steve Girsky vented frustration at Geneva: “All the governments in Europe said, ‘We want EVs, we want EVs.’ We show up with one, and where is everybody?” The answer is that they were off buying something else, real cars mostly.

COTY jurors are like governments appeasing Green voters with inglorious wind farms and wasteful subsidies. By any standards the Ampera was a disaster. Production is stopping and although GM will redesign the broadly similar Volt next year it won’t come to Europe.

There wasn’t much wrong with the Ampera. It was sensibly-sized and quite handsome, drove smoothly and quietly and as a hybrid didn’t have the range anxieties of milk-floaty plug-in electric cars, attracting complaints now about how costly they are to top-up. Apparently charging stations take money by the hour, without knowing how much electricity is actually being used. The cost can be just as much for a battery flat or near full.

I have said before that there is a FIFA flavour about Car of the Year. In 50 years COTY has never elected a Jaguar, Range Rover or Land Rover. It can’t be anti-British-ness. Munich doesn’t come off well either. There has been no BMW; a range that goes from Rolls-Royce to Mini has never made the grade except for second last year for the i3. It elected an electric Nissan yet COTY doesn’t do safety. Volvo and Saab never featured. Engineering excellence? Bentley has never made it. Production quality? There have been no Hondas. Value for money? No Skodas, no Seats but 9 Fiats, 6 Renaults and 5 Fords. I can’t understand why manufacturers get so excited by it.

Honda

Returning to Formula 1 in 2015 will be different from Honda's first shot in the 1960s. A splendid record in motorcycle racing prompted Denis Jenkinson of Motor Sport : “The 4-cylinder Honda motorcycle made a big impression and its production sports and mopeds continued its good name in racing. But we must not forget that Honda racing motorcycles started inconspicuously and progressed as the seasons went by. They did not appear on the scene and win immediately.” Above: Celebrating Honda in Formula 1 at Goodwood, below CDX 6 cylinder 1047cc

Jenkinson noted that Honda began on bikes by contesting classes where the opposition was weak, but this was not an option in Formula 1. Lotus, BRM, Brabham, Ferrari, and Coventry-Climax were well established. There was no weakness here and grand prix racing was full of team with recent world championships, such as Cooper. Even Porsche found it difficult to keep up, winning only once before pulling out at the end of 1965. Soichiro Honda radiated confidence in an interview with Günther Molter in 1962: “It is too early to talk of horsepower as the project is still at the development stage. Our grand prix car will have an engine performance unequalled by any of the others.”

Soichiro was up against V8s from BRM and Coventry-Climax, V6s, V8s, and flat12s from Ferrari, and an air-cooled flat8 from Porsche. Honda produced a radical little V12, with needle roller crankshaft bearings, revving to 11,500rpm. It was a jewel of an engine in a semi-monocoque chassis using suspension that owed something to Lotus and BRM, with tubular rear sub-frames and inboard springs. The transverse engine owed nothing to anybody however, and lived up to Soichiro's assurances with 20bhp (quite a big margin in 1962) more than any rivals, including the Ferrari flat12. The little V12 was a triumph for designer Tadashi Kume, a mechanical engineering graduate who had been assigned to racing motorcycle engines even though relatively inexperienced. 1966 RC149

“Nobody at Honda really expected the car to shatter the racing world at its first appearance but such was the publicity accrued from motorcycle racing that the grand prix car was preceded by almost fanatical expectations from Europe rather than Japan,” according to Jenkinson. The reason for established teams' apprehension was the proficiency Honda showed at high-revving engines with large numbers of small cylinders and four-valve heads. Ferrari was notably successful with V12s, and Coventry-Climax, also an acknowledged master of racing engines, had a 16-cylinder under development. Honda was half-expected to have a roller-bearing 16 of its own with prodigious power. John Surtees drive RA 300 at Goodwood.


Jenkinson's admiration for Honda was not shared throughout Europe. Italians complained that Kume's masterpiece resembled an engine designed by Giulio Alfieri for Maserati in 1961, test-bedded in 1963, but only made public in 1964 following the Honda. 1965 RA 262

Yet if the prevailing teams overestimated Honda's prospects, team manager Yoshio Nakamura probably underestimated. Honda's 1964 offensive lacked the refinement and style of its motorcycle racing department. The cars were a year late and never had the polished finish of a Lotus, nor the glamorous appearance of a Ferrari. It was 1965 before they gained a competitive edge, an achievement that had eluded Porsche, but given the expectations raised by the exquisite motorcycles, it was no less than expected.
1989 Brazil Grand Prix, Ayrton Senna McLaren Honda RA 109E

Car Fires

There is nothing the Guardianistas on the Today programme love more than a good scare story. This morning it was rising food prices and 138,000 Toyotas going on fire. Even its interviewee on the price of wheat was cautious about its effect on the cost of a loaf. Scott Brownlee did a decent job of saying Toyota’s recall concerned a window switch in danger of melting, and 138,000 Rav4s and Corollas were not about to incinerate themselves. Silly woman presenter kept claiming Toyota’s press release said there was a fire risk. It said nothing of the kind, but in her efforts to show how nasty big corporations are she exaggerated, and Toyota had to issue an amendment.

Toyota Window Switch Recall: Clarification On Media Reports Of ‘Fire Risk’ Issue Toyota has today announced a recall of 138,000 Yaris, Auris and RAV4 cars in the UK. This involves the electrical contact in the driver’s side Power Window Master Switch (PWMS), which may over time come to feel ‘notchy’ or sticky during operation.

If commercially available cleaning lubricants are applied to the switch to address the notchy or sticky feel, the switch assembly may overheat and/or melt. In the USA, issues of melting or erosion are categorised under ‘fire’ by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. If a car's power window switch feels notchy, owners should not attempt to address the issue themselves with commercially available lubricants. Toyota engineers have conducted various simulation tests, including using commercially available lubricants. In no instance did a fire result. There has been only one case related to this issue in the UK, and no reported accidents.

Trouble was, this is the second recall of door window switches in as many days, and Honda’s press release was more alarmist. Honda said it would be trying to contact everyone who owns a Swindon-made CR-V, “because of a potentially dangerous defect that could lead to it catching fire”. The problem was spotted after one owner in Britain, and four in the United States said they could smell burning. It seems to be a faulty seal on a master switch inside the driver’s door that controls the automatic windows. If liquid seeps inside, it could overheat and the door could catch fire. Are they all using the same switch? The same supplier? The same door trim manufacturer? I think we should be told.

The pictures are of a Volvo that caught fire on a Scottish road. It started as a small conflagration under the bonnet (top), but as I watched the car comprehensively destroyed itself, with much crackling and banging as windows broke and fuel ignited. Another memorable car fire I watched was when a colleague in the Glasgow motor trade was trying to sell a VW Beetle (old air-cooled sort) to an overweight Glasgow lady. She thought she would try the back seat but was so heavy that when she sat down the batteries underneath shorted out through the seat springs. The upholstery caught fire, then the whole interior, the paint blistered and the tyres caught light. The fire service came and put it out. She didn’t buy the VW.

Requiem for a Puma

Suddenly at 71 years... Well, 71 thousand miles in this case. Obituary for a well-liked car. 71,000 miles at an average speed of, say, 30mph means Ruth or I spent 2,366.666 hours at the wheel of the Puma. That is 98.61 days. Fourteen weeks, day and night, or three and a half months. First registered in 2001, one of the last Puma Thunders, R50DOV had been on show in the foyer of Ford’s Brentford office and came to us with 4 miles on the clock. It was brought on a transporter from Essex to Wemyss Bay, so by the time it reached Duncan, the Ford dealer on the Isle of Bute, it had gone further by sea than it had on its own wheels.

What a pretty car. Silver. It may have been only a Fiesta underneath, but designed by Ian Callum (Jaguars, Aston Martin DB7, RS200, Mondeo) it was well proportioned and beautifully detailed. Ruth liked it from the start. It only did around 6,500 miles a year because we had other cars and a throughput of test cars. Ruth used it for commuting and going out saving lives, so I suppose most of the 14 weeks’ day-and-night in it was down to her. We used it surprisingly often for long distances between the north of Scotland and the south of England. Her friend Iona liked the Puma’s style so much she bought one too.

R50DOV had distinguished company from time to time

Buying R50DOV’s replacement was an unedifying experience. What with the time it took and the rigmarole. “The Financial Services Authority insists I read out the following…” Rubbish of course. Car salesmen try to sell you policies for this and policies for that and the FSA would only insist on you sitting down to listen if you were actually going to buy one, which we were not. It was all a ploy to get your attention and after a couple of boring read-outs we got wise and said Shut Up We Are Not Going To Buy That. One stupid salesman, trying to sell Ruth a car too noisy by half, told her that Nobody Drives Nowadays Without The Radio On, so she wouldn’t be aware of the racket. He didn’t stand a chance. An Audi A1 was a possibility but to get a decent one you have to add on this and add on that.

So fatigue was setting in by the time we came to several choices of Ford or a Honda Jazz. Sales lady at Ford did a good professional job – she will go far – but the Honda won despite a salesman blundering over things one would have expected expunged by Honda main dealer salesmens’ school. The Jazz is not as stylish as the Puma and Ruth will miss the heated windscreen this winter – what a boon that was. She already misses the pert Callum styling. The Jazz doesn’t cut as much of a dash, but it’s bigger and we can use it for journeys for which the Puma was really too small. The Jazz will hold more, it could even hold two Labadors, and it is quiet. Ruth hardly needs to turn the radio up beyond Quite Normal.

Room for a couple of Labradors in here?

Hooray for Hydrogen

Abandon wind farms and subsidise hydrogen. Sages in the Guild of Motoring Writers volunteered the view that subsidies to energy available only when the wind blew, should be redirected. They were watching a fuel cell Honda topping up at a hydrogen filling station. There were no illusions that setting up a national hydrogen network will take years, but somebody needs to calculate its benefits.

Some are self-evident. More hydrogen cars would mean less dependence on oil, and clean up the air. Fuel cell cars are as smooth and silent as any conceived by Lanchester or Royce. Spending billions encouraging them would surely gain approval from both environmentalists and left-wing subsidy junkies.

This open access hydrogen filling station was opened last September inside the Honda factory.Built and operated by industrial gases company BOC, it was a partnership of Honda, BOC and Forward Swindon the local economic development company. Open to anyone developing hydrogen-powered cars, it can fill at both the 350 bar and 700 bar pressures agreed by industry. Its aim is to encourage development of hydrogen-powered vehicles, such as the Honda FCX, and supporting infrastructure.

It still works on a ‘back-to-back’ system from a bank of hydrogen cylinders, which means filling takes place without waiting for hydrogen to be generated.

The occasion was the Guild AGM, and was a convincing demonstration that given the will, fuel cell cars must be the goal. Hybrid electrics, even good ones like the Chevrolet Volt/Vauxhall Ampera with a realistic range, are at best a stop-gap. The rest, like the Nissan Leaf, cannot be taken seriously as practical alternatives to petrol or diesel.

The Guild worthies were right. Switch to fuel cells and stop polluting the countryside with grotesque, wasteful and inefficient wind farms.

Four Wheel Steer

Four wheel steering has been reinvented for the BMW 5-series. Below 60kph (37mph) the rear wheels turn the opposite way to the fronts, making parking easier. Going faster they turn in the same direction, which makes the car turn in quicker. What Car? was lukewarm about “active” steering, although felt it had quite a profound effect. There was, “rarely a corner or roundabout that requires more than a quarter turn of the wheel. The 5-series remains utterly stable throughout. However we found that the car fitted with the standard electrically powered steering rack offered significantly more feedback, and although requiring a bit more arm-twirling more satisfying. We’d forgo the option of active steering.”

Nothing new about four wheel steering for cars. See my feature from The Sunday Times magazine of 8 December 1985. I liked Honda’s described in The Sunday Times column of 6 September 1987. Honda did a slalom test at the press launch I thought convincing.