This week, our columnist sneaks a fun-sized classic into his car collection, ponders a smooth-riding SUV and remembers a titan of motoring.
Monday
There’s a new Citroën in our stable, but the bank manager is happy, because it cost only £50.
This superb 1:18 scale model of a DS is by the French firm Norev and, like just about everything else in life, it was delivered this week by a man in a white van. Even the Steering Committee, now seriously concerned as model cars fill the crannies of our house, reckons this one is special for its beautiful, sculptural shape and tasteful colours. Were I to own a real DS, it would have to be just like this.
On that note, I enjoyed last week’s fascinating chat with Citroën head of design Pierre Leclercq, who impressed me with his deep awareness of the brand’s heritage. I started researching his distinguished predecessors Robert Opron (CX, GS and SM) and especially Flaminio Bertoni (Traction Avant, 2CV, Ami, DS and H Van), the Italian sculptor who literally shaped Citroën.
As Jaguar’s Julian Thomson told us recently, referencing the E-Type, it’s a big responsibility to bear the weight of such predecessors’ brilliant achievements as you set out, in a much more crowded and rules-filled world, to do as well.
Tuesday
If you own five cars, one of them always seems to need tyres, which is how I have come across the killer fact that any Bridgestone car tyre you buy nowadays has a built-in property called DriveGuard, which means it can cover 50 miles at up to 50mph when it has been holed and is dead flat.
According to my local tyre dealer, these hoops don’t have the disastrous effect on ride quality as classic run-flats. It’s just a quality that a responsible firm chooses to build into every tyre. After a recent reminder of the awfulness of being marooned miles from home with no spare, I know this will affect my future tyre-buying decisions.
Wednesday
I’m obsessing about ride comfort, mainly because even my favourite roads around the Cotswolds are in a parlous state at present, riddled with huge, shallow potholes, because large parts of the surfaces have lost their first skin, as it were.
All we have to drive are our Mazda MX-5 (flat-riding but necessarily stiff), Fiat 500 (a 15-year-old design that wasn’t even a class leader when new), Volkswagen California (decently supple but essentially a delivery van) and Vauxhall Corsa (modern body control but poor secondary ride). Oh yes, and our 17-year-old Citroën Berlingo, which still rides with sweet-damped suppleness if you don’t mind the surround-sound trim rattles.
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OK then
start rating primary and secondary ride comfort in reviews from now on and make it mandatory.
Ride comfort
There shouldn't be any need to purchase a big inefficient SUV to get a comfortable ride. A generation or two ago, many normal cars had soft well-damped suspension and prioritised comfort over handling. Models like the Renault 4, Citroen GS, BLMC 1100/1300 and almost any Peugeot were superior in that respect to almost any car made today - yet they still possesed safe, fluid handling and decent grip.
It is publications like Autocar, which bang on about the merit of handling precision, absence of roll, Nurburgring lap times (all low priorities on today's congested highways) that have persuaded manufacturers to foresake comfort for grip. That, plus the current marketing obsession for bigger wheels and low-profile rubber.
What's needed now is for one manufacturer to make ride comfort a top priority and a genuine USP.
All true but you don't have
@ LP in Brighton
Spot on LP ..... the 'buck' broadly stops here with magazines judging new models on totally unrealistic (non real world concerns), handling characteristics. Few owners get to drive in this way in their day to day travels. I have noticed that at last the number of pictures in road tests of cars on full opposite lock with plumes of smoke pouring out of the wheel arches are decreasing..... maybe the message is finally getting through that this is not a KPI for a road test star rating for most buyers.
I have had SUV's for 25 years now, mostly because with my chosen sport ground clearence and four wheel drive are a necessity. But I confess that our rural roads in my part of the country are so bad that I wouldnt even look at a vehicle with lower than my present 55 profiles.....even then some of the potholes I encounter shake the whole car - god knows what it is like in a car with the 'smeared on veneer of rubber' we see, (even on modest vehicles). Your eyes must be out like organ stops peering at the road a few yards ahead of the car!