Motorworld

Epilogue UK

Night after night, stern-faced men and politicians come on the television to tell us that Britain’s roads are the modern-day killing fields. Alongside the M4, the Somme looks like a stroll in the park. Severe, blood-red captions flash up, warning us that excessive speed causes 100,000 deaths and serious injuries every year.

The Department of Transport spends millions on gory, X-certificate commercials that tug at our heart strings and lift our right feet. We are shamed and beaten into submission.

But despite what the doom-mongers say, British drivers are the best in the world, by a country mile. We invented queuing and it shows on the roads. We don’t lean on the horn every time the lights go red. We don’t simply ignore cycles and nor do we dawdle, American-style. We’re fast, organised and, despite what the suits say, safe. I’m not playing with statistics when I say that nobody does it better.

And I think it’s all thanks to Nissan.

Anyone who is not the slightest bit bothered about cars is likely to be a poor driver. People who don’t care about handling or performance; people who buy a car simply as a means of getting about are not going to worry if they indicate left while turning right once in a while.

So what if they trundle along a country road at twenty, causing ten-mile tailbacks? They can’t park, don’t understand roundabouts and are not averse, once in a while, to driving the wrong way down a motorway.

All these people want from a car is reliability. And that leads them, inexorably, to the door of their nearest Nissan showroom.

The good news is that when you or I see a Nissan, we know it may do something unusual and can take appropriate action. By herding all the bad, uninterested, mealy-mouthed and selfish drivers in one type of car, the roads are immeasurably safer.

They’re also stationary, which might have something to do with it. Years of under-investment by successive governments mean we have fewer miles of motorway per car than any other noteworthy industrialised power.

I’m always staggered when I consider that we have a fleet of nuclear submarines but no motorways in East Anglia.

We also have no car industry to speak of. Oh sure, we still make cars here but that’s because various Secretaries of State have bent over the railings in Westminster and allowed foreign investors to push broom handles up their backsides.

Britain, they crow, is a net exporter of cars but that’s only because Honda, Nissan and Toyota set up shop here to exploit plentiful grants and cheap labour.

Blame who you like — Red Robbo, Michael Edwardes, Tony Benn, Mrs Thatcher — but our own car firms are history. Jaguar and Aston Martin are part of Ford. Rover is German and even Rolls-Royce has had to do a deal with BMW to survive.

Great names — like Humber, Singer, Austin, Morris, Alvis, Hillman, Wolsely, Riley and Jensen — are gone.

I wonder, when Lord Stokes went over to Japan after the war to help Datsun set up a car plant, if, for one moment, he could have believed what would happen just 50 years later. The greatest car nation on earth has become a secretary bird, riding around on the back of the German and Japanese rhinos, picking at the fleas. And being cap-doffingly grateful.

There is one area, though, where Britain doesn’t just lead the world, we absolutely dominate it. I’m talking about motor racing.

Look at a Formula One grid. Most of the cars are British and among the eight that aren’t, you’ll find Minardi and Forti, who usually have trouble qualifying.

Even Ferrari, the pride of Italy, realised that if it wanted to get back in the limelight, it needed British help, so their 1996 cars were designed in Woking by a chap called John Barnard.

Benetton is officially Italian these days but does it make or design its cars there? Nope. They come out of a little factory in Oxfordshire. Sauber is Swiss but the engines are British. And where does Mercedes make the power plants that go in the McLaren — Stuttgart? Er, no. Britain.

Then there’s the British Touring Car Championship. The Volvos are built in the Cotswolds. The Renaults are from Didcot. The BMWs are from Surrey. Every single foreign manufacturer knows that if it wants to win on the track, it must use British talent.

The Americans know it too. You probably think when you look at the cars lining up for an Indycar race that you are witnessing something completely all-American. You are too, except for one thing. Every single car on the grid and most of the engines were designed and built in Britain.

It isn’t exactly a sport but the current World Land Speed record holder is British, as is the faster road car in the world — the McLaren F1. Weird isn’t it that the might of Italy and America, and even Japan, is beaten by a tiny British company?

Weirder still is that such a thing can even exist these days. Outside these shores, they think of Fiat or Chrysler as a small car firm but here, we have not only McLaren but Caterham, Westfield, Morgan, TVR, Bristol, AC, Reliant and countless other tiny bits of fiercely independent cottage industry.

Massively expensive legislation and ever more pricey development costs have failed to dent the enthusiasm of these microscopic car firms which, combined, turn out fewer cars in a year than come from Detroit in five minutes.

These cars are for enthusiasts and that’s one thing you will find by the bucket-load in Britain.

Nearly every car ever made is eligible for one of the thousands of owners clubs. There’s the Bad Car Club, the Club for Unloved Soviet Socialist Rubbish and even ultra specific outfits like the Cortina 1600E register. Got a GT? Well get lost then.

Some say most of the best classic cars ever made are in Britain, being lovingly nurtured by a nation that perhaps sees cars from yesteryear as a reminder of a once great past.

There are even people out there who collect spark plugs. This would not happen in Spain. One chap has created a display of petrol pumps through the ages. There are blokes who spend more on the carpet for their garage than they do on a child’s education.

The government taxes us, snarls us up, admonishes us constantly and then taxes us again. In 1994, they raised enough from Britain’s car owners to pay for 428 brand new 300-bed hospitals!

The environmentalists harangue us. Right-on commentators refer to motorists as though we’re some kind of nasty disease. And morons with multi-coloured hair camp out in trees to prevent a new road from being built.

But when an E-Type Jaguar burbles by, everyone in the country will take a second, sneaky little look. The British don’t have blood in their veins. It’s four star.