Volkswagen Karmann Ghia

The European Union has approved Volkswagen’s purchase of bankrupt Wilhelm Karmann GmbH, according to Automotive News. This provides control of Karmann's divisions for car and components development, contract manufacturing, plant engineering and equipment and tool development. “Given (so many) considerable suppliers and Karmann’s moderate market share, the Commission concluded that car manufacturers would still have alternative suppliers,” according to the competition watchdog. Karmann filed for bankruptcy after it stopped making the Mercedes-Benz CLK in 2009.

Valmet of Finland took over roof-making in Osnabrück and Zary, Poland; Canadian Magna International acquired roof business in Japan, while Webasto gained Karmann’s concession for the US and Mexico.

Karmann made its name with the VW Beetle-based Karmann Ghia and VW has plans for cars at Karmann’s Osnabrück factory in Lower Saxony, starting next spring with a Golf convertible. Will it have the grace and style of a Karmann Ghia? VW CEO Martin Winterkorn had kind words. “Over the decades, some of the most beautiful models in the automobile world have left here. We will be carrying on this tradition from 2011.”

A definite maybe perhaps, yet it could scarcely have the perfect proportions of the little Karmann Ghia, over which I eulogised in my first ever motoring column. “It has faults in its handling,” which I apparently found easy to master. Well, no denying the perils of swing-axles. I can’t have been going fast enough.

Here is my test car of 1959
VW hit upon the idea of the sleek coupe in 1954 and the first were displayed the following year at European motor shows. Italian studios were all the rage and VW commissioned Carrozzeria Ghia, which created haute couture Cadillacs for Rita Hayworth and was in league with Chrysler. One of its less accomplished designs was the Chrysler Norseman, which took 15 months and $150,000 to build in 1956, before being shipped off to New York. Unfortunately it was on the Andrea Doria, which collided with the MS Stockholm off Nantucket and the Norseman went down with the ship.

Ghia assigned Luigi Segre to base a design on the VW platform chassis, with air-cooled flat four at the back. There was no question of competing with Porsches, which looked quirky and had only just got under way. Karmann made 444,300 up to 1974.


I had not quite got into my writing style in 1959. I was quite new.
Demonstrator cars had plastic seat covers; I was already into taking interior pictures. Right-click to read motoring column

Environmental

Car of the Year jurists have, not for the first time, devalued their award. The Nissan Leaf may well be Car of the Year 2013, when it will be in production, but climbing aboard environmental zealots’ bandwagon makes 57 “leading” motoring journalists who voted look opportunist. For the first time in its 47 year history the award it has gone to an all-electric battery car. It is also the first time it has ever gone to a car you can’t buy.

“The world’s first mass-marketed, affordable, zero-emission vehicle for the global market beat 40 contenders to win motoring’s most important accolade,” trills the COTY announcement. Alfa Romeo, Citroen, Dacia, Ford, Opel/Vauxhall and Volvo, who were the leading contenders must feel bemused. “The jury acknowledged that the Nissan LEAF is a breakthrough for electric cars. Nissan LEAF is the first EV that can match conventional cars in many respects,” said Håkan Matson, President of the Jury, Car of the Year.

No wonder he said, “…in many respects.” By the same token in many respects it does nothing of the kind. It has a range of only a hundred miles before it needs an electric top-up of several hours. They might as well award the title to a golf trolley. This blog has highlighted the doubts over all-electric cars before. The head of research at Mercedes-Benz told the Fleet Street Group that the only viable electric cars were only satisfactory for cities. Everybody would need a second car to drive anywhere else. Until batteries develop in a way we still cannot see, such zero-emission cars will be zero-practical.

The Leaf will have regenerative braking, air conditioning, satellite navigation, parking camera and IT and telematics systems. What it calls “Innovative connectivity will allow owners to set charging functions to monitor the current (sic) state of charge and the remaining battery capacity, as well as to heat or cool the interior remotely via mobile phone or computer.” Just don’t try all these at once in winter, or the thing will never start. COTY jurists should really get out more.

Back to the Future

Transits do not, as a rule, fly but when Chitty Chitty Bang Bang took off in the film of Ian Fleming’s little masterpiece, there was a lot of Ford van in it. Now Pierre Picton, who has campaigned Chitty for 50 years, is to sell it. The creation of Rowland Emett and Ken Adams, it was built by the Alan Mann Ford racing team for the 1967 MGM United Artists film, starring Dick van Dyke, Sally Ann Howes and Lionel Jeffries. Picton’s GEN11 was the original used in the filming, a 2 tonner with a ladder chassis, leaf springs, a 3 litre Transit V6 and Borg Warner automatic transmission. It had to be tough and reliable for film work, it had to climb stairs but it also had to look the part. Its cedar boat deck was specially built by a real boat-builder in Windsor and the spoked wheels were cast alloy painted to look wooden. The dashboard with its realistic oilers came from a World War I fighter.

A second car was built for dangerous and studio scenes, a no-brass no-copper one for getting immersed in the sea (you can tell it from the aluminium exhaust pipes replacing polished copper), which had no engine. A third was effectively a fibreglass shell mounted on a speed boat, for the chases written into the adaptation of Fleming’s novel by Roald Dahl and Ken Hughes.

Ian Fleming was fascinated by the monstrous aero-engined Brooklands specials raced by the colourful Count Louis Vorow Zborowski. Like railway locomotives (see following blog) nicknames were coined for Brooklands racers; Old Mother Gun Bentley, the Aston Martin Bunny, the KN Vauxhall (Cayenne – hot stuff) so to imitate the slow-revving and occasionally backfiring power strokes of his first Higham Special Zborowski called it Chitty-Bang-Bang. At least that was the theory. A car’s name had to be approved for sensitive souls in the Brooklands paddock and the scrutineers had already turned down “Cascara Sagrada”, a herbal laxative. Zborowski turned instead to chitti chitti bang bang which, besides being onomatopoeic, had a racy association with a lewd World War I song. Officers on the Western Front obtained leave passes, “chits” in army parlance, for weekends in Paris, where they were entertained by ladies of the night. Chitty-Bang-Bang with the slightly altered spelling had a double entendre for male spectators at Brooklands, which would pass unnoticed by less worldly companions.

Zborowski, born 20 February 1895 made three Chittys before he was killed at Monza, when he crashed his Mercedes into a tree on 19 October 1924. Chitty 1 was completed in 1921 with a 23,093cc Maybach aircraft engine of the type used by German Gotha bombers. It had four valves per cylinder and developed more than 300bhp at a modest 1,500rpm. The chassis was principally Edwardian Mercedes and the body a rudimentary affair by Bligh Brothers of Canterbury. Handling was somewhat erratic owing to flexure of the chassis but it could do 120mph and was successful enough to encourage construction of Chitty 2

This was again a 6-cylinder, the 18,882cc Benz BZ IV with about 230bhp, could lap Brooklands at 113mph and with a touring car body was driven across France to Algeria and on to the edge of the Sahara by Zborowski and his boisterous chums. It still had chain drive to the back axle and was sold off to American collectors. Chitty 1 was bought by the Conan Doyle brothers, sons of the creator of Sherlock Holmes, after it suffered a big accident at Brooklands and it was broken up in the 1930s.

The third Chitty, again the work of Zborowski’s racing manager Clive Gallop, was a shaft-drive Mercedes-engined car which the Count drove only briefly before his death. In the meantime Gallop had designed a channel-section chassis frame, which was built by Rubery Owen, to hold the biggest engine yet, a 27,059cc V12 Liberty built in large numbers by the Americans to help win the First World War. This gave around 400bhp for what became the Higham Special, with final drive by side chains was a narrow strip of ⅜inch nickel-chrome steel to guard against breakage.

It was not enough. The Higham Special was bought for £125 by engineer John Godfrey Parry Thomas to tackle the world land speed record on Pendine Sands, Carmarthenshire. Renamed “Babs”, Thomas was driving it at around 175 mph on 3 March 1927 when the driving chain broke and 41 year old Welshman died in the ensuing accident. “Babs” was not forgiven and was buried on the dunes.

In 1969 it was controversially exhumed by engineering lecturer Owen Wyn Owen from what had become a military firing range. “Babs” was fully restored, a fitting tribute to the brave Parry Thomas. The original Liberty engine was replaced by a Lincoln Cars-built one, its twelve separate cylinders mounted on a Packard-Liberty crankcase.
Pictured at Broooklands in 2007, Babs is worked up for a demonstration run. The chassis is braced by strut and wire, much as contemporary Bentleys were, to improve stiffness. Plenty of batteries are needed to crank the enormous V12. Chain drives have substantial fairings.

Mini Car for Mini People (4 pics)

Mini Car for Mini People

Short people have a lot of problems, including their small stature and difficulties of driving a real car. Most cars don’t allow such people reaching the steering wheel, pedals and accessing gear. They feel like “lilliputs”, but finally, one of the world’s largest car manufacturers paid attention at their problems.

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King George V

Researching pictures for Dove Publishing’s Ford Centenary File turned up this 1965 C-registered Mark I Cortina alongside King George V, the 4-6-0 express locomotive by Charles Benjamin Collett, built in July 1927 for the Great Western Railway. First of the “King” class, No. 6000 was immediately shipped from Cardiff docks to the United States for the centenary celebrations of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, for which it earned a plaque and bell. Railway engines often had nicknames. “The Diver,” NBR224 built at Cowlairs and recovered from the Tay after the bridge disaster of 1879, remained on the rails until 1919. No. 6000’s soubriquet was, “The Bell” and according to Wikipedia was withdrawn by Western Region British Railways in December 1962, with 1,910,424 miles on the clock. So what about the publicity picture? Nobody at Ford seemed to know much, yet it looks as though it cannot have been contemporary because the Cortina’s C suffix was issued in 1965, four years after the locomotive was taken out of service. No. 6000 doesn’t look as if it has steam up although there is coal in the tender and the driver seems authentic. Was it languishing temporarily at the Swindon stock shed assigned to the National Collection in 1964? It was towed to London Stratford works, a temporary base for the Collection on 31 December 1966. Was it back in Swindon before being installed at the Swindon Steam Railway Museum in March 1968? It did sterling work hauling steam trains in the age of the diesel. In 1971 it hauled a Return to Steam Special from Birmingham Moor Street to Olympia. It then went from London to the Bulmer collection at Hereford, 525 miles, on 12 tons of coal and 125,000 gallons of water. It steamed until 1987 when its boiler certificate expired and went on exhibition at Swindon. No. 6000 was then swopped for British Railways Standard 9F 92220 “Evening Star”. All 89 tons of King George V (without tender, 137.5 tons in all) is now in the National Railway Museum, York. It has a 16.35in x 28in 4 cylinder engine. But no Cortina

Cortinas feature in The Ford Centenary File, published March 2011

Paris Hilton Filming New Reality Series in Los Angeles (12 pics)

Paris Hilton Filming New Reality Series in Los Angeles -
Paris Hilton, the 29-year old beauty has been filming new reality series “Simple Life” with members of her family for several months now, and keeping her three million Twitter followers updated about it. The show was filming outside her sister Nicky Hilton's home in Beverly Hills.

Dressed in ripped jeans, a sheer Grey vest and army green short-sleeved jacket, Paris looked bored as she waited for camera crews to set up. Wearing a pair of Leopard-print Christian Louboutin heels and white-framed sunglasses, the blonde businesswoman paced the driveway and practised her poses next to her pink customized Bentley Continental GT.

Miss Hilton purchased the £135,000 vehicle as a present to herself in December 2008. The car, which was customized by West Coast Customs, the same company that features in MTV makeover show 'Pimp My Ride'.

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Institute of Advanced Motorists' initiative

This is me. I first passed IAM test in this Austin-Healey Sprite.
Experience teaches distrust of claims that one measure or another will prevent x number of road deaths. Earnest but false campaigns by Brake, the charity that promotes slowness is among the culpable. Today it presents a petition to replace 30mph by 20mph in towns. The Institute of Advanced Motorists’ claim that young driver deaths could be cut by a third if post-test training was made compulsory makes more sense. In Austria it has produced a 30 per cent reduction in fatal accidents to new drivers.

Simon Best, CEO of the IAM says: “We need no reminding that 17–25 year olds — particularly men — proportionally have more crashes and suffer more death and injury than any other group. Despite this, very little is being done to ensure that young people improve their driving after passing the test. The high numbers of them who continue to be killed or seriously injured highlights the need for legislation insisting on post-test training over all kinds of roads; especially rural roads on which young people suffer disproportionately.” *

Young driver, 1960s, me, Glasgow Herald Highland Rally, Aberdeen tests.
This Blog has always advocated better training for young drivers. Pre-17 experience has been invaluable in our family (see older posts). The IAM is writing to the Under Secretary of State for Transport about post-test training, which would not be an unpopular option. There would be no question of taking a new driver off the road if they ’failed’, however. A second phase of short coaching sessions and driving practice off the public highway would be compulsory within a year of passing the test. In Austria, legal requirements for novices for further assessment have had outstanding results.

The IAM is launching Momentum in the New Year, offering young drivers a low-cost assessment by an IAM examiner to improve confidence, raise awareness, and reduce risk. What a good idea. I have to declare an interest. As a journalist I first passed the IAM test in the 1960s, repeating it three times more for features I was writing, although I never formally joined the Institute. Passing the test was not the important bit. Observed drives with real IAM members mattered far more. I thought I was an OK driver until my first mentor, Bill Jackson of the Glasgow IAM asked me what was on a road sign I had just passed. It was a tutorial in observation I still apply. Making sure drivers look where they are going is better than 20mph limits for safeguarding GrandTeddy. (see older blogs)
*Rural roads – the biggest killer: IAM Motoring Trust

Beautiful GrandTeddy - well worth a Preservation Order

Awesome Amazon Tree Houses (15 pics)

Awesome Amazon Tree Houses - Awesome tree houses created by the company Amazon Tree Houses.

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Commentary

The MGF GT Concept of 2004 was another pretty coupe that never made it into production. Like the Ford ‘Anglo’ Saxon (see blog below) it was a logical development on an existing platform. Based on the MGF, it still looks good enough six years later to be worth the attention of MG’s European Design Centre, opened in June under director Tony Williams-Kenny. In 2004 MG-Rover tried to portray it as a successor to the MGB GT of the 1960s but it was far better than that. This would have been a worthy competitor to up-market coupes like the Audi TT.

The style of MG-Rover’s Peter Stevens was better than its publicity. Maybe that was part of what went wrong and the company’s demise saw off the smart little coupe. This rump of the British Motor Corporation, which once had 30 per cent of the British market, had slumped to 3 per cent under the Famous Four led by John Towers and what could have been a premium priced product never got past the prototype stage. It was to have been powered by the 2.5litre 24-valve quad cam KV6, with 200bhp to provide 0-60 in 6sec and a top speed of 145mph. The body had a drag coefficient of 0.31 and the only downside might have been access to the mid-engine.
The MG GT concept was announced with 17in Gunsmoke five-spoke OZ alloy wheels, similar to those on the MG XPower SV. There was probably not much time or resource for wind-tunnel testing although the designers included an extended front aero splitter and a long tail-spoiler integrated into the boot lid, which it was said would reduce lift at speed.

MG Motor UK is owned by SAIC, the Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation, and the new Design Centre has a studio for 20 designers, next to the SAIC Motors European Technical Centre (SMTC) on the Birmingham site. Williams-Kenny described the centre as, “A huge step forward. The advanced technology and dedicated team make us one of the most professional design studios in the world – we may not be the biggest, but we aim to be the best. We will be finalising details of the new MG6 from this studio and it gives us superb tools and facilities to go forward on projects such as the MG Zero concept and beyond.”

Ford Anglo Saxon

A Ford that never saw production, the Saxon, based on the Cortina was built in 1962. Encouraged, perhaps, by the 2+2 Consul Capri of 1961, Sir Patrick Hennessy, Ford Chairman from 1956 thought it would make commercial sense. Engineer George Baggs recalled Sir Patrick’s personal interest: “We took the Saxon prototype up to his house one Sunday afternoon. The butler served tea.” It was pure Cortina up to the waistline; with a different boot lid and coupe roof it could have been produced for very little more than the regular saloon. It would have been lighter and with the GT engine also faster. Sir Patrick’s term of office was drawing to an end, however. He combined the posts of chairman and chief executive until 1963, retiring aged 70 on 3 May 1968. Plans were already under way for the much sportier, though fragile, Lotus Cortina. The ‘Anglo’ Saxon was taken to Detroit for evaluation and never seen again. Replicas have been made on cut-down Cortina shells but I never found out what happened to the original. Was it broken up or does it survive in a quiet corner of the Ford museum?

ABOVE: 1961 Capri, inspiration for the Saxon, used in research material for The Ford Centenary File, to be published March 2011

Motoring Column

Environmental

The Sunday Times 21 April 1991
Austria had ideas for recharging electric cars nearly 20 years ago. Solar panels will charge batteries, but the optimism of the ÖAMTC in setting up the free filling station I wrote about has not been borne out. Solar cells might produce enough power to run a small scooter a mile or six but despite decades of airy talk Austria has 4.5million cars of which only 2800 are electric. Campaigners want 100,000 by 2020 and what they contemptuously term gas guzzlers phased out entirely, yet despite tedious conferences, well-funded academic papers and hopeful debates, practicalities are overwhelming. Electric cars are as old as the industry but like so-called renewable energy from subsidised wind farms they remain unattainable except within towns. Dr Thomas Weber, head of car research at Mercedes-Benz, which spends €4billion every year second-guessing what the politicians will try to appease shrill cries from the Eco-biassed, readily admitted to the Fleet Street Group (see older blog) that if the lobbyists got their way, we would all need not one but two cars. Human ingenuity can not yet square the circle. Nobody knows how fast fuel cells will develop but the nature of electricity still defies storage in anything as readily portable as a car fuel tank.
Pious hope. Kerbside charging with road painting and metered refuelling

Motherwell Tramcar

Motherwell may not have had a lot in common with Buenos Aires except that both ran Manchester-made trams. Between 1902 and 1904 the British Electric Car Company Ltd made tramcars at Trafford Park. The Manchester Ship Canal enabled it to export from its little factory, well-equipped with overhead cranes, to Egypt, New Zealand and South America. Its 4-wheeled single-truck double-deck open toppers must have been good, selling to 30 towns in Britain so successfully that the firm was bought out by the rival United Electric Car Company of Preston, and promptly wound up.

The factory on the corner of Westinghouse Road and First Avenue was later leased by the fledgling Ford Motor Company (England) Ltd, to build the first Fords made outside America. Henry Ford always liked his factories to be close by docks. Trafford Park had access to America, bringing in component parts by way of the Ship Canal, and it was right by a railhead from which it could send completed cars.

Ford’s managing director, Percival Lea Dewhurst Perry, spent £2000 leasing the 5.5acre (2.2hectare) site, beside that of crane manufacturer Frederick Henry Royce. Born, like Henry Ford in 1863, Royce too went into cars and aero engines. Each Trafford Park factory had its own railway siding and by 1914 Ford was sending vehicles in covered wagons to 1000 dealers. Perry thought Manchester, “The very best geographical and economic centre for our business.” The workforce welcomed Ford; it paid the best rates, 10d to 1s 3d (4p to 6.25p) an hour although their terms of employment could shift them from trade to trade. Before the First World War Britain was Ford’s second biggest market after the US, and the company turned out, in the long run, more stable and consistent than the indigenous motor industry.

Research for Dove Publishing’s next book, which celebrates a hundred years of making Fords in Britain, has turned up some engaging detail, not all of which can be accommodated in a manuscript of even 130,000 words. I never heard the rattle of the “BE Standard Cars” that used to ply on Jerviston Road, past No 98 where I was born. By that time the Hamilton Motherwell and Wishaw Tramways Company had retired to its great Traction House in the sky, and Ford had its own Thames-side wharf at Dagenham.
The Ford in Britan Centenary File will be published in March 2011

Love Locks - The Symbol of Love Luck (12 pics)

Locks of Love

It seems that locks aren’t just simply used to keep property secure from theft and vandalism any more. For decades now a custom has slowly been creeping across the world whereby loving, romantic, and sometimes superstitious couples have decided to write messages on padlocks, attach them to certain landmarks in specific areas - more often than not railings and fences - and then throw away the key. The practice, as well as symbolising a couple’s unending love for each other, is in some countries thought to bring good luck to a relationship. Below are some amazing examples.

Cologne, Germany — The 406 metre Hohenzollern Bridge in Cologne; a structure that has been slowly covered in padlocks since the romantic trend reached the city in 2008, much to the annoyance of local government.

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Amazing Fat Monkey Sculpture in Sao Paulo (8 pics)

Amazing Fat Monkey Sculpture in Sao Paulo
This statue is called Fat Monkey and  was built in Sao Paulo, Brazil, during Pixelshow Design Congress 2010. It’s made out of 10,000 Beach Thongs(flip flops).
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SCOTY

It is odd, is it not, how the official international Car of the Year (COTY) website makes you look up individual years, rather than publish a full list of winners. It cannot be because of its less auspicious choices such as the Austin 1800 (1964), Simca 1307 (1975), Rover 3500 (1977) or Chrysler Horizon (1979). It has learned some sense since then - less of a Eurovision Song Contest perhaps. This year’s short-list is Alfa Romeo Giulietta, Citroën C3, Dacia Duster, Ford C-Max, Nissan Leaf, Vauxhall Meriva and Volvo S-60.

Journalists’ juries tend to go for racy handling or a classy image. What hacks think about cars is not the same as real buyers paying real money although you can get obsessed with what cars cost. COTY was so embarrassed after electing the Porsche 928 a worthy winner in 1978, that it introduced a stringent price element and hasn’t elected a decent fast car since.

Last week the Association of Scottish Motoring Writers (ASMW) made the Kia Sportage Scottish Car of the Year (SCOTY), a mature judgement reflecting the distinctive Scottish market view of Kia’s seven year unlimited mileage warranty. There are Crossover cars with just as strong claims, including Nissan Qashqai, BMW X1 and Ford Kuga but the Kia is stylish, competitively priced and won the day, much to the delight of Korean executives prsent, for whom this was the first major award for a car only introduced at Geneva. Communications Director Steve Kitson felt confident enough to turn out plenty of management to enjoy the presentation.

John Murdoch, ASMW President, had a busy evening handing out gongs to deserving winners including the splendid Skoda Superb Estate (qv blog) and the Audi R8 Spyder. Executive Car of the Year was the COTY shortlisted Volvo S60. I was surprised not to see the VW Scirocco among the sporty-class winners. The SEAT Leon Cupra R was worthy enough, yet perhaps less deserving of an accolade than the SEAT Leon E Ecomotive, elected Eco Car of the Year.

There has been golf at St Andrews for 600 years. Scottish Car of the Year has been running barely a decade yet it has made its home at the prestige Fairmont, overlooking the ancient city, and its own rolling coastal links. The presentation was professional save for some over-optimism expecting the hotel’s smoke sensors to ignore the indoor (and perfectly safe) pyrotechnics.

Juan Manuel Fangio

Even Fangio found the streamliner Mercedes a handful.
Jenson Button was not the first motor racing world champion to look down the barrel of a gun. His adventure in São Paulo did not get as far as kidnapping, unlike that of Juan Manuel Fangio. A tall young man in a leather jacket approached the 46 year old, who had just won his fifth title, in the Lincoln Hotel, Havana, on 25 February 1958 with a peremptory, “You must come with me.” It was the eve of the Gran Premio de Cuba and Fangio was bundled into a car and driven off.
New York Times
February 26, 1958. p. 3.
Kidnappers Kind, Fangio Asserts
Auto Racer Declares Cuban Rebels Were Friendly
By R. Hart Phillips
Special to The New York Times
HAVANA, Feb. 25—Juan Manuel Fangio, the Argentine automobile racing champion, said today that those who kidnapped him Sunday were young men who treated him with consideration and even friendliness. The driver was released shortly after midnight.
The kidnappers told him they were members of the 26th of July Movement headed by Fidel Castro, the rebel leader, whose bands of insurgents are fighting Government troops in Oriente Province.
The kidnapping was allegedly carried out by youthful enemies of President Fulgencio Batista in an effort to embarrass the Government and if possible stop the holding of the second Gran Premio automobile race, which Señor Fangio was considered favorite to win.
However, the race was held yesterday afternoon, but it was suspended when a Cuban driver crashed into spectators. This morning the death toll had risen to six, with thirty-one injured.
Fangio Describes Captivity
Señor Fangio, appearing well-groomed and untired after having been held about twenty-six hours by his kidnappers, talked with reporters in the Argentine Embassy. The Argentine Ambassador, Rear Admiral Raul Lynch, had picked him up from a house on the outskirts of Havana not long before in response to a telephone call from the kidnappers.
“The revolutionists treated me well,” Señor Fangio said. “They tried to explain to me the reasons for my kidnapping and the aims of their organization and their attitude was even friendly. I was well fed by a woman who brought my meals.
“During the period of the kidnapping I was transferred three times to three different houses in three different automobiles. The houses were well-furnished residences and in one of them I saw a part of a film of the Gran Premio race on television.
“My captors took me to a house on the edge of town earlier tonight and told me to go inside and stay inside until someone came for me. Later the Ambassador called for me.” Señor Fangio said he planned to stay in Cuba for several days and would drive here in the next Gran Premio race if invited.
He said he held no resentment against anyone over his kidnapping.

Covering races in Brazil back at the start of Emerson Fittipaldi’s career was an exciting assignment. Picturesque circuits in that vast country were glamorous – except for Interlagos, a run-down slum of a track that made 1970s Brands Hatch look well organised and professional. I drove hundreds of miles in Brazil and loved the place. You had to look out for pickpockets on Copacabana beach. An armoured Mercedes with a driver trained in emergency techniques was the stuff of Bond books.
Met the great man at commemorative events run by Mercedes-Benz. He signed an Alan Fearnley print for me, kindly inscribing my name in response to a written prompt.

The Richest Athletes of the World (10 pics)

 

10 — Lorena Ochoa (Golf)
 Earnings: $ 5 million.

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Škoda Superb Estate

It is not often you can endorse official fuel consumption figures. On a brim-to-brim test over nearly 400 miles, I came within a single mile per gallon of the Skoda Superb Estate’s combined 38.7mpg. Mostly motorways and dual carriageways, with a fair amount of Kent B-roads, it was an impressive return for a 1550kg (4317lb) spacious estate car keeping mostly although not obsessively to speed limits. The 1.8 TSI Elegance is smooth, quiet, roomy and at £23,550 restores the dignity Skoda enjoyed as a great industrial and armaments firm. It made cars in Edwardian times; fine sporting and luxury machines by Laurin & Klement. Restoration by the VW group restores it to world rank.

A Superb Estate could replace my faithful 4x4. It has space for the motoring dogs. A heavy duty tray for the 595l (21cuft) loading space costs £150. It is 1700l (60cuft) with the seats folded (they could go walkies; there is more room than any competitor). I could even have it with sophisticated Haldex four wheel drive, so clever it only drives all of the wheels some of the time and hardly ever all the wheels all of the time.

It makes up its mind which ones to turn, depending on circumstances. A cunning control unit counts up wheel speed, accelerator position, engine rpm and what the stability sensors say. If there is ten per cent slip it reacts within a single revolution, transmitting the requisite torque. On slippery going it consults the ABS, braking one front wheel while applying pull to the other.

This is relaxed economical six-speed tranquillity. Cruise control is included in the price along with Columbus touch screen satellite navigation, leather upholstery, which I could never do without, heated seats, different side air conditioning, buzzing parking sensors and clever detailing that includes an umbrella in the rear door.

Adaptive Front light System (AFS) also makes up its own mind, producing the right sort of beams for town, main roads or motorways. A rain mode reduces reflective glare, cornering lights point sideways and, amazingly, the driver can instruct the Maxidot computer to adjust the lights for left or right hand drive. No more black patches when you go to the ferry. The spread of brightness is superb. You don’t realise how effective and subtle it is, especially the swivelling beams, until you drive something else.

The Skoda Superb richly deserves the awards it has had. It is supremely confident, confers complete peace of mind. There is a bit of road noise and they say the diesels are not quiet even though they win prizes too. Yet it is so well made; the trim is carefully stitched and moulded, nothing has been skimped. The fit and finish would grace a BMW. It is an organised car that it is hard to fault. Elegance specification includes rear parking sensors, Bi-xenon headlights, chrome roof rails and a tyre pressure monitor making it a bargain in equipment. It may not have the emotional appeal of a BMW, a Jaguar, or a Mercedes-Benz yet Skoda is on the threshold of joining them among the classic European makes of car.