Porsche - Peter Schutz

My BMW Z3 and road test Porsche
I once stood with Peter W Schutz, the American chief executive of Porsche AG, as he waxed eloquent over the quality and longevity of his cars. “You know what,” he said to me. “Every time I see a Porsche leave the factory I know not only have we sold a car, but also we will go on selling it spares for years.” True. The factory had a bodyshell in primer parked outside in all weathers and it never decayed. Maybe it’s still there. They had to sell bits for crashed Porsches, worn-out Porsches and in due course restored classic Porsches as the cherished things lasted for decades.

Porsche sold spares at premium prices. It sold everything at premium prices. Schutz, who replaced Dr Ernst Fuhrmann as CEO in the 1980s, knew that replacement components’ business was a bankable asset. Why, a Porsche headlamp glass could cost £100 when everybody else’s were a couple of quid. Now high-power flush-fitting Halogen units are £400 and upgrades to Xenon or Litronic levelling ones are £800.

Ford Focus headlight features on new Dove book, out March
Now everybody has caught on. Headlights are much superior to those of only a few years ago. I notice it going from a newer test car to my BMW or Nissan. Those that swivel with the steering are especially clever. How like cranky American politicians to ban them on Citroëns.

The cost of headlights has gone up and up on ordinary cars well below Porsche in the price pecking order. Audis run from £270 for an A3 to £390 on an A6. But are the distinctive LED running lights strictly necessary? They seem to me more like advertising gimmicks to identify drivers of upper-class cars.

Nothing’s new. Our family Wolseleys had a little light-up badge in the middle of the radiator proclaiming our social status after dark. You didn’t want to be confused with Austins, Morrises or Vauxhalls. As a small boy I was proud of that little light and cross with father when he refused to replace its single festoon bulb. Like festoon bulbs in Trafficators it failed. Father didn’t understand status.

SAAB GADGETS

Saab had some good tricks. The heat battery that I described in in The Sunday Times of 9 February 1992 really worked but seems to have atrophied. It was a niche product I suppose that was not going to be big outside Sweden. Traction control was demonstrated convincingly on a frozen lake and now everybody’s got it. Driving on ice under Erik Carlsson’s tutelage was memorable. Saab arranged occasions like this well, removing for ever the wrong-headed conviction that skill would always outwit electronics. True it is sometimes better to have switchable traction control, and the newest cruise controls that hit the brakes if a car veers into your path can be unnerving, but they work. How many lives have been saved by anti-lock brakes? Real lives really saved, not guessed at by self-appointed safety campaigners. Incalculable. Leave improvements to engineers and ban lobbyists.