In the good old days (think beam axles and crossplys) there were lots of car companies all of which made certain types of cars. As a result Land Rover became famous for 4X4s and Porsche became famous for sports cars. Jaguar meanwhile were good at a luxury saloon, Ford for something practical and Skoda if you were just plain skint.
The world was a happy simple place where depending on what kind of vehicle you wanted you knew who to buy it off. Then everybody started buying everyone else, but that didn't matter because they kept the old names and played on their strengths, so us simple consumers still knew were they were up to. For those of us who don't have MBA's this is a basic introduction to what I will call 'Brand Identity' and those boys in Detroit and Wolfsburg stumped up serious money to get their hands on the rights to various shiny nameplates with leaping cats and charging bulls and whatever on.
OK, so the world was a better place. You could still buy what you wanted by going to the right dealership, the only development being that due to lots of nice technology transfer your V12 supercar started on cold mornings just like a diesel hatchback.
Then, around the turn of the millennium something really, really stupid happened. All these car companies, who were all owned by the same people anyway, started to make other types of cars. Now you can buy a supercar from Audi, a 4X4 from Porsche, a diesel estate car from Jaguar and a luxury saloon from VW. Great in the short term if you've always wanted a Porsche but have 3 kids or you've had a bad knock on the head and desire a £60K VW, but at the centre of this is a very sad fact that will be really, really bad for the industry. Our children (wherever they are) will think Lamborghini make 1.9TDi people carriers and Skoda has just had a third consecutive 1,2,3 at Le Mans, and when I can finally buy a Lamborghini when I'm 76 they'll laugh at me and claim it's only got a heated rear window to keep your hands warm when your pushing it!
It's our duty to show, here and now, what car manufacturers do well. I'll start you off, please chime in with your own
Volkswagen: Smallish cars, well built, perhaps with a sporty option. Prime example, the Golf Mk2
Rolls Royce: You've got staff to drive it for you, to open the doors, hold your umbrella, the car should be big and dignified. I give you the Silver Cloud III
Ford: Made for the family or the rep. Easy to fix, handling a bit lairy in the wet, choice of 20 Weber carbs to upgrade. The Cortina
Austin: Smallish on the outside, roomy inside. Badge engineering should be banned because this should never be a Riley / MG / Morris / Van den Plas etc. The Austin 1100, just perfect
Renault: This is a tough one - do I chose the 5 or 12? Should be simple, cheap, small but quite big inside. There should be a clever feature or two that doesn't work very well, for example 5 gears on the R12 but you can only have 4 of them most of the time. Soft suspension, cloth seats that snag your fingernails, yellow headlights.
The world was a happy simple place where depending on what kind of vehicle you wanted you knew who to buy it off. Then everybody started buying everyone else, but that didn't matter because they kept the old names and played on their strengths, so us simple consumers still knew were they were up to. For those of us who don't have MBA's this is a basic introduction to what I will call 'Brand Identity' and those boys in Detroit and Wolfsburg stumped up serious money to get their hands on the rights to various shiny nameplates with leaping cats and charging bulls and whatever on.
OK, so the world was a better place. You could still buy what you wanted by going to the right dealership, the only development being that due to lots of nice technology transfer your V12 supercar started on cold mornings just like a diesel hatchback.
Then, around the turn of the millennium something really, really stupid happened. All these car companies, who were all owned by the same people anyway, started to make other types of cars. Now you can buy a supercar from Audi, a 4X4 from Porsche, a diesel estate car from Jaguar and a luxury saloon from VW. Great in the short term if you've always wanted a Porsche but have 3 kids or you've had a bad knock on the head and desire a £60K VW, but at the centre of this is a very sad fact that will be really, really bad for the industry. Our children (wherever they are) will think Lamborghini make 1.9TDi people carriers and Skoda has just had a third consecutive 1,2,3 at Le Mans, and when I can finally buy a Lamborghini when I'm 76 they'll laugh at me and claim it's only got a heated rear window to keep your hands warm when your pushing it!
It's our duty to show, here and now, what car manufacturers do well. I'll start you off, please chime in with your own
Volkswagen: Smallish cars, well built, perhaps with a sporty option. Prime example, the Golf Mk2
Rolls Royce: You've got staff to drive it for you, to open the doors, hold your umbrella, the car should be big and dignified. I give you the Silver Cloud III
Ford: Made for the family or the rep. Easy to fix, handling a bit lairy in the wet, choice of 20 Weber carbs to upgrade. The Cortina
Austin: Smallish on the outside, roomy inside. Badge engineering should be banned because this should never be a Riley / MG / Morris / Van den Plas etc. The Austin 1100, just perfect
Renault: This is a tough one - do I chose the 5 or 12? Should be simple, cheap, small but quite big inside. There should be a clever feature or two that doesn't work very well, for example 5 gears on the R12 but you can only have 4 of them most of the time. Soft suspension, cloth seats that snag your fingernails, yellow headlights.
its mad it is! Land Rover chelsea tractors, Ladas seem to not sell much here now, but people hapily buying random brands imported in. 
