TOP GEAR” Car chatter from the 1950s to 2025

Greetings to all at the start of a new year which I hope will bring you lots of good things!   As a consequence of the festive holiday period when the whole of South Africa seems to close down for nigh on a month, I haven’t had any new models to test, so I’ll kick off January with a mixed grill so to speak, but one which does stick to automotive matters!

TELLING IT LIKE IT IS

Aussies have a reputation for getting to the point, so to speak, while not mincing their words, so may I draw your attention to a regular podcast that emanates from those shores, and which is available on You Tube. It goes out under the title “ReDriven.”

Presented by Adam and Jim, the content is mainly orientated towards Used Cars but in truth, it covers almost anything related to cars with an obvious slant towards what pots Down Under. That means some cars that wilt in the face of their acerbic tongues may not be familiar in darkest Africa.

While I may not agree with all their assessments, many of which I suspect are hyped-up for extra effect, it is SO refreshing to hear the not-so-good things about cars that span the price scale from the very top to the very bottom.

Just this morning, I watched a recent edition that pilloried, with supporting evidence, a German car that sells in RSA for around R2,5 million before even more zillions are added on for options. Adam and Jim also had lots of worrying things to say about a R1,5 million SUV from the same stable, drawing attention to cheap interior fitments and the cacophony of rattles that reportedly infest the cabins of this model. Ironically, this self-same SUV was the recent recipient of a Car of the Year Award in RSA!

I’m certainly not suggesting that a presentation on automotive matters should focus solely on the nasties, but what I am suggesting is that objectivity should always be to the fore. On my home turf, there seems to be a far-reaching reluctance to delve beneath the bed clothes as it were, such that many articles read like extensions of a manufacturer’s press release.

I’ll make no further comment on that issue, but I will load my torpedo tubes and point then at journos who repeatedly use the description “affordable” in their descriptions of cars. Just the other day, I saw a headline along the lines of … “Here’s a listing of affordable SUVs for 2025.”

What’s affordable for one is not necessarily affordable for another so to brand a broad model range with an attribute that contains positive overtones on the “affordability” front is plain meaningless. What they mean to suggest is that the models under review are “cheaper or less expensive” than other models, but that does NOT make them affordable!

The irony is that recent, almost uncontained new car price increases, are largely responsible for the catastrophic decline in sales afflicting virtually every manufacturer around the globe. And to make matters worse, it appears that depreciation has become ever more problematic, especially as far as EVs are concerned, so one-time buyers of upper end models in particular are backing off and holding on to what they’ve got.

PRICE MADNESS

It’s not just the prices of cars that have rocketed out of sight as my companion on no fewer than 27 visits to the famous Le Mans 24 Hour endurance race has highlighted. His filing system is even less disciplined than mine, so quite how he came across the invoice for our 1998 visit to the French classic from the UK is beyond me. But he did, and what it revealed came as something of a shock.

The total cost for the two of us including insurance, entrance and grandstand tickets, and 5-day camping came to GBP449.  Today, an equivalent set-up would result in a disbursement of around GBP2 600 between us and that, I’m afraid, is why my annual visits – the first one was in 1989 – to this mecca of endurance racing have come to an end. Buying Lotto tickets hasn’t helped so far.

IT’S IN MY BLOOD

My interest in cars was nurtured by my late father who had me behind the wheel at the tender age of seven. Numerous cushions were required to aid the process which involved driving around his smallholding on the outskirts of what was then Salisbury, but the real highlight for me was when he got me a go-kart which I raced from the age of 12.

In the meantime, Dad was a subscriber to “Motor Sport” and to “Motor” from the UK. It was the motor racing reports in the former that stoked my interest in racing of the wheeled kind and turned me into a fanatical follower of the incomparable Juan Manuel Fangio. Indeed, I developed a near encyclopaedic knowledge of motor racing in the 50’s and 60’s in particular, but I also never forgot just how influential the editor of Motor Sport, Bill Boddy, was.

Boddy, who signed off all his articles with his initials, WB, had as his motor sport correspondent, none other than Dennis Jenkinson who famously navigated Stirling Moss on his epic 1955 Mille Miglia victory in the Mercedes 300SLR.

Jenks signed off his contributions with the initials DSJ and almost invariably added spice to his pieces with positive reports on his Porsche 356 which he used for much of his travel between tracks in Europe.

In the meantime, WB became well known in the 1950s for his admiration of the VW Beetle and for the engineering that was a hallmark of post war Mercedes-Benz cars. Clearly his views carried weight as my Dad’s garage at home contained examples of both brands, including a 1956 Merc 220S which was the first twin carb petrol engine example imported into southern Africa. It’s also no coincidence that I too have owned VW Beetles and a Porsche, and to this day still have two Golf 7s in my garage. Good automotive journalism clearly strikes a chord over very many years!

PLEASING TO THE EYE

I fully accept that old adage “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” but there’s one model from yesteryear that draws near universal praise for its elegant and timeless disposition. That’s the Mercedes 220SE coupe that first appeared in1961 and which happened to replace my Dad’s aforementioned 220S in September 1962.

Its pillarless side windows and the deletion of the small tailfins that adorned the equivalent saloon models of that era, endowed the largely hand-built coupe with a sporty grace that’s endured to this day if the ever-rising prices of first-rate examples some 60 years down the road are indicative.

Hopefully, the Editor will create space for a photograph within my verbiage for readers to share this model’s lovely design.

MG RETURNS TO RSA

Older readers will remember the British MG brand, primarily in the realm of sports cars, but the reality is that the brand suffered from transient ownership in the UK and “disappeared” from that market in the mid-2000s.

Somewhat to my surprise, the brand was resuscitated under Chinese SAIC ownership in 2007 and the first models emerged in 2011. By 2019, MG had become the biggest single-brand car exported from China, and by 2023, around 840 000 units were sold globally.

It hasn’t escaped my notice that the PR divisions of Chinese car companies tend to employ decidedly flowery descriptions of their line-ups and the MG importer (MG Motor) in South Africa is no different, claiming that traditional “British” brand values remain very much to the fore in their new presentations.

The fact that those very “values” failed to be of sufficient tenacity to keep the MG name alive in its country of origin is perhaps best forgotten, but don’t let that take anything away from the fact that the Chinese-built models that have relatively recently made their way into Britain, which does boast an MG Design Studio, have mostly been the recipients of generous praise from the usually objective UK press.

Three models are initially on the RSA menu, these being:

The compact ZS  SUV in two variants with 1,5 litre petrol power

The mid-size HS SUV in two variants with a choice of 1,5 litre turbo petrol/7-speed DCT auto or 2.0 litre turbo petrol with 9-speed auto box.

The all-electric Cyberster roadster with electrifying performance as indicated by the claimed 3,2s 0-100 dash!