Low opinion of U.K. cars

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32702, 3 September 1971, Page 21

Low opinion of U.K. cars

When Henry Ford told British newspapermen in March that the quality of British cars “. . . is just not up to the standards of those produced in Germany,” the remark was dismissed as just angry words spoken by a strike-weary boss who would try anything to cajole, shame, or threaten his men back to work. But, writes Julian Mounter of "The Times” in a report from Washington, other senior executives of the motor industry in the United States including those with business reasons for extolling the virtues of British cars—agree that Henry Ford’s comparison To find out if it really Is that bad, I asked some New York and Washington owners ■ of British cars, Mounter reports. It was an enormous task, because not only are they hard to find, but they are nearly impossible to approach. Walk up to any man or woman in the shade of those heavy skyscrapers, and they shy like a mare confronted with a rat. However respectable you look, however gently or politely you make your approach, you are treated as someone who is likely to produce a gun or a cosh. But the three who risked life and limb to speak to this strange accented and by then extremely frustrated young man, who was armed only with a pencil, confirmed all that the industry was saying. Two said the cars represented the worst decision of their life and one was a little kinder: he said he would go back to a Volkswagen next year, Mounter writes. Their complaints are exactly those I see every day in my letters from readers at home. “The damn thing leaks, even

when it’s dry,” said Joe Heidtman; “the trunk never closes proper,” said the man who wants a Volkswagen; “it spends more time off the road than my wife’s Pinto spends on it, and she did 5000 miles last year,” said another. Quite probably there are a large number of owners who are perfectly happy with their cars, and a survey of three is hardly exhaustive. But I spoke to more than a dozen Beetle and Japanese car owners—they shy away too, or it would have been more—and only one was not satisfied, pleased or thrilled with the product. Performance figures and advanced engineering do not sell many cars in America, reliability does. “Americans soon spot the automobiles that are not. That Morris Marina looks a great little car. If it sticks together, we are going to be buying more than you can make,” a motoring writer told me. “Mac,” my name since I started driving over here last week, has been well treated at gas stations, car lots, drive-ins and by the cops, Mounter writes. The only minor incident, of which I was generally unaware at the time, was when I was nearly beaten and robbed in Washington by two gentlemen who stopped me to ask the way. “Never stop,” says everyone from the porter at my hotel to the cops themselves. I have also been terrified by the behaviour of American cars, impressed by the behaviour of American drivers, appalled by their lack of skill when in trouble and generally impressed by the roads. The cars handle like a sailing boat without a keel. The first one I tried, a Dodge Demon—admittedly a hired versioncompared in road-holding terms with a Japanese car that a colleague nicknamed the Kamakasi and the Russian Moskvich that put years on my life during

a short test last summer. Next on the list was a Mercury Cougar. In many ways it is a great improvement, but I would rather risk my life in a Mini with manual gears and no brakes, than rely on the stopping power of this machine to get me out of a trouble spot.

The one thing that spoiled that great debate on British car safety standards versus those of America, is that really the conditions are so different over here. But if we must start flinging mud across the Atlantic, I here and now go on record as saying that on a purely subjective basis I consider leaving the length of boot and bonnet out for a moment British products are safer. I would rather be hit by a British car. The pedes-trian-impaling power of American products seems surprisingly high. I suppose I would rather be in an American car in a head-on collision that was unavoidable, but it is again a subjective impression that more incidents are unavoidable in an American car than a European one. Mr Lowell Dodge, Mr Nader’s head of the Centre for Automobile Safety in Washington, says that studies of a large number of accidents in this country suggest that, as one would logically expect, it is safer in a big car involved in an accident. “There is no doubt that handling, brakes and steering on European models are far superior. And we have no way of making a companion of successful avoidances,” he says. “The ideal would be a big car with European handling qualities.” Which car, in his opinion, best meets that standard? The Mercedes.

The discipline of American drivers is something we could well emulate. Unless they have good reason for changing,' they stay in the lanes they pick. Overtaking is usually cautiously achieved, but seldom nervously, and cars tend not to travel at widely differing speeds.

The skill? In 800 miles of road testing, I have already seen two quite bad accidents. Both could have been avoided, Mounter writes. On the turnpikes at steady pace it is orderly; on comers it is general practice to go in too fast, brake in the middle and come out slowly. There is a great deal we can learn from each other.

According to experts who have been studying hundreds of recent crashes, love causes a large proportion of death and serious injuries suffered by drivers of between 18 and 24 years of age.

It seems that on this side of the Atlantic it is not so much recklessness or driving too fast, which causes loss of control among drivers in this age group, it is a fondness for staring into a loved one’s eyes, while driving along a turnpike at 70 m.p.h. The statistics appear so grave, that safety authorities even put out newspaper and radio advertisements under the gruesome title “love kills.”