Can cars, complexity, cantankerousness and ‘crash-and-burn’ evoke great memories?
Having been on a truth crusade for much of his motoring existence, Iain Robertson was reminded very recently about an aspect of automotive electronica that led to frustration, anger and spite that encompass mild forms of racism…it’s been a long drive!
When you have an itch, there exists an inescapable desire to scratch it. As a toddler, I was unaware of the distress I caused my parents from the top deck of a red London bus, when I pointed at a car and uttered the word ‘Zodiwak!’. It might have been better for me, had I said ‘Mama’, or even ‘Papa’, but vehicle recognition clearly took priority.
With parents offloading the responsibility for my education to a remote Scottish school, my automotive fascination would grow like Topsy. Barely into my second year, I augmented my father’s pocket money by commencing a car-washing round in the village. Rather than submit to rugby on a Saturday morning, I could be spotted with my bucket, sponge, chamois and Turtle Wax working my way through more than a dozen local Fords, Vauxhalls, Triumphs and Citroens, earning my princely 2s/6d each, with an occasional thrupenny or sixpenny bit tip, which would be spent on ‘Autocar’ weekly and ‘Small Car and Mini’ monthly magazines.
By the time I reached my fifth year, with university beckoning and exams burgeoning, I had engaged the services of several first and second year chaps, leaving me to collect the cash, which had now escalated to 5/- (25p), of which I would pay the acolytes 50%. I had also learned to drive my customers’ cars. My average earnings were up to £15/week, which provided more than adequate funds for bus and train travel to car showrooms in Stirling, Perth and Edinburgh. At the age of 15 years, I was ‘testing’ cars and amassing information.
Ironically, I befriended some car salesmen. One of them even loaned me a Ford Escort demonstrator, with which to compete in an ‘autotest’ and I finished 4th overall. At no stage was I ever asked for a licence. By some quirk, I also managed to avoid the attention of the law. I used Miss McCrossan’s (the school nurse) telephone to book garage appointments. One of my earliest test sessions was in a Jaguar E-Type V12 coupe, in which I was able to prove the Autocar assertion that its engine developed enough torque to enable it to pull away from a standstill in top gear (4th for the record). They were the days and, aged 16, I was in possession of my own small red book…a provisional Driver’s Licence to my future!
My education was completed in Canada, where, in my spare time, I organised a local car club and learned an immense amount about driving on ice and gravel. My first official test drive, upon my return to Blighty, was of the 1977 Ford Fiesta, followed soon after by the first front-wheel drive Escort. Yet, it was the Ford Granada 2.8i that highlighted a growing technological future. My first foreign launch involved driving a Lancia Delta GT on ice, at Sestriere, Italy. The die was cast. Besides, I was already contributing on a freelance basis to a smattering of motoring titles, in my early-20s.
Forty years ago, cars were much simpler. As they passed through the fuel injection, catalysed and turbo eras, all of which were demonised by older scribes, it developed into the electronic period epitomised by the Teutonic Threesome, one of which (BMW) went wilfully along a jackboot route to attain market control. All Gallic and Latin attempts to factor in circuit board tech created only disharmony and unreliability; while Japan had mastered it, the UK was not far behind the other Europeans.
Having endured the 40mins of pre-emptive marketing twaddle, prior to being given the keyfob to a corking new 7-Series, accompanied by a snapper, I was keen to head out on the prescribed road route. It took the pair of us fully 20 minutes to get the radio to connect with Terry Wogan. Oh, the magic of ‘i-Drive’. We gave up on mastery of the knurled dial, resorting to the myriad of function replicating pushbuttons spread across the dashboard instead. Upon return to BMW’s Bracknell HQ, we were met by an over-enthusiastic and floppy-haired PR exponent keen to hear of our exploits with ‘i-Drive’. Unhappy with my responses, he called me insultingly a ‘troglodyte’ and I called him outside.
To a certain extent, I was glad that his boss overheard and resumed control. The PR bloke was shipped across to Rolls-Royce at Chichester, the ‘i-Drive’ incident was largely forgotten, until the retirement of the renowned PR boss and the return of the now older but no wiser PR bloke, whom had managed to inveigle his career path into replacing his former boss. He was never a nice person and even initial conflabs would have him peering around to spot someone ‘more important’. His spite, when he should have been grateful that his earlier actions had led to an actual promotion (that’s what happens in Germanic firms), came in the form of no more BMW launch invitations and a virtual ignorance, of which I was eminently aware anyway, being displayed by his entire team of cohorts.
Understandably, as a creative, I can also be bitchy but always overhued with my automotive honesty…well, frankness. Now into its eighth generation and in its own words, “BMW’s iDrive takes the interaction between driver and vehicle into a digital future where many areas of life are getting increasingly smart. The new interpretation of BMW’s operating system equips the vehicle to actively engage in its relationship with those on board and, in so doing, serves as a digital, intelligent and proactive partner in any situation. A natural dialogue is created with the aim of precisely tailoring all the functions controlled via BMW iDrive to the driver’s needs and preferences as the situation demands.”
Apart from the small amount of vomit I feel in my throat, it is ‘sehr klar’ that the lazy lack of translation from German to English gives not a care for ‘split-infinitives’, or commas. As to i-Drive, is there any point in promoting it, when the consumer has no choice but to accept it? Oh well, as a ‘grammar-nazi’, I would suggest that Germany rules.
