Alternators

I am a very successful motoring journalist who has just sold my internationally acclaimed TV Show about motoring (with an amusing bent) to Netflix.

Or I might be - in an alternative Universe where horrible things like Brexit and Jeggings and Vauxhall Agilas never happened.

If only.

Autocar today are looking at some if-only situations that could have changed motoring history - albeit not as much as me having my own TV show.  The article is here.

They look at how The Second World War could have been avoided by the bloke who drove into Hitler going a bit faster.

They sort of blame the recently deceased Frank Williams for annoying Adrian Newey enough such that he left Williams.  This led to McLaren and then Red Bull taking over the dominance or Formula 1.

They ask what would have happened if BMW hadn't bought Rover from under Honda's nose in 1994.  This is a trickier one with pros and cons on both sides but I can't help but think that the Rover and MG marques wouldn't have disappeared when the four directors took over and made a complete hash of it all.  The Triumph name might still be on some cars too.

Then it's back to F1 and the question of what would have happened if Gilles Villeneuve hadn't been killed in a crash during qualifying for the Belgian Grand Prix in 1982.  Maybe his nephew wouldn't have had a career?

Next in line, what if Saab had an equivalent version of the other GM branded plug-in hybrids The Chevrolet Volt and Vauxhall/Opel Ampera?  Given the relative lack of success of the Chevrolet Volt and Vauxhall/Opel Ampera (which is a shame - they were ahead of their time) then I doubt if it would have made much difference.

Finally, they return to Rover with the question, "What if... BMW had made the Pininfarina 1100?" Pretty sure that is a typo - it should read "What if... BMC had made the Pininfarina 1100?" But never mind, it is an interesting question and they even get a mention of the recently deceased Prince Philip in there.  It suggests a world without The Austin Allegro.  Very interesting.

However, what if the Autocar Team had thought a little longer...

A good question would be: What if Major Ivan Hirst had convinced a British car company to take on building the cars he found in a certain car factory in Wolfburg?

Or how about?: What if this year's Abu Dhabi Grand Prix Race Director Michael Masi had thought a little longer?

Don't Mention The War

That phrase was famously said by a silly man with a silly moustache.

Here he is not mentioning the war:

 Here's another silly moustache:

Remember that when Charlie Chaplin and Oliver Hardy sported this style, they were meant to look silly.  This house I took a photo of  several years ago seems to carry off the Hitler look quite well.

Now the real Hitler, in the penultimate picture here, is modelling the Volkswagen Beetle.

If the Beetle was so good though, why were Nazis always photographed hailing taxis?

People who don't like the Beetle are always quick to make the famous association with Adolf - something Volkswagen themselves would probably not be wanting to remind people of.

Shame their boss managed to do just that.  The BBC story is here.  He appears to have used a play-on-words with the phrase "Arbeit Macht Frei" - meaning "Work sets you free" - as emblazoned on the gates of the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Oops.

We'd just forgotten about the link with the Nazis.

Now wasn't there something about Diesel?

What has the VW XL1 Got in Common With the Beastie Boys?

Two things actually.

I dislike both and they both wear a VW badge.

 

My main argument with the XL1 is how ugly it is. But I covered that back in 2012.  It does, however, have something in its favour in that it gets exceptional economy and ultra-low emissions per mile out of its little diesel engine.

Or so Volkswagen claimed anyway.

But can you trust them?

Even the non-motoring press has exploded this week about the VW emissions scandal.  Here's a pretty good, albeit brief, summary from BBC News. Today it was announced, as was suspected all along, that it wasn't just US cars affected.

Their boss, Martin Winterkorn, has Winter-gone.

They could lose their Economy World Record too.  The test car was economical - but it was outputting silly, maybe illegal, amounts of NOx while it was doing it.

Well, to help redress the balance, here's some free advertising for them from me:

After all, they're not really a bad company are they?

I mean, it's not like they were set up by Hitler or anything is it?