Safe, efficient, reliable ... and boring

(First published in the Manawatu Standard and Nelson Mail, January 11.)

I walked past a big 1970s-era Chrysler Valiant in town the other day – an orange one (still the original paint job, I’d guess) with a tan vinyl roof.

I’ve driven such cars. They handled like a wheelbarrow half-filled with water. But I’ll tell you what: they had character. They had personality. When you drove a Chrysler Valiant, you knew you were driving a Chrysler Valiant.

I contrast this with the occasions when I hire a modern rental car. I couldn’t tell you what I’m driving without looking at the logo in the centre of the steering wheel.

They all feel and look the same. They’re safe, well-equipped, economical, reliable … and boring.

I thought of that Chrysler Valiant a couple of days later when I was reading the motoring section of my paper. It included a story about the new Holden Commodore due to be released next year – the first Commodore not to be built in Australia.

Holden had released advanced publicity shots of the new model from different angles. To me it looked virtually indistinguishable from the equivalent model Mazda, Hyundai or Kia.

Say what you like about the Chrysler Valiant, but it was unmistakeably a Chrysler Valiant. There was no way you’d mistake it for its competitors, the Ford Falcon and the Holden Kingswood (each of which, in turn, looked completely different from the other).

And before you say anything, yes, I know your chance of getting killed was far greater if you crashed in a 1975 Valiant or Holden Kingswood than if you have a prang in a modern Honda or Subaru.

In that respect, I concede we’ve made enormous advances. But did safety improvements have to come at the expense of the styling quirks that gave the cars of earlier eras their individuality?

Allow me to illustrate my point. On Facebook recently, my friend Phil O'Brien, co-host of Radio New Zealand's popular Matinee Idle, posted a 1957 magazine advertisement for a car identical to the first one he owned – an eggshell-blue Austin A50 Cambridge.

Phil invited other people to contribute reminiscences about their own first cars. There were 113 responses, many of them very witty.

They covered a weird and wonderful assortment of makes and models that people of a certain age would remember well, from the everyday (Austin A30s, Vanguards, Vauxhall Veloxes, Triumph Heralds, Holden Specials, Morris Minors and Ford Prefects) to the slightly more exotic and racy (a Renault 750, a Jowett Javelin and an Auto Union – precursor of the Audi). 

There were some that few people with any self-esteem would admit to having owned (namely, a 1970s Morris Marina and a Skoda Octavia wagon from the 1960s). But the point was that for a couple of days, people indulged in an entertaining nostalgia-fest about old cars.

Now ask yourself: can you imagine anyone getting similarly excited in 50 years’ time about peas-in-a-pod Ford, Mazdas and Toyotas? I can’t.

Good cars, all of them, but dull. With globalisation, the “world car” that motor companies started talking about in the 1970s became a reality. Lookalike models roll off assembly lines on every continent.

Old cars were quirky. That’s why people gather wherever classic or vintage cars are on display. Small wonder that Nelson publishers Potton and Burton recently brought out We Had One of Those!, a wallow in automotive nostalgia written by Stephen Barnett.

Would any relentlessly profit-driven car multinational today allow its engineers and designers to create something as eccentric as the lowlight Morris Minor, the Morgan three-wheeler or the Hillman Imp? It just wouldn’t happen.

And here’s another thing about modern car design. In some ways it has regressed, in both practical and aesthetic terms.

Design orthodoxy demands a rising waistline and a passenger compartment that tapers sharply towards the rear. As a result, window space is greatly reduced for back-seat passengers and the rear view is so restricted that drivers become almost wholly dependent on the reversing camera to see what’s going on behind them. And they call this progress?

Few cars demonstrate the regression better than the royal family’s vehicle of choice, the Range Rover.

Like its humble older sibling the Land Rover, the Range Rover was revolutionary when it was launched in 1970. It was the world’s first luxury four-wheel-drive and a masterpiece of design.

It had clean, simple lines. The driver sat high, surrounded by acres of glass. Reliability may have occasionally been an issue, but visibility certainly wasn’t.

Now look at one of its descendants, the Range Rover Evoque. It looks as if something very large has sat on it. It has a squashed look, with a rear window that resembles one of those narrow slits that soldiers shove their rifles through.

The big-selling Toyota Corolla, too, has morphed into something that resembles a particularly nasty insect. It’s not even quirky-ugly in the way that, say, the 1970s Leyland P76 was.

Now there was a car that was so ugly it was strangely desirable. They don’t make ’em like that anymore, and more’s the pity. 

The hazards of cycling

The tragically ironic death of police superintendent Steve Fitzgerald in a cycling accident is a reminder that, for all the rhetoric about the benefits of cycling, roads can still be a very hazardous place for people on bikes.

Steve Fitzgerald was killed when he was struck by a truck at Petone while cycling home from work on Thursday. What made his death ironic was that as the officer in charge of road policing from the 2000 to 2005, he was credited with helping to bring the road toll down from about 600 to the low 400s.

On the TV3 News on Thursday night, Wellington city councillor Andy Foster was up-front about Wellington not being the safest city on earth for cyclists. It’s hard to imagine anyone who has ridden in Wellington failing to agree.

Significantly, the New Zealand cities where cycling is most popular – such as Palmerston North and Christchurch – are flat, with relatively wide, straight streets. Wellington is the reverse: hilly, with narrow, serpentine streets that are often choked by parked cars. I have great admiration for the fortitude of Wellington cyclists who ride to and from work each day (and also, incidentally, for the skill of the bus drivers who navigate the same streets without incident).

The zone surrounding the Petone roundabout where Steve Fitzgerald died is a particularly notorious danger spot that cycling activists have been trying for years to get rectified. It’s a while since I’ve ridden in Wellington, but getting across the point at which several busy roads intersect at Petone was always nerve-wracking.

Cyclists in Wellington, probably more than in most places, intuitively adopt the tactics of defensive driving. They learn always to expect the unexpected, such as a driver’s door opening without warning in front of them (the cause of another cycling fatality at Upper Hutt on the same day Steve Fitzgerald died) or a vehicle suddenly cutting across their path. They learn never to assume that a driver has seen them unless they make eye contact.

I don’t buy the line that motorists and cyclists are natural enemies; after all, most cyclists drive cars too. It may sound Pollyanna-ish, but I believe that if cyclists show consideration for motorists, such as by trying to make room for them to pass, they will generally respond in kind. There’s undoubtedly a sub-species of cyclist who views cycling as some sort of macho competition for territory, and arrogantly asserts his (or far less often her) right to take up more space than they need. But I'm certain Steve Fitzergald would not have been one of these.

Most of the close calls I’ve experienced have been simply a result of motorists under-estimating how fast a bike travels. A car will pass you then turn left across your path assuming that you’re 100 metres behind, when in fact you’re hard on its tail; or a car will make a right-hand turn across your path as you approach, thinking they have more time in which to executive the manoeuvre than they actually have.

The good news, notwithstanding the sad events of the past week, is that according to the Cycling Advocates Network, about one in 1000 New Zealand cyclists are involved in on-road injury accidents every year, compared with three in 1000 motorists. And there is research which suggests that the more cyclists there are on the roads, the lower the accident rate becomes – the so-called “safety in numbers” effect (the rationale being that motorists are more likely to be considerate toward cyclists when there are more of them).