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Rare, fast and endangered but still rolling along
Independent, The (London), Feb 10, 2004
WE ALL know that Britain is no longer a major car-producing nation in its own right. The main factories, MG Rover's Longbridge excepted, are owned and run by foreign companies, even if some of the cars they expel have British badges.
Yes, Jaguars and Land Rovers are designed here too, and the German- owned Rolls-Royce and Bentley have British input into their redefined presences, but we are no longer like France, Germany, Italy, the US, Japan or Korea.
Our car-making is, in fact, almost post-industrial. It has mirrored the progress of the Industrial Revolution itself: we were in at the start, and grew out of it first.
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But there is another side to British car-making. We have an unequalled network of advanced engineering companies, so we can develop the ideas even if we do not then commercialise them. This is why most Formula One teams are based here, and why we make more racing cars than any other country. And, related to this, we have a remarkable automotive cottage industry.
I have just done a rough count of all the carmakers in the UK. It currently hovers around 22, not including the pure racing cars or the lower end of the kit-car market (another British oddity) in which you have to find a lot of the parts yourself. There is some foreign ownership among these smaller players, specifically the two most famous names of Lotus (a majority Proton shareholding) and Aston Martin (Ford-owned); otherwise talent is home-financed.
That is a lot of marques. Of this cottage industry, TVR is the biggest player. It can even lay claim to being the second-biggest all- British carmaker after MG Rover, which is either an accolade for TVR or a sad indictment of our industry's evaporation.
But just as well known as TVR, maybe more so for its epitomisation of perceived British eccentricity, is Morgan. Even Morgan has modernised, though; it realised it could not live on wooden-body- framed relics and long waiting lists forever, and nowadays has the Aero 8 with a stiff aluminium chassis, BMW power and a body style as bipolar between ancient and modern as it is possible to be.
Caterham is the most familiar of all the little guys. Caterham nowadays has moved its manufacturing from Surrey (although it still has a showroom there) to its busy factory in Dartford, Kent. Its considerable success (the Japanese are especially keen) is still based on a developed Lotus Seven, a car conceived back in the 1950s, and with the right lightweight materials and potent engines (at their ultimate in the pounds 36,200 Superlight R500) it can generate a thrill like nothing else. You can still buy a Caterham to build yourself. Many do.
If not, you might choose a Westfield. There is a hint of Caterham about Westfield's more popular lines, but the interpretation is different - not least because one model runs a hefty Rover V8 engine. The family-run, Kingswinsford, West Midlands company makes 500 cars a year, some as kits, and has also made a wide-bodied trackday car called XTR2 with a potent Suzuki Hyabusa engine. An Audi TT unit is an alternative.
Who, then, are these other cottage industrialists? They are a varied bunch, but all somehow manage to find their way through legislative strictures and create their individual cars. The days are long gone when anyone could design a car, ensure it complied with simple Construction and Use regulations (the right number and position of lights, mudguards, exhaust system and so on) and let it loose.
Today's regulations are more complex, and are framed with the bigger manufacturers in mind. They have to submit their cars for crash tests, which are very expensive, so expensive that the little players just cannot afford it.
For these companies, defined by their low production volumes, there exists Single Vehicle Approval, a detailed examination by the Vehicle Inspectorate on each individual car. It covers most of the safety and integrity rules applied to volume cars, but instead of a crash test the inspectors will use their knowledge and experience to judge a design. It is a good system in theory, protecting the cars' users and ensuring high standards. Without it, and given the regulated and litigious world we live in, the tiny carmakers would die - but those makers often curse the system's inflexibility.
Still, there are always newcomers, sometimes reviving treat names from the past. The latest attempt to resurrect Jensen failed last year, but Invicta flies again.
Invicta was one of Britain's grandest pre-war sports car makes. Now the name has been reborn under Michael Bristow, old-Invicta enthusiast (and owner) and new-Invicta mastermind. The project is dream realisation; a British rival to Porsche and Ferrari. It was delayed when a test driver destroyed the only running prototype, but another was built and production is slowly under way at the Chippenham, Wiltshire factory. That is not far from Marcos, and Chris Marsh, son of Marcos founder Jem, is the engineering brain behind Invicta.
