d motorofficial f motor_mag^129Jethro Bovingdon
“I CAN’T HELP FEELING THAT THIS ‘SELL
NOW, APOLOGISE LATER’ REASONING WILL
BE THE UNDOING OF THE CAR INDUSTRY”
CAN A CAR BE EVIL? I don’t mean in the ‘evil handling’ sense. In
fact, cars that invite you to walk on a knife-edge aren’t really evil at all.
Scary? At times. But hugely satisfying when you find the sweet spot.
That’s why cars like the Lancia Stratos, Porsche 911 GT2 and even some
Maseratis are revered as much as they’re feared. No, by ‘evil’ I guess I
mean... awful, the embodiment of something disturbing and tragic.
How about the Range Rover Sport? Not the latest one. Oh, sure,
it’s tasteless and vulgar, but somehow it’s not as offensive as the
first one that was launched in Vesuvius Orange for max impact/
offence. Adopted by the stupid, angry and vain, it became The Most
Aggressively Driven Vehicle the world over. Usually fitted with that
awful body kit and square exhaust pipe finishers, it was a hateful car
that wasn’t even any good to drive, despite some reports.
The root of the Sport’s evil is it contributed so strongly to a disease
that has crept through the whole car industry. It was a car of the
moment. Seduced by the promise of sporty dynamics and the ability
to convey just how rich and wonderful an owner must be, people
clamoured to own one. Cars like the Sport and the BMW X6 are the
vacuous, look-at-my-fabulous-life Instagram selfies of the car world.
W ho cares? Well, we all should. Not only are the Sport and cars like it
motoring’s equivalent of big Vesuvius Orange Louis Vuitton handbags,
they also speak volumes about a car industry sticking its head in the
sand while hastening the demise of the internal-combustion engine –
and maybe even the car as we know it.
In a world concerned with sustainability and climate change, SUVs
- especially the biggest, most horribly modified – might as well have
had hi-vis targets painted onto their body-kitted f lanks. The industry
didn’t care and was doing nothing to change things.
The reality is that they do care and have been cleaning up their act
with spectacular results, but while engine tech has become cleaner
and cleverer in leaps and bounds, the obsession with owning big, boxy
SUVs to look wealthy or important has caused an upward spiral in size
and weight. Cars like the Sport sell brilliantly and are big profit drivers,
so it’s been the easy option. But I can’t help feeling that this ‘sell now,
apologise later’ reasoning will be the undoing of the car industry.
Already there are calls in the UK for the government to bring forward
the ban of petrol and diesel car sales to 2032. That’s 13 years from
now. Remember that Eric Prydz song, Call on Me? The one with that
video. Seems like only yesterday that it was playing on the radio every
five minutes. It was number two in 2004. Fifteen years isn’t very long.
And if petrol and diesel cars are banned from sale so soon, then what
happens to classics? Maybe there will be a special dispensation for
‘vintage’ cars. Let’s say those built up until 1975, maybe 1980. Perhaps
the most efficient and modern cars – those built after 2025 – will have a
few years of grace, too. But our definition of modern classics?
Deemed not historically important enough to warrant special
treatment or clean enough to mingle with autonomous boxes, they
could be outlawed, wiped from our roads and doomed to sit in garages.
It would be wrong to blame this entirely on the Range Rover Sport,
not least because I have to reserve some hatred for the Nissan Qashqai,
surely the most evil of all cars. But god I hate Rangey Sports and X6s,
the Urus and Bentayga, and the f***ing Qashqai.