Mazda's celebratory 'viewfinder'

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Quite a few car companies are celebrating notable anniversaries this year. Jaguar is 75, and Peugeot is 200 years old – though it was approaching a century of making milling and grinding equipment before it attempted to build a car.

Surprisingly, Mazda Corporation is 90 years old in 2010. Like Peugeot, it did other stuff for a while before making cars, though it did begin making light trucks as long ago as 1931. To celebrate the anniversary, Mazda recently gave journalists this fun ‘viewmaster’ gadget, which should bring back memories of holiday souvenirs for readers of a certain age.

A slideshow inside the little TV-shaped box contains images of landmark Mazdas through the ages, from the first proper car (the cute 360R of 1960) through the first-generation 323 and 626 models, and some genuine landmarks – the rotary-engined Cosmo and RX-7, plus the MX-5, now in its 21st year of production.

And of course, Mazda’s finest motorsport hour is in there too – the Le Mans-winning 787B of 1991, the only rotary-engined car ever to win the event, and a feat likely to be repeated given the development of high-performance diesel endurance racing engines by the likes of Audi and Peugeot.

The 787B now sits in Mazda’s Hiroshima 787B – the room it’s kept in is seen as a kind of shrine by Mazda execs – who are often found just staring at the car, trying to gain inspiration from its near-mystical feat, and wondering how a relatively small company pulled off such an achievement.

In fact the victory was through luck as much as judgement – rivals, including fancied runners from Jaguar and Mercedes, fell by the wayside, leaving the Mazda in the lead when the chequered flag fell, making it the first Japanese car to win the 24-hour race. Mazda really didn’t expect to win - the UK press officer hadn’t even bothered to travel to France.

The most surprising slide in the viewfinder is the ‘bowler hat’ 121 of 1992. An oddball four-door non-hatchback that has slipped from the public consciousness – though according to Mazda execs it’s apparently still “big in Benelux”, where there are thriving owners’ clubs.

The 121 deserves to be there – but not that version. The original 121 was a world-class hatchback when launched in 1984. But my guess is Mazda has omitted it because it went on to a much longer life outside Mazda – as the Kia Pride.

It was transferred to Kia around 1986 when Mazda owned a stake in the fledgling Korean automaker. But Kia kept on developing the car, and production continued in Korea into the 21st century. In fact, it’s still going strong in Iran, where the same basic design created by Mazda in Hiroshima more than 25 years ago is still being built by local automaker SAIPA. Not even the MX-5 can match that longevity – and in any case, there’s nothing much of the original ‘Miata’ in the current model.

Finally, did you know that the Mazda name is a simplified version of the founder’s name, Jujiro Matsuda? The Mazda name has always been used on the company’s vehicles, but only became the official company name in 1984, replacing the Toyo Kogyo Co name that had been above the door since 1927.

Now no longer under Ford’s control, it’ll be interesting to see what shape Mazda will be in by 2020, when it celebrates its centenary.

It's undeniably a classic

It’s not often you get a chance to drive a genuine landmark car. While our Graeme Roberts was sampling the latest technology at last week’s SMMT test day, I went in search of something a little older. And the highlight of my day was undoubtedly a thrash round the high-speed bowl with a rather familiar 40-something...

The original Range Rover still looks modern – but the H-suffix registration number YVB153H is revealing – it was registered in January 1970, months before the Range-Rover went on sale. In fact it’s chassis number 3 – though it was the first car completed, as the Land Rover marketing department thought its blue finish would look nicer in the brochures than the dark green chassis number 1, YVB 151H – which also still survives, by the way.

There were luxury off-road ‘station wagons’ before the Range-Rover – the Jeep Grand Wagoneer, with its wood-effect formica panels, comes to mind. But the Range-Rover represented something different – a totally competent off-roader, but with the up-market cachet of a bespoke British limousine.

It seemed totally modern at the time, with clean, simple lines. Make no mistake: the SUV started here, exactly four decades ago. Soon there would be imitators (Jeep Cherokee, Mitsubishi Shogun/Pajero) though it would take 20 years for the likes of BMW and Mercedes to realise that their brands too could extend into Range Rover territory.

Clean was the operative word in many ways. YVB153H is conceptually a long way from today’s Range Rover. Up close today, the car’s interior finish is more than a little basic. No leather or walnut in the finish – not even a carpet. In fact, the interior has vinyl seats and rubber floors, designed to be hosed clean of mud.

The Range Rover was not conceived as a Chelsea Tractor – it’s actually closer to, well, a tractor. The target buyer was the gentleman farmer – the sort of chap who wanted a vehicle that could do anything a standard Land Rover could do, but without the industrial styling and finish.

Tick the box for styling – it’s timeless, and has actually aged better than the series 2 Range-Rover that replaced the original after 25 years in production. And while it’s hard to imagine the car is 40 years old, when you hit the road, it does show its age.

It may have a 3.5-litre V8 under the bonnet, but it’s been detuned to just 131bhp. Low-speed torque is to the fore, at the expense of top speed. It’ll do about 100kmh flat out – I backed off at that point on Millbrook’s test circuit!. And cabin noise is dominated by transmission whine from the four-speed box, complete with big, spindly gear lever. Shifting gear takes care.

As the Range Rover developed, luxury was gradually added – and the price went up. And still the car sold – despite the oil crises of 1973 and ’79. Many poke fun at British Leyland’s 1970s output of Marinas, Allegros and Maxis, but the company produced some drop-dead classics too.

YVB153H is cared for by the Heritage Motor Museum at Gaydon – next to Jaguar Land Rover HQ. It’s not a pampered museum piece, though – in fact it was one of the most in-demand cars for test drives as the assembled motoring hacks paid homage to this UNESCO world heritage site on wheels.

Incidentally, the second Range-Rover, YVB 152H, also still survives. And it’s still a working vehicle. It was converted into a six-wheeler fire engine, and serves to this day at Cambridge Airport.

The clever gizmo is easily fitted

Car makers are very keen on stressing how eco-friendly their cars are, quoting impressive mpg and CO2 figures. What they often neglect to tell you is that in order to achieve the quoted results, you have to change the way you drive.

The trouble is, eco-driving is not something that comes easily to many drivers – especially lead-footed sales reps who think they’re Jenson Button. To drive for maximum economy, you’ve got to step off the revs – keep below 2,000rpm at all times and change up as soon as possible. You’ve got to lift off the throttle on down slopes and anticipate the traffic conditions to avoid heavy braking.

But how do you monitor this? If you’re a fleet manager, for example, how do you separate the eco-warriors from the F1 wannabes? Ford has the solution. It has come up with a device that’s smaller and lighter than a mobile phone, but that can provide detailed information about your driving patterns – and suggest areas where you should hone your skills. It’s called EconoCheck, and I’ve just spent a week driving an S-Max equipped with it, analysing my driving.

Fitting EconoCheck doesn’t even involve opening the bonnet. It just plugs into a concealed port on the dashboard, where the diagnostic tester goes during servicing. It then analysed my driving for a week, generating detailed data about how many miles and minutes I spent on the road each day; how many journeys, my average speed and how long the engine was idle.

And although I was trying to drive as smoothly as possible, the results show there was still room for improvement. The bottom line was that I had the potential to make an 8% saving in fuel economy – at the mileages tested (the equivalent of 23,000km a year), that equated to a saving of 107 litres of fuel, a reduction in CO2 emissions of 282kg and an annual financial saving of €155. Over a 50-car fleet, that’s more than €8,000 of free diesel – just for driving with a bit more care.

And it identified specific areas where I could improve - I’m revving too hard in fourth and fifth, it seems, and leaving the engine idling for too long. “Your engine idled for 29:25 minutes. This is the equivalent of a distance of around 6.1 miles at 30mph,” said the EconoCheck report, rather sternly. As a rule of thumb, 5 minutes idling consumes as much fuel as driving 1 mile at 30mph. So switch off and save!

Ford of Britain marketing director Mark Simpson is excited about the product: “Green driving is not all about the vehicle – it’s about how you drive it,” he says. “If we can also help the driver, it’s a good fleet proposition. If you’ve got 10 cars and you can get a 10% fuel saving across the fleet, for a small business that’s a big deal. It’s free fuel for one car.”

Ford is still piloting EconoCheck, with a view to a full pan-European launch later in the year. Ford wants to charge for the device, and hasn’t defined the price yet. “It won’t be hugely expensive,” says Simpson, “but we have to cover our costs.”

For fleets, it’s likely to be a loyalty-generator – so it could be offered as a free service. “The units are reusable, so the investment won’t be enormous,” Simpson adds. “We don’t really see it as a revenue stream – it’s much more about doing something for our customers and potential customers. We’d like it to represent real value.”

It’s an excellent idea, and it seems to work. Full marks for imagination, Ford!

Ghia badge on a Ford was once prized

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I wonder how Giorgetto Giugiaro really feels about seeing the ItalDesign company he spent forty years building as part of a global automaker?

He’ll surely be hoping it’ll have a better future than another Carozzerie that he headed before setting up ItalDesign in 1968 - Ghia.

From 1965 to ’67, Giugiaro, then a young, rising star of the car industry, was appointed head of design for Ghia – a company at the time most famous for a VW model, the Beetle-based Karmann Ghia coupe. Changes of ownership at Ghia meant Giugiaro’s tenure was brief. By 1970, Ghia had become a division of a major car company – Ford.

Oddly, in the same week that VW announced the ItalDesign deal, Ford announced that it had killed the Ghia sub-brand in the UK, saying it had run its course.

While the Ghia studio in Turin remains part of the Ford empire, the Ghia brand was very soon relegated to little more than a top-line trim level. Successfully too, for 30 years and counting, through various generations of Granadas, Cortinas, Escorts and Fiestas. Ghia meant plush velour seats instead of vinyl. The vinyl went on the roof, of course.

Ghia trim had come to stand for fake wood and a soft ride – certainly not the image Ford wants to project, in the UK at least. Fiesta, Focus and Mondeo have all lost their Ghia versions over the past year or so, and the last of the Ghia-badged Galaxy models will be gone any day now.

“It’s served us very well – but we’re in a new decade and we’ve got to show people we’re doing something a little bit different,” said Ford of Britain marketing director Mark Simpson.

In its place is Titanium, a more modern and youthful sub-brand, but pitched above Ghia in terms of specification, so as not to alienate the older buyer more accustomed to a Ghia.

“The Ghia customer wanted luxury and more appointment. Titanium is more modern – though we had to satisfy older customers – we didn’t want to follow Oldsmobile and reinvent the brand, but lose all our existing customers,” Simpson said. The plan seems to be working. Take-up of Titanium trim is much greater. “On old Fiesta, we sold 3% Ghia, but with the new Fiesta, Titanium take-up is over 20%,” he added.

Ghia trim lives on in many European markets, however, but the studio was reconfigured as an “virtual design centre” in 2002 – its last tangible contribution to the Ford range was the Streetka cabrio of a few years back.

It’s a bit of a waste, really – considering what might have been. In 1964, Ghia even tried to become a supercar brand of its own, creating a beautiful Chrysler-powered coupe called the L6.4 (the name relates to the size of its 6.4-litre V8 engine).

It’s a rare car, but a familiar one– how many 40-somethings had the Corgi Toys model of the L6.4 in the ’60s, complete with the little corgi dog on the parcel shelf? Coolbear certainly had one (and probably still has it somewhere) and as a young lad often wondered why he never saw a real one on the streets of Blackpool.

Probably something to do with the total production run - just 25 were built. Customers included Frank Sinatra. But he preferred Vegas to the Golden Mile...