Britain, as you may have heard, perhaps while basking under an Antipodean summer sun (particularly good this year, we hear), has been a bit chilly these past three weeks, the thaw finally began in earnest today. Much of the north, west and south has been coated in snow; here in the Midlands, some of us escaped till Tuesday last week when another foot of the white stuff brought the country to its usual slithering halt, including parts not previously affected. Like my place. Not enough grit had been stocked, y’see, as the weather office (reportedly headed by a GBP200,000-a-year bureaucrat who is not actually an, er, weather forecaster) had not predicted we’d get such a long spell of real winter. So while overtime was worked down t’ salt mine oop north, only main roads got ploughed and scattered and streets in the burbs like mine, just a wee bit up a tiny hill, were occasionally impassable.
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At times like this, the idiot officials always surface. Don’t clear the path in front of your house, we were told, helpfully. Do anything but a 100% proper job and, if someone slips on fresh ice, you could be sued. So we all dutifully left up to a foot of goop in place and people walked down the middle of the road, dodging skidding cars as they went. In the US, not clearing your stretch of walk will get you fined. Why can’t we just change the liability laws to reflect common sense?
In the end some people did just what you should do in the face of stupid edicts from brainless bureaucrats: ignored them completely and turned out with shovels, brooms, and bags of cat litter (an excellent grit substitute) to clear streets and school grounds so they could get about and the kids could get in for vital exams.
Meanwhile, ‘elf ‘n’ safety’ (health and safety) officials decreed binmen could not possibly go out and clear ungritted (but, in many cases, passable with care) streets of the bags and wheely bins of household rubbish and recyclables accumulating in ever-growing stacks – in case the poor little things slipped and got a bruise or two. My favourite bit of daftness was the suits at Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (tax office to you and me) who, from their centrally-heated offices in London, decreed they would heavily fine any hill country farmer who had the temerity to take his ‘red’ diesel fuelled (and therefore not tax-paid for road use) tractor a few yards down the lane to dig out the elderly neighbours before they froze to death. As a well known tabloid columnist here often writes: “you couldn’t make it up”.
Nor, it seems, could you do that with the ongoing Saab sale or no sale saga we have also been watching for weeks now. Bid deadlines have come and gone, potential buyers have been rumoured and denied, there have been stories of old model tooling sales and, by late Friday afternoon UK time, the wind-down team is in, having displaced the board and CEO earlier this week, a new Spyker bid is on the table, cars are still being built, talks are still ongoing and Saab, albeit on life support, is still with us.
I wonder if they have seen a surge of orders from those wanting a last ‘real’ Saab before production, maybe in China, resumes? Certainly, if you were winding the brand down for GM, you’d want to keep an eye on the tooling because at least a decade of parts and servicing revenue is there for the plundering, as Caterpillar, to whom MG Rover parts procurement and distribution was outsourced before the company’s 2005 demise, will have noticed, to the benefit of the bottom line.
If Ford’s mission for this week’s Detroit show (and last week’s consumer electronics event in Las Vegas) was ‘maximise press coverage’ it’s job done and Champagne time in Dearborn about now. Having attracted a lot of coverage for new in-car electronics in Nevada, the blue oval pretty much stole Detroit with its redesigned (in, ahem, Europe) Focus supported by a product line that has been much revamped on a certain Mr Mulally’s watch.
Ford’s supremo did not attract all the ink; GM’s Ed Whiteacre, fresh from shaking up most of the top management team, was confident and bullish, promising that the US$6.7bn loaned by the government would be back in Uncle Sam’s piggy bank by the end of June.
Nice new coupe from Volkswagen, too, stylish enough to give the BMW 3-series some (presumably cheaper) competition. This apparently production-ready car, or something much like it, is likely to be seen next on the lines at VW’s soon-to-open new plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Electric vehicles were, of course, in the news this week. First, there was this blast from the past, proof that there’s relatively few really new ideas in the auto biz, just better and better ways of building on a Good Idea thought up long ago. Back in the present, another voltswagen made its Brussels show debut; Citroen’s C-Zero is of course, made by Mitsubishi on an OEM basis and is essentially a rebadged i-MiEV.
Not to be outdone, Toyota unveiled another li-ion battery powered hybrid and, just today, a senior engineer said he’d like the automaker’s plug-in hybrids (also with li-ion batteries) to be as affordable as possible. Hear hear.
Have a nice weekend.
Graeme Roberts
Deputy/News Editor
just-auto.com
