Steve Cropley
SUNDAY AM
Just for once, I tackled the latest Bicester Heritage Scramble without trying to see everything, because experience says you can’t. I concentrated instead on my obsession of the moment: eyeing up specials of no fixed provenance. There were two this time: an impossibly mighty twin-engined, 7.2-litre Ford-based behemoth called the Ballard Special and an Allard-based trials special offered by The Motor Shed, one of the many eclectic car businesses that make Bicester so enduringly great. Once upon a time, the sight of such a contraption would set me off concocting my own machine, to the extent of measuring it out on the garage floor, but this time I managed simply to look forward to seeing the pair again.
SUNDAY PM
Home in the Citroën ë-C4, an electric car that, after 500 miles, I believe I’ve taken too lightly. Perhaps my mistake has been too readily to recognise all the Astra bits (I’ve been driving such Vauxhalls for 15,000 miles). Zipping across the Cotswolds showed me a car with a supple ride, great seat comfort and perhaps my favourite refinement form of all: very low road noise. Its range isn’t impressive (it promised 217 miles and delivered 190-ish), but Citroën’s decision to keep the price reasonable by not overspending on the battery probably makes sense for many.
MONDAY
It’s so interesting to see how JLR’s move back onto the news agenda has panned out. I thought the story was about the new team’s potential to create a line of radical Jaguar EVs, but to the wider press, it’s about a ‘shock ditching’ of the Land Rover name. Most commentators agree with my column and podcast colleague, Matt Prior, in saying this is a decision that “somebody sensible will one day reverse”. A chat with Jeep boss Christian Meunier about jettisoning Jeep from the Wrangler was most illuminating: “He looked at me as if I was mad.”
TUESDAY
One of the best days of the year, the annual Autocar Awards ceremony, held as it has been for the past few years in the modern and welcoming Silverstone Wing. The idea is to honour and entertain the industry’s chiefs, who for the rest of the year are so damned helpful to hacks – Autocar’s hacks, anyway.
We had a wonderful attendance. It was our huge pleasure to entertain Goodwood owner the Duke of Richmond, the biggest winner, and innovator Lord Bamford of JCB, whose hydrogen combustion engine has such obvious potential in the car wor
