Viva the Niva
I could easily buy a Lada now after reading about it in your February issue. Great article. But to me, the Morgan is a joke.
There’s much to celebrate in the boldness of both – two cars not trying to be everything to everybody. CO
Lasting legacy
I just read the Hall of Fame on the Mercedes G-Wagen/G-Class in the April issue. It made me think back to the ‘The 25 Brains that Shaped Britain’ feature in the December issue, and reminded me that there were a couple of notable omissions.
One was Harry Ferguson, who as well as creating the revolutionary Ferguson tractor, created the business which developed 4x4 for race cars and road cars, from the Jensen FF to the Audi Quattro. Ricardo still builds gearboxes for the likes of Bugatti, and you can trace the lineage back.
The top 25 rightly highlighted Ratan Tata and Ralf Speth, but the missing name was the late Lord Kumar Bhattacharyya. He created Warwick Manufacturing Group at the University of Warwick in the ’80s, now known as WMG. It is now a leading university for industry-linked auto, battery and future mobility research.
It helped create UKBIC, and worked with multiple car makers most recently JLR and Tata Motors. But it was Lord Bhattacharyya’s role in facilitating the purchase of Jaguar Land Rover by Tata – he was long-term friends with Ratan Tata from his youth in India – that cements his elevated place in recent UK automotive history.
Distraction stations
Tim Pollard seems to be loving his Dacia Sandero, and in the February issue he tells us of the simple pleasures of no gadgets to distract him from driving. Why can we not have a premium car without the gadgets? How much nicer (and less expensive) would my Alfa be without all the unnecessary bits? To this end I have also bought a 2001 Ford Puma 1.7 so that I can have an analogue car to remind me what fun driving is without the distractions.
Doubling down
Alpina has become a name synonymous with tuning up BMWs and, in the process, creating some absolutely fantastic offerings. Their method of capturing the zeitgeist of the time has seen designs which ar
