The big surprise about the P38 Range Rover

IT’S not every eleven-year-old who gets the gig of redesigning Southport Pier. Why subcontract Southport’s seaside flagship out to some high-flying architect when you can get a bunch of schoolkids to do it?

Yet that’s exactly what I – and about 30 of my classmates – got asked to as a school project once. Obviously my design was the best of the bunch, but I remember having an argument with the council mandarin who came in to judge our efforts, who disagreed with my vision of the pier’s future. Having listened to our views, the council boffins went off – and then ordered the pier buildings to replaced with what I recall being memorably described at the time as an ‘airport terminal on stilts’.

I was thinking about this the other day when driving around in something else that had the difficult task of following up a decades-old institution – the second generation Range Rover. Any replacement for anything that’s universally loved is always going to get a rough ride. The 1994-2002 model is definitely the Rangie’s difficult second album.

It arrives in the dock charged with two counts of not being a proper Range Rover – one that it looks like a Metrocab and the other that it’s horrendously unreliable.

It’s tricky to defend the latter because I remember the car’s Achille’s heel – the complicated air suspension system – letting go on a friend’s 4.0 SE a couple of years ago and prompting a four-figure bill. Yet look back at its showings in the customer satisfaction surveys and you’ll find it was just as bad as Land Rover’s other offerings at the time – certainly, Discovery owners were equally frustrated. The Range Rover’s come on in leaps and bounds since the 1990s – but so have plenty of other cars.

But get past that – and the looks, which actually improved with the subtle nips and tucks over the years – and you’ll discover it feels like a Range Rover.

All the Range Rovers I’ve driven over the years – from a 1970 two-door to the 500bhp leviathan that tops today’s range – give you this wonderful feeling of being slightly invincible. You feel secure knowing that even if your alloys are six inches deep in thick mud you’ll power out of it effortlessly – and the most you’ll have to worry about is what position your electrically-operated leather seat should be in.

The second-gen Range Rover does all of that. Yes, it’s thirsty, but so is every other big off-roader, and because people dismiss the ‘bad’ Range Rover it’s a lot cheaper than its predecessor.

As second acts go it was brilliant. Although not as brilliant as my schoolboy redesign of Southport Pier was.

Genesis – the beginning of a tricky car experiment

JUST the other day I spent rather too long looking longingly at wax jackets in a swanky shop in the Lake District.

Normally I have about as much interest in clothes as Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen does in launch control systems and the McLaren 650S but I have a soft spot for wax jackets. Specifically Barbour wax jackets – it just goes with the Range Rover-driving, real ale-swigging, fell walking lifestyle I’ve been brought up with. Which is why I was weighing up whether to throw £250 at what is basically a glorified coat for Countryfile viewers.

The car world has been onto this mawkish obsession with brands and lifestyle – and it knows people like me will happily fork out extra for something because it’s made by Land Rover or BMW rather than Skoda or Dacia.

It’s also why the market for big – but mass-market – cars has pretty much evaporated in the UK. The likes of the Vauxhall Omega and Peugeot 607 have quietly slipped off to the mortal coil while BMW, Mercedes, Jaguar and (increasingly over the last 15 years) Audi have lapped up the managing director money. So it was perhaps inevitable I declared back in February the chances of anyone buying a £48,000 Hyundai was virtually non-existent.

But it turns out Hyundai knew this all along – which is why it’s pulling off a trick Toyota managed 20 years ago. A Lexus LS600h is basically what happens when Asda makes its own wax jacket – you might sneer at Asda’s offering, but you might just be tempted by a George one if it’s cheap enough.

That’s why you can now buy a DS (quietly made by Citroën), an Infiniti (a Nissan in all but name), a Vignale (a rejigged, upmarket Mondeo) and if we’re being cruel, an Audi (the emissions scandal has reminded us how that Ingolstadt’s upmarket offerings are laced with cut-price Volkswagen meat).

Hyundai’s plan is to serve up six luxury models completely bereft of the H-word – they will all be sold here as Genesis (ideally with Phil Collins-branded drum brakes). A luxury Hyundai would flop spectacularly, but a luxury Genesis might just do a Lexus and pull it off.

You’ll need £47,995 to take part in Hyundai’s biggest experiment yet, although chances are – given my shopping habits at the moment - I’ll probably spend roughly the same on wax jackets and real ale.

Spectre - great film, shame about the cars

I’M THINKING of opening a sanctuary – perhaps on some remote Scottish island – for fellow film fanatics in the run-up to James Bond’s next outing.

I can’t be the only film fanatic determined to avoid anything that might have prematurely ruined Spectre, but it was nigh on impossible to avoid finding out the plot details unless you spent the last six months in a cave or with your head planted firmly in the sand – something the film’s creators didn't exactly help by dripping trailer after trailer onto my Facebook feed every other night.

In the end it turned out to be a belter of a film. Don't worry - I’m not going to reveal which femme fatale he beds or what facial disfigurement the villain has if you haven't seen it, but you’ll have to allow me one spoiler alert. Why was Daniel Craig – the best ‘real world’ Bond since Timothy Dalton leapt into a swimming pool in Licence to Kill – getting involved with cars you and I can’t actually buy?

Everyone knows great cars – whether they’ve been approved by Q or not - and Bond films go together. Sean Connery being told his Bentley’s ‘had its day’ and then being introduced to a silver car with a few optional extras is one of cinema’s greatest moments, and Roger Moore winding down the window of his aquatic Lotus and casually throwing out a fish one of its funniest. Then there’s the moment Timothy Dalton fights his way through the roof of a swerving army Land Rover in the opening moments of The Living Daylights, and that glorious moment when Daniel Craig flicks on the lights to reveal a gleaming DB5 in Skyfall.

All of these vehicles have one glorious thing in common – you can, even if you might need to be a millionaire in some cases, buy all these cars in real life. Yet you can’t with Spectre’s automotive stars.

For starters there’s Bond’s car – an Aston Martin of course, but unlike the DBS or DB5 the DB10 Daniel Craig uses is not actually a production model. The closest you’ll be able to get is next year’s DB11. Close, but not exactly the MI6-spec the Bond fantasists who propel Aston’s fortunes will be wishing for this Christmas.

It’s the same story with the baddies’ choice bit of kit – a Jaguar C-X75, which was mooted as an XJ220 successor at the Paris motor show five years ago. It wasn’t a production car then and it still isn’t now – and I reckon using one in Spectre is giving today’s kids false hope.

It's a top-notch 007 outing – but I just thought the cars (except the one at the very end) were a bit of a letdown.

You love the NEC Classic Motor Show - here are some other great classic car shows you won't want to miss

LAST weekend I joined 68,000 of you in getting up at the crack of dawn so they can join a traffic jam just outside Birmingham. It was worth it – the Lancaster Insurance Classic Motor Show is one of those automotive pilgrimages everyone should do at least once.

Even petrolheads I know who think anything south of Crewe is ‘a bit far’ will happily head down the M6 to see 3000 classic cars – whether it’s an Austin Maestro van or an Aston Martin Vanquish that floats your boat, chances are you’ll have found it in Birmingham’s halls of automotive dreams.

It’s also the place where you can see Mike Brewer and Edd China finish a three-day resto miraculously close to kicking-out time on the final day and where just about every spare part imaginable will be at the bottom of a box on an autojumble stand.

It’s great fun – but it’s also where most petrolheads’ idea of a weekend outing stops.

The NEC show is great despite having to visit Birmingham on a dreary weekend. Auto Retro, on the other hand, is an excuse to persuade the other half to catch some winter sun in Barcelona – and it’s only a budget flight away from Liverpool or Manchester. If you’re staying overnight Barcelona’s hotels cost roughly the same as Birmingham’s – and whichever way you cut it, you’re more likely to persuade your other half with Gaudi’s basilica than the Bullring shopping centre.

It’s the same story with Germany. I love the Silverstone Classic, but book your plane tickets now on the cheap and you could just easily go to the Nürburgring in the height of summer for the AVD Oldtimer Grand Prix. Forget the language barrier – it’s worth going just to see all those BMW M1s and Porsche 911s going to war on the world’s scariest race track.

Then there’s the Irish National Classic Car Show in Dublin next March – a whole day of motoring fun and an evening of knocking back pints of Guiness, less than an hour from John Lennon airport – or the AutoMotoRetro show in the shadow of the old Fiat factory in Turin. Then there’s the behemoth that is the Essen show next April – if you think your feet get a bit tired after a day after tramping around the NEC then you’ll have no idea just how enormous Europe’s biggest classic car show is. You could spend weeks wandering around in there!

The NEC is great and as a show it belongs to 'us' - the classic car nuts. But just remember there are so many other shows just waiting to be discovered, and they’re only a cheap flight away.

Adios, amigo. See you in Barcelona!

Read more about the Lancaster Insurance Classic Motor Show in today's issue of Classic Car Weekly

Today’s superminis would make Gordon Gekko envious

IT’S 1986 and you’re that well-off walking stereotype of the moment – the young urban professional. A yuppie, in other words, and you’re proud to admit it.

Naturally, you do what everyone else is doing with their latest big bonus, and wander over to your nearest Mercedes showroom. About an hour later, you emerge with a big smile and a minty fresh 190E on order – and you’ve ticked every single box on the options list.

Fast forward 29 years and it’s paired up with another product of 1986 – me. After a brief test drive you’d have to conclude Stuttgart’s finest ages fares far better than a base-spec Simister of the same vintage, because 124,000 miles later absolutely everything still works perfectly. There is something mind-boggling about how a Mercedes that’s as old as I am still feels like it could do a round trip to the Moon without going wrong.

But in terms of gadgets it’s positively outclassed by even today’s smallest and cheapest offerings. In the same way you now get more computing power in a smartphone than NASA used for its Apollo missions, it’s now possible to get Yuppie-impressing levels of luxury in a Hyundai i20.

Alright, so I cheated a bit – it was the range-topping Premium SE Nav rather than the austerity-spec S – but I was still impressed by how much of a Gadget Show prize giveaway the Koreans have squeezed into their second smallest model. You get satnav, Bluetooth, USB connectivity, a helping of electric everything, anti-lock brakes, cruise control, a top-notch stereo you can operate from the steering wheel and – pause for breath – front AND rear parking sensors. Porsche 944 man would have fainted in disbelief if you’d offered him that lot back in 1986!

There are two truths here. Firstly, that the motoring world has come on to the extent that your brand new supermini is effectively a shrunken LS400, but more importantly that you only have to look to what Gordon Gekko Jr is buying right now to see what the Hyundais and Vauxhalls of 15 years’ time will have.

In-car WiFi, in-built fridges to keep your drinks cool, massaging seats and radar-guided cruise control? It’ll happen one day – and I bet that 190E will still be plodding on too.