Opinion

It's great to see confidence growing at Alfa Romeo. Are they getting carried away; thinking too big too quick, before more of their next-generation bread-and-butter models are even launched, let alone established in the market? 

That may be what it looks like - but boss Jean-Philippe Imparato isn't the sort to get distracted.

He talks, at every opportunity, about driving up quality and customer satisfaction. Of needing to guarantee profitability every year anew; and of succeeding at its growth plans by executing and delivering every new product to the market fully and properly, and only by doing so earning the right to move on to the next.

That's the difference that the oversight of Stellantis boss Carlos Tavares has made: a consistent focus on the health of the business.

If, within that context, there can be room for a new Spider as a halo car - or even the new SZ-inspired coupe that design boss Alejandro Mesonero-Romanos was hinting at when I chatted to him a few months ago - then it's a far different prospect than designing one within a pressure cooker, that needs to keep the business afloat all by itself.

It's the job of the designers to design; to have many good proposals prepared and ready to go, and to make the decisions of business leaders tougher, though ultimately giving them options. And, especially if they can sell it in the US, an Alfa Spider might well be a more commercially viable idea than a coupe, to buyers of a certain age especially.

On balance, I'd rather see the company go bolder with a really jaw-dropping, eye-catching coupe than play to the crowd with a convertible. But whichever model is chosen, it should work wonders for the perception of the Alfa brand.

For those of us who have spent years wondering where the Volkswagen Group was really going with Seat, once touted as its sporty mainstream marque, wonder no longer: the future is dim.

We found out at the Munich motor show that Seat is to stop being a conventional car maker. Its current models will run out and the name will live on for electric ‘mobility solutions’ – e-scooters and so on.

The car focus for Volkswagen’s Spanish arm will move entirely to Cupra, formerly Seat’s even sportier sub-brand, which has taken over the role as the flag-bearer for not just fun cars but mainstream cars too. It’s producing precisely the sort of cars that Seat was always meant to make.

For years, we were meant to perceive Seat as the Volkswagen Group’s answer to Alfa Romeo, making cars that were dynamically adept, easy on the eye and not uneasy on the pocket. This is effectively what Cupra does now.

Take the Formentor, a model exclusive to Cupra (unlike the earlier Ateca and Leon). Although it looks striking, with a long bonnet, and there are some quick versions, it isn’t a sports model: it’s a five-door family crossover that, with a 1.5-litre engine and an automatic gearbox, can be had for £315 a month.

It would look just as good and drive just as well with a Seat badge. And I can’t imagine that, outside Spain, the names Seat and Cupra are so ingrained in car buyers’ psyches that it would make the slightest bit of difference to all but the keenest of enthusiasts. Would it?

Maybe Cupra really does mean something to everyday car buyers that Seat never did or ever could do. But, as feels more likely to me, people working at the company feel differently about the two brands and therefore work differently with them.

Talking about the new Dark Rebel concept car, a dramatic sports coupé, Cupra design boss Jorge Díez told us that “with no heritage or need to keep to DNA, we can make it from scratch”.

That’s no doubt accurate. But would ardent Seat fans have been banging down the doors at Martorell in protest had the Dark Rebel come out exactly the same, save for having a Seat badge? “Sorry, Jorge, but this just isn’t sufficiently Alhambraey.”

Whatever, I’m pleased for the people who work there that, after years of stagnation, they’ve alighted on a brand that seems to have hit a sweet spot. Although it feels like a direction that the parent brand could and should have taken a couple of decades ago.

Another new ‘brand’ that’s having no trouble expanding is Caffeine & Machine, which runs a hub/pub/coffee shop/hotel/place to take your car in Ettington, Warwickshire.

Last week, it opened a new branch, The Bowl, in Houghton Conquest, Bedfordshire, not far from Millbrook Proving Ground. That came as a bit of a surprise: I knew the team was working on opening two other venues, one farther north, one farther south, yet  this one popped up first.

I really like locations like this – Caffeine & Machine or any of the other hospitality outlets notably friendly to cars or bikes. It makes me more inclined to get out.

A mate of mine thinks differently: ignore this car culture nonsense, he says, and just go for a drive – you’ve got a kettle at home. I’m sure that ultimately he’s right, but somehow I like to have a destination in mind. It feels better to plan to go somewhere than plan to go to where I started.

Either way, I’m happy to have another destination in mind.

We’re long past the stage of debating whether or not the original 2020 decision to ban the sale of new internal-combustion-engined cars in 2030 was a good one, yet for better or worse the fact is the date was set both in the minds of car buyers and the industry itself in making investments to ensure it was ready for the switch to EV.

Yet ever since that day, the amount of indecision and lack of leadership and ownership on this issue from the UK government has been remarkable, something set to culminate this week with prime minister Rishi Sunak delaying the ban for five years.

For starters, the rollout of a charging network to support the switch to EV has been painfully slow. The five-year delay is probably needed to make it fit for purpose, less it be used as an excuse to simply drag heels for longer. Based on experiences so far, I know what seems more likely.

Then there’s consumer confidence. The government’s will-they-won’t-they flip-flopping on the 2030 date has hardly been a ringing endorsement for the casual car buyer wondering whether or not to make the switch to EV.

READ MORE: Government considering delaying introduction of 2030 ICE ban

Electric cars have many merits, but in the wider public consciousness, they are new with lots of unknowns, and rather than a positive education and hand-holding job through the transition backed by incentives, shade has been thrown on them and doubts about whether or not a switch will happen as planned were allowed to fester.

For car buyers, the likes of the Ford Fiesta and other smaller, more affordable cars are being killed off anyway to make way for EVs. Given the long-term view needed on investments in new cars, the five-year delay isn’t going to magically bring them back.

Then there's the inability to even clarify the law itself. The 2030 ban was really a 2035 ban, given the exemption for hybrids with ‘a meaningful electric range’ that remained within it for five years. Remarkably, though, that hybrid exemption was never outlined. We won’t ever know now. Did the government? Unlikely.

This was true too of the ZEV mandate, a rising increase of the proportion of EV sales car makers must hit between now and 2030. Just a few months out from its introduction in 2024, it has yet to be officially set. It was tipped to be released this week, but whether the ZEV mandate now survives is another unknown. How have car makers been supposed to business plan inventories for next year amid the lack of any clarity on a key regulatory framework with large fines for not hitting it?

READ MORE: Car makers demand clear hybrid definition as 2030 approaches

This too should be the end of the UK wanting to be seen as a leader in climate change and will seriously dent this country’s standing as a place for businesses to invest in a stable, forward-looking regulatory environment. It’s a softening of what was a world-leading stance on making a switch and businesses are rightly annoyed.

Ford UK boss Lisa Brankin said her business requires “ambition, commitment and consistency” from the government, and a removal of the 2030 ban would undermine all three. Again, whatever you think of the ban in the first place, Brankin’s words ring true for the situation we’re in.

Perhaps the date was too ambitious anyway, given the 2035 date set by the European Union that the UK now falls in line with. Given where the power balance lies between the UK and EU when it comes to the automotive industry, alignment with the EU always seemed the more sensible path anyway.

I can remember the day it was announced: the ban was listed as a single-line bullet point in a long list of net zero targets. There wasn’t any other information at the time and it all seemed rather whimsical. The three years of chaos since then should have been three years of careful planning before that date to perhaps end up at the same decision as Sunak will settle on this week, yet of course there’s the added backdrop here of votes to be won in crucial upcoming by-elections, with a general election looming in around a year’s time.

After my irate column of 16 August on the subject of people being asked to pay ongoing fees to use features in their cars, I think I’ve put my finger on what irritates me most about it.

It’s the idea that a manufacturer wants to retain some kind of stake in or ownership of a product long after you’ve bought and paid for it.

I’ve had a lot of correspondence on this. Only a few people have said they think it’s okay, but I suspect I will remain unconvinced regardless of the elegance of the arguments or analogies. The vast majority agree that it’s a grim practice.

Accordingly, BMW will stop charging such fees for hardware-based features (although not for software-based features) on its future cars.

Sales and marketing boss Pieter Nota told us at the Munich motor show: “We thought that we would provide an extra service to the customer by offering the chance to activate that later, but the user acceptance isn’t that high.

People feel that they paid double, which was actually not true, but perception is reality, I always say. So that was the reason we stopped that.”

My analogy is to imagine a property developer building 1000 houses to the same design, all with an en suite bathroom, because it’s cheaper than troubling the builders to make some with, some without.

So you buy one, move in and love it. What a place, and it’s all yours! But what’s that behind this door? Ah, now that, say the developers, is an extra bathroom, but you can only access it if you give them £30 a month in perpetuity.

I think if that happened, there would be lots of doors kicked in. So should there be here.

The origins of the word 'supercar'

Researching the origin of the word ‘supercar’ (or ‘super-car’) for my column of 30 August, I found that it got its first outing in Autocar in an advert in 1915 and in an article (about aero-engined specials) in 1921.

My reading was, however, limited to our digital archive (subscriptions sold here, would make a great present, etc).

In Man of Speed, the biography of engineer Reid Railton by estimable historian and author Karl Ludvigsen, he mentions that the term also appeared in a 1921 issue of The Motor, a weekly magazine much later incorporated into Autocar.

There it referenced, rather than a general idea, a specific machine. ‘First Descriptions of the Performance of a British Super-car in which Originality and Unconventionality are Prominently Characterised’, ran the headline on the Leyland Eight, designed by Railton and his gaffer, Leyland chief engineer JP Parry-Thomas.

Parry-Thomas, a setter of many speed records, would later race a special-bodied version of the car, dubbed the Leyland-Thomas, at Brooklands, lapping the circuit at 129.73mph.

It’s often unclear which car is the first of any genre, and Ludvigsen is inclined to discount the word when used by manufacturers in adverts, although as it not long after entered general vernacular, I’m more relaxed about that.

The Eight wasn’t the first car of its type, but if one is looking for the first specific model that was independently referred to as a supercar and certainly thought of as one, it could be that.

Are car parking providers easing up?

Twice this year I’ve appealed against private car park penalty notices and succeeded (kudos to NCP for its one, which I didn’t think it was obligated to).

Meanwhile, at short notice, I’ve just delayed a Europcar hire car’s return by a good few hours and been told there’s no extra fee.

Am I lucky, or have parking and car hire providers, so often maligned, recently become more consumer-friendly?

After my irate column of 16 August on the subject of people being asked to pay ongoing fees to use features in their cars, I think I’ve put my finger on what irritates me most about it.

It’s the idea that a manufacturer wants to retain some kind of stake in or ownership of a product long after you’ve bought and paid for it.

I’ve had a lot of correspondence on this. Only a few people have said they think it’s okay, but I suspect I will remain unconvinced regardless of the elegance of the arguments or analogies. The vast majority agree that it’s a grim practice.

Accordingly, BMW will stop charging such fees for hardware-based features (although not for software-based features) on its future cars.

Sales and marketing boss Pieter Nota told us at the Munich motor show: “We thought that we would provide an extra service to the customer by offering the chance to activate that later, but the user acceptance isn’t that high.

People feel that they paid double, which was actually not true, but perception is reality, I always say. So that was the reason we stopped that.”

My analogy is to imagine a property developer building 1000 houses to the same design, all with an en suite bathroom, because it’s cheaper than troubling the builders to make some with, some without.

So you buy one, move in and love it. What a place, and it’s all yours! But what’s that behind this door? Ah, now that, say the developers, is an extra bathroom, but you can only access it if you give them £30 a month in perpetuity.

I think if that happened, there would be lots of doors kicked in. So should there be here.

The origins of the word 'supercar'

Researching the origin of the word ‘supercar’ (or ‘super-car’) for my column of 30 August, I found that it got its first outing in Autocar in an advert in 1915 and in an article (about aero-engined specials) in 1921.

My reading was, however, limited to our digital archive (subscriptions sold here, would make a great present, etc).

In Man of Speed, the biography of engineer Reid Railton by estimable historian and author Karl Ludvigsen, he mentions that the term also appeared in a 1921 issue of The Motor, a weekly magazine much later incorporated into Autocar.

There it referenced, rather than a general idea, a specific machine. ‘First Descriptions of the Performance of a British Super-car in which Originality and Unconventionality are Prominently Characterised’, ran the headline on the Leyland Eight, designed by Railton and his gaffer, Leyland chief engineer JP Parry-Thomas.

Parry-Thomas, a setter of many speed records, would later race a special-bodied version of the car, dubbed the Leyland-Thomas, at Brooklands, lapping the circuit at 129.73mph.

It’s often unclear which car is the first of any genre, and Ludvigsen is inclined to discount the word when used by manufacturers in adverts, although as it not long after entered general vernacular, I’m more relaxed about that.

The Eight wasn’t the first car of its type, but if one is looking for the first specific model that was independently referred to as a supercar and certainly thought of as one, it could be that.

Are car parking providers easing up?

Twice this year I’ve appealed against private car park penalty notices and succeeded (kudos to NCP for its one, which I didn’t think it was obligated to).

Meanwhile, at short notice, I’ve just delayed a Europcar hire car’s return by a good few hours and been told there’s no extra fee.

Am I lucky, or have parking and car hire providers, so often maligned, recently become more consumer-friendly?