Opinion

For a while, it seemed worryingly like BMW had lost it.

The wanton controversiality of the buck-toothed 4 Series, outlandish iX and wilfully challenging i7 gave the impression that the firm was eschewing mass appeal entirely in pursuit of heightened appeal in the more lucrative luxury market, among demographics who value polarisation over panache.

Now, though, with the comparatively subtle (you might even say objectively handsome) treatment of its latest concept car, the Vision Neue Klasse, together with its associated virtuous messaging around sustainability, connectivity and utility, BMW will no doubt rekindle a spark of excitement and intrigue in those who had been left cold by some of its recent efforts.

BMW Neue Klasse concept sets tone for brand's EV reinvention

It doesn’t directly preview any one production car (though you can bet the 2025 3 Series replacement will be a pretty good match…) but rather an entire line-up of dramatic, imposing EVs with the range, kerb appeal and technological functionality to really move the premium EV game along.

The signs are hugely promising: the cosy, minimalist cabin is a pretty vocal pushback from the incremental industry-wide shift towards drab, dreary cockpits, and the technology housed within seems set to tangibly improve the driving experience, rather than impede it.

And while the Neue Klasse’s defining design cues are perhaps no less ostentatious than those of BMW’s most polarising recent efforts, the sharp, cab-back silhouette and muscular proportions go some way to reassuring us that not all new-age EV saloons will be amorphous, anonymous, aero-obsessed blobs.

There will be vocal detractors to the decision to swap physical controls for voice activation, those who argue that a full-width head-up display will be distracting on the move and possibly even more critics of that striking new front-end design.

But perhaps all comers can be united in agreement that BMW’s ‘new class’ of electric cars will strike a commendable balance between honouring the most celebrated aspects of the firm’s historic models and warmly embracing the future.

My eyebrow was raised by a motoring story in The Times newspaper last week, which attributed the luxury car dealer Tom Hartley with coining the word ‘supercar’ in Britain.

It made me wonder whether or not that was true (it isn’t), and if not, from where its use came.

Even the best encyclopedic corners of the internet are vague about the supercar. Not only the specifics of what one is (in short, it’s a very fast car, but perhaps we will revisit that another time) but also from where the term comes. And so once more, my friends, to Autocar’s new digital archive.

It turns out the word supercar arrived early. I found the very first uses of the term – albeit hyphenated to super-car – in the mid-1910s, mostly in adverts.

First it came via the American manufacturer King, which in 1915 produced a new eight-cylinder model. “To ride in this super-car is to eliminate the mechanical presence in motoring,” King’s copywriters claimed, with period modesty. Price from £355, by the way.

Through the late 1910s and into the early 1920s, luxury car makers such as Rolls-Royce, Bentley, Lanchester and Farman used the word, albeit referring as much to a car’s size as its speed – although the two went hand in hand back then.

In 1921, ‘super-car’ came to an editorial piece about fitting large cars with larger aero engines. “What could be more interesting than to marry the two, and thus obtain a super-car?” we wrote. It’s a sentiment that’s hard to disagree with today.

And I think that definition of a super-car, or supercar, largely holds up a century on. But by the mid-1920s, hyphenated or otherwise, the term had fallen out of frequent use.

Its return again came via the US. In a review of 1968 model-year American cars, a US writer introduced Autocar readers to ‘supercars’ such as the Pontiac GTO, Ford Fairlane GT and Mercury Comet Cyclone.

The term remained a staple in our Detroit Notebook column throughout the late 1960s, describing the fastest variants of what we’ve now come to think of as muscle cars.

Into the 1970s, then, and enter the De Tomaso Pantera, whose “shattering performance and spectacular good looks put it fairly and squarely in the supercar bracket”, according to our 1972 road test.

The De Tomaso, which we mooted as a successor to the Ford GT40, had a Ford V8. Was this Italian car’s Detroit iron the missing link that allowed the term to migrate over from American muscle to mid-engined European coupés?

Who knows? But by 1973, we were talking with familiarity about “these supercars”, the new Ferrari Berlinetta Boxer and upcoming Lamborghini Countach, and associating the term with a near-200mph top speed.

But only a year later, we thought it might have run its course: “Supercars – the end of the line?” we asked about the Countach as it entered production, neatly confirming Betteridge’s law that any headline ending in a question mark can be answered ‘no’. “Will speed limits, tightening legislation, and the lack of opportunity to use its 180mph performance make [the Countach] the last of its type?” No. No it won’t.

By 1975, supercars were so common that we thought one formed an “essential part of the range” of a prestige manufacturer, and the term has slowed not at all since. A search of 2022’s magazines returned more than 200 results for it.

The supercars keep coming, then, and they keep getting faster. Is that commonality what was behind the creation of the more extreme term ‘hypercar’? Not exactly. More on that too, perhaps, another time

When the automotive industry has made the national headlines in recent years, it’s rarely been for positive reasons.

The latest example of this has been the expansion of the Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) in London, an environmental policy that’s already onto a loser in the popularity stakes by hitting people in their pockets.

Could the vociferous negative reaction to ULEZ that’s now spilled onto the streets with protests (and even seen cameras chopped down) be repeated as we head towards the government’s ban on the sale of internal combustion-engined vehicles in the next decade?

An expanded ULEZ is something we’ve known has been coming for a long time, yet as the date loomed the debate around it only gained in intensity as it dawned on people the policy really was going to start costing them money.

The 2030 ban has a longer run-in, yet here again we have an environmental policy that’s going to put a dent in voters’ wallets. While EVs surely will end up achieving cost parity with their ICE equivalents, the collateral damage has already been done: smaller, more affordable new cars are already a near-extinct breed, as they are no longer economical (or indeed profitable) for car makers. Investments have instead been diverted into battery-electric vehicles and something has had to give.

The crux of the opposition to ULEZ is that it’s seen as a tax on the poor, those unable to afford compliant vehicles, and the argument around the 2030 ban as its introduction comes over the horizon could quite easily follow a similar path.

The usual ‘well, you can always buy used’ argument undermines the very premise of the policy in the first place - and don’t forget that the government has still yet to reveal how it will fund the multi-billion tax shortfall from a fall in fuel duty revenue as more EVs take to the road. Don’t be surprised to simply see fuel duty increased over the next decade. Such a move would do wonders for the popularity of EVs amongst those that can’t afford them, no doubt…

Many have highlighted the removal of truly affordable new cars (let’s face it, an MG 4 might be a bargain amongst its EV peers at £26k but it’s not a £14k Dacia Sandero) as a societal issue governments will have to confront. The reaction to ULEZ has perhaps shown a glimpse of what’s to come.

Renewed customer interest saved both salad cream and Subbuteo when they were threatened with their production ending.

Their respective waning popularity was apparently caused by the inexorable rise of mayonnaise and video games as we all morphed into louche poshos.

But when their makers announced their demises, an upsurge in nostalgic popularity caused U-turns. And praise be, to this day, we can still enjoy tangy lettuce while flicking hemispherically mounted figurines around a tabletop.

I thought this was quite a recent memory, but it turns out that both products were saved in 2000.

If you thought so too, apologies for reminding you of that particularly horrible phenomenon of ageing whereby what you thought happened last week you actually recall from several decades past, even though you can’t find the glasses that you set down 20 minutes ago.

Anyway, the Ford Fiesta, perhaps Britain’s best-loved small car, went out of production last month. I don’t know if demand for the new supermini had picked up notably, but there’s rather more regulation on new cars than plastic footballers, there are more supply contracts to sign and factory capacities to worry about, so I suspect that no amount of craving would have saved a model whose profitability was crippled by mandatory safety and emissions obligations.

Its demise did, though, cause an upsurge in interest in older Fiestas. The classifieds website Car & Classic noted that searches for Fiestas rose 70% over their normal levels during the weekend that Fiesta production finished.

But what of values? I don’t suppose there are huge numbers of people looking into Fiestas as investment buys, but it stands to reason that when demand rises, so do prices.

In the year leading up to the announcement last October that production would end, C&C’s Fiesta selling prices averaged £5000. Since then, the average has been £7200. Should one buy-buy-buy? They are cute cars and prices are on the up.

Well, not so fast. There are so few XR and RS models that particularly big spikes in their prices (up 19% and 130% respectively) could be down to curios, as with that Sierra Cosworth RS500 that went for nearly £600,000 a few months ago. ST prices are actually down (13%), although most are so recent that they will be models that are just following a natural depreciation trend. 

And anyway, with inflation high, who is to say that a double-digit percentage increase in value is in fact much of an earner?

I don’t think I would take the chance. Better, I think, to buy something because you want one rather than because of any potential return on investment – which is a slight ‘do as I say, not as I do’, because I bought the Honda Africa Twin motorcycle that I’m currently riding around Ireland just when Honda announced the new one in 2016, thinking that I could own it for a couple of enjoyable years and then move it on.

Alas, no. Not because Africa Twin values haven’t increased – they have – but because it has worked its way into my affections to such an extent that I can now never sell it.

From a fun investment, it became a useful tool, then my favourite way to travel to now perhaps the best thing I own. I do all of the servicing on it, I know its every foible and, as I write, I’ve begun a list of the jobs it will need over the winter.

For as long as I can get on it, I will ride it. So a word of caution if you’re considering buying into a model you think is on the up: as a hobby, it might be fantastic; as an investment, you might as well buy a bottle of salad cream.