This is a poor example of my favourite Goodwood pic;
http://londonbikers.com/_media/editorial/8d5c2de3-a6cf-44b7-bfec-3a9a8829ac74.jpg
It shows Jeremy McWilliams in the foreground, enjoying a cigar and the great Wayne Gardner on a Matchless in the background. The photo oozes "incorrectness" from every pixel. Polly Toynbee would hate it.
Gardner is sitting well back on his seat, but his testicles are still on the tank....
Aren't Britain's roads so congested that you'd never be able to reach full speed? Or never be allowed to?
I know they'd be good for escaping the country, when your drug empire goes bust (how else are you going to be able to afford these cars?), but what else are they good for?
There was an interesting selection of "low emissions" cars on display too (inverted commas because the holier-than-thou brigade on electric cars still have a blind spot on power stations not being zero emission).
My particular favourite was a hybrid that does a claimed 92mpg with a combination of a small rotary engine and electric motors on each wheel. Oh, and has a 0-60 of about 3.5s.
Hideous colour, but you can't have everything I suppose.
http://www.autoblog.com/2009/03/03/geneva-2009-frazer-nash-namir-by-giugiaro/
There are private places where a person can drive (not me - I can not drive) these cars to their full potential. And even on the more less congested government roads (and there are some) they are joy (for those who can drive) - for example their breaking and steering systems are widely superior to other cars - and they do not just look good, they FEEL good also.
Even now there are still manufacturing companies in Britain - some (including many car industry places in Northamptonshire) have some of the biggest companies in the world as their customers, and some (such as Morgan) sell direct to the general public - at least that part of the general public who afford their products.
True it is not the mass production for the poor that the industrial revolution was based on (although the companies that sell development to the general car companies do get to the mass market). But it does show that we are not yet at the stage of "atomistic individualism" (just isolated sole traders and a vast government) that the French Revolutionaries dreamed of. There is still a network of private companies - and there are still associations and ways to cooperate outside government. Formula One is an (imperfect) example of that.
Over time private cooperation (such as the companies that cooperate to create Formula One) may get less connected to government - or more connected to government.
That is the great struggle of our time. And it effects the car industry as well as everything else.
For example, the subsidies given to General Motors and Chrysler help undermine Ford (for example because the subsdies help keep the United Auto Workers union strong). For some people that does not matter - because Ford cars mostly run on government roads (and the first Henry Ford supported government roads - and he supported the credit expansion of the late 1920's), but for other people it matters very much indeed.
For me a great manufacturing enterprise is a much to be celebrated as a great farming estate. In short the industrial "revolution" (including those engineering companies in Northamptonshire) is as much to be celebrated (in spite of all its flaws) as the agricultural "revolution" that proceeded it and on whose food, raw materials, and PROFITS the industrial "revolution" depended (the old story that industrial developments depended on the profits of the slave trade is largely a myth). Other people think differently and welcome its passing.
It all depends which side someone is on.
