Off With The Edd

I don’t know why but I felt slightly sad when I heard this week that Edd China, the towering mechanic from Wheeler Dealers, has left the show due to ‘artistic differences’. Having watched the show from the very beginning, over the years I came to see him as a sort of sage mentor offering me insight and tips to help me avoid tragic issues when fettling my classic.

Apparently, Velocity, the new producers, want fiddle with the format dumbing down the technical bits because they’re difficult and time consuming to film. This decision made regardless of the fact that these segments are the most enjoyable element of the show. Especially to those who actually like cars and are watching in active, learning mode. 

Apparently this change is due to the continued success of the programme where it has grown from niche cable viewing with a mainly UK audience, to one which is shown all over the world. Talk about being a victim of one's success but it’s probably been brewing for a while.

Such a shame.  I can now see becoming over dramatised and awkwardly edited to accommodate multiple US advert breaks. It will become littered with engineered incidents and replete with unnecessary dramas, imaginary deadlines and overblown cliff-hangers. Just look at shows like Sin City Motors or Fast N’ Loud as examples of that type of format. Oh dear…

I also suspect that more emphasis will go onto Mike Brewer as the cheeky British chappie that the Americans seem to like so much.

As for me, I prefer the depiction of an Englishman; King of his shed fettling his motor, attending to the details and stoically doing the job properly. That, alas, was Edd’s former role.

The new boy is Ant Anstead a well-respected car restorer who will no doubt do an excellent job of the resto’s. However, it’s sure we’ll see less of him and his socket set than we’re used to. That’s probably one of the main reasons I’ll watch: to see the difference. Who knows, it might be like when they change Dr Who: awkward for a while then you don’t notice the difference. I doubt it though.

Wheeler Dealers is the Daddy of car restoration shows TV. Well before this format became the vogue, Mike and Edd have been buying cars, doing them up and flogging them on effectively defining the tone and content of these types of show. It mattered not that cockney geezer Mike often buys cars of dubious quality and doesn't pay Edd a penny in labour to offset the profits.

Over the years they've done up many cars and have progressed from car-lot lemons to high-end motors as their budgets and popularity have increased. Although they have flexed the format over time, the main USP in this show was we saw the restoration being work done in useful detail.  And in that role Edd’s stature grew from backroom boy to greasy-gloved co-host to the benefit of the show to my mind.

I can honestly say I've found Edd's various advices useful as he tackled the oily fingered problems that Mike failed to spot on his buying journeys. In doing so, he has offered some genuinely useful hints and tips when dealing with complex engineering issues.

So, if we no longer find Wheeler Dealers to our taste, what are the alternatives?  Here’s my view of a couple of rival shows that might fill the void.

For the Love of Cars

Channel Four gave this a Sunday night 'Top Gear' airing slot perhaps because they assumed there was a population of blokes going cold turkey for some petrol-head action whilst this other troubled show was is off the air . To my mind, this is done to good effect. As required by the format there's a technical/none-technical duo the former being Philip Glennister, who banters with grease monkey Ant Anstead whose job it is to find rare and interesting motors to do up and flog.

The dynamic is a bit different in this format as Glennister doesn't do a great deal of the heavy lifting but gets to drive the cars, meets experts and owners and narrates interesting background info' about the chosen motors. 

Ant tends to buy the cars and required parts and remains locked in his garage to do the work only emerging to go to various suppliers as the car work progresses and as part of the final triumphant drive of the gleaming results. There is some technical detail but not much.

Overall, the format works well. There's some genuine passion from all involved and the quality of the resulting motors is high meaning they fetched eye-watering prices when sold at auction in the final show. Now Anstead has jumped ship I wonder if series three will ensue – with Edd perhaps!

Car SOS

A few years ago, someone in the Channel 4 organisation thought they'd invoke the classic car zeitgeist by offering another, more philanthropic, programme format. In this effort, they try to pull at our heartstrings by secretly stealing the neglected classics of various people who have had bad luck, do them up in secret and conclude the show with a big emotional reveal to the (hopefully) astonished owner.

Again, it's a two-man effort with Tim Shaw as the roving parts procurer and Fuzz Townshend as the man with the spanners. Luckily, both are competent and likeable and we do get to see some involving engineering that appeals to the hard-core petrol head.

Glossing over the fact that what you're witnessing might be defined as a managed TWOC 'ing or the equivalent of breaking into a house and decorating it, the show does try to take us through the process of restoring, finding parts and doing authentic, good quality work on some interesting and rare cars. It even uses some very creative ruses to cover up the 'crime' and get the clueless owners in situ for the final unveiling.

As they are now getting on for nearly 100 cars restored, hopefully this means Channel 4 have faith in the format and will continue to produce it.

It’s interesting that Channel 5 have also had a few goes at this format.  They’ve offered, The Classic Car Show, The Cars That Made Britain Great and the woeful Classic Car Crisis.  None have hit the mark to my mind and have not achieved any longevity. However, Channel Five Executives do note, if you fancy another go, there’s a tall, TV seasoned mechanic recently come available.  Just a thought…

Here’s to the new!

So it’s so long and thanks to Edd for the time being. I’m sure another format will be developed for us to enjoy his informed ministrations and, as long as the classic car zeitgeist remains strong, I hope there’ll be a production company willing to develop and commit the necessary resources to provide what we really want: good engineering coverage delivered in an amiable and generous fashion.

Yesterday's Vision of Tomorrow

In the seventies, when I was in my formative years, school holiday TV often included old black and white episodes of Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers.  These were 'chapter plays' that were originally shown in cinemas in the 1930s. Both starred the square-jawed Buster Crabbe as the eponymous hero prancing around in preposterous man-pants whilst waving an unconvincing ray gun. They were old, creaky, and slightly hilarious but I did enjoy them in a broad kind of way.

Apart from the hammy acting, wobbly sets and misleading cliffhangers, an interesting aspect of features like these was they showed what is called 'yesterday's vision of tomorrow'.  In their depiction of vehicles, weaponry, robotics and clothing the scriptwriters, producers and directors were taking their best guess at what society and technology might look like hundreds of years into the future.

These ideas were given to costume designers and special effects people who worked with minuscule budgets and bits of rubbish to bring these predictions to dodgy reality. Most of the time, their efforts were tragically low quality: the rendering of a rocket ship looked just like a pimped up washing up liquid bottle with a firework shoved in its spout. Usually because that's what it was.

So, embracing this theme, you'll remember that over the last few blogs I've been looking into the car world of yesterday via a pile of ancient Autocar magazines. It occurred to me that the reports from the annual Olympia shows of the thirties, similar to the chapter plays, offer an insight into what the car aficionados of the past thought would comprise the vehicles of tomorrow. Adopting this mindset, I delved into the publications once again and the results are remarkable.

Let's start with this picture of the 'unconventional but attractive' Cord. I can well believe Flash Gordon could get to the planet Mongo in such a thing so maybe the future had arrived. But what else did the thirties promise?

Plastic Prediction

Composite car bodies have been around for some time. Whether that's the high tech carbon fibre of modern supercars or the fibreglass of Reliants or TVRs. We're now quite used to these materials being used in cars as a durable alternative to metal. In 1934, this was pure science fiction. The mainstream plastic of the age was Bakelite that, although functional and attractive, was also brittle and heavy.

How prescient then, the wizard-like Mr. H Potter's prediction that plastics, within twenty years, would be used for car manufacturing. Even in 1934 weight for weight, plastic was as durable as iron or steel.  We should note Mr. Potter was chair of the plastics group in the Chemical Engineering Society so he may have been slightly biased. Nevertheless, was he wrong? No, by Jingo, he was not!

Self Driving Cars?

As modern a phenomenon as you could possibly find. The age of self-driving vehicles is just around the corner. Even as you read, viable SDCs are abroad on our roads. Knowing this, the following advert caught my eye. 'You only steer' it proclaims. What? A car capable of taking care of the majority of driving procedures? In 1934? Did such a car exist? Well, according to Warwick & Wright Ltd it did, as they proudly extolled the many automated functions of the 'Safety Stutz'.

Hmmm, colour me skeptical, but this seems to smack of misleading advertising. The claims, even in these times of alternative facts, are the kind that we would censure in the modern age. Nevertheless, it's amusing to think of their gullible customers, beguiled by the 'fully auto-controlled' claim, sitting on their drive vainly stirring away at the steering wheel expecting the car to do the rest. Caveat emptor indeed!

On your bike!

You may consider the shrill chorus of cyclists complaining about lack of respect from drivers is a modern phenomenon. It's usually the refrain of a peloton of thin, angry, Lycra-clad men but it was also the basic point made by a bike rider from the thirties who demanded 10 feet wide cycling lanes. Even in times of less traffic, this seems an inordinate amount of room for him and fellow pedallers. His claims would get short shrift today when some roads fail to meet the basic needs for cars but it just goes to show biker militancy is by no means new (and still gets so few column inches in the motoring press!)

An iPad?

More a trick of the eye than a true prediction of the future but I couldn't resist including this advert for a radiator muffler as it did cause a double take.  Have a look. To all intents and purposes, he's holding something that looks just like an iPad in a contemporary, ironic kind of way.  Of course, things like TV or computing or apps or, well, iPads were years off so it's a whimsical notion. But fun too. 

To conclude, it's worth remembering that many things included in these crumbling mags were innovative in some way or other, at least to the motorists of the thirties. They give an accurate definition of the idea that almost everything is relative. One day, the advances that are rocking our world will soon look just as quaint which is amazing to consider.

OK, l'll leave you on that thought. So, until next time, happy classic motoring!

All Our Yesterdays

In this blog I thought I would again visit the past and try and get an insight into how the cars and car industry of yesterday promoted their goods and extolled the virtues of their products.  This was in an age when the basic rules of marketing were as haphazard and exotic as some of the cars they were trying to sell. 

It all stems, of course, from the gift of some ancient Autocar magazines I recently received which illuminated the car world of yesterday. They showed not only how things have changed technologically but also how differently we thought about motoring back in the day.

It seems apt, then, to have another look into these ageing mags to find some more precious gems to delight, confound and appal and believe me there is plenty to keep us busy.

Before we begin, it’s appropriate to remember that much of what we will encounter was considered perfectly normal no matter how amusing and horrifying we may find it. Mass motoring was still a good way off and in relation to the earliest of these publications, there is the not so small matter of World War Two separating us from the ideas and attitudes they espouse. Not to mention that things like social mores, rules of the road and the associated legal restrictions were still quite nascent compared to the oppressive sledgehammer of today's big brother state.

On this last point there was an interesting letter in a 1934 Autocar about a Blackpool man who’s defence to a reckless driving fine was that he had covered over one million miles without incident. This implies that, to him at least, quantity was equally important as quality when it came to driving skills. Didn’t prevent a penalty of £1 plus costs though.

The final point to consider before we continue is that, despite the range of topics described in these tomes, cars were still a relatively exotic phenomenon. This is illustrated in a useful infographic that a 1938 magazine provided:

I’m not sure what the position was in Northern Ireland and perhaps we’d better not go there. More interesting, is that today that ratio is both very different and could indeed be the reverse for classic car owners. For example, in my household the car to people ratio is in fact 3:2

Now that I’m in my fifties with over thirty years of driving experience I do consider myself something of a veteran but in 1938 you needed a mere ten years on the road to be considered such. Theoretically, you could be in your mid to late twenties and still be able to join the Company of Veteran Motorists. I equally wonder what was the 1938 equivalent of a souped up Vauxhall Corsa?

We all know that things have changed for women in society since the thirties and WW2 did a lot to liberate women from the household and into workplace. Interesting to find that, Autocar in 1934 was refreshingly liberated in their approach and included a column called ‘tête-à-tête written by one Elsie Wisdom. Her role was to represent the motoring interests of the womenfolk of the thirties. This didn’t, stop her from poking fun at one mechanically naive female.

Elsie whilst at the hair salon recounts overhearing a conversation in which a lady who after finding a greasy pool under her car complained to her mechanic he was overfilling her car with oil and charging accordingly. Soon after the subject was relieved to find this had rectified itself. Unfortunately, this was due to an under lubricated engine caused by an an oil leak and inevitably led to catastrophic failure.  Her reaction, Elsie noted, was being ‘amazed and indignant that if the car had just obligingly run out of oil, as it would out of petrol; then she would have refilled it and all would have been well’.

I will finish by finding some comfort in the fact that even with the distressing turmoil that played out a few short years later some venerable motoring institutions survived and are still with us today.

I think most would agree that if you need some staple sundry for your car that a branch of Halfords will usually be a good place to go and more than likely help you out.  In the thirties, Halfords were not quite so sure of themselves. 

Have a look at this advertisement.  All looks well until you see their get out clause: ‘or can get it’ (in a smaller typeset).  To be fair, given the diffuse nature of the motor industry at the time, it’s unsurprising really. I just wonder how long it would take them to get ‘it’ (whatever ‘it’ may be and good luck if you live in N. Ireland).

  

That’s it for this time around but I think it’s highly likely we’ll feature some of this material again. Whilst we may find some mirth, these magazines do offer some fascinating social history viewed through the lens of the motoring culture of the time.  For car fans like us that is as interesting as a more traditional history book and there’s equally as much to learn.

I’ll get my reading glasses on and find some other gems for you in a future blog! In the interim toodle pip…