Tag / car

by Andrew Pilcher

Peugeot 205

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The final car in our concours d’elegance is the Peugeot 205 GTI from the mid 1980s, a hot hatch from the days when Peugeots were cool rather than the default option for people who need a car but just don’t care any more. Peugeots have become the Toyota Camrys of Europe, only much less reliable, sort of uninspired and stuffy. I have no idea how they can come from the same organisation that also produces the marvellously mad Citroens and DS’s. I covet a DS3 or a C4 Cactus but I’d never consider a Peugeot equivalent, which is strange bacsue their cars are essentially the same underneath.

by Andrew Pilcher

Morris Minor

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Today’s car is a Morris Minor ragtop from sometime in the 50s and 60s. The Morris Minor was a predecessor to the Mini, and if the live action movie of the Borrowers is to be believed, it was the only car that was available at that time.

The Borrowers wins the award for most gratuitous use of colour grading in a movie, with a colour palette seemingly based on the different kinds of mould you can find in a shower stall that has been left to rot for a few years. That’s definitely a British provincial high street you’re seeing there – so why are the cars driving on the wrong side of the road?

You can see lots of variants on the Minor in the picture above. There’s the wood framed Traveller, station wagon where the wood at the load-carrying end was actually structural rather than a stuck on decal. There’s a red GPO van, which at the end of their useful life you used to be able to buy for £10 at auctions – British indie bands couldn’t have survived without the ready supply of these in the 80s. And on the right, fourth one up, there’s a convertible.

We love convertibles in England. On those rare occasions that the sun does come out we tend to make the most of every fleeting moment of it, which is why we have more convertible cars per head than any other country in Europe. It’s the triumph of optimism over experience.

Note that I’ve drawn the car afresh in each panel – there’ll be none of that cut and paste stuff in my strip if I can possibly help it…

by Andrew Pilcher

Renault Wind

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Today’s car is the Renault Wind, a mid engined sports car from France. I think it was Renault’s tribute to the Lotus Europa, a mid engined British car from the 1970s, for which it provided the engines, and which was also styled like a bread van. It sold about three cars before it was pulled from the market, as no-one wanted a sports car they couldn’t see out of that was named after flatulence. There’s one that I see occasionally driving around Hastings – it has the dent in the offside front wing that is traditional to all French cars for some reason.

Lotus Europa

Lotus Europa

Renault Wind

by Andrew Pilcher

Honda Jazz

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One of the joys of living in a seaside town is the seagull lottery. Will your car be the one they use as a toilet, or will they aim for the blue BMW a few cars down? (For some reason, they always choose the BMW.)

This is my own Honda Jazz, a model known as a Fit in every other market – it would appear that its only the UK that objects to having a car named after uncontrolled muscle spasms. It’s grey, or, if you’re working in Honda UK’s marketing department, Urban Titanium.

It usually wins the seagull lottery at home, but at work, it’s less lucky. My parking space is under a row of lime trees which leak sap all over the cars underneath them, and once that bakes on it’s hard to shift. That, and there is a bird in the vicinity we all know as the atomic pigeon; I’ll leave the rest to your imagination.

by Andrew Pilcher

Solarium Volvo

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I was sat at my little drawing desk in my study, trying to think up an idea for for today’s cartoon, when a big blue estate car drew up and parked outside. I drew what I saw (editing slightly for clarity) and that’s what you see in the last panel.

This happy accident led to a full two weeks worth of cartoons on the same theme, as I swapped the car parked outside for something different each time.

Todays guest car is a Volvo estate. Yes, that’s what a Volvo looks like these days. Somehow it just doesn’t seem square enough.

by Andrew Pilcher

Vinyl roof

smith-pilcher-871-151102There’s nothing more 70s than a car with a vinyl roof, and I still think a car with a reconditioned one looks rather swish. But most survivors from the 70s now look like the one in the cartoon.

austin-princess-03The car is a British Leyland Princess – a Ford Cortina competitor that could have been a world beater if only they built them well enough to hold together for longer than one week. And if the management had given it the hatchback it was so obviously designed for.