All language subtitles for James.Mays.Cars.of.the.People.S01E03.1080p.WEB.h264-POPPYCOCK

A lifetime ago,
car ownership was a great privilege.

We can all remember our grandparents
saying, "Only the doctor had one."

But, by the time I was born,
having your own wheels was

beginning to look like an
inalienable right,

and public transport was a hangover

from an earlier,
less enlightened time.

So now definitions must be revised

if we are to separate mere
motor vehicles

from the true cars of the people.

Last week we discovered that
Japan's greatest people's car

was a motorcycle.

Sorry about that.

At least Britain's greatest
people's car was actually a car.

It just wasn't this one.

Look, I love Minis.

I've had three Minis, in fact,
and I know the Mini was important,

but it's all been said
5,387,862 times.

Which is how many they made.

I could bang on for ages
about how, in 1959,

the Austin Mini's inspirational
design, blah, blah,

a new golden era of, etc, etc.

But I bet you've
heard it all before.

So let's keep it mini.

I'll do you the executive summary.

Radical transverse front-engine,
front-wheel-drive, packaging,

Issigonis, Michael Caine,
Italian Job, classless, Twiggy,

string-pull door handles,
sliding windows,

Peter Sellers, Elke Sommer naked,
The Italian Job

water in the distributor cap,
bypass hose, Marc Bolan,

also available as a van.

In any case, this week it's
social mobility that interests me.

That's why I'd like to suggest
that Britain's greatest

people's car is not the Mini but...

..the Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow.

And the story of its transformation
from in-your-face aristocrat

to aspirational people's hero

is a lot more complex
than a quickie in a Mini.

When the Silver Shadow
was launched in 1965,

it was a radical
departure for Rolls-Royce.

Now, it may not look it now,
with its overbearing presence

and that radiator grille
nicked from the Acropolis,

but this was actually a pretty
modern car by anybody's standards.

For a Rolls-Royce,
it was VERY modern.

Rolls-Royce,
like Kim Kardashian's booty,

stretches back a long, long way.

A temple to tradition,
luxury and class,

Rolls-Royce was the chariot of
presidents, kings and tycoons.

Owning one sent a message
to the rest of society

and that message was, "Naff off!"

But the times, the people,
and car design, were a-changing.

Up until now, R-R had built
cars the old-fashioned way,

on a separate chassis.

But the Silver Shadow was unitary -

the body shell formed the structural
substance of the car so there

were no huge girders running
underneath and this meant that,

even though this was smaller and
lower than the car it replaced,

it actually offered
superior legroom.

Pretty much everything
about the Silver Shadow

was new and radically hi tech.

There were high-pressure hydraulics
to operate the new-fangled

disc brakes and
the self-levelling suspension.

The seats, gear change,
windows, air conditioning

and even the fuel filler flap
were operated electrically.

Monocles fell out everywhere.

More importantly, Rolls-Royce had
identified a new type of customer.

It wasn't the aristocrat of old,
who just sat in the back

while his chauffeur stayed
at the front and did all the work.

No, this was a new breed
of self-made owner-driver.

Entrepreneurs, industrialists, and
then famous artists, photographers,

pop stars,
television personalities.

I can't think of anyone else
I should mention.

It was boom time.

The Shadow said you were part
of the boom like nothing else.

But a status symbol
for self-made millionaires

hardly qualifies this
as a people's car.

That came about from Rolls-Royce
making a cataclysmic error.

To try to keep up with the demand
from all those new money buyers

springing up all over the place,
they over produced.

More Silver Shadows were made
than any other Rolls.

That meant the second-hand
market became saturated

and prices plummeted.

Eventually, over-supply meant
that second-hand Silver Shadows

fell into the hands of the sort
of people who perhaps weren't

prepared to give them the love
that a complex hand-built car needs.

Because, contrary to popular belief,

a neglected Rolls-Royce will
go wrong and it will go rusty.

So, while the prices
of the cars came down,

if anything, the size of
the bills went the other way.

Soon, shabby Shadows
could be seen hanging out

in some very questionable company.

By the mid 1980s,
a used Silver Shadow becomes

something of a badge of office
for disreputable professions.

Scrap metal dealing, the specialist
video industry, that kind of thing.

But move forward
a couple more decades

and something
interesting has happened.

The sick Shads have been put down
or cannibalised for spares and

the sparkly survivors are driven
by people who just appreciate

this thing for what it is -
a lovely car.

People like this misty-eyed fool.

Now it's an equal opportunities
car because everyone,

everyone, regardless of age or
gender or race or religious belief

or political persuasion or
class or income or profession

or dress sense or sexual
inclination or hairstyle,

can drive one of these.

You simply cannot
look bad in a Shad.

It's still faintly,
almost comedically British

and yet somehow it's multicultural.

No other car does that.

When it came out in the 1960s,

the Shadow cost twice the price of
the average UK home - about £6,500.

Today, a good one is yours for a
20th of the average UK house price.

So, from '60s millionaires to
dodgy dealers to now pretty much

everyone, the Shadow has, in
its way, represented the masses.

But there's one more reason I feel
that this truly is a people's car.

Well, here's one thought.

That plethora of second-hand
Shadows meant that it soon became

very popular, obviously,
with the wedding car business.

And I can't prove this, but
I reckon that more British couples

have taken their first
car journey of married life

in the back of a Rolls-Royce
Silver Shadow than in any other car.

And that makes it deeply significant
in the lives of millions.

My very first car was one of these -

a Vauxhall Cavalier Mark 1. Ha-ha!

Except, actually, mine
wasn't quite like this

because I think this is a 1.9 GL.

Oh, yeah, proper upholstery.

Wow. The speedo on
this one goes up to 140.

Mine was actually
the very basic 1.6 L model.

It didn't even have a clock. But
then, the previous owner had been

an industrial representative
in t'North of England.

Now, your car is supposed
to say something about you

and the 1.6 L said something
very definite about him.

Every single blanked-off switch
and missing feature was there,

or rather wasn't there,
to remind him of his failure.

And that was exactly the point.

The company car - it was
a peculiarly British thing.

Well, of course it was.

We had a class system in society,
we needed one on the roads as well.

What do I like about the Astra CDi?

Well, it's an "i", and "i"
means "important" these days.

There's no CD badge on the back
and that's disappointing.

It's difficult for someone following
to know you're driving a CD Astra.

Vauxhall, Ford,
British Leyland, Talbot -

they seemed to be offering
a world of magnificent choice.

You could have different engines,
different trim levels,

two headlights or four headlights.
But, in reality,

they were making the rungs
of an automotive social ladder.

It was a system more arcane than
the table manners in Downton Abbey.

So, I've enlisted two experts,

former sales fleet managers
Ian and James,

who join me on a day
that suitably represents

the glamour of life as
a '70s business traveller.

THUNDER RUMBLES

When I was a lad, in the '70s,

one boy's father
had a two-litre L

and another boy's dad
had the two-litre GL,

and we knew instinctively that
GL Dad was just more successful

with women and GL Boy would
have better football boots.

It all started off
very innocently with Ls

and then it all
got quite complicated.

It was a bit of
a psychological war, really.

Part of it is driven by ego.

Nobody sees what your pay cheque is

but they sure as hell see
the GL or the L or the Ghia.

And, as you drove up the motorway
and people passed you,

you'd instinctively look at
the boot to see what his was.

And if he was doing
better or worse than you.

'There's something very
playground about all this.

'There's obviously
all the usual comparisons

'you'd look for in a car.'

96 horsepower, not bad.

108mph, 0-60 in 13 seconds...

'But then there's
the mystical L, XL, GLS,

'the leftover scrabble letters
of aspiration that signify

'a whole baffling
world of proto-bling.'

Boot light. Fog light.
Electric windows.

'A real-life Top Trumps.'

It's got a clock.

This would be the car that typically
was driven by the junior salesman.

Wood trim dashboard fascia.
I don't believe it.

It does!

Vinyl roof.

I don't think I've seen
one of these since

Peter Gabriel was still in Genesis.

Oh, man.

This is just glorious, this thing.

Oh.

'I might be worryingly overcome
by velour seat envy.

'But when it comes to the ranking
of electric windows above a vinyl

'roof, it's clear that this was
the sort of debate that would

'have started bloody brawls in
Happy Eaters up and down the M1.'

13.6 seconds to 60 and only 91mph.

Do you realise your car is so slow?

It may be slow but it is
a Crusader so it has the stripes

and the velour interior.

Oooh!

I am going to put it in front
of the Mark 2 Cavalier 1.6 L

simply on the basis of
the wood, the wheel trims,

the coach lining and
the crushed velour. Fair?

Well, yes, but in terms
of sales appeal,

the Cavalier would have had it.

Really?

'Decrypting Ian and James's cipher
of just what SLX or WTF means

'might as well be a scene
from The Da Vinci Code.'

The Cavalier was more appealing?
Oh, I would've said so.

Even though it was a more basic
model? Yes, I would've said so.

So this badge hierarchy,
actually, they got it wrong?

I think there is an element of
it's the badge, it's also the time.

'I have fallen down the rabbit hole.

'Ian will now only answer me
in a series of riddling clues.

'And it's doing to
the inside of my head

'what the wind is
doing for my hair.'

Well, chaps, that's been
absolutely fascinating

and I am absolutely none the wiser
but thank you very much anyway.

But while our dads lay awake
dreaming of velour seats

and wood-trimmed dashboard fascias,
we, the teenagers of the era,

were indulging loftier fantasies.

Pin-ups.

Sam Fox, obviously,
but also this kind of thing.

This was a time when the development
of a pubescent boy

could be accelerated
with a picture of a car.

Now, these are a couple of all-time
favourites -

I put them up there
when I was about 14,

and they're still there.

The Lamborghini Countach,

the Porsche 911 Turbo.

Phwoar!

These unattainable beauties kept me
going single-handedly through

the dark nights of those
difficult years.

Launched in 1974 as the LP400,

the Countach remains a nodal high
point in radical automotive styling.

And perhaps the most
uncompromised expression

of what came to be known in the
vernacular as wedge design.

Oh, hang on a minute.
TYRES SCREECH

I've forgotten something.

'80s reality check number one -

having to tentatively reverse

and manoeuvre between bollards
in a Lamborghini Countach

results in me looking neither
gnarly nor bodacious.

Ah, well. It'll be worth it once
I fit the piece de air resistance.

I don't suppose you've got
the wing for the back?

That one? Yes. Yeah, yeah.

You know it slows you down...
I'm not worried about that.

No? No. It looks cool.

I'm borrowing this
Countach from my mate Harry,

who actually decided to live
the bedroom dream

of owning an '80s pin-up car.

The thing is, when we grew up,
we never saw these cars. No.

You had to buy the poster -
you couldn't go on YouTube.

You couldn't see, you know...
"Oh, look, I've seen a Countach."

I saw one in London, I was 18, 19 -

on the other side of the street
was a blue Countach.

I had to take a picture, and this
picture was in my photo album -

and then, very embarrassing,
I then cut out a picture of me

and stuck me next to the Countach

so I could say,
"Yes, I'm next to the Countach."

I want to make it absolutely clear

that these days Harry is a perfectly
normal man, he's married,

he has a happy home life, he hasn't
suffered from having posters

or indeed owning a Lamborghini.

This is a sensitive
question at our age,

but has the wing made you more
attractive to the ladies

than when you drive your Countach
without the wing?

I think it just attracts more blokes
than girls, actually.

Really? Yeah.

Desperately disappointing. Yeah.

The wing was absolutely pointless.

It doesn't work as a spoiler,
it doesn't provide down force.

If anything, it accentuates
the lift at the front.

But who cares?

'80s reality check two -

pin-up cars look fantastic
framed on sunset beaches.

They look slightly less good

being dragged through waterlogged
ditches around Oxfordshire.

So, let's get this
thing on the road, sharpish.

I don't care if you hate supercars,

or you hate the idea of being
flashy, or excessive consumption -

look at this car on your screen

and tell me it isn't a thing of
utter wonder and beauty.

Because it is.

Let's drop it down a cog
and give it some beans.

Yes!

Well, that's quite terrifying.

Let's take this back to subsonic,
before I Bobby Brown my trousers.

I suspect all this spray is
actually giving my Lamborghini

a bit of a soft-focus look.

It's another great '80s effect,
really. It's poster art.

Everything about the Countach was
quite a bit more exciting

than the equivalent
bit in your dad's car.

The engine in this one is
a 5.2 litre V12,

developing 455 horsepower -
that is actually quite a lot.

2 litre Granada had something
like 100 horsepower.

Meh.

There have been other amazing
cars since,

but I'm not sure anything has ever
seemed quite so modern

and quite so stunning
as the Countach.

It still looks modern now.

The engine was behind you,
and it had two radiators,

fed with air by scoops
apparently from a fighter aircraft.

The rear tyres were the fattest
ever fitted to a car.

The doors opened upwards like
something out of Back To The Future.

The seats sported
Miami Beach six packs,

and it had that wing - which was
supposedly to stop it taking off.

It was unbelievably exotic,

and we were weak at the knees
at the thought of it.

Now, at last, I'm in one.

And it is...

terrible.

It's an old car, now.

It's also a supercar,

so it's not very good round town.

But then, supercars aren't,
are they?

It does about 15 miles to the
gallon, which is terrible,

but I suppose Rod Stewart wasn't
really interested

in the price of petrol.

The cold, hard, grown-up reality
of it is,

unless you do happen to live on the
sun-kissed shores of California,

then owning one of these things is
utterly, hopelessly impractical.

Sorry, Harry.

The visibility is very poor.

The seats are uncomfortable.

The windows only open
a couple of inches, look,

and the interior was designed
by a man who loaded some instruments

and switches into a blunderbuss
and then fired it at the fascia.

The engine is not, as it would be on
a modern Lamborghini, fuel-injected.

It's fed by six twin-choke
carburettors,

and that effectively means it has
a carburettor per cylinder.

And setting that lot up to run
smoothly

is a bit like trying
to synchronise 12 mopeds.

Still, it could be worse.

They've closed the road.

I don't believe that.

Oh, God.

As I've already discovered,

manoeuvring in this Countach
is a bit tight.

I can't really see...

The people who live here are going
to be chuffed to bits, aren't they?

If this is your small
and tasteful gated community,

then I'm very sorry.

The opportunities for smacking this
on something are absolutely massive.

So difficult to see the extremes.

It's pretty difficult when you're
driving along in a straight line,

never mind doing this sort of thing.

Yes, I know, it's for barrelling
along a big, wide road,

not exploring the back
streets of medieval England.

But even then you could still be
going home to a maintenance bill

bigger than MC Hammer's trousers.

The suspension on this car is
rose-jointed, like a racing car's.

What that means is, there aren't any
nice, soft, forgiving rubber bits

in it, it's all just metal on metal.

They could wear
out in as little as 800 miles,

so if you drove from London to
Edinburgh and back,

you could be due for a very
expensive undercarriage rebuild.

So, it was a great poster.

But actually driving a Countach
is like discovering that...

Sam Fox is a drag artist.

But that was the point about
supercars of the '80s -

we plebs were never meant
to drive them,

we were just supposed to
admire them.

While we were kneeling in awe before
those graven images

of Italian and German supermodels,

something very interesting
was happening.

Performance was being democratised,

and this is where
I first saw the true light.

The Ford Escort XR3.

Now, it is still an Escort -
a very humdrum car -

but this one is different.

It has tricked-up suspension,
a bit more power -

and those wheels.

Yeah!

Unlike the ethereal supercars,
the XR3 was real.

A performance car that you could
see, touch and, crucially, possess.

One of the things that made this car
appealing was that it

sat in Ford showrooms alongside
all those cars

that were secretly oppressing us -
the Cortina L and the GL and the GXL

and the 2000E, all that hierarchical
stuff, and then amongst it, this.

An Escort with XR3 on the back.

XR3 - it sounds like...

Well, it sounds like a space ship,
doesn't it?

The XR3 wasn't
alone on Planet Hatchback.

The early '80s saw
an invasion of small,

souped-up cars propelled
by no-nonsense advertising.

MUSIC: "Cars"
by Gary Numan

The Thatcher years would end up
being remembered

not as the era of the supercar,

but the time of cheesy synthpop
and hot hatches.

Look, I'm not going to
claim that a warmed-up Escort

was the foil to the supercar.

The Countach got to 60 in half
the time, and was 70mph faster.

If this was a pub debate,
that would be the end of that.

But there's another
way of looking at this.

A hot hatch is just a car.

Driving one is no different
from driving the regular version.

Hot hatches are light.

Hot hatches are modestly sized,
so they're wieldy.

Meanwhile, '70s and '80s supercars
were full of tricks and vices.

Not for the unwary.

PSYCHO THEME PLAYS

And one, above all,
had a had a lethal reputation.

It's a 1975 Porsche 911 Turbo.

Just like the one on my poster.

Let's take it for a spin.

Turbo!

What a word!

It wasn't a new idea in engineering,
to be honest.

Aero engines had had turbochargers
for decades,

but it was the great
hope of performance motoring.

In basic terms, a turbocharger made
any given engine...

well, bigger.

"Turbo" means simply that
an exhaust-driven impeller

charges the engine's
cylinders with more fuel

and air mixture than they would get
under atmospheric pressure.

So, you got the power.

Remember, the vast majority of what
a car engine burns is, in fact, air.

So, if you can put more air in,
and a little bit more fuel in -

wahey!

The turbo-charged 911 could
reach 60 in 5,2 seconds -

a second and a half quicker than
the non-turbo version.

Was there a catch?

Oh, yes.

Barroom philosophers will always
tell you that the

Porsche 911 could bite back.

Part of the problem was the layout -
the engine was right at the back,

so the whole car behaved like a
giant pendulum in the corners.

But in the Turbo you had the added
problem that the power

came on a bit suddenly.

But that wasn't all - the Turbo
suffered from a massive time lag.

This meant you were never quite sure

when all that power would make
itself known at the rear wheels.

And that spelt disaster for many
a chinless yuppie

who'd invested your whole pension
in one.

# Amadeus. #

There goes another stockbroker.

The thing is,
even by modern standards,

this is still
a very, very quick car -

but it's terrifying.

And that is exactly my point.

I've always said that I've never
driven a car

that actually played any tricks
on me -

I always knew I was being an idiot
before the car told me I was,

but actually I'm going to
revise that.

I think an old 911 Turbo
DOES play tricks on you.

It really will catch you out.

For a nation growing ever more
wealthy and upwardly mobile,

the 911 Turbo was peerless,

sophisticated and very,
very desirable.

It promised us the world.

Well, either that or a terrifying
short cut out of it.

To paraphrase The Rolling Stones,
you can't always get what you want,

and if you try too hard,
you might find...

yourself in a ditch.

Anyway, this has got me thinking -
here is a Peugeot 205 GTI 1.9.

It is a definitive 1980s hot
hatchback.

It can be a bit
wayward at the limit,

but it's front wheel drive,
so ultimately it's benign.

Over here is our Porsche 911 Turbo -

unusually,
and probably rather briefly,

pointing in the right direction.

Now, in the hands of a professional,

the Porsche would be quicker around
a race track - of course it would.

But what about in the hands
of mere mortals?

The sort of frustrated
fantasists who prostrated

themselves before the posters
of that glorious era.

It's time to find out.

In three, two, one, yah!

HE LAUGHS

So there you go. Just a little bit
of extra power to the people

can topple the nobs from
their high-performance pedestal.

Once again,
the cars of the people gave us hope.

The hot hatch is still with us,
the company car almost forgotten.

But there is a legacy.
Gone are those ranges

that were graduated as precisely
as an engineer's ruler -

L, GL with a clock,
GLS with a clock and a rev counter,

but if anything, the opportunities

for interfering with an individual
car's specification have increased.

These are the ultimate
expressions of it -

trendy cars that can be almost
infinitely reconfigured to suit

the individual owner's taste.

The Mini comes in baffling variety
and with very aspirational names

such as the Mini Bayswater
or the Mini Hogarth Roundabout.

I made that one up, but you can get
a Mini Clubman Bond Street.

The new Beetle Cabriolet,

the latest edition of
the very car that Adolf Hitler had.

You can spend up to £35,000
on one of these,

including £10,000 worth of options -

amongst them,
the Beetle clothes hanger, £21.50.

The Fiat 500 - now, apparently,

there are half a million
permutations of all the options

you can have on this car.
I'll not go through them all,

but they include
a whiteboard on the glove box

and "balls" stickers for £190.

And we don't know what those are.

So, in a way, this is more power
to the motoring people than ever.

All the extras that defined
the company car of old

are now in an options tombola.

As the old saying goes, give a man
a fish and he will eat for a day.

Give a man a Fiat
with 500,000 choices

and he won't work out
the brochure in one lifetime.

The problem for me is that
they are so unashamedly retro,

and retro design makes me uneasy.

It smacks of a lack of confidence,
I think, by the makers

and to some extent
by the buyers as well.

I mean, old cars, real old cars,

they're great, they're a warning
from history, but new cars,

surely new cars should be new.

And while we're on warnings
from history, here's another -

old being passed off as new.

The Bond Bug.

By 1970, things in Britain
were looking a bit grim.

The empire had gone.
We had to accept

that we weren't going to be
a part of the space race.

We were beginning to retreat into
a world of sci-fi and fantasy,

but it was OK because
we could offer you a car

shaped like a piece of cheese
that looked from the future.

It seems mad to think that
this monstrosity -

it looks like Marge Simpson's
tried to iron her own head -

was ever a car to aspire to own,
but to a kid in the '70s, it was.

The Bond Bug was
an attempt by Reliant

to make the three-wheeler
appealing to a younger market

and actually, it did work

because when I was a kid,
a bloke up the road had one of these

and we just thought he was
the coolest dude in creation.

We would have fallen around laughing
at anybody who had a Reliant

but a Bond Bug -
Bond Bug was brilliant.

Reliant genuinely believed
that the bug would...

well, drive a wedge into
the sporty two-seater market.

Yes, really.

What do we like in a small car?

We like small tyres
so there isn't too much grip,

we like a perky engine,
and very sharp steering.

It has all of those.

It doesn't have fifth gear,
though, and I keep going for it.

We also like a car to be bright
orange with some black decals on it.

I think initially
these cars were only available

to Tomorrow's World presenters,
people like that,

but pretty soon they filtered down
into the community at large.

And that's where the problems began.

It soon became clear that the bug

was nowhere near as modern
as it made out.

One of the things that
characterised the 1970s,

particularly in Britain, I think,
is that we had technical ambitions

and aesthetic vision far ahead
of our actual engineering ability,

so this thing, it looks like
it comes from the year 2020,

but actually,
it's pretty old-fashioned.

It's got a basic engine at the back,
it's got four speeds.

It's only got three wheels,
let's be honest.

It's not really
a very interesting car,

not from a technical point of view.

There are only really three
parts to the bodywork of a Bond Bug.

There's the basic tub itself,
the hinged canopy part

and the little opening flap
at the back - that's it.

Everything else is
screwed or bolted in place.

So, the bug was reversed into
the lock-up of automotive oblivion.

Trying to pass off the past
as the future fooled no-one.

If only they'd done it
the other way around.

20 years later, the Japanese did.

They took the essence of the old
and stuffed it with the new

to create the Mazda MX5.

What Mazda did with the MX5
was to take an old philosophy

and then drag it, willingly, as it
turns out, into the modern world.

The MX5 was an instant hit.

A fun and affordable roadster

designed purely and unashamedly
for the people's pleasure.

What a brilliant idea.
Why did no-one think of it before?

This is a Mark 1 MX5,
launched in 1989, and actually,

it is a piece of retro design.

It's very obviously a bit of a
rip-off of the original Lotus Elan.

It even has the pop-up headlights,
but the remarkable thing is,

on the Mazda, they pop up...

and pop back down...

together, whereas on the Lotus
you often ended up driving around

sort of winking at people in
a slightly inappropriate manner.

Most importantly,
Mazda got that famous basic formula

absolutely right - the engine,

the driven wheels, the skinny little
tyres, and all the rest of it.

For decades, the British
and the Italians were

the champions of the small roadster.

MG, Fiat, Austin Healey,

Triumph, Alfa Romeo and Lotus.

These roadsters defined the spirit
of motoring, but by the late '70s,

and not for the first time,
European standards started to slip.

We were beginning to fall
out of love with the roadster.

The designs were archaic.

The build quality was indifferent.

They had dodgy electrics

and hoods that leaked
like government ministries.

The hot hatch was the new thing -

perky, more powerful versions of
four-seat, three-door family cars.

The European roadster
suddenly became an antique.

It was something to be driven
only on a Sunday,

and even then only if
you knew a bloke with a van.

And yet the Mazda, the same
basic idea, was all the rage.

I know, because I've done it,

that if you stepped into
an old '70s MG after this

it would feel like a damp postcard
from an English seaside holiday.

Terrible.

I have to conclude that
it was the cars that were at fault,

not the philosophy.
The philosophy is brilliant.

The cars had just become annoying.

Thank God we've got the Japanese.

It's so simple -
if you keep everything small,

everything light, you don't
need hundreds of horsepower.

A little four-cylinder job will do.

And because this car is short, then,
because of boring reasons to do with

physics and something called polar
inertia, it will turn smartly.

It all makes perfect sense.

Why did we ever forget about it?
Hmm?

And the roof comes off,
and that trumps everything.

Now all I need is some sun.

I had one of these. So did my dad.

It's a sort of ageless car.

Anybody can drive it - a misty-eyed
nostalgist who remembers

the lovely days of the '60s
when it never rained, obviously,

and modern youngsters who simply
want a simple, low-maintenance car

to have fun in.

It is a people's car.
It's for all the people.

Most importantly, the MX5 worked.

It worked perfectly
and it didn't leak.

Over three generations of this car,
almost a million have been sold.

Small beer by
people's car standards, I know,

but it remains the world's
best-selling small roadster.

We talked about cars
that gave the people hope.

And the MX5 helped realise the hopes
of generations of roadster drivers,

the hope that
you would reach your destination.

So the Mazda was good,
because it worked,

but it was successful
because of the way it looked,

because of the lifestyle
it hinted at.

And if we go back to the Lamborghini
we saw earlier,

that didn't really work that well,
but look what it said about you

with its scoops and its wing
and all this stuff here,

it was just fantastic.

We've been talking about
people's cars of hope,

how choice gave us more freedom
and made us happier,

but isn't choice really just another
form of tyranny?

They are just... I know this is
the sort of thing boring people say,

but they are just cars.

They're for getting from
one place to another, from A to B.

So wouldn't life be easier

if we just had a car in the way that
we have a National Insurance number?

But what would it be?

Not this hideous boogie bus,
that's for sure,

and what is the perfect
people's car anyway?

Is it just the cheapest car possible
so more people could own it?

Is it a political instrument,
a national statement?

Does it say something about the self

or does it work for the benefit
of the whole? It's a tricky one.

The answer can be found somewhere
that embraces the heights of modern

innovation while acknowledging the
weight and experience of history.

In fact, we could have saved
ourselves a lot of time and bother

because it's where we started
in the first place.

So what is the people's car of the
21st century?

Well, I think there is one.

It's a practical, reasonably priced,
five seater. It's good to drive

but it's not too big.

You can have a basic, frugal model
or you can have a sporty version.

It's classless, it's tasteful,
it's inconspicuous, it's well-made

and it's just sensible enough.

If you re-write the rules of the
people's car for the modern age,

it fits perfectly.

And even though we live now
in a world

of overwhelming automotive
choice,

I believe it is the only
car the world actually needs.

It is, in case you hadn't guessed,
the Golf.

Not a totes radical choice, I know.

But ask yourself, "Why not
just have a Golf?"

Why hadn't I got one, in fact?

It's the second best selling car
range in history at around

30 million and stretches all the way
back from the current

seventh generation car to the
original of 1974.

The Golf was designed to be the much
belated replacement to VW's Beatle

and as difficult second albums go,
it was a bit of a stormer.

Simple, attractive with Italian
design,

good handling and an affordable
price.

And it was a hatchback.

It seemed like a good
idea at the time.

As things turn out, it still is.

Each new generation's stuck with
the same simple recipe,

establishing
the Golf as a wheeled staple.

Golf's are like potatoes, you
wouldn't want to do without them.

Even though
they're not really that exciting.

Hey! Allow to me interrupt
this lovely filmic montage

while I talk about the GTI
version of the Golf.

This is a Mark 2 GTI, from the
1980s.

I know it's not the mould-breaking
original, but it's

the one all my yuppie mates had

when I was in my 20s and I couldn't
afford a car.

So it's the one I resent.

To some people the Golf GTI is
responsible for redrawing the

battle lines of the class war,
especially in Britain.

And therefore it is an instrument of
evil.

Maybe.

Mind you, if you've already produced
the Beetle, you can

probably get away with it.

Remember what I was saying earlier?

How the hot hatch destroyed the old
school two-seater roadster?

The Golf GTI was the main culprit.

It's tremendous, though.

Why didn't I have
one of these in the 1980s?

And a job with a salary of pounds
attractive.

As well as making me well jelly,
the GTI shows what a durable idea

the Golf is.

As it manages to be a great
car in its own right that's still

contained under the Golf umbrella.

Hang on a minute. Hang on. Stop.

I think I might have got a bit
carried away with this idea.

You see, there have been 30 million

Golfs built over the whole seven
generation life of the thing.

There have been something like
40 million Toyota Corollas,

if you count every car that has the
name Corolla on it.

But there are over
a billion cars on the planet today.

So what's 30 or 40 million
here or there?

The VW Beetle, the best selling
single car in history?

There were only ever 21.5
million. So it barely registers.

In any case, there are over seven
billion people on the planet

so in crude statistical terms,

there's only one car for every seven
people.

There aren't even enough seats to go
around.

And, of course, one and a quarter
billion of those people live in

absolute poverty, so have probably
never even been in a car.

It's all nonsense, in fact.

The motor industry has
completely failed.

There is no car of the people.

But there's another
way of looking at this.

The car as we know it only exists

because of a universal
desire to possess it.

It began life as the preserve
of the toffs, it was a proposition

so complicated that you needed to

employ a man just to drive it and
look after it for you.

But now a century later,
it's a consumer durable.

A disposable one at that.

Yes, there are still cars that cost
a million pounds or more, but

they come to us riding on a
groundswell

of engineering achievement

that is fuelled by the demand
for mobilisation for the masses.

So, in actual fact everything from
the £1,500 Tata Nano all the way up

to the £1.5 million Bugatti Veyron
Super Sport,

they are all cars of the people.

Subtitles by Ericsson