All language subtitles for James.Mays.Cars.of.the.People.S02E01.1080p.WEB.h264-POPPYCOCK

The shape of the
Boeing B29 Super Fortress is deeply

etched on the conscience
of humankind,

being the only aircraft ever to have
delivered an atomic weapon in anger.

And it bears little comparison
with this -

a humble, mid-sized
Japanese hatchback.

And yet you could argue that,
long term, this has been the more

destructive weapon, one that laid
waste to acres and acres of
industry.

And it gives rise to a curious
new maxim for the modern age -

to win at cars,
first you must lose at war.

MUSIC: Back In Black
by AC/DC

1945 - Britain had won the war.

Hip hip hooray!

We still had our empire,
we still had our reputation

for engineering excellence, we were
still the workshop of the world.

Thank God we won the war.

Once the war was over, our car
factories could stop churning out

Spitfires and get back to cars.

Immediately post-war, Britain was
the world's second-biggest
car-maker,

and the world's biggest
car exporter.

For many people in Britain, however,
the end of the war

simply meant dusting off whatever
was up on bricks in the garage,

and then going for a first spin
in the new broad, sunlit uplands.

And for thousands of people,
that car was this.

The Austin 7 had launched right
back in 1922 and it was Britain's
very first people's car.

It was like our Ford Model T,
but a bit more modest,

and cheaper and easier to run,
as you'd expect.

Was one of them Austin big 7s

That do 60 on top and no buts

Developing 25 horsepower

Not only got looks but got guts.

The Austin 7 was
sold all over the world.

There were licensed built versions
made in Germany, France, America.

Australia used its chassis.
It was copied by Nissan in Japan.

And an Austin 7 formed the basis
of the first car from the company
we now know as Jaguar.

It was also the basis
of the first Lotus.

This was one hell of a car.

America had also won the war.
Victory had left her with

massive manufacturing capacity,
loads of money, a lot of it

owed to America, in fact, and
control of the vanquished nations.

Their Marshall Plan could
dictate to the losers what

they had to do to get back into
the global goodies gang.

America had not been bombed.

America could go back to making
things like this.

This, I'm sure you know,
is a 1937 Buick Special
two-door sedan slope back.

Ahem.

This was the cheapest car
in Buick's Series 40 range,

but even so it had a straight-eight
engine giving 100 horsepower,

modern overhead valves, hydraulic
brakes, a heater, a defroster

and even, if you paid a bit extra,
a dash mounted radio.

There was just no stopping
Buzz and Chuck and Hank.

During the war, Buick's factory was
given over to making munitions,

usual sort of thing, but in 1946 the
Special went back into production.

It would do for now.

Thank God we won the war.

Now imagine if you'd lived in
Germany in that immediate post-war
period.

Everything was bombed to bits,
much worse than Britain.

Millions were dead. The Allies
were in control of everything.

The great dream
of the VW Beetle factory -

that was all smashed up
and in the hands of the British.

But it could have been worse.
You could have been Japanese.

Food was in woefully short supply.

Roads were largely unmade.
There were virtually no materials.

The occupying powers had been
charged with changing the Japanese
system

from a military to an economic one.
The Emperor had become a puppet.

But the production of passenger cars
was virtually outlawed.

If you were lucky,
you might get a bicycle.

If you were very lucky,
it might have a small engine on it,
but that was it.

And yet, a lifetime later, we buy
more and more of the cars we covet

from the supposedly defeated
nations, Germany and Japan.

So who really won?

It took only 30 years or so
for Japan to transform itself

from a knackered nation of
powered bicyclists

into a world-conquering,
car-making superpower,

and that, despite being
the world's first, and so far only,
victims of atomic war.

It took only 20 years for Germany
to transform itself

into a maker of great cars,
and more to the point

the roots of this turnaround
were happening just as the

old Allies thought their global
position was completely
unassailable.

So how did that happen?

Britain will launch a ship a day,

more than the rest
of the world put together.

Britain now leads the world
in aviation.

The problem wasn't that Britain
and America didn't innovate.

Post-war, they led the world
in aviation, electronics, machinery.

We had Nobel Prize winners.

We'd invented modern computer
science and discovered DNA.

The slumps of pre-war years
must never return.

I mean, cripes, by 1952
we had a new Queen, and America

still had its dream, which we could
all see on the silver screen.

More to the point, it had Detroit
which was a Mecca,

a city built on the automobile
and the desire to possess it.

By the late '40s, Britain had
moved on from the Austin 7
and was building new stuff.

Cars like Ford of Britain's
V8 Pilot.

You will have spotted
that this is a Morris Minor.

The Minor, though modest,
was very middle class.

Rather in the way
that the 2CV symbolises

everything about the condition
of being French,

the Morris Minor has come
to be regarded as everything that's
good and proper about being British.

There must have been something
good about the Minor as this was

the first British car to sell
more than a million.

In the end, 1.6 million were made

right here at the Cowley
factory near Oxford.

But the Morris Minor was not
perfect.

In fact, it's something
of a lasting monument to the sort

of timorousness and disorganisation

that would come to characterise
so much of our motor industry.

When the designer Alec Issigonis
had finished his prototype design,

he realised he'd made it
a bit too narrow.

Now we have a model of it here.

This is an original one from the
time and if you have a look at it

you can see he was dead right,
he'd cocked it up a bit.

It was a bit too narrow.

So he took the full size
prototype design

and he sawed it in half
lengthways like that

and then he experimented
adding different size strips

to see what would make it look right
and, in the end,

he decided it needed an extra four
inches down the middle.

Great! But the press shop, the
people designing the tooling for
this thing

had already made some of the tooling
for the original narrow versions.

So in the final car
they had to come up with this -

this strip that runs down the bonnet
to there and then spreads out

nicely along there.
That is a fudge.

And it gets worse under the bonnet.

THEME TUNE PLAYS:
Open All Hours

The Minor was supposed to have
a brand-new flat four engine

driving the front wheels.

But penny-pinching meant it was
lumped with wheezy inline jobs,

driving the rear wheels.

A pity, isn't it?

Let's shut the bonnet
on this travesty

and pretend it never happened.

Morris put quality first.

Look, I'm not being down on it,
the Morris Minor was brilliant,

despite a bit of management myopia.

And let's not forget that because
he couldn't realise

his front wheel dream of a Minor,
Issigonis went on to design the
Mini,

one of the most significant
small cars ever.

And with the Minor and the Mini,

he is responsible
for a sizeable slice

of our British
sense of automotive identity.

That's not bad for a Greek.

NEWSREEL: £100 million worth of cars

exported since the war ended.

So despite a slapdash motor here
and a bodged bonnet there,

the UK motor industry post-war
was booming.

And America's was too.

Before the war had even finished,

US car-makers, encouraged by the
government and working in secret,

had already started creating
a new era of cars.

By the 1950s, the American car was
a gobsmacking monument

to the new culture of ownership.

Goodbye, three-speed manual
transmissions and Art Deco fixings,

hello, the jet age,
neon lights and the automatic.

Nothing could go wrong.

Could it?

Well...not yet.

The first Japanese raiding party
to the UK barely registered.

This is the 1964 Daihatsu Compagno.

It was overpriced,
it was breathtakingly slow,

it was surely nothing to worry
about.

This car, however,
not just this model

but this actual car you're
looking at now

was the very first Japanese import
to the UK.

I was only one year old
when the Compagno arrived

so I couldn't reach the pedals
to try it out.

But even ten years later, I remember
that we as British schoolboys

still thought that Japanese cars
were a bit of a joke.

I have here the actual Top Trumps
sports cars pack that

I was given for my 11th birthday
back in 1974

and there is only
two Japanese cars in the pack

and one of them is this.

It's the Toyota Celica GT.

Now you didn't want this
card in a game of Top Trumps

because it's only got
a 1600cc engine,

only makes 92 horsepower,

it's the second cheapest car
in the pack.

And as 11-year-olds
we weren't interested in or

worried by Japanese cars
with their silly names.

We'd already been told by our elders
and betters that the Japanese

would make cheap runabouts for
people who weren't really interested
in cars

but the British would continue to
make the sort of stuff

that really mattered.

We were basically car racists.

On the other hand, if you wanted
to win a game of Top Trumps,

the car you needed...

was this one -

the Jaguar E-Type.

Look at it!

No lesser man
than Enzo Ferrari himself

said that this was
the most beautiful car ever made.

In fact, there is nothing new for me
to say about the E-Type Jaguar,

it's like trying to have
an opinion on the weather

that you've never heard before.

So let's just... Well, I'll tell
you what, I'll shut up

and you can just
look at it for a bit.

# Tell me all the things
that I wanna hear

# Cos that's true

# That's what I like about you

# What I like about you... #

Over half a century has passed

but I still think that is the best
down the bonnet view

that the motor car
has ever provided for us,

it has that lovely bulge in the
middle, that's very feminine,

the wings rise very slightly,
at each side,

but it's those louvres
that really do it for me.

Look at that,
that is the machine aesthetic

and it comes with a reflection
of heaven.

It is perfect!

Perfect!

# That's what I like about you... #

The E-Type being long,
lascivious and affordable

became the perfect statement
of the British male machismo

and it remains it.

Doesn't it?

This, by the way,
is a Series 1, 4.2 Jaguar E-Type.

The trouble is within ten
years of its launch in 1961,

the E-Type had been...

well, improved into...

this -

the Series 3.

The Jaguar Series 3 E-Type
has become a bit of a fatty.

It's 20% heavier
than the original car,

it's a bit bigger all round,
the styling has become fussier

and it's actually slightly slower,

especially in the case
of this one which was

a three-speed automatic.

It isn't the pure,
lissom sports car it once was,

it's become a bit middle-aged.

It has become, heaven forefend,

a GT.

Meanwhile there was a second
Japanese car in my Top Trumps deck.

And here it is -

the Datsun 260Z.

And here it is for real.

Definitely not a cheap economical
runabout for people who don't

really care, very definitely
and obviously a sports car.

Another clue we blissfully ignored.

The Datsun had done a better job
than

the E-Type of maintaining its figure
through the years.

It arrived in 1969 and by the time I
was Trumping in the school cloakroom

in 1974 the engine had grown a bit

but its weight had hardly increased.

But how does the Datsun compare
with the Jag in the real world,

rather than in a subversive
card-swapping exercise

in a schoolboys' lavatory
in Rotherham?

Time to find out. I mean,
I quite fancy the Datsun myself

but maybe I should ask someone
who knows better.

This man's lineage has almost as
much E-Type provenance as the car
itself.

His dad was the first man ever
to race an E-Type

right here at Oulton Park in 1961.

That man was Graham Hill,

so this must be...

Damon Hill, and here he is.
Good morning.

James, how are you?
Very, very well, thank you.

We decide to have a race.

'The classic Series 3 E-Type
versus the Japanese upstart Datsun.

'I'd drive the Datsun and then Damon
the E-Type for one lap

'and then we'd swap to cancel out
his advantage from,

'um, knowing the track.'

ENGINES REV

And they're off.

Well, we left him behind.

He's buggered off already.

The Datsun has 150 horsepower
against 272 for the Jag.

Bit of a slow acceleration there.

But the Jag weighs 450-something
kilograms more.

Oh, it's very soft, it's a very
soft, floaty feel to the handling.

Lovely.

And it's almost like
I'm on a flying mattress.

I can't feel any bumps at all.

Going over the start
and finish line now,

I'm looking in my mirror
and I can't see James at all.

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

Let's just edit that bit out.

Time to swap.

This time I would have the
upper hand.

Spoiler alert. Damon Hill is
a faster driver than me.

But what we now need to do now is
add the pro Damon Hill lap

for each car to my average doddering
man on the street lap

to find out
which car was truly better.

Thank you.

Do you want to know the lap times?

Erm, go on.

In the Jag...

Damon Hill - 1:29:06.

James May 1:... Really?

Yeah.

1:49:97. In the Datsun...

Wait a minute, that's, that's
20 seconds slower? Yes, it is.

That's an awful lot. Yes, I know.

In the Datsun - Damon Hill 1:30:05.

Oh, right. James May - 1:47:81.

So if you, if you aggregate
the whole thing,

you kind of take us as a cross
section of the driving community.

Very well put, yes.

Then, erm, then which
comes out on top?

Well, hang on a minute,
if we add together...

No, it actually goes to the
Datsun...

just.

The Datsun has just squeaked
it by less than a second.

Actually, there's a third thing that
this demonstrates other than that

the Datsun was a better sports car
and you're a better
racing driver than me,

Top Trumps is not real life
and we believed that game -

that meant everything to us
when I was 10, 11 years old.

The E-Type Jag was a great car for
winning that game therefore

it was a better car
but that's not true. No.

They sold us a lie but that's...
You'll be all right.

But that's something I'll have to
come to terms with.
It's only Top Trumps.

I spent years stuck with
misconceptions about Japanese cars,

the greatness of Britain,
commando war stories

and pictures, all sorts of things.

They promised us the world
and they gave us tinsel.

So the Japanese invasion
had begun in earnest

and America had it even
worse than the UK.

I suggest we don't be fuelish.

The world's great gift to the
Japanese car industry was

the oil crisis of 1973.

Suddenly the USA's
"bigger is better" philosophy

wasn't looking too big.

The market was changing,

economy and size were the buzz
words,

so Ford came up...

with this.

The Mustang 2 was designed to meet
boring everyday concerns,

gas mileage mainly, absolutely
head on and it looked a bit rubbish.

And there was worse because
the original Mustang was based

on an everyday family car, the
Ford Falcon, this was also based on

an everyday family car but this time
it was the rather unloved Ford
Pinto.

Built to run and run and run.

Japan, on the other hand,
had no oil of its own

and so small, efficient engines
were their bread and butter.

Would Detroit
and the US rise to the challenge?

Only one way to find out.

Time for a real world test.

When the Mustang 2 was launched,
it came with a V6 engine,

but after a year or so,
they gave it the big five litre V8,

which is of course the one that
the vast majority of Americans

bought because
if you didn't have a V8,

you were fundamentally
a goddamned Communist.

Now, I have one US gallon of gas
with which to drive around Detroit

and whilst I'm doing that, these
fine gentlemen are going to tell me

everything they know about the city,
the motor industry,

the culture, all the rest of it.

They are Ralph, who used to
work on the Ford production line,

Steve, who is a local historian
with a particular

interest in the motor industry,
and Jerome, who was a steel supplier

to the motor industry in that
vital 1970s, 1980s period.

Happy, chaps?

Let's burn rubber.

While I'm doing that,
I am also in Japan with this,

the original Toyota Celica GT 1600,

straight from the Top Trumps pack
of lies, same colour and everything.

How about that?
However, in the interest of fairness

and because we have the larger
engine Mustang, I'm going

to be driving this
version of the Celica, which is

the more popular
and more powerful 2000 GT lift back.

As before, I'll have exactly one
US gallon of gas

and my passengers for this trip are

Mr Kuroyonami, who was one of
the designers of the Celica,

Mr Furuichi, who maintained
the Celica production line,

and Mr Sugisaki, who worked
in prototyping for Toyota

for a massive 53 years.

Gentlemen,
thank you very much. Shall we go?

Climb aboard.

Now, I'm not actually going to put
just one gallon in each car

and then run them dry cos there
could be all sorts of genuine '70s

rubbish in the bottom of the tank,
like Boston's More Than A Feeling.

No, we did an earlier economy run,
so I know when my gallon's gone.

We're making a right here and going
to go onto these train tracks.

While in America,
I'm getting a tour of Detroit.

Over in Japan, I'm driving
around Detroit's sister city,
Toyota.

Yes, Toyota City,

an entire city that was created
just to manufacture Toyota cars.

Everything you can see here,
from houses to fields to stadiums,

is designed to serve that one
purpose alone.

Just to make everything
absolutely clear,

I have an earpiece in on this side

and there is a translator in our
film car, which is coming with us,

and he can also talk to my guests
through an open radio down here

in the door, so my questions will be
translated to them.

Their answers will be briefly
translated to me.

So, translator man,
could you please ask them

what it was like to
work in Toyota in the 1970s?

TRANSLATES INTO JAPANESE

MUFFLED TRANSLATION

'What?!'

I can't really hear what
Christian's saying, I'm afraid.

It sounds very muffled
in this little Walkman earpiece.

Could you say to them,
"I like the Celica very much.

"It's a very fine car."
TRANSLATES INTO JAPANESE

'If you think this seems
like a phenomenally overcomplicated

'set-up just to see how much fuel
these cars burn, you're right.

'When I conceived this plan,
I thought

'I'd neatly sidestep the problem
of not being able to speak Japanese.

'I was wrong.'

SPEAKS JAPANESE

I worked at the
Dearborn Assembly Plant

from 1977 to 1985, I think.

So, did you build this?

Chances are that
I worked on the engine in this car.

Back in Japan,
my translator is now speaking

Japanese into my earpiece, rather
than out to the rest of the car.

JAPANESE IN JAMES' EARPIECE
Wrong channel.

Wrong channel.

Wrong channel.

JAPANESE TRANSLATION CONTINUES
Wrong...

No, you're doing that in my ear.

What went wrong with Detroit?

There were a combination of things
that really came about to

bring a demise to Detroit.

One was the automotive industry
had had 25 or 30 years of zero

competition. The cars had developed
style and charisma

and had gotten away from reliable
and durable and economical.

And... So they weren't reliable?
Oh, no. The cars were disposable.

In a lot of ways,

the cars were designed to make
you buy one every...

as soon as you had it paid off.

So the oil crisis - what was
the main immediate impact of that?

Fuel price, I suppose?

You couldn't buy fuel on a Tuesday.
Lines at gas stations... Yeah.

And all of a sudden, you had
the rest of the world that had

been building reliable, practical,
efficient vehicles...

So, you know, a 4,000 pound,
500 cubic inch Chevrolet Monte Carlo

became a completely undesirable car
when you could...

It got five miles to the gallon.

Meanwhile, in Japan, we finally
stopped getting lost in translation.

TRANSLATION: I guess for people
overseas having Japanese cars

imported to their countries must be,
you know, a little

defeating for their national pride,
but for us,

it was a sense of, you know,
excitement and pride.

TRANSLATION: I went to
Detroit in the '70s

and the downtown was
dangerous back then.

There were places where you couldn't
park a Japanese car.

They wouldn't let you park
it at Ford in the parking lot.

Especially like during the downturn,

when folks started getting
laid off and...

You guys remember Vincent Chin?

Yeah, Vincent Chin was killed
at a McDonald's. They thought he...

He was actually Korean.

I think he was Chinese and he was
getting married the next day.

He was out at a bar

and some out-of-work autoworkers

assumed that he was Japanese

and part of the reason
why they were laid off.

And they confronted him.
I guess there was alcohol involved.

Bottom line is,
they murdered Vincent Chin.

TRANSLATION: Being just Japanese,
we're hardworking people,

you know, we do what
we're told to do.

We do more than we're told to do.

I guess that's in our blood,
so to speak.

These racist things you're
talking about,

this was all sparked by the Japanese
car because that was...

Yes. A loss of lifestyle.

The Japanese imports, they were
actually making the better product.

It was perceived to be inferior
because it was smaller,

but the finish was better
and it was more refined.

TRANSLATION: I didn't
feel any blue collar,

white collar difference
when I worked at Toyota.

I felt like I was surrounded
by experts.

Wherever I went,
I felt like there were masters,

great masters around me,
creating these things.

It was a joke when I was a kid, you
know, "Where did that come from?"

"Made in Japan."
I mean, no matter what it was.

The big three, they were just
so arrogant, you know.

Too big to fail.

Too big to fail.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.

And less than a mile later...

That's 13.6 miles.
That's one US gallon.

So, that's as far as I can take you,
I'm afraid.

Sorry it couldn't have finished
somewhere a bit more picturesque.

But...cheers.

Thanks, James.

What up, do'. What up, do'.
What up, do'.

Thanks for your help.
It's been tremendous.

Well, that was tremendous.

I've learned a lot of interesting
things about the American

motor industry, about Detroit, about
the teenage lives of those guys.

I've learned to say, "What up, do'".

I wonder how I'm
getting on in Toyota City.

Like a battery-powered rabbit,
the Celica just keeps going

and going and going.

The Mustang lasted just 13.5 miles.

The Celica keeps going for almost
26.

Ford Mustang, mmm or hmm?

Yes? Down? Oh, OK.

Incredible when you realise that
a Mustang 2 would have cost you

over a third more than a Celica.

'When you add it up, a Toyota really
gives you your money's worth.'

It wasn't just Toyota and the
Celica.

Datsun and Mazda and all the rest of
them, they too were ready,

and then there was Honda,
a name that Americans knew for
having

changed the face of motorcycling
with the all-conquering Super Cub.

In '72, Honda launched the Civic,

and then, four years later,
the Accord.

Both were compact, economical,
good to drive, cheap,

and could be used to stalk blonde
female joggers.

What more could you ask for?

# Who built the road,
who was the foolish one... #

And then something unthinkable
to the older generation happened.

In 1982, Honda opened a factory
in the US, in Marysville, Ohio,

to build the Accord
in America's backyard.

By the time we arrive at this
Accord,

the fourth generation in 1990,

something truly remarkable
has occurred.

The Accord,
from a maker of cheap runabouts

and step-through scooters
for preppy kids and moms,

has become the best-selling car
in the United States.

Honda had taken over the American
market, but in Britain,

we had a different
problem altogether.

We were a small island
with a small market.

To thrive as we had done before
the war, we needed to export.

So, in 1973,
Britain joined a free trade zone.

Two years later, a referendum
confirmed it. We were in.

April 1975,
we joined the Common Market,

and that meant we were free to
sell our cars in places like
Germany.

Germany were also free to sell
their cars in places like England.

And theirs were better.

The Triumph might outperform the BMW
when you're racing round a circuit,

but it was unreliable,
it felt coarser,

the brakes were more wooden,
and the wind noise was dreadful.

And it just got worse from there.

You see, this car was
part of their Project Ajax range,

which began in 1965 with the 1300.

And then there was the 1500

and the Toledo and various versions
of our car.

This range of supposedly related
mid-sized cars came in two

different lengths and with front
wheel drive and rear wheel drive.

It was completely baffling.

The 3 Series, meanwhile,
slotted neatly into a growing range

of clearly related cars and that
continues to this day, of course.

You have the 5 and the 3 Series,
and also the 4 Series,

the 1 Series, the 2 Series,
and so it goes on.

Even outside of the cars themselves,

the whole landscape of British
car-marking was becoming
apocalyptic.

'Right now, the five week old
dispute at Triumph has robbed

'the firm of £20 million
worth of turnover.'

We'd have preferred not to have gone
on strike. We had no alternative.

The British Motor Corporation,
who made Austins, Morris Minors,

and Jaguar E-Types,
and the Leyland Motor Corporation,

who made buses and trucks,
had merged and then gone bust

and ended up being
bought by the British government.

The trade union strikes of the 1970s
made everything even worse.

Successive models of the Triumph
would be delayed by two years

because of industrial action.

Well, we all know how it ends.
BMW triumph and Triumph faded away.

By 1984, it had gone,
disappeared and gone.

And the next Triumph after
the Dolomite was the Acclaim,

which was really just
a licence-built Honda.

And that can be considered
a bit of a defeat.

The UK just couldn't keep up.

The troubled British Leyland
desperately flailed for a last

great hope.
It would be a car of the future.

'A new concept in vehicle
engineering.'

It would revitalise our expert
business.

'The car will appeal
to European tastes.'

It would show Germany and Japan what
Britain was really made of.

'Five years' hard work, an enormous
investment in money and skill.

'And throughout its development,
nothing was left to chance.'

It's the Allegro.

The Allegro is one of the most
reviled cars

in British automotive history.

The people who built it nicknamed
it the Flying Pig because it was

supposed to be the car
that saved British Leyland,

but I think that was just
the British workers'

cruel Midlands humour cutting
through the management's rousing
rhetoric.

It's a car which we think will
appeal not only to the sophisticated

British public, but to the
sophisticated European public,

which, of course,

is very much greater now that
we're in the Common Market.

It is not funky or modern. It is
blobby, rounded and conservative.

It should very obviously
have been a hatchback

because hatchbacks were all the rage
in 1973 when this was launched,

but the management decided that
the Allegro would have a boot,

like a proper car.

'From the essentially practical
to the unashamedly glamorous.'

I sit in here, looking at this door
fit and this bit of welding, this

bit of plastic, and I honestly
think, "I could make it this well...

"in my shed."

Everything about the
Allegro was wrong,

from the lack of a hatchback to the
ghastly giant square steering wheel.

The German and Japanese cars
felt like harbingers of a new

technical age. This car,
like the Triumph before it,

felt like a shelf
full of Grandma's knick-knacks.

The weird thing is the management
at British Leyland at the time

must have actually believed
that this car

was a winner,
that this would save them,

would save Britain effectively.

There must have come a point
when it was all ready and they stood

back and looked at this shape in
this baby poo colour and said,
"Yeah!

"We've done it, chaps!"

Something just doesn't make sense,

so I've agreed to meet the original
designer of the Allegro, Harris
Mann,

in a secret location, where no-one
can throw things at him.

This had a rather
unfortunate birth...

Right. ..in that it was supposed
to be an 1100 replacement.

The Austin 1100.

The Austin 1100 replacement,
but as it got developed,

it had various requests
from engineering, in that...

Interfering is the word
you're looking for, is it,

possibly? Always. Always
interfering. Yes, OK. Yes.

So they wanted to put a much more
robust heater into the car

and they wanted to also accommodate
a 1500cc engine in here.

By the time you stuffed
the carburettors on the side,

it started to gain height.

It should have looked like this.

Ah!

It's much better!

Well, I think it was.

But it just went through
so many engineering disasters.

Why couldn't they just design
a new heater that allowed you

to build your nice funky Allegro?
Unfortunately, it cost millions.

So it had to come
out of the parts bin.

So... This was the car that was
supposed to save British Leyland.

That was its job.

Are you saying that
the fortunes of this car

and therefore of a very large
chunk of the British motor industry,

were all changed by the heater
and a tall engine?

I suppose you could say that, yes.
Whose fault was it?

I think it was
engineering management.

It's a very sorry tale.

Well, it is, to me, anyway,
as somebody who likes cars,

to think that your vision was never
realised, that it was

spoilt by interference and that it
slightly spoiled your life as well.

So I'm going to give you back
your artwork,

for that is what it is. Thank you.

The best I can offer you,
to be honest, is...

Well, would you like a lift?

No, thanks. I'd rather walk.

Oh. Thank you. Fine, thanks
very much for coming. Thank you.

Thank you.

Maybe he's in a hurry.

I thought as much.

It was the bloody class system,
something which my Japanese friends

back in the Celica said they didn't
have to deal with.

'£20 million went into the new
Allegro,

'but production has never hit
the target of 4,000 a week.'

'It's stoppages like these
that forced

'Leyland into near bankruptcy.'

The communication
breakdown between management

and workers meant
that despite the protests of people

like Harris Mann, Germany
gave us a thorough spanking.

And for proof that class mucked
this up,

you only have to look at what
happened to the Allegro next.

British Leyland decided that the
secret weapon that would turn their

great hope around would not be
the quality or aesthetics of German

cars or the clever features
and dependability of Japanese cars.

Oh, no.
What would, without question,

save the Allegro would be a posh
radiator grille.

Ha!

This, yes, it's the Vanden Plas.

The Vanden Plas was just an Allegro

but with even more
Victorian trimmings

and a whopping great radiator
grille stuck on the front -

like it had come last in a
Rolls-Royce fancy dress competition.

I'm not sure how it's possible for
a car to actually look embarrassed,

but this somehow manages it.

Just imagine you're German,
you've just seen the Neue Klasse BMW

and then you see this.

I think the idea was
to provide the social impact

and the on-the-road presence

of something like a Bentley,

but in a car for everyman -

but of course that
doesn't really quite work,

because the body shape is too
bulbous to appear truly imperious

and the radiator grille serves
only to remind you, in fact,

of your relatively
lowly status in life.

And more to the point,
the Vanden Plas was around 26%

more expensive than
a standard Allegro

with the same size engine -

an extra £534 to
advertise to the world

exactly what was wrong with Britain.

In fact, the only good thing
about the Vanden Plas

is that it makes the standard
car look relatively good -

even in executive dysentery,

or whatever they called that.

But did it make Britain a player
again in the export business?

Well, around 670,000 Allegros

were produced in total.

Only 25,000 or so ever left Britain.

More to the point of this film,

its direct Japanese rival

is a perfect example
of a petrol phoenix

rising from the ashes of war.

It's the fourth generation
Mazda 323, launched in 1980.

J-POP MUSIC PLAYS

And the honest truth is,

the Mazda 323 is not really
a particularly remarkable car.

It looks ordinary,

it's only 1.3 litres,

it's just a universal
Japanese small hatchback,

but it's such a relief to be in,

compared with being in
the dowdy, old Allegro -

even now, when it's 35 years old.

J-POP MUSIC PLAYS

It may be humble,
but therein lies its strength.

The Japanese started
out with a proper plan

and gradually improved
and finessed it,

rather than trying to go
bigger or better, like the US,

or just panicking and covering
the thing in wood, like the UK.

By 1982, two years into its life,

this generation of the Mazda 323

had sold one million units.

That actually made it
the fastest car in history,

where fastest means
first from 0 to one million.

1982 was also, coincidentally,

the last year that an Allegro

rolled off the production line.

It was also the beginnings
of the global car

because the basis of this car

also formed the basis
of two American Fords.

The Austin Allegro was just
a local car for local people.

So, there you have it -

because of, not despite,
their limited resources,

Japan's Mazda 323 was
the sort of people's car

that we could only dream
of exporting.

And I'm also guessing,
but it is just a guess,

that the equivalent of
Harris Mann at Mazda,

Harisum Manusan,

probably ended up with the car
he drew in the first place.

By this point, it was all over.

Germany and Japan
had cemented their lead

as the world's biggest car exporters

and the once-great
British institutions

fell like dominoes.

Triumph and
Rolls-Royce are now owned

by a different company altogether.

And that car company is...

..BMW.

Remember the giant Morris and
Mini factory back in Oxford?

This is now owned by BMW.

And then there's Bentley,

now also owned by Germany -
through VW.

Soon, everyone was feasting

on the carcass of
what were the war victors.

MG and Austin, now owned by China.

Jaguar and Land Rover,
owned by India.

Lotus, Malaysia.

The US might be just behind Japan
and Germany in terms of production,

but its car factories
have only survived

by adopting modern
Japanese techniques.

They transformed
the old Detroit methods.

We could blame the fuel
crisis or poor management,

or even the class system for this,

but it's also worth considering that

while our brightest minds
were occupied elsewhere

on things like defence,

Japan and Germany were barred -
by treaty - from rearming.

So, what else could
their brightest minds do

than move onto developing cars?

Indeed, we unwittingly sowed
the seeds of our own downfall.

Remember when I said
that Britain used to be

the world's biggest car exporter?

In Forbes' list of the largest auto
manufacturers in the world for 2015,

Japan and Germany occupy every
single one of the top five places.

From the devastation of war

had risen two automotive giants -

something even more incredible

when you consider where a car
like the Mazda 323 had come from.

This is Mazda's home town,
Hiroshima,

but it's more famous, of course,

for being the site of the
world's first atomic attack.

Now, Mazda emerged from
the rubble of the old city

and has now become
a cornerstone of what is,

very obviously,
a completely modern one.

Mazda, perhaps more than any
other car-maker,

proves that to win at cars,

first you must lose...

..at war.

# Speeding along

# The rolling highway

# Singing a song

# To the rhythm of the road

# The sun's in the sky

# A heaven of blue

# The world flashes by

# You feel so happy

# When you're sweeping along

# A leafy byway

# Singing a song

# To the rhythm of the road

# You'll never be late

# If it's a V8

# When you're speeding along

# To the rhythm of the road

# The rhythm of the road! #