KIDS IN CARS

I am always moaning about the fact that young people getting into their first cars today are not like us ‘old farts’ who tinkered with cars, modifying them, racing them and servicing them.

However, the organizers of the 2017 New York Auto Show went all out to make sure kids featured big at this year’s expo. I applaud this initiative and the photos of pure fun tell the story better than words.

But, by the time these little tykes are old enough to have a licence, they won’t be doing the driving – they’ll be enslaved by autonomous cars.

However, it's great to see such unbridled enthusiasm and joy on the show floor.

Well done!

One media forum at the NY auto show was devoted to the subject of ‘why’ younger drivers are more likely to accept autonomous, self-driving cars. 

Another forum even posited that autonomous driving will kill cars like the MX-5.

Bah, humbug!

MEET THE PRESS - PART FOUR

This is not about a wordsmith, but a photo-journalist, the great Hans Lehmann – the world’s first scoop photographer. 

Hans was born in Dessau, East Germany in 1939, but moved with his family to Wolfsburg, where he developed an interest in cars. He moved to Hamburg to start his career as a photographer, working freelance for an agency and the key German newspapers.

He regularly returned home to visit his family in Wolfsburg. During a visit in 1963 he noticed a prototype being tested (in those days car companies did not bother to disguise prototypes), and he sold the photos he took with a 300mm lens to the German tabloid BILD.

After this highly profitable deal, Hans had a new profession. He travelled to Death Valley, Australia, North Africa and the Arctic Circle. Hans had a three tier pricing structure. He got the most money from his top line customers who had first publishing rights; and when I was Editor of MODERN MOTOR magazine we got ‘second access publishing rights’ which allowed us to use the photo twice.

His wife Christa, who did all the bookkeeping, also monitored the customers to check that they were sticking to the publishing rules.

In May 1976 a single photo taken above the Arctic Circle arrived on my desk, and was to be the catalyst for what I consider to be my greatest achievement as a car magazine editor. For six months I had been researching a rumour picked up by my London Editor, Harold ‘Dev’ Dvoretsky, that Holden’s next new car in Australia may come from Europe.

‘Dev’ was not a great journalist, nor a news hound, but he had the most amazing network of contacts spread throughout the car industry in Europe, including Lehmann.

I began questioning my own ‘moles’ at Holden, and a picture began to form about the shape and size of the new car, and it was completely different to the current Holden sedan.

As the research notes started to build, an image crystallized the minute I saw the rear three-quarter night shot Lehmann had sent. One of his contacts had told him the car was being developed by Opel and would be sold in Australia, and he included this gem (in German), as a caption on the back of the photo.

By September of 1976 I had enough to put a story together, but just one photograph to hang it on.

Then the Eureka moment!

My resident part time artist at MODERN MOTOR was also a part time security guard, and one day he was visiting the Sydney Showgrounds to pick up his paycheck. At one of the pavilions he noticed an event accompanied by very tight security. He muscled his way into the Hordern Pavilion and immediately recognized what was happening.

General Motors-Holden was conducting a research clinic for its planned new car, the Opel-sourced, Holden Commodore. Nobody from Holden saw anything wrong with having an extra security guard hanging around; but he stood for almost 30 minutes taking in the scene, and snapping photos in his mind of the silver design model.

He raced the five kilometres from the Showgrounds to my office and bursting through the door, grabbed paper and pencils and sat at my desk, drawing the car from memory. And, here is the result. A major scoop on the new Holden Commodore, published in October 1976 – a full two years before the public launch of the car!

Needless to say neither I, nor MODERN MOTOR, were flavor of the month in the GM-H Boardroom. The GM-H Chairman, Chuck Chapman; the Chief Engineer, Joe Whitesell; the Design Director, Leo Pruneau and the Sales Director, John Bagshaw discussed the appearance of the story, and decided the best way to deal with me was to ‘invite me into the tent’.

I was invited to travel from Sydney to GM-H in Melbourne, where I would be lunched and presented with a complete briefing on the car, provided I did not use any of the information or fine detail we discussed, before the public launch of the car.

Having already scored the news value of the scoop I agreed immediately; a secondary outcome was that I became very good friends with each of those directors for the rest of my life, and career, in the car industry.

POSTSCRIPT: By the time the Commodore was launched in 1978 I had resigned from MODERN MOTOR to compete in the 1977 Singapore Airlines London to Sydney Car Rally with veteran adventurer, Hans Tholstrup. After the rally finished in September 1977 I joined Leyland Australia as its PR Director, a role I held for 14 years.

HOLY JUMPIN' JAGUARS, BATMAN!

Jaguar XJ40 press launch, Dunkeld House, Perthshire, September 1986

The photographer’s recollection was typically British, magnificently underplayed:

“I had just taken a photo of an Australian crew, when I heard a car approaching at great speed behind me; I turned, aimed and fired just as the car leapt in the air and flew past the lens. They were having a good time.” I thought to myself.

From the driver’s seat, Sydney’s Daily Telegraph auto writer Wayne Webster was pressing on down the narrow country B-road, holding the speed steady at something well beyond the British motorway limit. He was calm and focussed on the job of keeping the shiny new cat on the road and chasing the unofficial ‘lap record’ for the press preview drive route for the Jaguar XJ40, set earlier in the week.

His companion Paul Gover, from the Canberra Times, recalled: “We knew that the very eccentric CAR magazine journalist LJK Setright, had established the 'record' at some time around 3 hours 55 minutes and we went all out to beat it.”

"I drove the first section pretty swiftly, but the roads were very narrow and twisty, and my sums showed we had no chance. But Webbie took over and, as the roads opened up over the Highlands, we were back in with a serious shot. We topped 120mph several times, me smiling with an eye on the clock, but then becoming a frown as we realised there was no way to get back to the ‘chequered flag’ before we ran out of fuel."   

"About 10 miles from the end we were forced to detour off the route, down into a little Scottish village and the nearest pump, to add £10 of five-star fuel before dashing back to Jaguar HQ at Dunkeld House.” 

“When we pulled in we found we’d missed the record by just a minute or two, and the Jaguar team were commiserating with the colonials. Then we told them about running low on fuel and they didn’t believe us. They said a race driver had pre-run the course and been fine on fuel. So we asked him about his fuel economy and were told he had averaged 12.8 miles-per-gallon. When they checked our onboard computer we had done worse than 10 mpg!”

I was told later in the day the red Jaguar was wheeled into Jaguar’s temporary press garage to check it over, after the photographer showed them the photo

The car had thankfully not sustained any damage, but the exploit certainly boosted the Australian media’s global reputation for competitive driving!