Richard
Brown
I have a troubled
professional relationship with my editor Fred Crawley.
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Having spent an entire
conference late last year being asked, “Are you the new Fred?”,
“How is Fred?”, “Will you tell Fred I have a story for him?” I
began to understand how Dacia feels at the annual Renault-Nissan
knees up.
It’s fine though. I carved
out this little, back-page nook to grumble in. Gratifyingly, it
became popular and I started receiving heartening complements from
the Motor Finance network.
And then Fred cancelled it
last month.
Yes, he sugared the decision
with the fact that there was just too much news and brilliant
content that couldn’t be cut, but you didn’t see him spill my tea
and reset all my internet bookmarks. The man was firm with envy. It
would be a quiet war.
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This month, Fred’s
contributed two; count them, two, stories. Both went top of the
site, unsurprisingly. Yes, I know they were exclusive stories about
Black Horse and Lombard and, yes, I know Fred scooped the rest of
the motor press on both of them but you didn’t see him totally fill
in The Times crossword I had been saving for my lunch
break.
[Have you worked out
which desk drawer the smell of rotten prawns is coming from yet,
Rich? – Ed]
Then, to trump it all, we
were invited to a day of test driving Land Rovers and Jaguars
around the Heritage Motor Centre with, and I quote, “more cake than
you can eat”.
Despite a total lack of a
finance angle to either the rallying or the baked goods, I feel my
proposal for a piece – “I’d have a lot of fun and food” – was given
unfair dues by He Who Commands.
Even reasonable requests like
forking out to send me to Geneva to cover the motor show with a
modest booze stipend and a week beforehand to sample the atmosphere
were spurned by His Lordship, who cackled like a Victorian
workhouse whiphand as he threw my claim sheet on the smouldering
embers of my ambition.
Not that I would have missed
much: Just the BMW M6 turbo-charged coupé, a touch shy of
£100k’s-worth of German acceleration.
I mean, do I really want to
see a car that’s worth more than my flat? Not when Fred has got me
looking into the residual values of decaying FIAT Pandas (the
answer is ‘less than my bicycle’). If the itch gets bad I can just
read Chris Knapman in The Telegraph telling me about
wishbone suspension, flap-paddles, and what it’s like to be a
journalist who goes to all the places that Bond villains like to
live.
Here’s a thing: stare at the
back of the Honda NSX Concept (if you’re not in Geneva, you can
Google it.). All you can see is a very wide robotic skull viewing
you with contempt.
It’s much like working for
Fred.
Of course, the muscular city
cars and hatchbacks are all over the show, like a gym full of guys
who are all shorter than average and overcompensating at the
weights benches.
A personal favourite is the
revamped Kia cee’d. It looks like Darth Vader and moves
(supposedly) like Usain Bolt. Seems a bit of a wasted opportunity,
however, when all the target demographic needs it to do is sit
behind traffic turning into the McDonalds drive-through at the
Target roundabout, Ruislip.
[There was a great analogy
here about the McLaren that never showed up in Switzerland last
year but Fred pulled it, it was that good.]
There’s even a new Fiat 500
on display. As Fred accidentally managed to coax from those in the
know, the 500 is regarded by some as “the best car for finance out
there”, settling in a perfect space between affordability and
practical appeal.
The model on display at
Geneva is slightly larger, looking like a dumpy but shiny Morris
Minor in the press release on my desk, and could hit that sweet
spot again if those taking finance in this country expand, either
by number, ambition or waistline.
If that is the case, Fred
will likely get the first word on it so, again, no need for me to
go on a week-long bender of Toblerone and schnapps.
So I hope you enjoyed Geneva,
from wherever you were, and I hope you enjoyed this month’s
Motor Finance, unless you are a fan of this column and
it’s the first thing you turned to.
In which case, unfortunately, this month is full of
exclusive news, data and comment that Fred put together.
