Where Have All the Crap Cars Gone?
The first and, so far, only car I’ve owned was a Vauxhall Corsa. I inherited it in my thirties, when my mum moved to New Zealand, and it chugged along for about a decade until it gave up the ghost on the side of the M4 (a sorry tale I’ll come back to). It was Chelsea blue. I’m not one for engine sizes, but think powerful lawn-mower. It had a problem with condensation, which meant the only way to clear the wind-screen was to open the window — or you could drive with your head out the side like a dog. Moss grew in the rubber seals like a window box attempting to cheer up a drab flat.
It was, in other words, a shit car. But I never really thought of it like that: growing up, my parents always had shit cars; pretty much everyone we knew had basically shit cars. This is not a judgement on class or money. Back in the 1980s, people with no money had shit cars, with a big dink in the side and one door that was a different colour from the rest of the body. The upper class absolutely loved a shit car, with an enthusiasm for rusty bangers that almost looks like trolling today. My uncle, who was high up in the civil service, was both the richest person we knew and drove the worst car: a Renault 14 that was at least 70 per cent rust or holes. (As an aside, Kate Winslet was once a passenger in the Corsa with my girlfriend and was highly complimentary.)
But now, it is the total opposite: everyone I know drives what I would consider to be a fancy car. They start reliably on cold mornings and they don’t require a metal coat hanger to deliver entertainment. There’s more advanced technology in modern cars than in the space shuttles of my youth (or, at least, that sounds like something that would be true) and you and yours can travel in serene air-conditioned and sound-proofed comfort, listening to The Rest is Politics while your buns get lightly toasted by the heated seats.
When did this happen? Why did this happen? If pushed for a date, I’m going for July 2001. This was when the new Mini One was released by BMW, the maker of famously good, German automobiles. We may regard the original Mini, designed in the 1950s by Alec Issigonis, as an icon now, but it was always meant to be a low-cost, no-frills product. When it was first sold, it cost £350 plus tax, though if you wanted a fitted heater that was an extra 40 quid. My family had several, both regular and Clubman. The only concession to luxury was the capacious storage “bins” on each door, which were sized to fit one bottle of vermouth and two bottles of Gordon’s Gin: the ideal proportions for a dry martini, Issigonis’s favourite tipple.
When it was decided to reboot the Mini in the mid-Nineties, there was a furious row about how luxe the new car should be. Rover, which oversaw the Mini brand and was the undisputed master of the shit car, wanted it to be an economy model that would update its 100 series, a vehicle so boxy and soporific that it looks like it has been drawn by a four-year-old. BMW, which had bought Rover in 1994, had other ideas and, at a risk of lapsing into lazy Teutonic stereotypes, it prevailed. The new Mini would be bigger, more jacked-up than the car that inspired it. Unlike the original car, it assumed that passengers in the back actually had legs.
BMW’s Mini was a worldwide hit — even though it had a reputation for being a bit weird and unreliable. A big part of this success, I think, was that you could buy into a prestige brand without spending a fortune. It used to be that the top car manufacturers didn’t sully themselves with cheaper models. That changed around the turn of the century: in 1997, Mercedes launched their compact A-Class; BMW followed with its entry-level 1 Series in 2004. If you were interested in status, the barrier to entry was suddenly quite a bit lower.
But perhaps the main factor behind the death of the shit car has been the all-conquering boom in SUVs, whose small-house-on-wheels vibe is the antithesis of the shit car. In 2006, seven percent of new cars sold in Europe were sports utility vehicles; in 2023, they accounted for almost half (48 per cent) of global car sales. SUVs are a no-brainer for car companies: they don’t cost that much more to make, but because they are considered a premium product, they can command profit margins up to 20 per cent larger than smaller cars. That’s why most of the car adverts you see are for SUVs. Volvo has even debated no longer selling their estate — another signature car from my childhood — in the UK.
Personally, though, I never understood the connection between status and the car I was driving. I look at people who have really flash cars the same way I regard really muscle-bound men: awwww, if that’s what floats your boat, then great, go for it! This didn’t change when the Corsa finally packed up. The circumstances weren’t totally ideal: the car broke down at 6pm and we weren’t rescued by the RAC until 3am; I spent those nine hours in a lay-by on the M4 with my five-year-old daughter, surrounded by a perplexing number of bottles of piss from (very dehydrated) truck-drivers. But if you’ve got a shit car, what do you expect? It would be like supporting Burnley and being disappointed when you don’t win the Champions League. When we received £61 for scrapping the Corsa, I couldn’t help thinking of it as a win.
OK, sure, I’m in the minority. You probably have a non-shit car and are very happy with it. It’s clearly a lot safer than my old Corsa. You may lease it, in which case you get that heady, new-car smell every couple of years. But I also look at the roads now and feel they have become a bit monochrome: isn’t it dull when everyone’s car looks and basically works the same?
All I ask is that next time you are replacing your ride, consider the shit car. Consider maybe a Hyundai i10 or the king of the shit cars, the Jaguar X-Type. These may not have power, reliability, decent mileage, Bluetooth or a little camera that shows you parking. But what you will have is a car with character. A car you could give a name to. And, when it inevitably lies down and dies somewhere suboptimal, I guarantee the whole journey will not have been boring.
Tim Lewis is an Esquire editor-at-large and the author of Land of Second Chances: The Impossible Rise of Rwanda's Cycling Team. This piece appeared in the Autumn 2024 issue of Esquire, subscribe here
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