Peter Sinclair: Millennium Car of the Century

By PETER SINCLAIR

When it comes to the car he drives, Man seems to have a sneaking affection for the hideous. How else to explain the results of the Millennium Car of the Century contest a few months ago?

Sleek Lagondas, snarling Jaguars, purring Porsches ... these expressions of testosterone-on-wheels were ignored. Even the stately Rolls, monarch of the British highway, found itself neglected in favour of the ditzy, the dumpy and the downright dreadful.

Philosopher Roland Barthes, writing in 1957 said: "I think ... cars today are almost the exact equivalent of the great Gothic cathedrals: I mean the supreme creation of an era, conceived with passion by unknown artists, and consumed in image if not in usage by a whole population which appropriates them as a purely magical object."

And all that about a car which only made it into third place, the slightly eerie Citroen DS.

Second spot was claimed by the pint-size Mini, as emblematic of the 60s as Carnaby St or Mary Quant.

And top of the heap was that classic of sublime ugliness which remoulded the century: the Model T Ford, the "Tin Lizzie" available in any colour "as long as it's black" which, selling for $US260, by 1921 had captured 57 per cent of the world's market and 100 per cent of its heart.

One of the judges was car enthusiast Lord Montagu of Beaulieu who is now mounting an exhibition of the good, the bad, and the absolutely frightful.

That the most enduring feat of Nazi engineering, the Volkswagen, appears on both Best and Worst lists confirms our ambivalence towards automotive beauty.

Visit the Beaulieu website to see for yourself. Perversely, it's those designs which should have remained on the drawing-board which offer the most aesthetic gratification. We reserve for them an amused horror mixed with genuine affection.

There are unsightly classics like the tiny Trabant, usually an Orwellian shade of slime-green, which clattered about communist East Germany trailing clouds of black smoke; the Nash Metropolitan for which the 50s nurtured an inexplicable passion; the Austin Allegro with its square steering-wheel and idiosyncratic handling; the Skoda Estelle, another triumph of Iron Curtain engineering; and let's not forget the star of 1934, the Crossley-Burney Streamline, which combined the sleekness of the tank with the convenience of the hearse.

My favourite, naturally, is the Sinclair C5 electric runabout, love-child of a bathtub and a bike, designed by Sir Clive Sinclair, an inventor whose major contribution to technology was the pocket calculator.

Described as the most expensive tricycle ever built, it was a lightweight battery-powered single-seater which required pedalling uphill.

Developing the C5 beggared Sir Clive. But he's still around — only five years ago he produced the Zike, an electric bicycle; and ... oh no ... has announced another electric car.

The Sleuth says: on your Zike, Sir Clive ...

Links:

Millennium Car of the Century contest

Roland Barthes

Citroen DS

Mini

Model T Ford

Lord Montagu of Beaulieu

Volkswagen

Beaulieu

Trabant

Nash Metropolitan

Austin Allegro

Skoda Estelle

Crossley-Burney Streamline

Sinclair C5

Sir Clive Sinclair

Zike

Peter Sinclair e-mail: petersinclair@email.com