The Rover P6 could only possibly be British. Look at the wood, leather and chrome, the big, solid body styling, the twin headlamps. Then drive it - big, torquey engine that flatly refuses to rev because it just doesn't need to.
On the other hand, nobody but the French would build the Citroën GS. Most of it is fantastically well-designed, in an utterly off-the-wall, unconventional fashion that only the French could come up with. The hydropneumatic suspension is superb, the body styling is from another planet (but extremely streamlined), and most of the controls are well designed and easily to hand.
But there are just a few of those Friday-afternoon points that the French excel in. You can just imagine a Citroën designer, who'd probably had a few Stellas with his lunch, glancing at his watch every few seconds as he decided that the dashboard should be very attractively swoopy, leaving no space to store anything. Likewise as he did the right-hand drive conversion. The handbrake on RHD cars can only be operated with one's little finger. The usual excuse is that it would have cost too much to re-engineer the handbrake handle - but it was re-engineered to fit the right-handed swoopy dash, they just forgot to move the release button!
The new Renault Laguna is great - a car like that could only be French. It looks like nothing else on the roads, but it's very individual and very stylish - and will probably look hideously dated in a few years time.
However, I can't help feeling that the British have slipped up lately. The MGF, Jaguar S-Type and Rover 75 are both supposed to hark back to a golden age of British motoring - but while the cars they ape were technologically and stylistically advanced back in the ‘60s, the F, S-Type and 75 are just pastiches, products of companies which have lost their way. With France producing cars like the Laguna and Vel-Satis concept which are recognisably French, but modern, I hope we find our design feet again soon. Let's have some truly modern Jags and Rovers, cars which can carry the flag of the Mark II and P6 without trying to be them.
6-6-2001
My mum, who knows about as much about cars as my cat, proved this point today. A new Jag S-Type passed us and she said, "Oh look, it's an Inspector Morse car!"