How Britain fell in love with the Vauxhall Corsa
Hyundai calls it: ‘the call of the small’. The story of cars over the last 10 years in Britain - as the above graph of new registrations shows - has been the rise of the nippier, more flexible vehicles that are better suited to the demands on city, and family, life. As ‘lower medium’ cars like the Ford Focus have tussled with ’superminis’ from Vauxhall, one of Britain’s best-loved car brands, saloons like the BMW 3 series, with their less flexible interiors, have gradually lost out. (Seats that can’t be folded to make way for bikes are an issue now.) Meanwhile at the roomier end, SUVs like the Range Rover, owners of which have rapidly become social pariahs, have given way to ‘people carriers’ like the Renault Espace. Of course, the main gripe with SUVs is that they guzzle too much gas. But in truth ‘greener driving’, if there is such a thing, has been slow to come. Average CO2 emissions for new cars have fallen by only 15 per cent over the past decade, and much trumpeted ‘hybrid’ cars like the Toyota Prius still only comprise 6 per cent of new registrations. What we’re not doing is driving less. Instead motor industry bodies like the SMMT are left to tout CO2 reduction ‘innovations’, such as pumping up tyres, taking off roof racks and “emptying unnecessary items from the boot”.
(Source: SMMT)
Subscribe to Times Labs RSS feed
Leave a Reply