While the war on motoring rumbles on with a political focus, there’s still plenty for petrolheads to be excited about on the ‘Road to Zero’
You’d be forgiven, if you’re a “car person”, for feeling a bit jaded at the moment. Rightly or wrongly, the so-called war on motorists rages on, sucking any remaining joy out of driving with its daily barrage of fees and fines. And with the world turning against fossil fuels, it’s the older, more interesting cars taking the flak – anything running on petrol, especially classics, is steadily losing ground in a world increasingly dominated by electric SUVs.
All of this weighs heavily on my mind as I wait at a windy bus stop in Oxfordshire, having left the car at home in the spirit of environmentalism. My eco-friendly, multi-modal journey by e-bike, train, Tube and bus has taken nearly three hours and cost some £67.25 – all to report on yet another EV conversion firm that takes old classics and gives them a new lease of battery-powered life.
It’s an extremely divisive topic. On the one hand, half the appeal of a classic car – if not two-thirds – is held in its engine, the furious, galumphing contraption that once made a car a car. We appreciate classics for how they sound almost as much as how they look – the way their roar scatters woodpigeon as they tear down country lanes, and their charismatic rumbling parked in sunny pub gardens. On the other hand, petrol is taboo now; if we want to pass classic cars onto the next generation, as our parents did, converting them to run on cleaner fuel is not sacrilege but simply preventative maintenance.
My bus lurches to a halt in Kidlington, a village so mundane it was once an attraction for Chinese tourists wishing to experience “authentic” Britain, away from the saccharine chocolate-box towns found elsewhere in Oxfordshire. It can be tempting to think of our nation as a sort of singularity that occurred in 1953, with rakish young men driving Triumphs and MGs across unspoilt countryside, but no – here is a Tesco, some chain pubs and a large Skoda dealership, its forecourt packed full of European SUVs.