We don't value great cars - or people - enough, until they're gone
Mike Rutherford thinks we should value both great cars and people while we still have the chance.
Human nature being what it is, we’re often guilty of taking things for granted. It’s not until we lose an important something or someone that we truly appreciate what we once had.
This I was reminded of a few days ago when Audi declared that it’s no longer building its small, chunky, great-value Q2, which has potential as an affordable modern classic. Thankfully, a few basic, last-ever examples remain in stock, starting at £29,532.
Last Wednesday, there was another loss, this time courtesy of Nissan, which is closing one of its two UK production lines. So can’t it just sell or lease its spare Sunderland factory space and capacity to Chery, which craves UK manufacturer status? Should the Chinese firm waste several years and billions of pounds building a brand-new plant before recruiting its own workers here? Or might it tap into Nissan’s existing, but under-utilised, facilities and workforce? UK Government intervention is required on this matter. Especially because, when originally built, the Sunderland plant was heavily subsidised by UK taxpayers, who therefore, to this day, have a sizeable financial stake in it.
Continuing the theme of transforming sad losses into happy gains, in Japan, Naoko Nishimoto, 80, parted company with something dear to her a short while back – the immaculate Mazda RX-7 she’d owned for 25 years. Her sadness at having to hang up her driving gloves was tempered by the fact that Mazda bought back the car from her, hopefully at a super-generous price. Naoko made an aptly titled YouTube video ‘Goodbye RX-7: Saying Farewell To A Dear Friend’ about the buying, owning, driving and selling experience that was so important to her but not, she assumed, to anyone else. How wrong Ms Nishimoto was. Her humble, 10-minute cinematic production has just won the Grand Prix award at the International Auto Film Festa in Tokyo.
Other dear friends lost in recent days were Geoff Whalen (90) and Alex Zanardi (59), both true gentlemen with time for anyone – even me! Geoff was MD and de facto chief salesman at Peugeot’s UK operation in the nineties, but broken-hearted in 2006 when his former Paris paymasters closed the factory at Ryton, Coventry, that he loved.
Alex I met, interviewed and rode alongside at Japan’s Twin Ring Motegi international motorsport complex. And after his distinguished car racing career cruelly ended with a horrific crash, he reinvented himself and won multiple Paralympic gold and world champion medals aboard his specially built, hand-powered bike. Words like legend and hero are often overused, but not in the case of Alex, who epitomised bravery. Along with Stirling Moss, he was one of the toughest, most determined and inspirational men I ever had the honour of knowing and sharing a car with.
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