It's very difficult these days to convince somebody of the environmental merits of driving a classic car if they are clouded by the 'green' marketing spin that most car manufacturers drape over their products.
When the internal combustion engine was conceived, it paid no mind to sensors, engine management systems or complex monitoring to extract every last chink of power from every precious drop of fuel. Prior to the fuel crisis of the seventies our focus was on aesthetics and power rather than environmental conscience.
It is in no doubt that the sports cars of today do a fantastic job of blending performance with economy however when we start looking in to the cost of production not only financially but ecologically, it starts to paint a rather different story.
Let's look at EV's or Electric Vehicles. Recent research has indicated that to produce electricity to power these vehicles, the environmental cost may be many times worse than comparative diesel or petrol powered vehicles. Additionally the production methods used to produce the batteries and electric motors require many toxic materials such as copper, aluminium and nickel. We must also consider the cost and impact of extracting such materials from the ground. Ironically it may be the case that these vehicles have done potentially more damage to the environment than their petrol powered cousins before they have even turned a wheel.
Promoting the use of electric vehicles in countries where electricity is primarily produced by the burning of fossil fuels is therefore essentially pointless.
As a certified petrol head it will always be difficult for me to come to terms with the idea of electric powered cars simply because I am genetically pre-disposed to the sound of a V12 at 8500rpm. I do agree that automotive progress will bring us many good and useful innovations and yes I suppose we have to think of our children as well. I am a bit disappointed though that my daughter is more likely to be learning to take her driving test in a sibling of a Unigate milk float rather than a 3 cylinder Daihatsu Charade Turbo as I did... happy days.
To get back to the headline story lets look at an equation that I always cite to people when they start banging on about what a good deal they got at their local GMC dealer. GMC in this instance does not stand for General Motors Corp. but rather 'Generic Malaysian Car'. This equation is of course CPM or Cost Per Mile.
This is always a good one because what it does is factor in everything from initial purchase price through to insurance and fuel cost and many other things between. It's also the equation I use to justify to myself and my wife that it is indeed cheaper for me to drive a BMW with a 4.0 V8 rather than a Ford Focus diesel, it's that old favourite - purchase price.
My current classic cost me the grand total of £175 with tax and MOT (it's an 80′s 5 pot Passat estate). I do approximately 500 miles per week in it and it is totally reliable. It does around 35mpg, I can undertake most of the (scarce) repair work myself due to it's simplicity and it's as warm, comfortable and quick as any modern car. Importantly it makes a wonderful noise and also looks cooler the dirtier it gets which is a bonus. When I do the sums my Passat, even with it's hefty weekly mileage tally is still far cheaper to run than a Toyota Aygo.
I do take on board that driving a classic every day may not be to everyone's taste; dynamically cars of today are far superior but I think that's where we've essentially gone wrong with the whole motoring experience in general over the years. Automobiles are meant to have character, a soul and it's a car's foibles that make every journey an event rather than an exercise from A to B.
As classic car lovers we are by and large a group of pretty diverse human beings but essentially we are one thing - individuals. We drive the cars we drive because we enjoy not seeing 40 odd other similar cars on our journey home from work and take a certain comfort from not having to keep up with the endless stream of generic German saloons in the fast lane of the motorway - we don't have to. Couple this with the fact that you can glance at the Toyota Prius driver as he/she goes past and think to yourself they may mean well but when you look below the surface they may have paid a price far greater than they imagined in the showroom.
