NOSTALGIA IS big business these days. Hardly surprising when the modern world appears so bleak. Motoring is no different. When you consider the current state of motoring, blighted by congestion, fuel prices, taxes, tolls and road rage, one can’t help but hanker for the old days.
But was driving 50 years ago so great? Granted, there were pros; roads were empty – in 1950s Britain, just 13 per cent of households had a car. However, this is among many negatives: struggling along rubbish roads in rubbish cars built from bits of Messerschmitts shot down during the second World War.
But there is great joy in pottering about in vintage machinery through verdant hills with the wind in your hair – even through a rusty hole in the bulkhead.
This feeling is exactly what Britain’s Best Drives, a tie-in with a forthcoming BBC4 series starring actor Richard Wilson – he of grumpy old git Victor Meldrew infamy – tries to recreate.
In the book, co-written with journalist Nigel Richardson, Wilson details his adventures as he heads off in a series of classic cars in a bid to revisit the Golden Age of Motoring in the 1950s.
Equipped with period guidebooks and a Thermos full of Bovril (probably), he revisits six historic drives through the Lake District, north Wales, the Forest of Dean, the North Yorkshire Moors, central Scotland and along the Cornish coast.
His choice of transport is a mix of period cars: a Triumph TR3A ragtop, a Ford Zodiac Mk II, a cute little Austin Cambridge A55, a decadent Bentley Mark VI, a funky Morris Minor Traveller and a VW Kombi van whose gearbox drives him nuts.
It sounds awful – how enticing would it be to spend countless hours in a cold, damp unreliable car with the world’s narkiest geezer? But don’t let the cover, featuring Wilson in pure Meldrew pose, fool you. He is quite the charmer. His observations of the people he meets and places he visits are full of mirth.
The book is about the journey, rather than the destination. It’s also full of interesting titbits. Did you, for instance, know that the Automobile Association was founded in 1905 to warn motorists of police enforcing the 20mph speed limit?
And the writing is beautiful. Who wouldn’t smile at a description of the Triumph’s windscreen wipers as “dainty hands” sweeping and swishing raindrops away? One can imagine Wilson gazing lovingly at the scarlet car on a windswept Cumbrian hillside, “like a bead of fresh blood on a faded tapestry”.
It’s enough to get the addled commuter stuck in a 12-mile motorway tailback teary-eyed with longing. Maybe things were better in the good old days after all.
Britain's Best Drives: Journeys through the Golden Age of Motoring, by Richard Wilson and Nigel Richardson, is published by Headline, approx €20. The BBC4 series begins on February 18th