Arash AF10
Few of Arash Farboud’s creations have yet to trouble the DVLA, but we hope his latest, £320,000 Vette V8-powered creation makes it to production

FBS Census
This odd-looking roadster rather boldly named itself the ‘Future of British Sportscars’. It stank of glue, broke down, and then sank without trace.

Panther 6
Panther lurched from crisis to crisis for twenty years before succumbing to the inevitable. The Solo was quite good, the Panther 6 quite mad.

TVR Cerbera Speed 12
The maddest product of TVR’s nineties heyday under Peter Wheeler: 1000bhp, but only one made it to the road. Less than a decade later TVR was dead, but there are rumours of reincarnation

Morgan Roadster
They’ve been making cars from wattle and daub at a glacial rate in Pickersleigh Road, Malvern for a century now, so must be doing something right.

Caterham Seven
The design might be more than half a century old but it’s simple to build and still a performance and handling benchmark; that’s why Caterham is still in business.

Noble M12
Rave reviews weren’t enough to guarantee a stable business. Despite the departure of the brillant but difficult Lee Noble, the firm is still around and working on a £200,000 supercar.

Ariel Atom
Brilliant design, stellar performance and long queues of buyers; this is how low-volume sports cars should be done

Bristol Fighter
The anomaly of small British sports car firms: this bizarre, secretive, blue-blooded company makes outrageous cars at outrageous prices in tiny numbers with no publicity yet seems immune to the downturn

Midas Gold
“I couldn’t do better than a Midas”, said Gordon Murray of this Metro-based, plastic-bodied ‘sports’ car. That was before he created the McLaren F1. Wonder if he’s changed his mind?

If you love to drive, then it follows that you should love your car. It might seem obvious to some that falling in love with the car you drive is something to strive for: but think about it a little deeper and you can see that automotive infatuation just might help to save the planet.

And nowhere is the point more relevant when you look at how English sports car company Morgan’s died-in-the-wool world view could soon be the model to which the bigger car corporations turn in the name of survival.

The retro styling of a Morgan’s design isn’t to everyone’s taste — but the micro manufacturing way of doing things they employ has created arguably the most sustainable form of car industry as exists anywhere.

But it’s not only the BMW ‘Efficient Dynamics’ motors in the newest Morgans that colour them green. It is the overall environmental impact on a product that most closely defines how ‘green’ a product can be rated. As Cardiff University’s ground breaking Environmental Rating for Vehicles (ERV) study, the Morgan 4/4 rated a highly respectable score of 28 (the Bentley Arnage rated 2, and the Smart for 2 rated 60, though we personally wouldn’t be seen dead in one of them).

So it is possible to create fun, dynamic cars that don’t destroy the planet without resorting to new fangled fuels and drivetrains.

The open secret of Morgan’s vision is that its business model is based upon low volume production, the long life cycle of their product range and that ptoduct’s simplicity and durability. In other words, it is much more eco friendly to avoid built in obsolescence, high-impact, capital-heavy multiple product development and the use of componentry and materials that are less than vital for a car’s primary purpose.

Morgan began using Ash wood sub frames because of the scarcity of steel in the post war years, but now the use of timber in their cars’ construction is one of the mainstays of the Morgan philosophy. By using lightweight renewable materials such as steel, timber and leather rather than the energy-intense aluminium and other composites to keep weight down and you’ll increase environmental as well as dynamic performance.

Simplicity of design, low volume of production of highly durable and emotionally appealing cars leads us to love our four wheeled companions. Not only is that what every passionate driver desires, but it also makes it much more likely that we’ll care for and nurture our car through an extended life-cycle. This avoids the endless promotion of the new — the basis of course on which not only the car industry, but mass production itself has always relied upon.

And therein lies the rub. If car companies are to survive they need to move closer to the Morgan business model. This ultimately means that fewer cars will be produced and therefore fewer employees in the primary stage of manufacturing will be needed to produce them.
This sort of restructuring is logistically complex and politically sensitive. Cutbacks that these sort of innovations entail rolls down the structure of business and society in general.

If we’re serious about changing the way we produce and consume cars, then livelihoods based on old style mass production will be harder and harder to sustain.

If however, manufacturing turned wholeheartedly to Morgan’s ‘Micro Factory Retailing’ model, then we could reasonably expect that eventually service industries would spring up to support the nurtuing of this new generation of ‘slow build’ vehicles. These smaller scale cottage industries, dedicated to micro manufacturing spare parts and after-market mods and other products, would create jobs, wealth and commerce in its wake.

Crucially, it would be easier and more economically viable for this new wave of industry to introduce in turn their own cleaner, more sustainable processes.

Wether this is a misty eyed piece of wishful thinking or a quiet, wood and leather-wrought revolution only time will tell. Either way, these last few years we’ve begun to look at Morgan’s world view altogether differently.

There’s a lot of misunderstanding about the word ‘classic’. And for such a controversial word, petrol heads and general lovers of cars and bikes use the word perhaps more than any other. In a noble attempt to clarify our terms at the start of our ‘classic’ feature thread, we thought we’d consult the good book: and find examples out there in the real world that exemplify the various definitions of the ‘C’ word. Tell us what you think of our choices, and please, feel free to suggest your alternatives.

Classic (adj) (as defined by Collins Dictionary 1991)
1 ‘of the highest class’ : The Rolls Royce Phantom Coupé

Synonymous with the highest possible ideals of motoring perfection, many believe that Rolls Royce has reached new heights with the latest range of models. Combining as it does superlative performance with bespoke tailoring, could the Phantom Coupé be the most classic Rolls ever?

2 ‘serving as a standard model of its kind’: The Honda Civic Type R

In its many and various manifestations the Civic Type R has set the standard by which all hot hatches are measured. They are engineered with the perfect balance of fun-focused emotion and workaday reliability – and that’s what Hot Hatches – the icon of the everyman – are all about.

3 ‘adhering to an established set of principles’: The Morgan Plus Four

Sticking with a formula of hand-wrought production values in a self consciously retrospective style, a Morgan is instantly recognisable. Though that self-conscious styling plays on deep-lying popular ideas of what constitutes a classic (falling perhaps into cliché), it achieves its aim every time.

4 ‘characterised by simplicity, balance, regularity or purity of form’: Harley Davidson Sportster

Love them or hate them, the perennial popularity of the simple but burly V-Twin form is the core of one of the strongest brands mankind has ever known. As such, the consistently pure idea that is the Harley will continue to rumble into legend.

5 ‘of lasting significance or interest’: McLaren F1

In 1998 the McLaren F1, setting a still rarely matched top speed of 243 MPH, almost single-handedly ushered in the era of the road going hypercar. Representing the boomtime economics of GP-roadcar crossover it remains a totemically significant classic – even in a world where the Bugatti Veyron exists.

6 ‘continuously in fashion because of a simplicity of style’: The Mini

Despite the current mania generated by the fiftieth anniversary of the launch of Alex Issigonis’s Mini design, the little cars never really went out of fashion. Devastatingly simple, accessible and fun, the design will be forever associated with a time and a place in when Britain was at the centre of style.

And it’s difficult to argue that the new Mini doesn’t carry on many of the traditions initiated by the BMC version. Loved particularly by women of a certain age, and an ongoing exemplar of the British thing (ok, we know they’re German, but still…) their stratospheric sales figures are testament to the brand’s ongoing appeal.

7 ‘of the highest excellence’: The Land Rover Discovery 3

With its ability to range deep into the most inhospitable terrain imaginable as well as being the perfect luxury long-distant ride for a family of six (or a handful of outdoor adventurers), the Disco 3 is the apogee of a much-maligned form.

8 ‘regarded as definitive’: The Lamborghini Countach LP400

If you were a man-child of the seventies or early eighties, the Countach will always be the definitive dream car. The Gandini designed shell, the scissor doors and its multilayered hooligan chic remains unsurpassed. Hats off to Bertone.

Did you see our future classics feature in issue 6? We selected 10 current-ish cars, which our experts think have the best chance of becoming a genuine future classic in years to come.

But, if you’re like me, you probably disagree with the choices our so called experts made, and here’s your chance to do something about it.

For starters you can vote on which of our choices you think is the most likely future classic in our poll, here are some pictures of our 10 to help you choose.

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Second, you can suggest another car that you think should have made the list. So if you think the Rover 75 V8 is a steaming pile which is going to be outlasted and outloved by the Jaguar S Type, simply tell us as much in a comment on this post. And you can do likewise if you think that the Renault Avantime is a singularly pointless car that needs forgetting like a bad dream and replacing with a car that actually serves a purpose, like the Audi TT Mk1.

We’ll even see if we can come up with a small mystery prize for the best argued case for future classic status*, so get those thinking caps on.

A couple of rules to make it a bit more interesting:
1.) No out-and-out supercars or uber-luxury brands — cars with a Rolls-Royce or Ferrari badge can’t help but become classics — I’m looking for suggestions that anyone could aspire to.
2.) No ‘cult’ revivals, so new Mini, new Beetle and new Fiat 500 are all out — regardless of how great these cars are in themselves, their classic status is virtually guaranteed by their inspirational forebears.

*We’ll decide the winner at the end of October.