fiatreviewarchive.co.uk

AN indication of just how dramatically cars have improved in recent times comes this week with a clamber behind the wheel of Fiat‘s Panda.

In comparison to the original Panda it is light years ahead, although in reality there is little more than a decade or two to separate them.

In its latest guise the Panda is a well-built, gutsy and roomy runabout that may look a little toy-like from the outside but is every inch a proper car.

Soon it will be available in four wheel drive form and also with a diesel option.

If we all have smallness and frugality imposed upon us, apart from politicians who will keep their limousines and helicopters of course, then life with a Panda will not make humans an endangered species.

Indeed, to be purely objective rather than emotional, if personal transport is gradually eroded to the point of becoming merely a means of getting from A to B, then something as good as the Panda is all that any of us could ever argue for.

Let’s face it, with four seats, air conditioning, a stereo sound system, electric operation of most functions plus remote central locking and the ability to cruise at the motorway maximum, it is more than just adequate.

It may seem unlikely right now, but there really is a distinct possibility that at some stage in the future fancy cars will be banned.

Successive governments will simply impose increasingly tough penalties on their users, to the point where they are no longer a viable option.

How incredible then that as we reach car saturation point in the affluent UK, 80 per cent of the world’s population does not have access to motor cars.

Strange but true, according to Renault whose designers have just put the final touches to a new small car that will sell throughout Europe for five thousand euros.

It will be marketed under Renault’s bargain-basement brand name of Dacia and will be sold as the Romanian-made Logan.

It comes at a time when global vehicle production is expanding at such a rate that we have to wonder if the planet will become one gigantic slab of tarmac.

Consider that the motor car has been around for more than 100 years and that Renault has been making them for most of that time.

In 1998, just six years ago, the French car company churned out two million vehicles yet by 2010 – in a further six years – that figure will have doubled to four million.

The point is not that car production is increasing, but rather that the rate of increase is phenomenal.

It is like the rate of vehicle improvement, which has been consistent and gradual until very, very recently.

All of a sudden everything to do with cars has shifted into overdrive, apart from the infrastructure to keep up with it.

Last year we paid £42.2 billion in taxes on fuel, vehicle excise, VAT on fuel and vehicle purchases and company car tax yet the road budget was just £6.7 billion.

The ratio of the UK’s motorway network length to head of population is the lowest in Europe, way behind Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Austria, Holland, Greece and even the Principality of Luxembourg.

Ten years ago there were 3,250 kilometres of motorway in the UK and this has grown by just 226 kilometres in a decade despite the phenomenal growth in the number of cars.

To put that into context, in ten years motorway traffic has increased by 36 per cent while the main road network including trunk and major roads has grown by just half of one per cent.

It is frightening to learn that the government’s central statistics office predicts an increase of 50 per cent in UK car use by the year 2030.

The fact that we pay the highest taxes in Europe for the worst road system with the poorest maintenance is apparently accepted because we have been brainwashed into feeling ashamed of using cars at all.

Tim Green, director of the Road Users’ Alliance points out that 92 per cent of people travel by car in comparison to just a few per cent travelling by public transport in addition to those who walk or cycle.

He asks if the claims about the alleged environmental damage to the atmosphere caused by cars is deliberately exaggerated to encourage us all to hand over loadsamoney and accept sub-standard roads without a fight.

Just imagine the environmental pollution caused by a single plane and then look at the remarkable increase in the number of new destinations from regional airports across the UK.

No one complains about them, possibly because the Government does not have responsibility for providing them with highways in the sky.