Porsche Boxster

When a car is first launched, it has no image, no character, and no pedigree (unless of course, the manufacturer is a professional racing team). Over time of course, a car gains its image and its persona. Look at the Ford Mondeo for instance. Conceived in the early 1990s, it was a great car. Nice looking, good engines and a driving style that appealed to young sporty drivers as well as old biffers. But then what happened. It became tarnished with an image it is only just beginning to shake off. The infamous 'Mondeo Man' was created. A man with a Mondeo is a boring man, with the average 2.5 childeren, a simple house and a Mondeo in the drive. He works in accounting, his wife lives at home, and he likes to wear beige. Now this is all true of the Mk 1 Mondeo, but in 2001 a new version, the Mk 3 came out.

This was created right when Ford was going through radical changes in its design house. Angular yet smooth lines were adorning the bodywork. Triangles and curves working together in the panels to create something truly for the 21st century. This was a car that looked not only good, but way better than the competition. It was also fitted with powerful engines, so it was fast. And it was a Ford, so it was cheap to buy, run and insure. And yet, it was still tarnished. Anyone who bought one was labeled as a Mondeo man, despite the fact that the true persona of the Mondeo man had moved on to some Korean import.

As you can tell by the preceding sentences, car image is very important. Often, after a few generations of the same model have been released, the manufacturers tailor the car to market demands and the consumer view on the car. For example, Ferrari will still rack up large sales for any car they release, even if the car is a complete horror story. In the 1980s, they created such atrocities as the Mondial and the 400, and the Testarossa. Despite these being truly awful cars, they still sold well, due to Ferrari's image, an image of style and speed that most would believe would feature on any model sporting the Prancing Horse.

So what of the Porsche Boxster? Well, this is an interesting car. It was first launched at the very end of the 20th Century when the entire world was in party mode, and in fear of the so-called Y2K Bug (a devastating thing that would supposedly cause the world's computer systems to shut up shop just because of a deadly three extra zeros on the date. Anyway, the Boxster was hailed as a replacement (if a bit late) for the similar 1970s Porsche 914: a car which shared the exact same two seat, mid engine layout as the Boxster. It (the Boxster) quickly gained a healthy reputation as a fun, cheap alternative to the rather expensive and serious 911. But this is where it all went wrong for the Boxster. In the early 2000s, the two seat sports car market found itself crammed full of alternative drives, most of them much cheaper (and in rare cases faster) than the Boxster. As Top Gear's Richard Hammond sadly stated in one of his reviews of the Boxster "the only reason you would buy a Boxster, is because you cant afford to buy a 911" Jeremy Clarkson (from the same programme) then went on to say that "buying a Boxster is advertising the fact that your life hasn't turned out as well as you'd hoped"

Now, I value the opinion of these two expert motoring journalists most of the time but really, these comments had me annoyed. For one, they were viewing the Boxster as a sort of 'cheap 911' which is plainly isnt. They also said that buying a Boxster would give a person a bad image. This is clearly ludicrous. If you saw two people at the traffic lights, one in a Boxster and one in a Hyundai, whose life do you think has worked out better? Sadly, their silly opinions seemed to have turned into fact, and the merits of the actual car in question have been forgotten about.  

The Porsche Boxster has a been honed, refined and improved on all levels in its four incarnations to date. The new one for instance is a real looker, and the essence of James Dean's 1950s Porsche 550 Spyder have been woven into the bodypanel shapes like silver thread on a wedding dress. The design also shows a bit more of its own personality which is much more creative, seeing as previous Boxsters just looked like shrunken 911s. The Boxster could be one of the finest sports cars ever made. Its balanced layout, good looks and great engine note make it a truly excellent car. Its just a shame everyone seems to laugh at it, and write it off as a "poor man's 911"

What a shame.

Citroen GS

Being weird is one thing. Being strange is another. And being different is yet another. Citroen cars of the 1950-1990s were generally all three of these things. Often the technological hallmarks and stylistic gems unique to this out-there French car maker, were overlooked by a world that simply wasn't ready for them. Indeed, the unique market situation that Citroen faced in the aforementioned time period, was conservative and upright- no place then for cars with sci-fi dashboards and suspension that allowed the car to drive without one of its back wheels if necessary.

Citroen made most of its money at home- in France. A place where most of the wacky Citroen features were lauded and praised. Of course, selling a car at home is not always profitable and Citroen was keen to export their products overseas. Where they were not made welcome at all. The UK car market was full of rustic wretched rustbuckets, and a fresh new continental car seemed like a way forward. Wrong. Citroens proved to be just as unreliable as all the other British Leyland tripe coming out of the Midlands of England.

What about the US, another hugely promising market. At the time of the GS, oil was hugely expensive, and a small 1.2 litre engine would surely drink way less juice than the 7 litre land yachts it would be on sale with. Well, the GS would have been hugely successful and indeed economical, if it had been able to get into the country in the first place. In the 1970s, a man called Ralph Nader suddenly made cars his worst enemy, and introduced hundreds of new safety regulations in an attempt to curb the huge road toll in the US at the time. Sadly the Citroen GS met none of these regulations. Ironically, the GS was actually safer in a crash than pretty much all of its US rivals.

Being weird is one thing. Funding this weirdness is another. Citroen was a small French company, with a limited customer base: namely French farmers and French heads of state. The farmers liked the clever suspension and frugal nature of the cars; the heads of state liked the more prestigious models for their incredibly stylish lines and the fact that they were driving around in something from home. Yet despite the rather varied popularity, Citroen was beginning to make losses. Their only way forward was to make a small, predictably popular family car. Hopefully it would sell well, and give Citroen the cash injection it so desperately needed. It did.

Name another car that can do this

The GS was an enormous success. But only hindsight. Despite selling nigh on 2 million GS models, and winning the 1971 European Car of the Year award, Citroen had declared bankruptcy in 1974. So what on Earth went wrong? Here we have a car that was way ahead of its time in nearly all aspects. It was one of the most aerodynamic cars in the world. It was one of the safest cars in the world. It was one of the best handling family cars of the time. It was a car that could be driven around with one of its back wheels missing, thanks to the groundbreaking hydropneumatic suspension. It wasn't just different, it was revolutionary.

A dashboard so modern we're still not ready for it

Sadly, these innovations were costly and hard to maintain. Citroen spent millions developing their innovative features and even more funding warranty claims when things went wrong. They had also spent millions developing the GS to originally have a rotary engine, which ended up selling very poorly. They had also splashed out on a brand new factory for the upcoming luxury Citroen CX: another weirdo which again cost Citroen millions to develop. The GS was also strangled by the car legislation in France at the time. Big engines meant big taxes on your car, and in order to boost sales, small engines were fitted to the GS, to ensure that owners weren't stung with a harsh bill from 'le tax Monsieur' These engines may have saved fuel, but didn't move the GS very fast. The fuel saving small capacity was mainly defeated by the fact that you had to rev the GS to near breaking point in order to go anywhere, meaning fuel bills were uncannily high.

In my mind, the GS was a sad story. Citroen went to all that effort to be different, and it should have been hugely profitable. But despite the high sales and the innovative features that no other cars had at the time, it left Citroen broken and begging for a bail-out.
 
It is interesting to note that now the car has a semi-cult status, with devoted owners all over the world. Perhaps Citroen was just ahead of its time. Again.