Driving me crazy

摘要

These were questions an Iranian industrial trainee put to me in the early seventies. Coming from the Middle East, he had never seen rust. I also remember a Swedish girl who laughed about the weekend scenes in London, when someone in every street would be working on their car. Rust and bodywork perforation, along with 3,000-mile maintenance intervals, have disappeared but their departure coincided, more or less, with the disappearance of a truly indigenous British car industry.Cars are still built in Britain, but of the big names only Ford and Vauxhall remain, and even their products are European rather than home built. What remained of home-grown manufacturers became first BMC Ltd, then British Leyland, and then the Rover Group. The latter became bankrupt in 2005 when its sole product, the Rover 75, failed to sell.