But not in Canada, for a while.
The point was standards and expectations change.
The case for airbags is less strong than one might think. Wearing a seatbelt all the time reduces injuries by 50%. An airbag but no belts reduces injuries by 30%. Airbag and belts reduces injuries by 65%.
Mk1s are reliable, economical and keep up with traffic. And are 15 years closer to the 60s than the tictac MX5,
Horses for courses etc.
Good points. But the MX-5 remains the most accessible way to get a ‘flavour’ of those 1960s cars, even if it is a quite a ‘nannying’ car now. Let’s see what the electric MG brings to the party…
Having coveted an MGB or a Spifire back in the late 60s-70s you are spot on. As someone lucky enough to run a daily driver (which gets less use than my NB!) I think the NA and NB do that best, but for a proper daily driver an NC or ND would be more suited.
An ND with LED lights, side airbags and autonomous braking would I think just take the edge off the (relative) roughness of the earlier MX5s…still a manual gearbox and takes a bit of getting in and out of though…
60s cars are pretty accessible. Electric MG is a GT convertible,
Seems relevant to the earlier post about evs so thought I’d add - it’s being widely (albeit quietly) publicised that Ev sales are falling off the proverbial cliff right now. The prevailing thought being that the initial adopters have all bought in and are either lifelong electric car owners from here on or going back to ICE cars. All round scepticism and prohibitive costs are keeping people away.
Strangely people have taken to blaming Mr Bean for all this, which doesn’t surprise in this day and age 
.
We could have petrol powered cars a little longer than was previously thought if the market demands it…
SMMT numbers for 2023
There is suggestion that the December numbers are due to ZEV regulations. Manufacturers are set targets by the government, which are reviewed annually. For 2024, 22% of new UK car sales from each brand must be zero-emission. If the vehicle makers fail, they face massive fines of £15,000 for every car that doesn’t qualify and £9000 for every van in 2024 (and £18,000 for every non-qualifying van in subsequent years).
By 2030, the target will be 80% and 100% by 2035. Currently only 8 makers are reaching the threshold. Ford and Toyota are facing fines of over £400m and £340m this year.
Brands sitting pretty:
Its incredible how Toyota have messed up. Its all very well for their CEO to take a position, but they also have a responsibility to shareholders. Toyota product decisions taken 5-6 years ago (not to develop EV) will now impact their bottom line. There will be similar costs in other industrialised economies.
However, brands meeting the threshold can trade credits; Ford etc can buy credits from Tesla, MG, Ora, BYD etc. The decline in December sales is attributed to stock being held back by some makers, in order to add to 2024 sales.
Stellantis has quite an electrified lineup through PSA, Vauxhall and Fiat brands, but EVs are 15% of sales. Its close. Would they be confident in 2024 of making the threshold. Probably. Other brands might try and incentivise buyers into EVs to boot their share.
What Mazda UK has to say:
“Now that we have clarity on the ZEV Mandate from the Government, we are confident our plans for the future, along with the flexibilities in the Vehicle Emission Trading Scheme legislation, will result in Mazda UK meeting all requirements to remain penalty-free for the duration of the mandate”
They have changed their tune since October last year. At the time, their CEO complained consumers should have the choice. What he failed to realise is that, at least ever since Type Approval was a thing, the Government has always had a hand in what cars consumers can buy and cannot.
Its likely that petrol car supply will be constrained this year to boot EV sales. I expect the ZEV rules to be even toughened (fines increased) post-2024, to at least 2029, by which time, it will make no difference then if a future government tries to abolish the scheme.
SMMT van sales for January.
January 2024 car sales against January 2023
Private sales for all types of new cars are collapsing, so the market is being driven by the fleets. Households worry about the here and now, industry invests for the future, looking at the headwinds. Remember, December was also the month the UK was driven into a technical recession.
Petrol cars are toast. The closure of the engine foundaries is baked in, retraining of employees planned for. If the market wants petrol cars, then there are plenty of used alternatives.
For MX5s, I can forsee lengthening delivery times in 2024. For buyers, you will just have to suck it up, because what else are you going to buy. Unless that is an electric MG roadster (yes, I know about the weight etc, but ithas a roof that goes up and down, which is the major reason why anyone buys a convertible roadster).
But the troubling thing is all the mandates, figures and statistics signal that organic uptake will not be sufficient in itself so manufacturers and consumers are going to have their choices eliminated gradually in order for them to make the right one, the one they’re told to make. Whether it’s to guide people towards electric vehicles, foods, entertainment, political persuasion etc. Regardless of the reasoning and virtues behind them, it all seems very fascistic.
If you can live with one (home charging is the only way it makes sense), secondhand EVs are really cheap. Cheaper than their petrol equivalent, in many cases. Look at 1 year old ID.3 prices compared to a fairly ordinary Golf.
Besides the charging and range issues, the appeal of new ones to private buyers is crippled by high PCP costs, as you’d expect with such poor residuals. And there is just about no government incentive left, with VED - potentially at the £40k+ rate for most EVs - coming next year. The only big incentive is the low BIK for fleets or salary sacrifice.
Well they could just announce from tomorrow new petrol and diesel cars will not be sold, and let the public deal with it in the same manner was when catalytic converters were compulsory, air bags were compulsory, seatbelts were compulsory. I didn’t see Citizen Smith take to the street protesting these changes, even if they were well meaning changes.
Car tax duties have been manipulated for decades now, basically to encourage people to switch to less polluting cars, and by dint, to get the car makers from selling these things, as a result of declining demand. Its not been entirely successful, because there are still car makers out there making cars that are more polluting than they need to be.
In the US, CARB regulations, which does include fiscal penalities on the manufacturers, have been very successful in reducing pollution by 99% (it was CARB that really got catalytic converters going). Yeah, so fining the car makers if they continue to make something that causes a harm, just because people want it (or have been persuaded, through adverts, that they must have) is the way to go, because other approaches have not worked entirely successfully.
Organic uptake was never going to be successfull, given 100 years + of entrenched habit. Electric cars appeared in the 1910s I believe, but carmakers didn’t have the incentive to innovate. They’ve had 100 years to innovate electric cars. Car makers have known, through funded research, since the 1950s about the impact of their products on the environment.
Its troubling that for 60 years, car makers have made relatively little effort to address the issues caused by their products. The only time they do, is when they hold out their hand for government funding and subsidy of R&D. Why did the Road Research Laboratory exist? It existed to enable the government to fund improvements in car design that the car makers were unwilling to invest it. The successor TRL, while privatised, is still largely funded through the public purse, which effectively subsidises the car industry.
Scientists, with good evidence, have told car makers, and other industries, that you have to make things in a different or better way. They get mostly ignored by the car industry, who mostly wait until a government makes them change their ways. The story of catalytic converter and airbag fitment is one example.
Most people will agree that airbags reduce injuries and deaths. A societal effect is reduced healthcare costs associated with car injuries, which impacts our insurance (car insurance pays for the costs of NHS treatment of road accident victims).
An airbag was invented in 1919. but it wasn’t until the 1970s that the designs were practical, when General Motors started to offer them on government purchased cars (ie getting the taxpayer to pay for product development). Paradoxically Ford and GM lobbied hard against their compulsory introduction. Airbags as optional extra were fitted from the 1980s. The 1989 Mazda Miata had an airbag. MX5s around the rest of the world, at the time, didn’t even have a bag as an option. That’s immoral. How can a car maker consciously make a car less safe for one market compared to another? India didn’t mandate airbags until 2021; up until then then, Western and Japanese car makers were quite happy to sell cars without airbags, into India and other markets, while at the same time, offering essentially identical models with airbags in others (because they had to). Cars are still sold in Indonesia without air bags
Up until very recently, makers such as VW, were still selling cars without catalytic converters in markets such as South Africa.
Consumer manufacturers do not make alturistic improvements in products until basically forced.
I always thought one way to swiftly get rid of petrol cars is to enforce government procurement policies. Government procurement policies are often used to change the behaviour of a company ; if you don’t behave in a way which is consistant with our value, we won’t do business with you. That might include how you treat employees, your community, how you treat waste, your management systems, your safety oversight, and what products you choose to sell other customers; European government action has all but stopped export of drugs that are used in the US for execution, and now that action is having a profound impact on the debate in the US.
And let’s not forget the pathetic rearguard action, by Detroit especially, to prevent lead free petrol being introduced . What was especially noteworthy was how much the car enthusiast community had swallowed the Kool Aid and decided it was the end of the world as they knew it .
And it wasn’t …
Seem to recall for a while, you couldn’t importm a South African Golf or Senator because they ran on 4-star only.
Japan banned leaded petrol first, first in regular petrol in 1975, then completely lead free by 1986. Austria, Canada, Slovakia, Sweden and Denmark were next. The US and Germany eliminated leaded petrol in 1996. The UK banned it in 2000, so the rearguard action was Solihull not Detroit.
You could still buy leaded petrol in the UK from one small supplier until 2021. And piston-engined planes still use very heavily-leaded avgas (the “LL” means low lead but it has a substantial amount).
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