Probably not a completely familiar name, but one well known to many petrol heads.
Unfortunately, today, we say goodbye to Marcello Gandini, Italian designer of many, many iconic cars of the 1960’s, 1970s and 1980’s
Marcello Gandini Lamborghini Countach
Probably, his most famous creation is that poster car from many a young boys wall. The Lamborghini Countach. I think I bought the DVD copy of Cannonball Run, just to listen to the Countach in the opening credits.
But he actually started even earlier with Lamborghini, with the ground breaking Lamborghini Muira, the first production mid-engined super car. (comments below on the Lotus Europa please.)
For those of you not familiar with that 1960’s model, it was the yellow sports car, bulldozed off the cliff at the beginning of the ‘Italian Job’.
His list of designs are too numerous to list in a post, but they did include The Ferrari 308GT4, BMW 5 series, VW Polo and the humble Renault 5.
Marcello Gandini Lancia Stratos
Not to mention my favourite, the Lancia Stratos, designed with no compromise. And scared the hell out of everyone who drove it.
Thank you. Marchello Gandini, 26th August 1938 to 13th March 2024. It has been a pleasure.
And that’s not just a flippant statement. As you may be aware Cymark has been going for nearly 30 years, and have some pretty long standing retailers within the Motor Trade. So I am being honest when I say that our clients are seeing more new and used car enquiries, per month, than any time in the past 10 years.
So, why are manufacturers throwing lots of money at the job?
We are all familiar with the various brands getting behind the dealer network when we are working our way through a recession or an economic slump. But why are they chasing registrations today?
Well the answer may be slightly more than bragging rights this time.
SMMT figures are really strong on car sales at the moment, but a good percentage of those registrations are from orders taken 6, 9, 12 months ago when cars weren’t available and the electric vehicle world in particular looked slightly brighter.
So while overall enquiries are up hugely, the percentage that are new car enquiries is falling.
I don’t want to be cynical and say its because people don’t like EV’s, but perhaps people don’t like the price they are being asked to pay for a cleaner ride?
Have we just moved people from being consistent new car customers to repeat used car customers?
But is that a problem?
Our enquiry follow up team have been really busy this year, making sure that retailers get the most from their enquiries, with a number of sites saying they were concerned that – if they left it to their own sales team – they would miss opportunities. They just didn’t have enough hours in the day to sort through a mixture of tyre kickers and genuine buyers.
Check for yourself. How many overdue contacts do you have in the DMS. Are they all these used car enquiries or are they new car enquiries chasing the big discounts being offered?
Depending upon where you are sitting, the amount of subsidy provided by the government can vary enormously.
For a few years EV drivers have been smiling broadly at the £5,000 grant provided in the UK as they glide quietly about in the latest EV. But are UK drivers going to get a raw deal.
France in particular, right down to where you live in France and how much you earn can offer the driver over £11,000. There are even subsidies for nearly new cars. (Seeing how much residual values are dropping for EV’s even a considerably lower subsidy is probably worth it.). The whole system is supported by the European Carmakers association the #ACEA.
They are also supporting the process at the other end with thousands of scrappage subsidies. Again depending upon which region you live in.
But aren’t they trying to push French (or European, the Italian and German governments are looking to implement the same EV subsidy model).
The short answer is yes. Of course they are, they would be foolish to give state money away to a foreign manufacturer.
But to do that when the Chinese models are expected to be so cheap is looking difficult. How do you square that circle.
The current guidelines do a couple of things, including an upper level £40,000 on the price of the car. OK for France certainly, an a few German models. Tesla and Porsche miss out, but China should, almost certainly, slide under that bar.
Limit production / manufacturing CO2 emission levels to 14.75 tonnes CO2.
Ok, a few people are looking lost here. We know that the CO2 emissions that the government talk about, for the vehicles running costs. So that they can be compared, mile per mile, to petrol or diesel models.
So what is production CO2. Simply put it is how much it actually costs to manufacture the car. (and the French model is also looking at including the cost of getting that car to the country it is selling it within). The French guide lines have a 14.75t of CO2 limit.
This rules out a lot more models. For example Tesla batteries vary from 2.5t to 16.5t depending upon the model. Add that to the steel costs for the rest of the car and it’s easy to trip over that limit.
A lot of the Chinese models from BYD don’t make it. Even the Chinese manufactured BMW iX3 fails to meet the limit.
So, are the French pulling up the draw bridge, emphasising the benefits of a small Citroen or Renault (still part state owned). Of course, but then they would be foolish not to.
It might be cheap to manufacturer batteries, or produce adequate steel in China, but aside from the labour rates, they don’t always use the most ecologically sourced materials. Plus you have to transport said car via a costly shipping route, or overland by rail. Both of which have rising costs due to war torn areas of the world.
So what should Brit’s do? We can’t buy small cars made in Birmingham any more. Our best hope is that China builds factories here and uses UK steel.
At the moment the picture is very unclear. But it would certainly help if we had over £11,000 from the government to play with and a few grand subsidy for those nearly new models that are clogging up retailer forecourts.
‘My god, you made it to 29 years.’ This has happened a few times this week. Not quite as catchy as 25 years, or 30 years, but 29 years is a long time supporting one industry.
A great thank you must go to everyone who has worked for Cymark during that time. Lots of late nights and hard graft. You laid the foundations for today’s company.
In those decades, we have worked for numerous manufacturers and hundreds of individual retailers, providing successful and cost effective telemarketing and e-marketing for retail sales, local business and LCV sales and database building, aftersales service bookings and post service follow up.
The pandemic brought a lot of changes. Cymark streamlined its processes (we got rid of the big white binders so many of you remember). It’s all online and easily accessible. We still make on-site visits, we want to make sure we are doing it right for your retailer.
Successful industry marketing and comments are included within other blog pages. Make sure you subscribe.
Guy Winter
01423 501234
07711 978908
Have a look at the links across the top of the page for Retail / Service / Sales Conversion information.
We got to the end of our list of 12 Cars for Christmas., these were based upon a combination of style, ‘coolness’, driving pleasure and sheer personal preference. If you have a better list or just one model you want to add the list, let me know
The top four cars are pretty much inter-changeable all of them could have got first place. It would depend upon the day, the journey I had to make and . . . . . well, it had Countach doors and it won Le Mans.
McLaren F1
Built as a road car, that competed at Le mans. Not unusual, but winning first time out with the designer wising he had driven the car to the track to prove its road worthy credentials is.
Phenomenal performance. Uncompromising design and manufacturing. And a cool central seating position cemented its place at the top of our 12 Cars of Christmas. Everything else faster is either a special or heavily overweight.
You need to see one. Compared to many modern hyper cars, the F1 is tiny. You really can chuck it down a B-road. Not something I would think of doing in a Lamborghini Aventador or Ferrari F90.
And you can take TWO friend. Gordon Murry, the designer though that sitting in the middle was the best place for a driver to be. Who am I to argue.
The heat shielding in the engine bay is gold foil. Real gold. Because that was the best product for the job. No compromise. No turbo’s. Apparently better response from a naturally aspirated engine, in this case a 6 litre V12 courtesy of BMW motorsport with 618 bhp.
A bit late to be a poster on my wall. But a 241mph top speed. It certainly ended up on lots of you car fan’s walls.
The list is the personal preference of our Director, Guy Winter. A car fanatic since the 1960’s, he eats’, sleeps and dreams everything Motor Trade. For the past 25 years he has worked for Cymark providing digital and telephone marketing support for individual retailers, groups and manufacturers alike.
If you want to stay on top of the latest Motor Trade chat either subscribe to this blog or find Guy on Linkedin.
A combination of style, ‘coolness’, driving pleasure and sheer personal preference. If you have a better list or just one model you want to add the list, let me know.
The top four cars are pretty much inter-changeable all of them could have got first place. It would depend upon the day, the journey I had to make and . . . . . a poster on a 1970’s bedroom wall.
Lamborghini LP500 Countach.
The doors, the performance, the look. Ok, the real reason is the look. Style, complete with a 70s model crawling all over it.
I’m not precious. It doesn’t have to be an early model, the LP400 or the periscope rear view mirror model. But similarly it certainly cant be a LP5000QV or one of the last Anniversary models with more plastic bolt on’s than a lego kit.
The LP500 had it all. The technical advantage – it put the gearbox in front of the engine, right next to your elbow, so the gear change was as good as could be. This did mean that the drive shaft – that went to the rear driven wheels – had to go through a specially made tube built into the bottom of the engine sump. Italians eh.
Oh, and a v12 full bore engine screaming away behind you all the way to the 7,800rpm red line. Power is a little bit vague, depending upon who you ask its between 375bhp and 440bhp.
I remember being told at the time that the mere name of the car, ‘Countach’ means a slightly stronger version of ‘Bloody hell’, in Italian. I have no idea if that is true, to be honest I prefer not knowing for sure.
As an avid 70’s tv movie watcher – and later the video – the opening soundtrack of the Cannonball run made the Countach so cool. Plus the fact you had to had climb out o the car if you wanted to reverse it.
I would say -‘Why don’t we make cars like this any more?’, but we do. Lots of them, all the hyper cars. The trouble is that they don’t stand out like the Countach did. Just like the E-type Jaguar in the early 1960’s, this was a car that made you say ‘WOW’.
The list is the personal preference of our Director, Guy Winter. A car fanatic since the 1960’s, he eats’, sleeps and dreams everything Motor Trade. For the past 25 years he has worked for Cymark providing digital and telephone marketing support for individual retailers, groups and manufacturers alike.
If you want to stay on top of the latest Motor Trade chat either subscribe to this blog or find Guy on Linkedin.
A combination of style, ‘coolness’, driving pleasure and sheer personal preference. If you have a better list or just one model you want to add the list, let me know.
The top four cars are pretty much inter-changeable all of them could have got first place. It would depend upon the day, the journey I had to make and . . . . . well lots of things. In this case, it might be that the weather was bad or it was raining.
Audi ur-Quattro.
The cold, wet forests or Keilder and North Yorkshire, bright lights lancing through the trees behind you as you desperately ran along the gravel track to the next ‘even better’ vantage point. Somewhere else to get showered with grit at 2am in the morning.
Another popping, fire breathing, rally car that ended up arriving in the retailer showrooms in the 1980’s. Pick 10 valve or 20 valve performance, in road trim there was little difference between them – although the 20v seemed to rev harder. It had a 2.1litre turbo charged 5 cylinder engine. Even the talking dashboard version was cool, even if most owners did turn the feature off.
Starting life as a military 4 wheel drive system, shoe horned into a pretty Audi coupe, the gearbox also had locking differentials, so you could turn the car into a virtual tractor if you needed to.
Once I got my driving licence, I only wanted two cars. The Porsche 911, already covered here, and the Audi Quattro (in red or grey). Neither, I could afford at the time.
Audi did have a 2.2 litre un-turbocharged coupe, using the same engine and body. It was slate grey, It wasn’t the real thing, but it was close. So I had one of those instead.
But the proper version, it had useable performance, almost available to ’every man’, that was more focused on the 50mph to 130mph window. It remains the second fastest – cross country – real world car I ever drove (after the Lancia Delta Integrale, but that was way too unreliable and rust prone to appear here unfortunately).
The list is the personal preference of our Director, Guy Winter. A car fanatic since the 1960’s, he eats’, sleeps and dreams everything Motor Trade. For the past 25 years he has worked for Cymark providing digital and telephone marketing support for individual retailers, groups and manufacturers alike.
If you want to stay on top of the latest Motor Trade chat either subscribe to this blog or find Guy on Linkedin.
A combination of style, ‘coolness’, driving pleasure and sheer personal preference. If you have a better list or just one model you want to add the list, let me know.
The top four cars are pretty much inter-changeable all of them could have got first place. It would depend upon the day, the journey I had to make and . . . . . well lots of things.
Ferrari 288GTO.
No, there is no point in waiting for the rest of the list, the F40 isn’t there.
The 288GTO is that rare thing (and also much rarer than the F40 in numbers with only 272/8 being built) it started its design life as a Group B car. A true road car, made as good as it can be to go racing.
The F40 on the other hand started out as a race car that was then ‘adapted’ slightly to make it road usable. Personally I would like proper door handles, radio and ventilation system. If you search the internet for the 288GTO Evolution (not this model) with its screwed on wheel arches and spoilers you can see the F40 taking shape. The 288GTO is just so much more elegant. You, and your passenger, can drive up to the Savoy, hand the keys to the valet and not feel like an idiot, its a car, not a racing car.
To the untrained eye it just looks like a 308GTD/328GTB, but virtually every part is unique to this GTO. The 2.8litre turbo charged V8 produced 400bhp in road trim, but made the car slightly longer than earlier models sharing the same styling because it was mounted in-line, rather than transverse. And because Grp B, was cancelled the cars were fitted with air-con and full leather.
The F40 is a race car underneath, with no pretence of comfort, the 288GTO is simply beautiful.
Was it a drivers car? Well, Nicki Lauda ordered one. He wasn’t slow.
The list is the personal preference of our Director, Guy Winter. A car fanatic since the 1960’s, he eats’, sleeps and dreams everything Motor Trade. For the past 25 years he has worked for Cymark providing digital and telephone marketing support for individual retailers, groups and manufacturers alike.
If you want to stay on top of the latest Motor Trade chat either subscribe to this blog or find Guy on Linkedin.
A combination of style, ‘coolness’, driving pleasure and sheer personal preference. If you have a better list or just one model you want to add the list, let me know.
Jaguar E-type, Series 1
“The most beautiful car ever made”, said Enzo Ferrari. Stunning performance in period with a price tag half that of Italian exotica or an Aston.
Can you imagine how much the E-type stood out at the Earls Court Motor Show that year. What was the humble man in the street driving? Either a Ford Anglia or an Austin A40.
Plus if David Bailey, Steve McQueen and George Best drove one, then it wrote ‘cool’ and underlined it twice. In red pen.
The list is the personal preference of our Director, Guy Winter. A car fanatic since the 1960’s, he eats’, sleeps and dreams everything Motor Trade. For the past 25 years he has worked for Cymark providing digital and telephone marketing support for individual retailers, groups and manufacturers alike.
If you want to stay on top of the latest Motor Trade chat either subscribe to this blog or find Guy on Linkedin.
A combination of style, ‘coolness’, driving pleasure and sheer personal preference. If you have a better list or just one model you want to add the list, let me know.
Porsche 911 (993)
Probably the most accomplished performance car of all time. Certainly easy to drive very, very fast.
The early lightweight air cooled cars might not be as powerful or technically as quick as the later 996 / 997 onwards cars, but the light weight made it the go to choice for a cross country run in a hurry.
This is one performance car that you can live with every day. Happy going to the Supermarket, just as happy hitting over 180mph 10 minutes later. (Hands up who knows a supermarket near a disused runway).
The list is the personal preference of our Director, Guy Winter. A car fanatic since the 1960’s, he eats’, sleeps and dreams everything Motor Trade. For the past 25 years he has worked for Cymark providing digital and telephone marketing support for individual retailers, groups and manufacturers alike.
If you want to stay on top of the latest Motor Trade chat either subscribe to this blog or find Guy on Linkedin.
