Notes From the Hard Shoulder Page 12

  I pulled back the camper's sliding door and met the postman. There was nothing for me. 'That's a pretty rough breakfast,' he said.

  'What is?' I asked, even as the stench of burning reached my nostrils because I'd left the price sticker on the bottom of my new camping kettle.

  'Boddingtons,' he said, indicating the array of spent cans on the floor.

  'Nah,' I assured him. 'That was last night's dinner.'

  This wasn't entirely true. The main course had been a robust steak 'n' chips at the nearby and slightly riotous Exford White Horse Inn, after which I had intended to drive a few miles up a road notoriously haunted by a spectral horse-drawn hearse (the harbinger of an imminent death, apparently) and into an area of moorland reckoned to be stalked by a giant, sheep-mauling black cat. There I would erect the hinged concertina that was the camper's extending roof and settle down to commune with nature, especially as there was no lavatory installed.

  But as I drove an Exmoor fog descended so that, by the time I located a grassy pitch some 10 miles away, I wasn't sure if it was a layby or the green of a golf course. I sank into a fitful sleep but awoke an hour later with a thumping head and freezing feet. I'd parked on a slope and was sleeping the wrong way round. Reversing the bed arrangement restored a certain amount of inner calm but by now the pea-souper was host to every demon that had ever dwelt within the minds of men. And I'd forgotten to fill the integral water tank. So I returned to the village green, where the camper's curtains admitted a little of the warm and comforting glow given off by the windows of the Crown Hotel.

  Still, breakfast – taken out in the sticks – would be a belter, and it was. Bacon, eggs, sausage, kidneys, beans, mushrooms, black pudding, tomatoes and some local and healthy-looking wholemeal bread. Everything except the tea, and including a few areas of the upholstery, was fried.

  It's amazing what you can forget to take with you on a camper van holiday. Much of it is obvious – bedding, pans, pants – but those little things that are crucial to the smooth running of a household, and are taken for granted at home, are easily overlooked. Brown sauce, for example, and a pan scrubber. A sprig of Exmoor bracken makes an effective substitute – for the pan scrubber.

  Bloody hell, I'd only spent one night and cooked one meal in the van, and it already looked and smelled like a student bedsit, an illusion enhanced by jazzy seat fabrics suggesting that the place hadn't been decorated since the '70s.

  I suppose I should take a moment to introduce my unflagging ally on this trip; the Celeste Motor Caravan, converted from a Volkswagen Caravelle mini-bus by an independent company called Bilbo's Design. It's incredibly well thought out, and comes with a rear seat that converts to a double bed, a smaller bed area for an infant inside the accordion roof, a compact cooker, a fridge, a sink with electric pump and drainage tank, and curtains all round. There are two tables, a swivelling front passenger seat and battery-powered mood lighting.

  If you want full sanitation and servants' quarters, you have to move further up the range and buy a true motor home, with a bathroom and what have you, but that will be something much bigger. The compact Celeste is really designed for use on organised caravan sites with shower blocks, and can be hooked up to a permanent mains electricity supply. It's a metal tent, if you like, only much better – it's properly equipped, entirely waterproof and comes ready assembled.

  It's also a lot better than a normal caravan. For the enthusiastic motorist, towing a caravan is pure misery. They are slow, cumbersome, wide enough to become wedged in several parts of the Exmoor landscape, they create all sorts of rearward visibility problems and generally have even more tasteless interior trim. The Celeste is as wieldy as a large estate car and its rear-view mirror shows exactly what's behind you. The duvet, usually.

  The downside of the motor caravan is that if you're going to own just the one vehicle, then you are committed to taking your holiday accommodation with you on every journey, even to the supermarket. This is deeply ironic in an age when so many of them will deliver to the home.

  The mini-bus on which the Celeste is based is in turn based on a humble builders' panel van but, independent artisans being a much fussier breed than they once were, vans are pretty good these days. The Celeste – daft name, but it's a caravan tradition – fairly bowls along, the oily throb of its gutsy 2.5-litre turbo diesel overlaid with the rumble of an errant beer can somewhere in the back. It's worth taking a bit of care over correct stowage in these things. There's a place for everything in the Celeste and on the largely straight A-road route between London and the West Country everything seemed to be in its place, in accordance with the old maxim. Once on the winding stuff, however, I became reacquainted with a few items of unfinished washing up from the breakfast. I also forgot to latch the door of the fridge and got egg all over the floor.

  I felt a bit of a fraud after the earlier Exford incident so my determined plan for the second night was to spend the day exploring the area and eating ice cream before locating a remote spot with a sea view for the night. And so I simply roamed Exmoor, returning the vigorous waves of other motor caravaners (this had me confused – I thought I'd left the roof up or something) and marvelling as the wonder of creation unrolled before me in widescreen format. And all the while I knew that I could, at any time, simply park up, brew up and even nod off.

  How I laughed as I sped past the vacancy signs on family hotels and the hordes of people crammed into small restaurants. I admit, though, that it was quite difficult to drive straight past the Ilfracombe Tandoori with only the ingredients for a fish-finger sandwich on board.

  Eventually, I settled on a small plot overlooking Woody Bay, arriving just as the sun tensed for its final plunge into the sea and threw a last, defiant burst of liquid gold over everything. Even a bottle of vegetable oil looked beautiful when illuminated by its reflected glory.

  I raised the roof, erected the table and prepared the seafood delicacy. It was nine o'clock, and the remainder of the evening would be spent in reading and quiet contemplation; solitude and blissful silence broken only by the occasional interjection from a sheep in the adjoining field.

  That night, as I lay in the faintly fetid interior of my Celeste, I wondered what it was that made the motor caravan so appealing to someone who would regard normal caravaning as the most loathsome experience on earth, were that accolade not already reserved for anything to do with tents. Something certainly did.

  At around £28,000 the Celeste represents an outlay roughly equivalent to nearly 300 days' worth of quality bed and breakfast for two, or about 10 years' holiday accommodation. That's one way of looking at it, and a way that makes it seem expensive.

  But here's another. It's still a good deal cheaper than that second home in the country we all secretly yearn for. Yet, essentially, that is exactly what it is. Anywhere you like.

  THE MOTOWN STORY

  I never much liked motor shows. This one's no different save for a few details, such as that the silvery ticket in my hand cost $250. But that's all right because it's all for charity and anyway, someone else paid. The women are largely in little black numbers and the blokes are in what Americans insist on calling tuxedos. This is gala night, the last and most exclusive preview before the doors are thrown open to Joe Six-Pack.

  Mounting pressure on the thorax suggests that Car Magazine snapper Steve did a rather overenthusiastic job of tying my bow tie, but at least I'm wearing the one piece of clothing actually specified in the bottom right-hand corner of the invitation. Elsewhere, this has been dispensed with in favour of an invariably jewelled collar stud. This is not about cars at all, it's about the great and good of the city putting in an appearance, preferably a memorable one. People gush and so does bubbly, but sadly into that vessel that is so inextricably linked with civic functions and rejoices in a suitably ominous oxymoron – the plastic glass. Later, these will be found abandoned on boot lids or trodden into the carpet, like the aftermath of the school disco. At least Mercedes-Benz has real A
merican beer in real, cool glass, but even here someone overhears our conversation and says, 'You guys are from Australia, right?'

  Mustn't be cynical, especially as I got in gratis; look at cars instead. But this only makes things worse. Just what are European car makers trying to say? Everywhere there is fatuous imagery of furry animals and trendy young people, probably dolphins too if you look hard enough. On the VW stand the fine and handsome Passat is sidelined in favour of the ridiculous new Beetle, adorned with flowers and the current Miss Michigan. She has fine teeth, but then it's illegal not to in the US. Tiresome car makers' bicycles are irritatingly evident and the Porsche stand is showing a weird film of microbes and sperm, all to do with great ideas evolving or something. If Henry Ford hadn't hijacked the word for use elsewhere I'd say it was bunk. Now the Chevrolet Silverado, an awesome V8-engined pile of extended-cab pick-up displayed with funny-hatted and denim-clad chap strumming country songs on his guitar – cheap fuel, big distances and American liberty are all implicit in its unashamed bulk. That's more like it.

  But we're not here for the sanitised version of events proffered by a motor show, we're here to discover the truth about Detroit, the cradle of motoring civilisation and the city the car industry built for itself. And the truth is not to be found in the cosy, glitzy surrounds of the Cobo Center. The truth, as ever, is out there.

  The batteries in Steve's camera begin to fade at minus 10, and so do I. Fingers and mechanisms seize and conversation becomes difficult owing to numbing of the face. Detroit in January really frosts my ass, and it's tempting to think the American auto industry made an early blunder in the choice of its location. Michigan is the only state in the US from which, looking south, you can see Canada. Eh? Florida would have made more sense, you guys.

  There are good reasons for things working out the way they did. The region belonged to the Wyandot people until 1701, when the white man came. Actually, it was a Frenchman, Antoine de la Mothe, sieur de Cadillac, an army captain sent by the king to establish a trading post and stem British encroachment into the area. He reputedly landed at the spot now occupied by the Renaissance Center, the '70s-built five-tower complex recently bought by GM for conversion to its new world headquarters. Cadillac named his settlement Pontchartrain d'Etroit, source of its current name. Some two centuries later, one Henry Leland, an admirer of the pioneering spirit and a man prepared to push the boundaries of manufacturing possibility, named his car company after the explorer.

  For over a hundred years the tiny settlement – population 1,650 in 1810 – was fought over by the British, the French and the Indians. But by the time it was admitted to the Union in 1847 steam navigation was well established and the Erie canal had been built, which slashed the Detroit-New York journey time by 90 per cent. Detroit became an important shipbuilding centre and, with the opening of the railway to Chicago in 1852, a suitable transfer point for grain and lumber from the American interior. To the old world this promised work and prosperity, and Detroit's legendary immigration began. Towards the close of the century the population was up to nearly 300,000, following the influx of Irish, Italians, Ukrainians and, most numerously, Poles. Detroit was now famous for iron, steel, steam engines and ships, and as a world centre for cast-iron stove manufacturing. The infrastructure that would be required by mass manufacturing was already in place and with it the necessary technical skills. Walter Chrysler, after all, worked on the railways. By now Detroit was pretty much gagging for the horseless carriage.

  When it came in 1896, trundling into town under the command of its creators Charles B King and his mechanic accomplice Oliver E Barthol, it was just that. It is preserved in the Detroit Historical Museum and really is just an ox cart with an engine lashed in the back. But, unlike Benz's effort, it had a full complement of wheels and that engine was a sophisticated in-line four. Already the American car business was looking cocky. It seems to have been well received, too, but then this was a town that thrived on new technology.

  Ransom E Olds was Detroit's first proper car maker. He would have been Newark's, but a chance meeting on a railway platform with a copper magnate named Smith persuaded him to set up in Detroit in return for financial backing. He built the first car factory in 1899. It burned down two years later, but his timekeeper James Brady rescued the prototype Curved Dash Olds from the flames. He went on to become the mayor of Detroit, as was only right, for the Olds became the world's first series production car, with 425 built in 1901. Suppliers sprang up to serve the endeavour and Detroit was go.

  The Olds was not mass-produced, mind, though it undoubtedly threw the gauntlet down in front of Henry Ford, who set up shop proper in 1903. General Motors came in 1908, with William Durant's incredibly far-sighted vision that a holding company should be formed to draw together numerous smaller and vulnerable car makers. Chrysler was a latecomer when he went his own way in 1925, but had the sense to buy up the inventive Dodge brothers and secure a reputation for innovation.

  Living and working in Detroit must have seemed fantastic. Prosperity and hope were bolstered by the progress of the car, production of which occupied a quarter of the city's populace by 1929, a population that had grown five-fold since 1904 to 1.6 million. In 1911 Ford began building his Model T in a way no one had tried before, and in 1913 he brought production to a halt for the day to photograph his entire workforce of 12,000 outside the Highland Park factory. Times must have been good, for this may just be the world's most expensive photograph. A pristine example of the T is on display in the museum and, unusually, you are allowed to sit in it. Of this ground-breaking car Steve notes: 'The lofty driving position is spoiled by pedals that are too close together, like the Lamborghini Diablo's, and poor weather proofing. The controls do not fall easily to hand.' None of this stopped Ford producing 15 million of them by 1927. In 1920 half the world's motor vehicles were Model Ts.

  The lure of Detroit was immense. A photograph surviving from the century's first decade shows a Ukrainian family of four with a few small suitcases. They have just stepped from the train, drawn halfway round the world by the promise of a new, better life in the bosom of the motor industry. After the first war, black families of the southern states flocked north in their thousands for the same reasons. An alarmist telegram to Henry Ford in 1923 reads: 'We are advised that rumors are in circulation throughout the entire south that the Ford Motor Company is seeking labor.' But then, Ford had doubled his standard labour rate to create the five-dollar day. Today, African-Americans make up around three quarters of the city's population.

  Great edifices trumpeting the success of the city, such as the original GM headquarters and the neighbouring Fisher building, rose omnipotently from the low-rise sprawl. The motor barons were the heroes of the day; a picture of the youthful Alfred P Sloan shows a dashing fellow wearing the expression of a man possessed. In 1934 Clyde Barrow stole a Ford V8 for bank robbing and felt compelled to write to Henry Ford: 'Even if my business doesn't seem strickly legal, it don't hurt anything to tell you what a fine car you got in the V8.'

  Even the Depression could not knock Detroit off course. Labour unrest in 1936 and '37 caused the famous sit-in strikes at GM's factories by the newly formed Union of Automobile Workers of America, but this, too, is recorded positively in the history books as the most beneficial labour movement of the century. It certainly didn't prevent Detroit becoming 'the arsenal of democracy' during World War II. Thousands more streamed to the city to make, among other things, 92 per cent of the vehicles, 75 per cent of the aero engines and 56 per cent of the tanks used by the US forces. Tens of thousands were drafted to build the B24 Liberator alone, which at one point was taking to the air at the rate of one an hour.

  All of this, of course, simply left Detroit better equipped with skill and plant to begin, post-war, a new era of car building. This was the indulgent age of affordable muscle cars and Harley Earl's tailfins, themselves inspired by the warplanes that Cadillac had helped build through its work on Allison aero engines.

/>   To many, the following 30 years are the golden age of the American car. My favourite exhibit in the Henry Ford Museum – not a collection of old Fords, but the legacy of the old man's efforts to record the history of the American people through the things they made – is Chrysler's obscure 1964 turbine car. Commercially it was not a success, but stylistically it is a masterpiece, festooned with turbine imagery in such details as its vaned headlamp bezels and wheel centres and the nozzle-like design of its rear lamps. It is the work of an industry still rejoicing in itself. But though Detroit's car business may have been on a roll at the time, problems were surfacing in the city which it had created and which served it.

  Three years after the turbine car, the tragedy of Detroit was burned on to the world's conscience. It's been there ever since.

  As we wait at the lights on Woodward, a beat-up '70s Chevy Camaro pulls alongside, engine throbbing. Green comes suddenly on American traffic lights, and as it does the Chevy's rust-ravaged bootlid squats and, with a squeal of rubber and a whiff of burned oil, it lunges for the next junction, just up the road. All the lights are red. He does it every time.

  This sort of behaviour is not without precedent. In the '50s, Detroit's streets were the amateur drag-racing centre of the world, where young men in modified V8-engined cars wowed the crowd, often with the clandestine help of GM engineers keen to test engine developments in the white heat of downtown competition.

  After a while I'm tempted, and the Seville STS's Northstar V8 burbles encouragingly. As the light changes I slam the pedal down, the exhaust note hardens and, whooping deliriously, we touch 80mph on the short drag to the next red before bringing the whole pointless, gas-guzzling charade to an ABS-assisted halt. We've beaten him by about 0.25 seconds.

  Childish? Certainly, and pretty unfair given the 20 years that separate the cars. But hardly dangerous. This is downtown Detroit on a Wednesday afternoon and the pavements are deserted. Given that this is the epicentre of the world motor industry, the roads, too, are suspiciously free of cars.