Jam Today
CONSUMING INTEREST
By LESLIE ADRIAN
Now the Cortina, which crept among us far more quietly than 'the most heralded consumer product in history' has notched up its million in four years, beating the Edsel target by 25 per cent; and one cannot grudge Ford their gloat. I must confess, however, that all this 'New Cortina is more Cortina' ballyhoo inclines me to com- ment, 'Yes, but not that much more. All I can hope is that you've put some of the faults right.' Churlish. But then I'm a consumer not a motor- ing correspondent.
How good are you at grasping the importance of a three-bearing crankshaft (the Cortina De Luxe 1,297 cc version) against .a. five-bearing ditto (the Super 1.499.9 cc engine); a semi-floating pressed steel banjo housing with hypoid final drive; or a babbit-lined bearing with mechanical tensioner? If this really makes you sit up and beg for a trial drive, you don't need the motoring writers. Not even the Which? car supplement. It regularly spots the Cortina as a joint Best Buy as the modified models roll off the Dagenham assembly line. I know several non-technical car owners (aren't most of us?) who bought the Cor- tina on CA's say-so. And on the whole they are happy about it. One, it is true, had his gear-box jam solid in the middle of a motorway when all the fluid had leaked away because a nut had not been threaded on fully. Another found that his left indicator didn't cancel (the police driver's handbook Roadcraft says this is dangerous). All of them complain about poor performance from cold (as Which? did) and about the too ready inclination of the engine to stall in low gear. But generally they are happy with their Cortinas but convinced that the main difference between all these De Luxes (funny name for the cheapest version), Supers and GTs (Gran Turismo, that means) lies in bits of trim and the number of dials on the dash, or facia as I must learn to call it.
Certainly, by hook or by crook, the Ford stand at the Motor Show was as jammed as the roads of London on opening day. And all the Cortinas were jammed with bodies. I couldn't help noting that a large illuminated turntable with the price (including tax) boldly stated at £668 13s. 4d. was slowly revolving a GT model, price £834 12s. ld. To be fair the neighbouring car on show was a De Luxe, but four-door (£693 5s.). This is known as putting your best face on it. Not as great a trompe-l'oeil as the full-page feature in the Daily Mail by their motoring correspondent, DeniS Holmes, headed 'Why they've changed the best selling car . . .' and discreetly tagged in small italics Special advertisement feature. Funny thing, as soon as I spotted that I ceased believing it. But does anyone believe motoring writers nowadays?
They poured hyperbole out by the tankful. The Express's Basil Cardew in Gaelic (he tested the car in Scotland), the rest in PR English (some of it too redolent of the handout). The Sketch man
handed us the 'more Coitina' line. The Times said it had been 'completely redesigned,' which seems to be gilding the lily, and the Guardian echoed this, as did the Telegraph. Not having last year's model with me at Earls Court I couldn't see the two versions side by side, but I recognised the outline instantly. Complete re- design might have baffled me. As to the greater roominess also claimed by most writers, it seemed so slight as to be unnoticeable. The old version is a roomy car anyway, and just as 'sleek' in its way as the Mirror headlined the new one. So, in a perverse way, I preferred Denis Holmes's write- up because it was a declared puff, while his fellow members of the Guild were just going through the familiar drill.
Footnote to all this: if it hadn't been for the motoring correspondents how many of us Cortina fanciers would have known about the disc-brake front wheel modification that Ford announced a few months ago? From what I recall it was a safety measure, but seemed to have been kept as casual as the much more serious Corvair stabiliser modification described by Ralph Nader in Unsafe at any Speed. Here is where dealers could be useful, if they had a mind to. They know who has which new car, and they have tele- phones. But once they've sold a car, they don't seem interested any more.
If you can afford to drink liqueurs you prob- ably don't need to worry about value for money. If you did try to calculate what your money buys it would not be easy. Apart from the complexity of shapes and names, seldom does the quantity appear on the label. When it does it is likely to be a figure such as appears on Grant's Cherry Brandy, 251 fluid oz.
Helpfully, Hallgarten and Simon have pro- duced a 'liqueurograph' (1s. 6d. from Wine- ographs, 1 Crutched Friars, London, EC3) which shows at a glance the cost per British fluid ounce of all the main liqueurs from Creme de Cassis (29 deg. proof) to Green Chartreuse (96 deg.). It comes in good time for Christmas extra- vagances, and shows that if you are buying for the kick you do best with British vodka at less than Is. 11d. an ounce, compared with slivovitz at 2s. 2d., tequila at 2s. 5d. or kirsch at 3s. 3d. Scotch works out at about 2s. All are 70 deg. proof, which means roughly 40 per cent alcohol by volume, one third alcohol by weight. And to stop argument, absolute alcohol is 175.1 deg. proof in Britain.
I suppose the pay and prices standstill will encourage renting of expensive appliances, in which case we ought to be thankful for the latest ruling on the following (or rather the non-follow- ing) of legal precedents. A few weeks ago the Court of Appeal allowed a rental company, Robophonc Facilities Ltd, to exact £245 14s. from a customer who had signed a contract for a telephone-answering machine and then cancelled the order before delivery. The cost of the machine ex-factory was f 105.
The learned judges disagreed. The Master of the Rolls wanted to hold the damages at i17 11s., but the two Lords of Appeal, Lord Justice Har- man and Lord Justice Diplock, decided on 'a reasonable estimate of the actual loss likely to be sustained by the plaintiffs as a result of the premature determination of the contract' as between 47 and 57 per cent of the aggregate rents for the unexpired portion of the contract; that is, seven years. Mr Blank's signature cost him more than twice the value of a machine he had never even set eyes on. Moral: buy yourself an ex- pensive fountain-pen and read all the small print.
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