Without wishing to sound too Private Frazer, there was a moment there when I thought we were all doomed. Well not us precisely, but a sector of our community beloved by, I would imagine, just about everyone whose eyes and ears have chosen to pass this way. Indeed there was a moment a while back when I feared this story might in time be seen as some kind of obituary for the small British sports car industry.
Did I actually fear it? Well, I along with plenty of others were certainly aware of the possibility. Had these cars not been exempted from the rules banning the sales of pure petrol cars their future would have been hard to see, because even re-engineering them for hybrid powertrains would have made them heavier, more complex, more expensive and less fun, while only buying a paltry five additional years. But it made no sense to run an entire industry out of business when its total emissions would add up to barely a teaspoon of water in an Olympic-sized pool of automotive exhaust.
Then again our leaders have frequently struggled to see sense and I expect it was only when the current lot realised how damaging it would be to them to apply the rules across the board that it was regarded as politic to make the exemption. Even so, I’m not complaining and credit where it is due: for now at least, the future of these brilliant cars is secure. Then again, with a government’s propensity for changing its mind roughly equivalent to my ability to get through bags of Haribo Polka when driving alone in France, I’d not necessarily call it a certainty yet.
