8:05 am, September 15, 2024
The colour of a car is, of course, subjective but I recently read a report that declared green was the new black – the colour of the moment.
I can get on board with that, as I’ve always loved a green car.
Indeed, my old Jaguar XJ8 and Range Rover are both green and I plucked them from stock to use as my own, so I must be completely down with the kids – a trendsetter, even if I am now of an age immortalised in one of the Beatles’ worst songs (and yes, I am losing my hair).
Green, then, is set to follow white, and subsequently black, as the fashionista’s choice of car colour.
It will also, hopefully, put an end to the seemingly endless glut of ‘Black Editions’ that appear to have stifled the creativity of marketing departments across the car industry.
It seems that every time I take anything newer than a decade old into stock, there’s a good chance it’s a ‘Black Edition’, which means the interior is as gloomy as Darth Vader’s helmet and the wheels look like they could do with a bloody good clean, even when they’re spotless.
It’s a far cry from the glory days of what I call ‘proper’ special editions, which were dreamt up by marketing moguls – presumably over a liquid and powder lunch – to be as ridiculous as can be.
In recent times, the two standouts for me have been the Nissan Juke Dark Knight, which had all the design details of a Batmobile but none of the associated kudos, and the Fiat 500 DIESEL – not to be confused with the Fiat 500 diesel.
The former has a petrol engine and leaves most traders completely flummoxed when one of them goes through the auction.
Apparently, it’s inspired by the Italian fashion brand to go with your trendy sunglasses, fragrances and undercrackers, and the name has nothing to do with what’s under the bonnet.
Ironically, DIESEL’s marketing slogan is ‘Only the brave’, which could equally apply to any dealer wanting to market a well-used Fiat 500 TwinAir, so perhaps it’s cleverer than we think.
Or how about the 2005 Citroen Pluriel Charleston, which took one of the most disastrous cars ever made and painted it in the colour scheme of a classic 2CV?
The funky black-and-maroon paint job sadly didn’t solve the issue of having to leave the roof behind if you took it off, which sort of made it the most pointless convertible ever made.
Or what about the late-1990s, and Mazda’s obsession with special edition MX-5s, where any word beginning with an M was fair game?
Monaco and Monza had racing heritage, I suppose, but the Merlot was named after a bottle of red.
Not, strictly speaking, the perfect pairing with a car, although I do understand there was a ‘Smoker’s Special’ in Japan if you wanted a matching public health warning on your driveway.
It was the cheaper cars that gave us the biggest laughs, though, with their comedy names.
Like the Talbot Samba Roller, finished in silver with yellow wheels to look like an early Eighties roller boot, and which also led to a lawsuit from Rolls-Royce, lest someone mistook the tinny Talbot for a Silver Wraith.
The Citroen AX Spot was a good one, too, named after a teenager’s complexion, perhaps.
My favourite of those was the metallic grey AX Chicago, which was positively posh.
Certainly, it was more luxurious than the subsequent Citroen Saxo Bic, which was named after something cheap, plastic and disposable.
I used to sell Citroens new at the time, and I seem to recall we shifted more AXs in silly special edition format than anything else.
An advert depicting the Talbot Samba Roller – Rolls-Royce sued the manufacturer over the model’s name
Soon, everyone was at it. Our rivals down the road at Rover would do you a Metro Rio, or if you wanted five doors, a Rio Grande. Clever stuff.
Or how about the Metro Caribbean or Metro Tahiti? They allowed you to stare out of your window in Sparkbrook imagining you were somewhere warmer, sunnier and nicer. Like Coventry.
Vauxhall was also a keen exponent of the special edition.
The Corsa Vegas and the ‘Casa Nova’ were exemplars of the breed – metallic paint, a pop-up sunroof and some fancy graphics had suburbanites flocking to the showroom in their droves.
My absolute favourite, though, has to be the Nova Cricket – marketed as ‘Cricket, Lovely Cricket’.
I can only assume the marketers were on some kind of trip when they came up with it, complete with white matching bumpers and wheel covers.
Come to think of it, those circumstances may explain the Nova Trip as well. One not to be sniffed at.
My favourite special edition of the lot, though, and the one my grandson would call the ‘goat’ (which I’ve only recently learned is an acronym for Greatest Of All Time) is a 1990s Nissan Micra.
There were multiple special editions of the Japanese supermini, including the comical Collette and the not-entirely-accurate Temptation, but what on earth were they thinking when they came up with the 1995 Micra Wave? Ping! We have a winner.
Pictured at top is the Fiat 500CbyDIESEL – which actually had a petrol engine
Who is Big Mike? Well, that would be telling. What we can say is he’s had more than 40 years in the car trade so has probably forgotten more about it than we’re likely to know.
