On a recent three-hour drive up the M6, design guru Kevin McCloud set himself a challenge. Could he spot an original-looking car?
“It appears to me that there are 1792093124 around 20 prototype cars and every car on the road is made from a compilation of those 20 cars,” he explains.
Manufacturers slot standardised parts together in different configurations to create almost every new model, from Jaecoos and Teslas to BYDs and Kias. “Even Range Rovers look like they’re made out of Chinese cars now,” laughs the Grand Designs presenter.
During his journey, McCloud laments that he saw just one model that stood out. “It was a tiny car. It had little round headlamps. It was all very sweet and fun. The sort of car that would appeal to a 14-year-old girl,” he recalls.
The point, explains McCloud, is that we no longer use the word “beautiful” when talking about vehicle design. “I don’t know where beauty has gone. Maybe it’s gone to the mobile phone or the apps,” he says.
As an antidote to the blandness of modern car design, his latest project, Kevin McCloud’s Classic Car Road Trips, sees him in six cars, exploring the architecture, design, culture and art of different European regions. In France, he travels from Cannes to Monaco in a 1960s Citroën DS convertible. In Italy, it’s a 1950s Maserati 3500 GT, and in Germany’s Black Forest, a 60s Mercedes SL.
The most surprising journey, however, was his drive around Northern Ireland in a DeLorean, a car he describes as an unlikely symbol of hope during the Troubles and an example of manufacturing bringing communities together.
“Despite questions around probity, John DeLorean was a genius in social innovation. He built his factory exactly on the division between a Catholic community and a Protestant community with a gate for each. But once they were inside, the workers built the cars as a team. It was a statement of faith in the place, and it stuck with the people as a happy, exciting memory.”
McCloud’s affection for old cars and his passion for sustainability inform his doubts about whether ever-larger electric vehicles are the best route to a greener future. Having owned two electric BMW i3s, he admires what EVs can offer but questions how much material and energy we use to make them.
“I loved the i3s because the seats were recycled wool and every component inside was made of plant resin with hemp fibre. They were lightweight and minimal and cost peanuts to make. I thought that was the future of driving. But then everybody started making massive cars again with massive batteries and huge subframes. The whole point about being ecological is to be miserly. It’s learning to live better with less. That’s where I saw the i3 pointing.”
He argues that the emissions involved in manufacturing newer, bigger EVs complicate their environmental credentials, particularly for someone who drives as little as he does. “There’s already been 12 to 20 tonnes of carbon spent making the car. I drive about 3,000 miles a year. I’ll be 87 by the time I get to carbon neutrality on a new electric car. It only makes sense if you do a lot of miles,” he says.
For him, buying a second-hand EV is the more sensible option. He compares overlooking the resources used to manufacture a new car to moving into an environmentally friendly home, and then “turning the heating up to full and opening all the windows”.
And despite the push for more EVs, he questions whether car manufacturers are embracing sustainability as imaginatively as companies in other sectors. “You can buy so many products that are made by ethical companies that claim zero carbon, that put money back into the community, that make an ecological product. None of these is car manufacturers,” he says.
In other industries, he argues, a growing number of smaller manufacturers can find customers by offering something distinctive, including sustainability. Car-making has moved in the opposite direction. Ownership has become concentrated in global groups, and the products have lost much of their individuality and connection to place.
Yet, he remains positive about the UK’s goal of reaching net zero by 2050, believing progress must draw on lessons from the past. “I’ve visited towns and cities, many of them in this country, where the manufacturing history has been wiped clean. Instead, the town’s been rebuilt five times in the past 200 years and has lost its identity. So many places are the same, with the same shops, the same sense of identity and the same housing stock. Old stuff tells us who we are. We don’t know how to get to 2050 unless we know where we’ve been.”
He also sees potential in Andy Burnham’s call for reindustrialisation, which he describes as a “great slogan to build a manifesto on”. “Manufacturing in the UK is not dead,” says McCloud. “We still make a huge amount of stuff here. It’s just that we’d rather imagine that we didn’t.
“We already have enough product and enough material in this country for Britain to have an entirely circular economy. We can make everything we need from everything we now have here. If I were at Andy Burnham’s side and he made that statement, I’d be saying, ok, then you’ve got to commit to the circular economy. You’ve got to commit to recycling and upcycling and upgrading materials, and you’ve got to commit to the waste stream and having sophisticated separation processes.”
He cites waste management and recycling company Veolia’s work extracting palladium and other rare metals from dust collected by road sweepers. He also describes technology that enables new resins to be made from algae grown on sewage.
“All of this technology exists and unknowingly to us it is beginning to infiltrate our lives,” he says. “I suspect [Burnham] is talking about the move against globalisation by the creation of smaller workshops and smaller factories, which is something that is very much part of the UK.”
A TV favourite, McCloud, 67, is a designer and author. He began his career in theatre design before establishing a lighting business. He was awarded an MBE in 2014 for services to sustainable design and energy-saving property refurbishment.
For all his enthusiasm for new materials and manufacturing techniques, he sees limits to what technology can offer. Ask whether AI can replace the designer and his answer is emphatic.
“I don’t think AI is capable of designing beauty,” he says. “And I don’t think that AI is capable of cooking a Michelin-starred meal.” What matters to him is human craft, care and empathy.
McCloud is warm, intelligent and easy to talk to. When the conversation turns to his own health, he is candid about the changes he has noticed.
“I wear glasses, I wear a hearing aid. I have no sense of smell,” he shrugs. “My body is slowly starting to softly shut down in some small ways.”
He says he has had no major health scares but describes himself as slightly arthritic and does exercises for what he calls his “clutch knee”. Asthma means marathons have never appealed. Instead, he practises tai chi, which helps quiet a mind that is usually racing. “It’s better for my head as much as my body,” he nods.
He also makes a habit of running up stairs rather than taking the lift.
Working in his garage on old cars brings back memories of his engineer father, Donald, who died in 2003, aged 73. “My father stood right next to me when I do that,” smiles McCloud. “I’m not going to meet my dad at a wine tasting; I see him in the garage.”
Kevin McCloud’s Classic Car Road Trips starts Sunday at 8pm on Channel 4
