John Simister: Heritage fleets? We need heritage mechanics

So old cars meet the internet age. Well, the information about them does, at least, but the trouble is that today's young, internet-age garage mechanics often have no clue what that information means. Someone whose life revolves around social media and an internet of things, whose mechanics' training course dwelt much on ECUs and diagnostics and CAN databus systems and software updates, might look at a carburettor and not even recognise it as part of a car.

To we lovers of old automotive machinery this seems extraordinary, but then what exposure has the teenage trainee mechanic had to such an object, or to anything mechanically analogue with a role in regulating an automotive system? Of course, you might say that someone embarking on a career in car-fixing should be interested enough in the subject to want to read around it, learn more, get a sense of the historical context, but it's by no means a given.

I was delighted when, a few years ago, my local garage took on a new, young mechanic who would find himself dealing with old cars on a regular basis. Tom loves it and he's very good at it, and he enjoyed watching the bafflement on a day-release student mechanic's face as the student contemplated my two-stroke Saab, in for an MOT and gently puffing blue clouds from its exhaust pipe.

Tom might be a rarity, though, and as the senior mechanics retire and take their knowledge with them, so the gap in that knowledge grows at the profession's input end. Now Ferrari, with an eye to enticing old Ferraris away from the specialist workshops and back into main dealerships for service, repair and restoration work, has become the first manufacturer of modern cars to train its new apprentices in the workings of old ones.

Perhaps tellingly, Ferrari's own press release on its new Classic Car Module in the Ferrari North Europe apprentice scheme talks about the example of (sic) 'a down-draught 6-carb Webber' without irony, but we can blame it on its author's need to go on the Classic Car Module him/herself. It does make the cogent point, though, that most school-leavers have no understanding of a ballast-resistor ignition system, the carburettor array just alluded to, or a 'straight-cut dog-mesh gearbox' are, nor even what any pre-synchromesh gearbox is like to use.

The course covers all of the above, plus magneto ignition, dynamos, distributors with contact breakers (including twin-points systems as used in some 1970s Dinos and no doubt others), and mechanical fuel injection systems. It doesn't mention drum brakes, leaf springs or lever-arm dampers, though; it's just engines to begin with. 

For someone like me, who has grown up with all this stuff, these simple, old-fashioned mechanical systems form my mental jumping-off point for what a car is. It's simple to visualise and understand, almost Ladybird Books material, and anything more sophisticated and modern then overlays it and modifies it.

What saddens me is that a modern car can't be seen in such terms because it's full of sensors and computer code, things you can't watch operating in a mechanical, cause-and-effect way, so the building blocks of watching and learning aren't there. You just have to take it for granted, or seek proof in a digital diagnostic read-out. This, I am sure, is why younger folk aren't as engaged with cars as they used to be. There's less to see, to do, to adjust, to fix.

It's surprising, too, how quickly this has happened. Even something not that old, such as a Peugeot 205 GTI with electronic fuel injection but of a primitive, analogue sort, would befuddle a young mechanic in a modern Peugeot main dealer. It's good, then, that technical apprentices at Peugeot UK have recently restored one as part of their training. Don't expect the dealers to follow suit, though.

So will Ferrari's idea spread? Perhaps, among the premium, sporting brands inhabited by enthusiasts, it will. Porsche already has a restoration competition among its UK dealers. Bentley is teaching its factory apprentices about restoration. Aston Martin, Jaguar and Land Rover take on restoration and servicing of classics at factory level, and will need new blood as time passes. Ferrari is the first to formalise a classic-car apprenticeship at dealer level, though. Let's hope that others follow.

And my local classic-car-friendly garage? It's Lingard Motors of Berkhamsted, Herts. Were I not a journalist, I'd rather enjoy working there myself.