[Gallery] Glorious German cars at Classic Car Sunday
Is the stereotype of a nation formed not actually by contact with anyone from said country, but by its car history?
Hear me out here, I’m not about to launch in a xenophobic rant, in fact the opposite. For what I propose here is that rather than drawing conclusions by actually meeting people, we’ve all drawn a picture from the automotive world.
You see the Italians have always built with flair, the British with a bulldog, built-in-my-shed spirit, the French with a certain je ne sais quoi and the Japanese with an efficient but slightly off-the-wall style. And the awfully trodden stereotypes of the countryman of each nation, as false as they almost certainly are, seem to follow this pattern.
Which brings us to the traditional car from Germany. On show at Breakfast Club today we’ve had some wonderful shows of teutonic mastery, from a wafting 280SE, through some beautiful Porsche 911s and on to the strange, but purposeful, Volkswagen Transporter.
These may be three incredibly different cars, but a trio that follows a pattern. Well nailed together, stylish but slightly restrained, and absolutely ready to serve a very specific purpose.
Those of us who are drawn to the German, and I confess here to being so, find these qualities intriguing. Especially from a British point of view. It’s everything we wish our car industry had been, just if we’d paid a bit more attention at the time.
Photography by Joe Harding, Peterr Summers and James Lynch.