Comments by "Lynott Parris" (@DenUitvreter) on "Ed's Auto Reviews" channel.

  1. The oil crisis was a factor but there was much more to it and government was basically forced to change it's policies through protests on many levels.
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  2. I'd give the 70's to the VW Golf. Not just for being up to the task of replacing the Beetle, but also because it set the front wheel drive, transveral 4-cylinder hatchback family car as the standard, also by it's hot hatchback, pretty radical and influential design by Guigiaro too. Yes, it doesn't look that radical in hindsight, because it was influential. The 20's are for Duesenberg, because it was incredibly fast for it's day, technologically very advanced but it also showed there was no limit in both cost and progress. It the was the roaring twenties, the Austin 7 didn't roar. The 90's I have to give to a car I don't like from a manufacturer I do like. The Mercedes W140, the S-class. Very heavy, full of safety features and comfort features and gadgets that have been copied by everybody. Also upped the norm for a top model car to a V12, a 6 to 7 litre. A 5 litre V8 was about the max for European cars outside the extreme luxury brands with small production. I agree with the reasoning about the 80's, but I go for the Espace because it was futuristic and was much less of a van than the ford. Vans with a sliding door had been around in Europe for ages, what made the new type of car was it's likeness to regular cars in every way except it's proportions and space.
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  3.  @samuelrudy1776  There is also the weight spiral. If you want to have the luxury of lots of torque which is easily achieved by big heavy V8's, you need a big car, with stronger and therefore heavier suspension, wheels etc. With turbos and superchargers you can give small light cars with good handling similar power, not the torque, not even with a supercharger. You want that luxury feel of lots of big V8 torque, you ended up with an entirley different kind of car with far more weight.
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  4. American cars make no sense here, that's what's so attractive about them. It's indulgence in space and torque, nicely wasteful just to make you feel good.
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  5. Correct, in cooperation with DAF, another advantage of the CVT was that it didn't need an engine with a wide power range and the F1 engine could specialize on one optimal RPM and be much stronger there. Despite their little engine the DAF's were pretty quick from the traffic light, the fact that they ran out of steam before hitting 100 km/h makes them appear slower than they really were. Another reason the CVT got popular was that a lot of small cars still were unsynchronised, so you had to doubleclutch and throttle in between, and there was more need for automatics. Engine breaking was a bit of an issue though, so maybe that's why it didn't do that well in other small car countries like Italy and France with much more hills and mountains.
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  6. The DS set new standards in comfort, handling and safety.
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  7.  @terabeatnik2000  If it's any consolation, the first series Golfs were problematic and unreliable too.
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  8.  @MaximilianvonPinneberg  Less than 10 years before, I like it better but I think it was more of a quirky French car than influential like the Golf.
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