The View from London
It’s summer travel time around the Cars.com offices, it seems. Brian Neale hit Greece a few weeks ago, and I just got back from five days in London. Unlike Brian, I am a car nut who has ogled British car magazines and TV shows for years, so getting to see all the different models we aren’t lucky enough to get here was a real treat. Of course, my wife was a bit miffed as we stood in the middle of one of the most historically significant cities in the world and I was going, “Oooh, check out that Peugeot!” And was it my fault that we walked by the BMW, Lotus/TVR, Mini and Corvette (it’s a brand of its own there) dealers on the way to our hotel every day?
The most noticeable trend in London (Ed. Note: London is not all of England, just its largest and most expensive city, so things may be different in other towns and/or suburbs) was the abundance of luxury cars. My unscientific observations would say that Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz made up a vast majority of cars on the road. That included a lot of the smaller European-only models, though, like the Mercedes A-Class, BMW 1 Series and the two-door Audi A3 hatchback. However, there were many more of the pricier S-Class, 7 Series and A8. And I would say there were just as many high-performance AMG, Ms and S and RS models among them. Almost every car I saw of any make was either brand new or an exceptionally maintained used car.
British makes were noticeably slim, with the exception of Mini and Vauxhall, GM’s British brand. Coopers were everywhere, but I saw many more Bentleys on the road than Jaguars. I could count the Jags I saw on both hands, while Bentleys were parked a plenty on nicer residential streets — yes, parallel parked on the street, as were Ferraris and Rolls Royces.
Another interesting trend was the lack of Japanese cars. I saw only a few Toyotas — mostly Prius hybrids — and two of the new European Civic hatchbacks. I did see many more Nissan Micras, though.
What was the big surprise on the road? Ford. The Blue Oval was everywhere, especially the new European Focus, which is much nicer than ours by far. The small Ford Fiesta was also plentiful.
Lastly, there was one brand that easily trumped all others in abundance, especially on our drive to and from Heathrow and Wembley, where we took in a Pearl Jam concert. That brand was Volkswagen. In Europe, not only do they have the Jetta, Rabbit (still called Golf there), GTI and Passat, but there was a new van called the Sharan, and the Polo, a hatchback smaller than the Golf. The Jetta was not too common, but everything else was akin to seeing Toyotas or Chevys here. My guess is that with so few Japanese cars on the road, Londoners are used to more mechanical issues in their cars, so VW’s lower reliability ratings we see in the U.S. are likely not as large a factor in the buying decision there. That’s just a guess, of course.
My personal favorites were the Peugeots, Renaults and Citroens. Yes, the French cars. The Peugeot 207 was the most common, and I liked the funky new Renault Megane once I saw it in the flesh weaving through traffic. Unfortunately, I didn’t see many of the larger Peugeot 407 and Citroen C6. Those are really my favorites.
I’m not even going to get into the right-hand-drive factor, but with so many cool cars on the road, I think I’d be able to figure it out if Cars.com ever shipped me over the pond for some sort of exchange program.
