Rebadged and redundant. 

 
 
 
It will come as no surprise to those of you which have been following this page for a long period of time for me to announce that I’m rather fond of many British cars, with an appreciation for the antiquated grade II listed behemoths that are vintage Bentleys and Aston Martins, to decidedly more innovative affairs such as the Issigonis Mini or Mclaren F1. My love for them doesn’t stem from some peculiar notion of rampant patriotism, merely that I like these cars for what they are, the fascinating men and women who brought them into the world and the impact they’ve had on the world of motoring. Hence, the topic of this article is possibly quite controversial. There’s no easy way to say it, other than simply stating what I think. That British cars are a pastiche, farmed of their heritage for whichever gluttonous, faceless corporation owns the right to the name. Now, this is hardly a sudden occurrence. British manufacturers have been producing backwards-looking cars engrained with industrial bouts of faux-English heritage for decades, but I can’t help but feel like it’s reached it’s worst in recent years. 
 
My inspiration for writing this article came from a simple glance at no more than a steering wheel. The steering wheel of a Bentley Flying Spur to be exact. Upon first sight, beyond being beached at the side of the road as a humongous British Racing Green whale of a car, it wasn’t particularly antagonising, the wheel avoiding any unfortunate undertones of Allegro by actually being perfectly round (as some manufacturers seem to have forgotten about), and looked to be of outstanding quality with a neatly stitched rim and ladled with brightwork. So why then did this humble steering wheel give me such an uneasy feeling of déjà vu? Several seconds later and a quick google search provided the answer. The Bentley’s wheel was effectively no more than a delicately disguised Audi A3 steering wheel, belonging to the base variant at that. Of course, I’m sure there’s nothing inherently wrong with the Audi wheel, but it did get me thinking. At what point is a Bentley actually a Bentley?
 
 In older, and certainly less commercially successful times, the idea of a small-volume British manufacturer raiding the parts bin of more mainstream manufacturers was unbelievably blatant, with Citroën CX mirrors being seen on more cars in the 1990s than white teeth were on British actors of the same era. One of my favourite cars of all time, the colossally powerful throwback to a bygone era that was the Aston Martin Vantage, was perhaps the worst offender, utilising a woefully unsightly Ford wheel shared with everything from Crown Victorias to pick up trucks. However, after pondering this for a moment, I became even more frustrated with the Bentley’s wheel, because when you strip away the several million kilograms of endangered tree, Connolly leather and Ford steering wheel from the old Aston, it was still a car handbuilt on a bespoke Aston Martin platform, with a bespoke Aston Martin engine, by a small team of craftsmen and women.
 
 Take away the tinsel from the Bentley though, and underneath the Audi switchgear and plastichrome accoutrements, and you find a Porsche Panamera, with an Audi V6 engine. That’s not to say that the Porsche Panamera is necessarily a bad car either, but I really struggled to see the point of someone spending around £200,000 on what is more or less a glorified Porsche, with an Audi engine with some nice leather and wood nailed to it. Is that really the best that Britain’s car industry can offer? Especially a product hailing from Crewe, the longtime home of Rolls-Royce and Bentley which claimed to produce the best cars in the world, without equal, for almost a century. Why should someone not just go and buy the Porsche it’s based upon and save themselves tens of thousands of pounds? Porsche isn’t exactly a bargain basement brand. 
 
Winding back the clock over two decades and the British car industry seemed to be facing an incredible resurgence, with billions being thrown at Jaguar, Aston Martin, Land Rover, Bentley and Mini by hoards of desperate German and American executives vying for control over Britain’s prestigious names. All this time later, I can’t help but feel like all we have left are those names. Bentley no longer makes a single model with a bespoke platform or engine to the brand, Jaguar is practically on it’s deathbed, Minis are bloated caricatures of what a small and innovative car should be. The only British car which seems to balance heritage with genuine forward-thinking design is the Range Rover. Not that anyone seems to buy them anymore. Especially when you can just walk around any street corner and drive off in your neighbour’s one for free.
 
So, whats my point? To merely ramble incoherently about the golden era of British cars which has been thrown by the wayside and trampled on by greedy globalised manufacturers? Thankfully not, although I do think it’s an interesting idea to ponder. Instead, it’s a question of identity. In a world where people are able to find their true identity more easily than ever before, I can’t help but think that car makers are doing a worse job than ever before, as increasingly homogenised models roll off the production lines of continuously consolidated companies. At a time when environmental legislation, safety requirements and cost play such a prominent role in developing new cars, I’ve begun struggling to see the point for all these different brands. Choosing a car is meant to be an exciting endeavour, but I really don’t envy anyone in that position at all. 
 
Just look at the rather amusingly named Stellantis Group. Anyone able to remember all the brands in their sprawling portfolio should automatically be enrolled in MENSA, a congregation of what appears to be a melting pot of all of recent-history’s most underperforming brands thrown into a multinational corporate soup and named after a forgotten European techno Group. Stellantis operate Abarth, Alfa Romeo, Chrysler, Citroën, Dodge, DS Automobiles, Fiat, Jeep, Lancia, Maserati, Opel, Peugeot, Ram, Vauxhall and likely other brands I’ve forgotten about or failed to find on their website. If you are an employee of a Stellantis brand I’ve forgotten about, or Stellantis themselves have forgotten about, be sure to drop me a line. Seemingly half the cars built within their brand bonanza are just rebodied or rebadged versions of identical platforms, and if I, a self-proclaimed car enthusiast (as much as I loathe the term), can’t figure them out, I can’t begin to imagine how a regular consumer can. 
 
Or perhaps that’s the point. Average customers can’t figure them out, because they simply just don’t care. They want a car with a nice screen, a high-ish driving position, parking sensors, and not to be so small that they feel like it will crumple like a soda can in a minor scrape, but not so large that it’s cumbersome to drive. Have we reached a point where the average consumer doesn’t actually care about how their car actually drives? If we hadn’t yet, the roads wouldn’t be littered with plagues of small-compact crossovers that claim to be cars that do everything, but fundamentally are just overpriced, fattened-up versions of the hatchbacks people used to buy, which drive considerably worse and use more fuel. Accordingly, it doesn’t matter if Peugeot will sell you the same car as Citroen, DS, Lancia, Fiat or Abarth, because you’re not supposed to notice. You’re just supposed to marvel at the seamless nature of the Bluetooth connectivity and dose off at the wheel, only to be saved at the last second by the lane-keeping-assist.
 
All that being said, whilst I will continue to detest the proliferation of mediocre crossovers onto our roads, I don’t really have an issue with more mainstream offerings being so similar to one another if it means that costs are kept in check and the products are better for it, which is why I just don’t understand how people are prepared to spend ludicrous amounts of money on lazily designed cars like the Lamborghini Urus and Bentley Bentayga, which are just uglier, less cohesive versions of already-pricey vehicles. So, that begs the question. Are car manufacturers becoming more cynical and greedier, or are these products driven by consumer laziness? The answer likely lies somewhere in between, and the only way to try and prevent this is vote with your feet. Go buy those cars which aren’t just hastily rehashed versions of the same platform, or a quickly released copycat. Spectacularly unique cars like the Alpine A110, GR Toyotas and Nissan Juke. 
 
 
The optimist in me hopes that people really do care about the cars which they’re buying and that manufacturers are going to retain their identity as we storm towards an electrified era, but don’t rest on your laurels. The British car industry, once celebrated for its distinctiveness, innovation and total disregard for anything remotely resembling reliable transportation, now finds itself at a crossroads, grappling with the challenges of commodification and loss of brand identity in a global market increasingly dominated by conglomerates. 
 
As enthusiasts and consumers, we face a pivotal choice: to passively accept the ubiquity of homogenised vehicles or to champion innovation, authenticity, and craftsmanship in automotive design in the rare areas where it can be found. Whilst I particularly lament how this has affected some of my favourite brands, Jaguar and Bentley being the worst offenders, the issues I’ve discussed are unfortunately industry wide. You don’t need to buy a British car. You just need to buy one which knows what it actually wants to be.