Considering August is the quiet month of car sales before the September rush, there is a temptation to wonder what there is to write about. Throw in the Great London Olympics Escape and the summertime lack of a school run and the city has a 28 Days Later vibe.
There’s a feeling everybody has left the city, while Fred Crawley and I stay to enjoy empty streets.
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Fred’s grinching about the whole experience but I’m burning down deserted B roads pretending I’m Bradley Wiggins, Hero of Brent. Actually, I’m proposing the council build a statue of Wiggo on an intimidating scale with sideburns the size of car mats right above the Kilburn Halfords.
To be fair, I’m writing this on Fred’s birthday and took the team out for a lunch to celebrate. In a park. With a can of lager each. Bring your own lunch. Still, it was time out of the office.
On a similar note, one manufacturer’s UK arm experienced a power cut and we were told by answerphone message from their press team that they would be working from home. Grant Collinson, of sister magazine Leasing Life, driven grey from dealing with European companies whose staff have taken August off, was last seen heading toward the generator room with a bottle of factor 50 and a crude, office-built axe.
With the roads empty and my hopes high of somehow impressing Victoria Pendleton, I decided to tour this city to see how dealerships were doing. I hit the A-roads that stretch out of town like compass points: the Great West Road heading west from Chiswick Roundabout and Edgware Road heading north from Staples Corner, stringing together thin villages of forecourts skirting Brentford and Colindale.
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By GlobalDataI remember ’05-’07, when the lights were still on at the showrooms at 9pm on a weeknight, when the Audi tower was built high enough to display cars to passing motorists on the flyover, and Saturdays meant local roads were clogged with shoppers parking four-year-old lumps of part-exchange fodder.
The upward revision of total new car sales for 2012 from the Society of Motor Manufacturers may be good but, on a drizzling Tuesday supper time, during a month-long lull, in a city witnessing a mini-exodus, these showrooms were the abandoned outposts of a world populated only by a workforce that had stayed behind, just in case there was something to write home about.
richard.brown@vrlfinancialnews.com
