From A to B: Tales of modern motoring (BBC4)
Discussion
grahamw48 said:
Oh the day I got my brand new company Avenger. 
After a year I had my dream MK3 Cortina.
Bigger was better.
(I WAS 21).
Great days. No cameras and 70mph national limit.
Don't dis' the salespeople of this country though.
They're the guys who keep the rest in a job.
Company Cars. After a year I had my dream MK3 Cortina.
Bigger was better.
(I WAS 21).Great days. No cameras and 70mph national limit.
Don't dis' the salespeople of this country though.
They're the guys who keep the rest in a job.
My first was an Escort 1.8D. It was so underpowered it slowed down going up hills on the motorway.
Around that time I also had a Montego 2.0 (Oh my word it was s
tE!) and a Cavalier SRi 130. The first car I drove capable of reaching 100mph on the motorway. And of course it did. A lot. I was 22...Then I had an Orion 1.6 Ghia. Fab little car. 40mpg and more than fast enough in comparison to the 1.8D I'd been driving.
Then I got an Astra 1.6GL. In comparison it was hateful but it drove OK. At high speed. A lot.
Around then I got to own the Company. Company cars just weren't the same after that. Much nicer - but remembered with a good deal less fondness. Out of the mile-eaters a Peugeot 406 Coupe 3.0SE was about the nicest for it's purpose. I found that motoring fun had to come from having a boring mileeater for the week and something else for sheer entertainment for the weekend.
There are excerpts on YouTube .
Jalopy magazine did a review of the series in an editorial, slightly edited (but with all the salient points ) it is posted below with changes to make it more accurate plus remove irrelevant bits and to read more easily:
FROM Jalopy, issue 21 June 1994, the original item was titled "Crocks on the Box - Toys for boys by C. Potato".
The Jalopy six-valve terrestrial TV set has seen a fair bit of automotive action this month. Undoubtedly the highlight of recent box crox was a Beeb 2 series called "A - B: Tales of Modern Motoring".
I have to admit I wasn't expecting much from these programmes beforehand, having read lots of TV experts saying how great they were. Anything the pundits say is good is usually a load of rubbish, I find. This does of course apply to C. Potato's column particularly.
The ToMM progs were hilarious - far funnier than most alleged comedies, which raise about as many laughs as driving an Allegro into the back of a bus. Speaking of which [follows reference to a Jo Brand debut series telling one 'fat joke' numerous times, and also to a Dawn French program on the 'I am fat and beautiful' theme].
Back to A to B. Yes, it was funny. Prog 1 featured young drivers talking about their hopes and dreams. It's hard to say exactly why it was so funny, but it owed a lot to the way it was filmed and edited. A refreshing lack of background musak plus skilful use of that rare TV comodity known as silence, gave time for the silliness of the comments to sink in. For instance, instead of poking a camera at a youth and getting him to spout some predictable stuff about his Metro's Group 2 Insurance rating, we were given a fly-on-the-dashboard minute or two watching the victim with the beans-on-toast visage simply driving. So when the poor lad eventually started to speak and muttered something about forgetting to put his spot cream on in a Hovis Bread Accent, your reviewer almost choked on his pot noodles.
Indeed, the effect was so comical that I started to believe that these weren't real people, because surely no-one would agree to appear ont'telly looking like such a complete idiot. Please tell me this isn't true.
A later episode dealt with gurls in cars and threw up some similarly entertaining gems, but the jewel in the Toyota was surely the last, Over the moon with a Cavalier, a priceless insight into the minds of company car drivers. A typically sane Jalopy reader would not believe the way these peoples' brains work, judging by this evidence. Again, were the participants deliberately sending themselves up?
There was the Cavalier rep who checked in his rear view mirror for approaching vehicles wearing colour-coded bumpers (signifying an up-market Vaux) before moving over and letting them pass. Only an 'i' was allowed to do that, he said. What worried me about this cheery chap was the way he seemed to spend very little time actually looking where he was going.
Then how about the daring rebel rep who held out for an outrageously different Ford XR2i and left his jacket on the back seat so that casual observers might not guess his true mission in life? Furthermore, he was proud to say he could outgun any Sierra, we learned, as a stream of old bangers overtook in the background.
It seems there is a lot more to the hanging jacket business business than any sensible person might have realised. While our XR2i friend was carefully placing his best Burtonwear on the rear seat, others resorted to subtle tactics with the hangers themselves. M&S is definitely non-U for the get-ahead rep, it seems.
Moving up a notch to those who've really arrived in one sense even if they're still obliged to go everywhere in the other, we came to the executive set. There was the bloke in the Mercedes 200E who felt he should prise the badges off his bootlid so that people wouldn't think he had a mere base model like wot the common plebs use. The question is... does anyone care apart from him? Besides, just listening to the terrible din the thing made as he accelerated would give the game away. Still, at least it wasn't a diesel.
Stepping up to the glories of a Meistermachine, the camera stumbled across the BMW 320i co-op pilot who was at pains to point out that he is in fact a Very Pleasant Person. Just because he thought he was great didn't mean he wasn't nice. To prove this he recounted the story of a flirtation with starting his own business and the resultant cruel turn of fate that forced him to rattle round in a Peugeot 309. He tended to park this out of the sight of clients in case they got the wrong idea. Heaven forbid, old chap!
Saddest of all, however, was the man who found himself falling from the heavenly ecstasy of a Cavalier 2.0i into - shock horror! - a Maestro. But there was worse to come: it was a diesel Maestro Clubman! Oh the shame, the humiliation. His colleagues mocked him. His wife refused to go in the car - they actually cried about it. "It's crap. What have I done wrong?" the poor bewildered fellow said as he settled down in the inside lane, HGVs whistling past.
Here was a man with deep problems. When he stopped for the reps' customary service station strut and display of automotive plumage, he cunningly disguised himself as a regular family man by hiding the official jacket and removing his tie.
At this point I again smelled a TV rat. Fact may be stranger than fiction, but not this strange, surely? More recently, the late John Betjeman rose from the video vaults to recite his poem Executive - probably the only instance of the Cortina, that old rep favourite, making it into literature. The poem said it all...
C. Potato makes a valid point at the end - the poem does say it all...
It was a cracking TV series - arguably one of the best of the 1990s (and certainly the new millenium?) .
Edited only to add:
I suspect the Jalopy editor missed the last one of the series - "Red Lorry Yellow Lorry" as commented on upthread. Highlight of that one - for me - was the self-perceived "poor family" of married couple plus 3 kids tooling round West Cornwall in a bright yellow Mk 4 Cortina estate from Rickety Rentals costing them £25 a months. This was after the recession bit and they lost their Montego ("we loved that car", the mum said) then the first Rickety Rentals car caught fire (oops)... The kids were dying of shame in the back seat!
. Jalopy magazine did a review of the series in an editorial, slightly edited (but with all the salient points
) it is posted below with changes to make it more accurate plus remove irrelevant bits and to read more easily:FROM Jalopy, issue 21 June 1994, the original item was titled "Crocks on the Box - Toys for boys by C. Potato".
The Jalopy six-valve terrestrial TV set has seen a fair bit of automotive action this month. Undoubtedly the highlight of recent box crox was a Beeb 2 series called "A - B: Tales of Modern Motoring".
I have to admit I wasn't expecting much from these programmes beforehand, having read lots of TV experts saying how great they were. Anything the pundits say is good is usually a load of rubbish, I find. This does of course apply to C. Potato's column particularly.
The ToMM progs were hilarious - far funnier than most alleged comedies, which raise about as many laughs as driving an Allegro into the back of a bus. Speaking of which [follows reference to a Jo Brand debut series telling one 'fat joke' numerous times, and also to a Dawn French program on the 'I am fat and beautiful' theme].
Back to A to B. Yes, it was funny. Prog 1 featured young drivers talking about their hopes and dreams. It's hard to say exactly why it was so funny, but it owed a lot to the way it was filmed and edited. A refreshing lack of background musak plus skilful use of that rare TV comodity known as silence, gave time for the silliness of the comments to sink in. For instance, instead of poking a camera at a youth and getting him to spout some predictable stuff about his Metro's Group 2 Insurance rating, we were given a fly-on-the-dashboard minute or two watching the victim with the beans-on-toast visage simply driving. So when the poor lad eventually started to speak and muttered something about forgetting to put his spot cream on in a Hovis Bread Accent, your reviewer almost choked on his pot noodles.
Indeed, the effect was so comical that I started to believe that these weren't real people, because surely no-one would agree to appear ont'telly looking like such a complete idiot. Please tell me this isn't true.
A later episode dealt with gurls in cars and threw up some similarly entertaining gems, but the jewel in the Toyota was surely the last, Over the moon with a Cavalier, a priceless insight into the minds of company car drivers. A typically sane Jalopy reader would not believe the way these peoples' brains work, judging by this evidence. Again, were the participants deliberately sending themselves up?
There was the Cavalier rep who checked in his rear view mirror for approaching vehicles wearing colour-coded bumpers (signifying an up-market Vaux) before moving over and letting them pass. Only an 'i' was allowed to do that, he said. What worried me about this cheery chap was the way he seemed to spend very little time actually looking where he was going.
Then how about the daring rebel rep who held out for an outrageously different Ford XR2i and left his jacket on the back seat so that casual observers might not guess his true mission in life? Furthermore, he was proud to say he could outgun any Sierra, we learned, as a stream of old bangers overtook in the background.
It seems there is a lot more to the hanging jacket business business than any sensible person might have realised. While our XR2i friend was carefully placing his best Burtonwear on the rear seat, others resorted to subtle tactics with the hangers themselves. M&S is definitely non-U for the get-ahead rep, it seems.
Moving up a notch to those who've really arrived in one sense even if they're still obliged to go everywhere in the other, we came to the executive set. There was the bloke in the Mercedes 200E who felt he should prise the badges off his bootlid so that people wouldn't think he had a mere base model like wot the common plebs use. The question is... does anyone care apart from him? Besides, just listening to the terrible din the thing made as he accelerated would give the game away. Still, at least it wasn't a diesel.
Stepping up to the glories of a Meistermachine, the camera stumbled across the BMW 320i co-op pilot who was at pains to point out that he is in fact a Very Pleasant Person. Just because he thought he was great didn't mean he wasn't nice. To prove this he recounted the story of a flirtation with starting his own business and the resultant cruel turn of fate that forced him to rattle round in a Peugeot 309. He tended to park this out of the sight of clients in case they got the wrong idea. Heaven forbid, old chap!
Saddest of all, however, was the man who found himself falling from the heavenly ecstasy of a Cavalier 2.0i into - shock horror! - a Maestro. But there was worse to come: it was a diesel Maestro Clubman! Oh the shame, the humiliation. His colleagues mocked him. His wife refused to go in the car - they actually cried about it. "It's crap. What have I done wrong?" the poor bewildered fellow said as he settled down in the inside lane, HGVs whistling past.
Here was a man with deep problems. When he stopped for the reps' customary service station strut and display of automotive plumage, he cunningly disguised himself as a regular family man by hiding the official jacket and removing his tie.
At this point I again smelled a TV rat. Fact may be stranger than fiction, but not this strange, surely? More recently, the late John Betjeman rose from the video vaults to recite his poem Executive - probably the only instance of the Cortina, that old rep favourite, making it into literature. The poem said it all...
C. Potato makes a valid point at the end - the poem does say it all...
It was a cracking TV series - arguably one of the best of the 1990s (and certainly the new millenium?)
.Edited only to add:
I suspect the Jalopy editor missed the last one of the series - "Red Lorry Yellow Lorry" as commented on upthread. Highlight of that one - for me - was the self-perceived "poor family" of married couple plus 3 kids tooling round West Cornwall in a bright yellow Mk 4 Cortina estate from Rickety Rentals
costing them £25 a months. This was after the recession bit and they lost their Montego ("we loved that car", the mum said) then the first Rickety Rentals car caught fire (oops)... The kids were dying of shame in the back seat!Edited by aw51 121565 on Monday 13th August 01:25
Ari said:
Brilliant.Ari said:
These are awesome!
Ari said:
Glad to see you entering into the spirit with a period FurtiveFreddy said:
Good find 
; it's been just exerpts from the various programs until now which isn't ideal.I've got a bootleg copy of the whole series on two DVDs, but I'd rather not start distributing it to protect the chap (on another forum) who converted his VHS copies to DVD format then passed copies around
. FurtiveFreddy said:
That's made me all misty eyed for my V6 Cavalier! Gassing Station | TV, Film, Video Streaming & Radio | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff