Great presenter. Talks to the camera like he's having a lively pub debate and speaking his mind. Assumes people are intelligent and engaged in the issue. I wonder if he feels that it is his responsibility to pass on the knowledge and wisdom he has accumulated through these documentary pieces. Reminds me of old teachers I had - sincere, paternal, moral, educated and enthusiastic!
I like his style. A wonderful social commentator who was really ahead of his time but he liked life's little luxuries too. I wonder how many Minis in the 1970s had a phone and a TV.
Even though it was made almost 50 years ago, this show is just as relevant as ever. Although the condition of modern society has deteriorated quite a bit since then. Sadly, we can also never get such a graceful and elegant presentation as this today.
ROB1E is currently on a Bentley Continental. I love Fyfe's questioning. He's not telling us how it should be but instead puts across a series of points for the viewer to make up their own mind. A lot of these points still really make you think about where we are going wrong. Maybe someone can create a Fyfe AI from his recordings to come back and give us his view on the modern age.
1975: FYFE ROBERTSON - Has the CAR Gone TOO FAR? | Robbie | Retro Transport | BBC Archive. 24.11.24. Probably didn't suffer fools gladly...he would be the prototype for python's Tim the enchanter....
Now THIS is a comment. When you say that he isn't telling it how it should be, you hit the nail on the head. I was struggling to work out what is so good about this, and you've pinpointed it.
@@colinthorn 1975: FYFE ROBERTSON - Has the CAR Gone TOO FAR? | Robbie | Retro Transport | BBC Archive 2105pm 1.12.24 why should he tell you how it should be? he wasn't taken in by car culture at all... he was suggesting it wasn't all it's cracked up to be but go and find out for yourself...
Wonderful film. I used to live near Bridge and, yes, it got its bypass, about one year after this film was made. It's a sleepy village now, thankfully.
Fyfe Robertson was long before my time. I only recently discovered him here for myself... and I have to say: It's easy to really like him and his reports. The man who claims he doesn't belong in a Rolls Royce unwittingly embodies everything that made up "good old Britain". In this respect, I believe this man and a Rolls Royce would have entered into a symbiotic relationship. It fits wonderfully... & btw: someone like him can also wear this hat in a RR ;). Many greetings from Germany and please don't stop the supply of these programs from your archive👌
Way ahead of his time here, he was right then and he’s right now, in fact even more so. That mini was fantastic, love a bit of wood and picket upgrading
Robertson was such a compelling presenter, whatever the subject. Interesting that every one of the gadgets on the RR Camargue that wowed him is today pretty much standard on anything above a downright poverty model… and the ~£30k price tag is not that far off either.
I can remember Fyfe presenting on Nationwide when i was a child. What a nostalgic film, full of the cars i remember as a kid, but i never saw a Camargue! AND, like Lord Stokes, we are still debating if electric cars are any good. Brilliant film.
So much of this video hit me hard,,,, hearing talk of the first world war, talking about horse and cart being normal, the cost of a rolls in 1974 , and the fact that when this was made there were on one tenth the number of vehicles on the road compared with today. Wonderful thought provoking video
The 1926 Vauxhall 30/98 he drives around the 9 minute mark is still registered on the road 50 years after its appearance here!, that's very special and a testament to car enthusiasts spending thousands and being infatuated with keeping these wonderful cars around.
Until 1973, imported cars had a tax of 25% added to their price and after that tariffs were gradually reduced. That's the real reason most cars were British.
That road in Eltham is Rochester Way, it's just as busy today, despite there being a bypass and now vehicles park with one set of wheels on the narrow pavement, with every front garden having been removed to accommodate a vehicle.
1975 road by my old home you would see 3 cars parked. Now both sides packed last time i passed that way, most wheels on pavement. Image them all with charge cables.
I remember, when I was about 9, he did a program on a village that sat above volcanic turbulence of some kind - I can't remember what kind - and he said something like "This village sits on Hell". Well, I was only a kid and I thought that must be literally true. It scared me so much I remember it to this day.
I was likely brought home from the maternity ward in a Ford Cortina mark 3 estate and in 1980 my parents replaced it with a1976 Granada like the ones seen at the motor show.
I love this fellow. The old days and old fashioned gentle, in assuming ways. I get a feeling of old England, old Scotland, us, in the old days when life was simpler, people better cultivated and charming in a natural way. II feel elevated when I encounter people like this.
Be careful with that kind of feeling, it's of a time that never existed. This man lived through the times of Edwardian slums, men dying by the millions to poison gas, the great depression... Life was not in any sense simpler and for most people there was no chance to become "cultivated and charming", they had to work from a very young age and were lucky if their diet was good enough for their teeth not to fall out by the time they were 30.
@@kyle8952 I'm in no doubt about the validity of your thoughtful reply. The written word, as in this instance can appear clumsy and a brief response, may appear to lack circumspection. I'm sure you are right, it was not a barrel of laughs
The village of Bridge was just down the road from the village of Boughton, where I lived until I was seven. The A2 ran through Boughton too, (the end of our back garden backed onto it) until they built the bypass in '75. Whilst they were building the bypass I remember going to play on the earth moving equipment when the workers went home 😄 Then in '76 my parents moved to the Medway towns. Boughton is now a sleepy little village. And I drive down that bypass maybe once or twice a week. I'm 56 now.
Fyfe, you were absolutely right back then as you are now with being concerned with pollution to our environment that vehicle transport brings along with it although not until recently manufacturer's have rushed in electric vehicles but the point of view the British Leyland chairman had with charging the battery with a majority of fossil fuels in the UK still exists but with turning gas into electric instead of using clean energy, basically we are still not ready to save our environment Fyfe after nearly another half a century since you started driving vehicles and doing something about all of your concerns you raised. .😢
The worst thing about cars is that they are like castles or villas by the sea: luxury goods invented for the exclusive pleasure of a very rich minority, and which in conception and nature were never intended for the people. Unlike the vacuum cleaner, the radio, or the bicycle, which retain their use value when everyone has one, the car, like a villa by the sea, is only desirable and useful insofar as the masses don't have one. That is how in both conception and original purpose the car is a luxury good. And the essence of luxury is that it cannot be democratised. If everyone can have luxury, no one gets any advantages from it. On the contrary, everyone diddles, cheats, and frustrates everyone else, and is diddled, cheated, and frustrated in return. This is pretty much common knowledge in the case of the seaside villas. No politico has yet dared to claim that to democratise the right to vacation would mean a villa with private beach for every family. Everyone understands that if each of 13 or 14 million families were to use only 10 meters of the coast, it would take 140,000km of beach in order for all of them to have their share! To give everyone his or her share would be to cut up the beaches in such little strips-or to squeeze the villas so tightly together-that their use value would be nil and their advantage over a hotel complex would disappear. In short, democratisation of access to the beaches point to only one solution-the collectivist one. And this solution is necessarily at war with the luxury of the private beach, which is a privilege that a small minority takes as their right at the expense of all.
I was 11 in the late 1950's when the Tonight programme started on BBC television. Fyfe Robertson was one of the roving presenters who gave us amazing entertaining programmes. Television was totally different back in those days.
Місяць тому
Television worth watching. Today I don't even own a TV.
@@nygelmiller5293 You are right. Cliff Mitchelmoor was a lovely presenter from the old school. He , along with his colleagues, would not have survived in todays TV world sadly.
Loved the trucks, particularly that delectable sounding yellow Scammell. Also liked the dark blue Dodge. Also spotted a little red Fiat that was being sold as a Niki in 1990 in Australia. There was a very modern looking truck in one of the freeway shots. Must have just come out.
I was 18 when this was filmed and I had an ex-antique dealer Cortina 1600 MkIII, the same American style Cortina style seen early in the film. It or ’76 introduced the first front wheel drive hatchback Ford Fiesta. The market was dominated by the Vauxhall Viva, Ford Escort MkI, Morris Marina and Austin Maxi. The Morris 1000 was in its last days. They were all poorly built relatively thirsty carburettor fed, unreliable rust buckets. The Japanese were just starting to appear with the Datsun Cherry and some Toyota models which were reliable but even worse rust buckets. Exhausts and batteries hardly lasted a year, the warranties were for six months. Even my 1976 Fiesta 1300S was terribly unreliable, achieved only 30mpg with a following wind and needed a respray under warranty, yet its unlined wings and door pillars had rust holes by the fourth birthday. This is unheard of these days. The Mini was in its prime and there were badge engineered versions of it like the Riley Elf, or ‘Wee Riley’ as it was known in Fyfe’s Scotland. Fyfe was a very forward thinking man, seeing the issues with town congestion and pollution and forecasting pedestrian areas in town centres long before they appeared. Traffic pollution was a massive issue back then with lead and sulphur in petrol, carburettors spewing half the unburnt petrol out of the exhaust and trucks with diesel engines that puffed massive volumes of soot. Also he is correct about the drive-by noise of the period. At 6am every morning I have an eight wheel heavy truck parked and pumping liquid about 15m away from my bedroom window. Up until around 2010 the engine noise when it accelerated away caused my windows to rattle and there was a tremendous engine roar. Today the same size truck is whisper quiet and I literally cannot hear it coming, pumping or accelerating away. Its engine also has Adblue, cats, soot filters and the fuel is ultra low sulphur with up to 10% clean biofuel mixed in. Nearly everything has become more economical, cleaner, quieter and even, dare I say it, far more reliable over a similar 50 year span of my experience that Fyfe mentions, but all after this video was originally filmed.
One of the major problems with the Leyland Princess was the utterly dire fuel economy. It got something like 17mpg which even for the 1970s was pathetic. Also, just a couple of years ago I was walking down the street and someone pulled up to the lights in a suffix-Y (1982) model Vauxhall. You could feel and smell the hot acrid oil cloud that all cars had in those days, it was noisy, there was visible filth coming out of the exhaust. There was a time that was completely normal for a car. It then moved off with the typical gearbox whine of that era as well. I also remember seeing rainbow puddles on the ground as parked cars leaked fluids. Don't think I've seen that anywhere since literally 1999 or so.
@@greenbunnyinabongo7299 No its a milk tanker filling milk from my dairy. But its just a modern Scania truck with a tanker body but Volvo and others have similarly got more powerful and far far quieter over the years.
To Hedydd2 An educated man! (YOU I MEAN) You mention cars without todays wheelarch liners, when all mud got flung up against the front panel, and rusted cars behind the headlamps! The Mini was the worst - because the front panel was so near the wheels! Second hand Minis were either full of rust at the front, or FILLER. If you had an accident, there would be no strength in that very short bonnet! The answer is, a firm called LOKARI - (on the internet) which specially make wheelarch liners for people's cars!
The man may be from a different time but he was clearly quite ahead of his time, even in 1975, regarding the social awareness of vehicles and how they might be managed politically. Lord Stokes would have done well to listen to his message. Congestion pricing in London is 20 years old now, and gasp!, there is even talk about it happening in Manhattan, New York.
Loved Robbo back in the day, Great Bloke! Sadly missed, I would love to have told him that Camarge suited him to a T with his Tweed's and the hat! And the Accent! RIP mate, sadly missed!🇦🇺🇦🇺
23 gallons for £17. Where do I sign?! 😁 All these recently posted Fyfe R reports were on when I was a very little boy. I don't recall him but boy has he become a cult favourite in this house! Amazing reporter, dry, witty, socially aware, way ahead of his time!
This absurd "modernisation" that Fyfe so eloquently questioning was highly influenced by the oil, car, bitumen and tyre manufacturers in the USA colluding to close down public transport. They bought public transport companies and closed them down. There was a huge anti-trust case in the USA in the 1930s. But these industries basically colluded again after ww2 and pushed car-dependent suburbia. Which spread across Europe. But Europeans revolted (more than in the UK). Amsterdam in 1970s was a car-dependent city, but CHOSE to change back to a human-first city. And now more people cycle to work than drive.
Parts of Victorian Glasgow were also trashed for the motorway network. Birmingham as well. And as you say, the Dutch were on track for the same until the early 1980s or so, imagine the centre of Amsterdam and all that beautiful historic architecture getting pulverised for more motorway. Praise be that we moved past that and didn't end up like the US.
Of course more people use bicycles in Holland than most other countries. It's flatter than a flat pancake cooking on a flat baking plate. The only part of the UK remotely like Holland is South Lincolnshire and North Cambridgeshire, but towns and villages are much further apart, up to 17 miles or so, which doesn't encourage widespread use of bicycles.
In the fifties and sixties the bicycles and mopeds where in Amsterdam the most used way of transport next to the bus and trams. Cars became populair in the 70 and later on when people moved to cities like Hoorn Purmerend Lelystad and later to Almere. Nowadays it is to expensive to park a car in Amsterdam. Although there are still a lot of cars but public transport like the metro and of course bicycles in all kind of varities are very important for Amsterdam
@@dartskipper3170 I lived in Nijmegen for many years, and it's quite hilly, being built there by the romans because it let them see what was coming on the river for dozens of miles. The people of that city don't ride bikes any less than in any other part of the country, and the bikes they ride aren't particularly suited to hills - they're slightly modernized versions of what Britain pioneered in the very early 20th century with very heavy all steel construction and at most, three gears. (Occasionally you see a posh one with eight). I don't buy the hill argument for a moment. No, what stops us riding everywhere in england is we've been socially engineered not to. There is no space on the roads. Where you're most likely going to see a bike for sale is the likes of Argos or Halfords, where they are fundamentally considered childrens' toys and so adorned with useless rubbish like knobbly tyres, funny frame shapes, effectively nonfunctional (and unnecessary) suspensions and 27000 gear combinations split across two different controls, but at a price point where there's absolutely no quality to the thing and they're unreliable and unpleasant junk. That last point is particularly nasty. The average person thinks that bikes are all rubbish, but also that they "should" cost £100-200. So rather than spend £500 for a basic bike of reasonable quality, they go "£500?? for a bike??? you must be mad, It's only a bike and you can get one from sports direct for £80 quid in a sale!". Then we have to look at the separate role of car indoctrination. People grow up believing that learning to drive and getting a car is just what they have to do, and they never stop to consider if this is a practical choice. I know multiple young people who earn £20-25K a year, live within walking distance of work, and yet spend £8000 on a car and it's insurance. Do they go on any great trips? No, they commute to work, spending half an hour in traffic that crawls at 5-10mph in a congested main road. Yet they look at me as strange for just riding my bike past the traffic jam and arriving to work faster, without spending any money on petrol, tax, or any of that other rubbish.
@@kyle8952 Cars carry more than one person and their luggage/shopping/tools in comfort and in all weather without getting a sweat and quicker than a bicycle; disabled people can drive as well..
That £29250 RR Camargue is equivalent to about £224k as of 2017 (I don't have a more up to date conversion). The modern equivalent of the Camargue is probably the Ghost, which is the entry level model and starts around £280k. That's not as big a difference as I was expecting. Meanwhile, the average price of a 'normal' car (such as that Cortina) in 1975 was £1840. In 2017 money that's £14k - there are barely any brand new cars you can get that cheap.
That £29,250 for the Rolls Royce is around £222,000 today, which is below current list price for their cheapest model. Mind you, the 1975 model is probably more reliable than anything they currently make.
£29250 is around £225k as of 2017 (the calculator I'm using doesn't go more recent). In 1975 the average price of a car was £1840 (around £14k in 2017) and the average house price was around £9423 (approx. £72k in 2017). Average salary? Around £2335 for a normal bloke, less for women.
14:27. Unfortunately, no. 50 years later and driving has become as fun as a flat tyre. Congestion is worse, SUVs pack narrow streets and the motorway network is crumbling. One wonders what Mr Robertson, who passed away in 1987 at the age of 84, would make of Britain today.
@19:20 - sorry Fyfe, speakng as an ex juggernaut driver, nobody likes Gravelly Hill Interchange! Getting away with it, is as good as it's got. Superb production. Reminds me why i don't watch telly any more!
Heh, it's funny to hear him say that the 1920s Vauxhall is was 50 years old, and saying he reckons a new car then wouldn't be around like the vauxhall in 50 years. But here I am today with a 50 year old Triumph Dolomite right from that era haha, still going around no problem But what's even more funny is that I've always held a sort of grudge against the modern car of today in the 2020s, thinking there's no way THESE modern cars will still be around in 50 years! I guess I may very well be completely wrong, and there'll be someone else still using a car that's new now but 50 years in the future and thinking the very same thing
Great presenter. Talks to the camera like he's having a lively pub debate and speaking his mind. Assumes people are intelligent and engaged in the issue. I wonder if he feels that it is his responsibility to pass on the knowledge and wisdom he has accumulated through these documentary pieces. Reminds me of old teachers I had - sincere, paternal, moral, educated and enthusiastic!
I like his style. A wonderful social commentator who was really ahead of his time but he liked life's little luxuries too. I wonder how many Minis in the 1970s had a phone and a TV.
Not social, anti social.
Fascinating how many of the motoring social issues are still relevant today, goes to show how little we’ve learned.
That 1926 Vauxhall is now exactly twice as old as it was when this programme was made - and is still going strong.
I doubt that particular car still going strong
@@bardo0007 Still shown as taxed on DVLA....
That little mini is bloody gorgeous.
"the look of concentrated tycoonery".
Wonderful.
BBC Archive, you are spoiling us! We asked for more Fyfe and you delivered!
Even though it was made almost 50 years ago, this show is just as relevant as ever. Although the condition of modern society has deteriorated quite a bit since then. Sadly, we can also never get such a graceful and elegant presentation as this today.
ROB1E is currently on a Bentley Continental. I love Fyfe's questioning. He's not telling us how it should be but instead puts across a series of points for the viewer to make up their own mind. A lot of these points still really make you think about where we are going wrong. Maybe someone can create a Fyfe AI from his recordings to come back and give us his view on the modern age.
1975: FYFE ROBERTSON - Has the CAR Gone TOO FAR? | Robbie | Retro Transport | BBC Archive. 24.11.24. Probably didn't suffer fools gladly...he would be the prototype for python's Tim the enchanter....
The irony!
Now THIS is a comment. When you say that he isn't telling it how it should be, you hit the nail on the head. I was struggling to work out what is so good about this, and you've pinpointed it.
@@colinthorn 1975: FYFE ROBERTSON - Has the CAR Gone TOO FAR? | Robbie | Retro Transport | BBC Archive 2105pm 1.12.24 why should he tell you how it should be? he wasn't taken in by car culture at all... he was suggesting it wasn't all it's cracked up to be but go and find out for yourself...
Agree with many comments here - Fyfe Robertson was such a charismatic, knowledgable but most importantly affable presenter.
Wonderful film. I used to live near Bridge and, yes, it got its bypass, about one year after this film was made. It's a sleepy village now, thankfully.
A poet, philosopher and scientist, rolled into one. Fyfe is amazing here.
Fyfe Robertson was long before my time. I only recently discovered him here for myself... and I have to say: It's easy to really like him and his reports. The man who claims he doesn't belong in a Rolls Royce unwittingly embodies everything that made up "good old Britain". In this respect, I believe this man and a Rolls Royce would have entered into a symbiotic relationship. It fits wonderfully... & btw: someone like him can also wear this hat in a RR ;). Many greetings from Germany and please don't stop the supply of these programs from your archive👌
Way ahead of his time here, he was right then and he’s right now, in fact even more so.
That mini was fantastic, love a bit of wood and picket upgrading
Great thought provoking piece. Professionally delivered with no sign of an agenda. We knew this would happen and we’ve done bugger all about it!
Robertson was such a compelling presenter, whatever the subject.
Interesting that every one of the gadgets on the RR Camargue that wowed him is today pretty much standard on anything above a downright poverty model… and the ~£30k price tag is not that far off either.
This is the sort of TV I miss. The camera work in this was exceptionally good.
Fyfe Robertson for the next Top Gear host!
He’s in heaven now . 👼
@@phillipcarter8045died 1987
He was 73 when he filmed this
The origin of "top. gear"
They’ll need to use a ouija board
@@jameshurst3279 I think the OP realises he’s dead, children.
Fyfe was a joy to watch. Erudite, personable and someone you felt was talking directly to you. A different era.
Bless him! He was lovely.
I can remember Fyfe presenting on Nationwide when i was a child. What a nostalgic film, full of the cars i remember as a kid, but i never saw a Camargue! AND, like Lord Stokes, we are still debating if electric cars are any good. Brilliant film.
The BBC at its very best. Thanks for the memories.
U do a great job on here am big supporter of u do a good job on here
So much of this video hit me hard,,,, hearing talk of the first world war, talking about horse and cart being normal, the cost of a rolls in 1974 , and the fact that when this was made there were on one tenth the number of vehicles on the road compared with today. Wonderful thought provoking video
Great man and a wise man ! I enjoyed him on B.B.C. programmes like "Tonight" in the sixties !
The 1926 Vauxhall 30/98 he drives around the 9 minute mark is still registered on the road 50 years after its appearance here!, that's very special and a testament to car enthusiasts spending thousands and being infatuated with keeping these wonderful cars around.
Oh God, I do miss this man!
Wonderful programme and presenter.
Thank you BBC Archive for uploading these.
Always looked forward to Fyfe's reports on the
" Tonight " programme a real character ,gentle on the ear .
What a marvellous programme. Look how many British made cars were on the road then compared to now, how depressing.
If they made them more reliable and durable then buyers wouldn't have turned to imports.
Yeah, its a shame unreliable british made british leyland cars didn't continue to haunt the horrors of British motorists
@@Dan-co4zlHow dare you decry the pinnacle of British motoring? 😂
Nothing depressing about it, they were utter crap.
Until 1973, imported cars had a tax of 25% added to their price and after that tariffs were gradually reduced. That's the real reason most cars were British.
I would have loved to hear Fyfe record an audiobook of the Hobbit. He's got the perfect voice for it.
That road in Eltham is Rochester Way, it's just as busy today, despite there being a bypass and now vehicles park with one set of wheels on the narrow pavement, with every front garden having been removed to accommodate a vehicle.
1975 road by my old home you would see 3 cars parked. Now both sides packed last time i passed that way, most wheels on pavement. Image them all with charge cables.
Sounds wonderful , its crazy the way things are going
That village green, where he's showing the old Vauxhall, is in the village of Peter's Green near Luton.
I remember, when I was about 9, he did a program on a village that sat above volcanic turbulence of some kind - I can't remember what kind - and he said something like "This village sits on Hell". Well, I was only a kid and I thought that must be literally true. It scared me so much I remember it to this day.
Fantastic. Much of his commentary wouldn't be allowed now.
What he describes in that Rolls is basically what I have in my Hyundai today, I had to wait 40 odd years to have some of that luxury passed down.
Note he drives that old Vauxhall past an early sixties Victor FB! Just like dad past on to me! 😊 what a heritage!
I was likely brought home from the maternity ward in a Ford Cortina mark 3 estate and in 1980 my parents replaced it with a1976 Granada like the ones seen at the motor show.
I love this fellow. The old days and old fashioned gentle, in assuming ways. I get a feeling of old England, old Scotland, us, in the old days when life was simpler, people better cultivated and charming in a natural way. II feel elevated when I encounter people like this.
* I mean unassuming
Be careful with that kind of feeling, it's of a time that never existed. This man lived through the times of Edwardian slums, men dying by the millions to poison gas, the great depression... Life was not in any sense simpler and for most people there was no chance to become "cultivated and charming", they had to work from a very young age and were lucky if their diet was good enough for their teeth not to fall out by the time they were 30.
@@kyle8952 I'm in no doubt about the validity of your thoughtful reply. The written word, as in this instance can appear clumsy and a brief response, may appear to lack circumspection. I'm sure you are right, it was not a barrel of laughs
By which I mean my own clumsy response. And here above is another
@@kyle8952worse today in 2025
The village of Bridge was just down the road from the village of Boughton, where I lived until I was seven. The A2 ran through Boughton too, (the end of our back garden backed onto it) until they built the bypass in '75. Whilst they were building the bypass I remember going to play on the earth moving equipment when the workers went home 😄 Then in '76 my parents moved to the Medway towns. Boughton is now a sleepy little village. And I drive down that bypass maybe once or twice a week. I'm 56 now.
Did the bypass improve the village though?
Fyfe, you were absolutely right back then as you are now with being concerned with pollution to our environment that vehicle transport brings along with it although not until recently manufacturer's have rushed in electric vehicles but the point of view the British Leyland chairman had with charging the battery with a majority of fossil fuels in the UK still exists but with turning gas into electric instead of using clean energy, basically we are still not ready to save our environment Fyfe after nearly another half a century since you started driving vehicles and doing something about all of your concerns you raised.
.😢
That was a long sentence; heard of paragraphs?
@@petesmitt Have you heard of where to correctly use an apostrophe? Kettle, pot, etcetera ...
@@chrislawrence5188
Fixed, thanks to your whataboutery..
Absolutely brilliant!
What a fascinating and prescient presentation!
this was incredible.
Never seen this guy before, but I want a mini again after watching this!
I remember Fyfe Robertson. Easy to listen to with a wee a bit of humour.
The BBC would not employ this man now.
Such elequence and wonderful presentation.
Fascinating video
He did a memorable talk on 'miles to the gallon', when he visited a "dry area" in North Wales as he looked for an open pub on a Sunday.
What A Joy. Thanks.
What a great presenter he was!.
Brilliant
It sounds like he read 'The social ideology of the motorcar' by André Gorz, he makes many of the same points.
The worst thing about cars is that they are like castles or villas by the sea:
luxury goods invented for the exclusive pleasure of a very rich minority, and
which in conception and nature were never intended for the people. Unlike the
vacuum cleaner, the radio, or the bicycle, which retain their use value when
everyone has one, the car, like a villa by the sea, is only desirable and useful
insofar as the masses don't have one. That is how in both conception and
original purpose the car is a luxury good. And the essence of luxury is that it
cannot be democratised. If everyone can have luxury, no one gets any
advantages from it. On the contrary, everyone diddles, cheats, and frustrates
everyone else, and is diddled, cheated, and frustrated in return.
This is pretty much common knowledge in the case of the seaside villas. No
politico has yet dared to claim that to democratise the right to vacation would
mean a villa with private beach for every family. Everyone understands that if
each of 13 or 14 million families were to use only 10 meters of the coast, it
would take 140,000km of beach in order for all of them to have their share! To
give everyone his or her share would be to cut up the beaches in such little
strips-or to squeeze the villas so tightly together-that their use value would be
nil and their advantage over a hotel complex would disappear. In short,
democratisation of access to the beaches point to only one solution-the
collectivist one. And this solution is necessarily at war with the luxury of the
private beach, which is a privilege that a small minority takes as their right at the
expense of all.
That wee mini is modded perfect 👌 less is more.
WOW , THIS GUY IS BRILLIANT
Surprisingly relevant even today, I had to laugh when he said the cars of that time would not last, today they are designed not to last...
I’d forgotten how good he was.
Looks like we’re all driving about in Rolls’ now.
I was 11 in the late 1950's when the Tonight programme started on BBC television. Fyfe Robertson was one of the roving presenters who gave us amazing entertaining programmes. Television was totally different back in those days.
Television worth watching. Today I don't even own a TV.
To Vulgivagu
I remember the Tonight programme, also with Cliff Mitchelmore - and pethaps Judith Chalmers
@@nygelmiller5293 You are right. Cliff Mitchelmoor was a lovely presenter from the old school. He , along with his colleagues, would not have survived in todays TV world sadly.
The filming in this is excellent! That mini of his is banging for sure
Loved the trucks, particularly that delectable sounding yellow Scammell. Also liked the dark blue Dodge.
Also spotted a little red Fiat that was being sold as a Niki in 1990 in Australia.
There was a very modern looking truck in one of the freeway shots. Must have just come out.
He may not be the great L. J. K. Setright. But, he deserves an enormous amount of respect for wearing a brown Safari suit.
I was 18 when this was filmed and I had an ex-antique dealer Cortina 1600 MkIII, the same American style Cortina style seen early in the film. It or ’76 introduced the first front wheel drive hatchback Ford Fiesta. The market was dominated by the Vauxhall Viva, Ford Escort MkI, Morris Marina and Austin Maxi. The Morris 1000 was in its last days. They were all poorly built relatively thirsty carburettor fed, unreliable rust buckets. The Japanese were just starting to appear with the Datsun Cherry and some Toyota models which were reliable but even worse rust buckets. Exhausts and batteries hardly lasted a year, the warranties were for six months. Even my 1976 Fiesta 1300S was terribly unreliable, achieved only 30mpg with a following wind and needed a respray under warranty, yet its unlined wings and door pillars had rust holes by the fourth birthday. This is unheard of these days. The Mini was in its prime and there were badge engineered versions of it like the Riley Elf, or ‘Wee Riley’ as it was known in Fyfe’s Scotland.
Fyfe was a very forward thinking man, seeing the issues with town congestion and pollution and forecasting pedestrian areas in town centres long before they appeared. Traffic pollution was a massive issue back then with lead and sulphur in petrol, carburettors spewing half the unburnt petrol out of the exhaust and trucks with diesel engines that puffed massive volumes of soot. Also he is correct about the drive-by noise of the period. At 6am every morning I have an eight wheel heavy truck parked and pumping liquid about 15m away from my bedroom window. Up until around 2010 the engine noise when it accelerated away caused my windows to rattle and there was a tremendous engine roar. Today the same size truck is whisper quiet and I literally cannot hear it coming, pumping or accelerating away. Its engine also has Adblue, cats, soot filters and the fuel is ultra low sulphur with up to 10% clean biofuel mixed in. Nearly everything has become more economical, cleaner, quieter and even, dare I say it, far more reliable over a similar 50 year span of my experience that Fyfe mentions, but all after this video was originally filmed.
Interesting post.
One of the major problems with the Leyland Princess was the utterly dire fuel economy. It got something like 17mpg which even for the 1970s was pathetic.
Also, just a couple of years ago I was walking down the street and someone pulled up to the lights in a suffix-Y (1982) model Vauxhall. You could feel and smell the hot acrid oil cloud that all cars had in those days, it was noisy, there was visible filth coming out of the exhaust. There was a time that was completely normal for a car. It then moved off with the typical gearbox whine of that era as well.
I also remember seeing rainbow puddles on the ground as parked cars leaked fluids. Don't think I've seen that anywhere since literally 1999 or so.
Is this large lorry that you speak of filling tanks at a petrol station ?
@@greenbunnyinabongo7299 No its a milk tanker filling milk from my dairy. But its just a modern Scania truck with a tanker body but Volvo and others have similarly got more powerful and far far quieter over the years.
To Hedydd2
An educated man! (YOU I MEAN)
You mention cars without todays wheelarch liners, when all mud got flung up against the front panel, and rusted cars behind the headlamps! The Mini was the worst - because the front panel was so near the wheels! Second hand Minis were either full of rust at the front, or FILLER. If you had an accident, there would be no strength in that very short bonnet!
The answer is, a firm called LOKARI - (on the internet) which specially make wheelarch liners for people's cars!
The man may be from a different time but he was clearly quite ahead of his time, even in 1975, regarding the social awareness of vehicles and how they might be managed politically. Lord Stokes would have done well to listen to his message. Congestion pricing in London is 20 years old now, and gasp!, there is even talk about it happening in Manhattan, New York.
Nothing changes just a full circle round and round we go !!
Brilliant ❤❤
I can remember him from my teenage years ,i think he had another TV series that opened with an Abba song
Back when the BBC used to make good TV programmes.
But do you support EVs?
Making good tv programmes is a lost art...
@Keithbarber It's also expensive.
@danellis-jones1591 maybe so, but today's offerings are just so lousy and poor quality they are not worth a penny
before it became the 'IPC' . ..
What a brilliant presenter
Wonderful
Love the presenter and presentation style - must dig out some more "Robbie"!
Loved Robbo back in the day, Great Bloke! Sadly missed, I would love to have told him that Camarge suited him to a T with his Tweed's and the hat! And the Accent! RIP mate, sadly missed!🇦🇺🇦🇺
just great ... .. .
2:30 very insightful… His enthusiasm for electric power.
His outfit is so dapper..
Doing my engineering course at Longbridge, and I'm quite long in the tooth.
23 gallons for £17. Where do I sign?! 😁 All these recently posted Fyfe R reports were on when I was a very little boy. I don't recall him but boy has he become a cult favourite in this house! Amazing reporter, dry, witty, socially aware, way ahead of his time!
16p per litre
This absurd "modernisation" that Fyfe so eloquently questioning was highly influenced by the oil, car, bitumen and tyre manufacturers in the USA colluding to close down public transport. They bought public transport companies and closed them down. There was a huge anti-trust case in the USA in the 1930s. But these industries basically colluded again after ww2 and pushed car-dependent suburbia. Which spread across Europe. But Europeans revolted (more than in the UK). Amsterdam in 1970s was a car-dependent city, but CHOSE to change back to a human-first city. And now more people cycle to work than drive.
Parts of Victorian Glasgow were also trashed for the motorway network. Birmingham as well. And as you say, the Dutch were on track for the same until the early 1980s or so, imagine the centre of Amsterdam and all that beautiful historic architecture getting pulverised for more motorway.
Praise be that we moved past that and didn't end up like the US.
Of course more people use bicycles in Holland than most other countries. It's flatter than a flat pancake cooking on a flat baking plate. The only part of the UK remotely like Holland is South Lincolnshire and North Cambridgeshire, but towns and villages are much further apart, up to 17 miles or so, which doesn't encourage widespread use of bicycles.
In the fifties and sixties the bicycles and mopeds where in Amsterdam the most used way of transport next to the bus and trams.
Cars became populair in the 70 and later on when people moved to cities like Hoorn Purmerend Lelystad and later to Almere.
Nowadays it is to expensive to park
a car in Amsterdam.
Although there are still a lot of cars but public transport like the metro and of course bicycles in all kind of varities are very important for Amsterdam
@@dartskipper3170 I lived in Nijmegen for many years, and it's quite hilly, being built there by the romans because it let them see what was coming on the river for dozens of miles. The people of that city don't ride bikes any less than in any other part of the country, and the bikes they ride aren't particularly suited to hills - they're slightly modernized versions of what Britain pioneered in the very early 20th century with very heavy all steel construction and at most, three gears. (Occasionally you see a posh one with eight). I don't buy the hill argument for a moment.
No, what stops us riding everywhere in england is we've been socially engineered not to. There is no space on the roads. Where you're most likely going to see a bike for sale is the likes of Argos or Halfords, where they are fundamentally considered childrens' toys and so adorned with useless rubbish like knobbly tyres, funny frame shapes, effectively nonfunctional (and unnecessary) suspensions and 27000 gear combinations split across two different controls, but at a price point where there's absolutely no quality to the thing and they're unreliable and unpleasant junk.
That last point is particularly nasty. The average person thinks that bikes are all rubbish, but also that they "should" cost £100-200. So rather than spend £500 for a basic bike of reasonable quality, they go "£500?? for a bike??? you must be mad, It's only a bike and you can get one from sports direct for £80 quid in a sale!".
Then we have to look at the separate role of car indoctrination. People grow up believing that learning to drive and getting a car is just what they have to do, and they never stop to consider if this is a practical choice. I know multiple young people who earn £20-25K a year, live within walking distance of work, and yet spend £8000 on a car and it's insurance. Do they go on any great trips? No, they commute to work, spending half an hour in traffic that crawls at 5-10mph in a congested main road. Yet they look at me as strange for just riding my bike past the traffic jam and arriving to work faster, without spending any money on petrol, tax, or any of that other rubbish.
@@kyle8952 Cars carry more than one person and their luggage/shopping/tools in comfort and in all weather without getting a sweat and quicker than a bicycle; disabled people can drive as well..
That's some ensemble for summer
~ £30.k for That Rolls Royce
You Could've Bought 5 or 6 Family Houses in South East England for That Money, Which Today Are Worth £3 or £4 Million 😲
"Valued at" is more appropriate. Not necessarily worth it.
That £29250 RR Camargue is equivalent to about £224k as of 2017 (I don't have a more up to date conversion). The modern equivalent of the Camargue is probably the Ghost, which is the entry level model and starts around £280k. That's not as big a difference as I was expecting.
Meanwhile, the average price of a 'normal' car (such as that Cortina) in 1975 was £1840. In 2017 money that's £14k - there are barely any brand new cars you can get that cheap.
It would’ve been the Wraith which was also a Coupé
£398,000 December 2024.
2:36 The irony of asking a Leyland exec anything at all about technical advancement of the motor vehicle…
No sat nav yet that was a huge difference in modern driving
That £29,250 for the Rolls Royce is around £222,000 today, which is below current list price for their cheapest model. Mind you, the 1975 model is probably more reliable than anything they currently make.
I looked up the average house price in 1975: 10 000 pounds.
3:40 In 1975 my parents bought a four bedroom house for £8,000.
And now a run down mid terraced house cost twice as much as a Rolls Royce 😂
£29250 is around £225k as of 2017 (the calculator I'm using doesn't go more recent).
In 1975 the average price of a car was £1840 (around £14k in 2017) and the average house price was around £9423 (approx. £72k in 2017). Average salary? Around £2335 for a normal bloke, less for women.
Look at all those Triumph 2000s
And the water stains down the rear quarter on the Jag, looks like it'd been there a while and it was already starting to rust...
I know this is pushing 50 years old, but nearly all of the Rolls Royce luxury features are now standard features.
U do a great job on here
4:47 amused by power windows...he was from the horse and buggy days
I think it was more that the driver could operate the passenger window
Crazy to know that the presenter is healthy and still working for BBC today
You sure? Google says he died in the 80s. He'd probably be the oldest man alive if he was still here
@mr.robot.159 u r fake news
14:27. Unfortunately, no. 50 years later and driving has become as fun as a flat tyre. Congestion is worse, SUVs pack narrow streets and the motorway network is crumbling. One wonders what Mr Robertson, who passed away in 1987 at the age of 84, would make of Britain today.
Like the rest of us cry
@chucky2316 We stopped investing in infrastructure, took short cuts and now we're paying the price for it.
I want Mr. Fyfe's suit!
Wise words nearly 50 years ago. Robbie must have had a crystal ball. If he was about today, I'll ask him for the lottery numbers.
I believe he's mistaken at 06:24. It never climbed Ben Lomond, but has climbed Ben Nevis.
When RR was British !
Beautiful car, apart from the arse. That was clearly a Friday afternoon job.
English!
@19:20 - sorry Fyfe, speakng as an ex juggernaut driver, nobody likes Gravelly Hill Interchange! Getting away with it, is as good as it's got.
Superb production. Reminds me why i don't watch telly any more!
Juggernaut was the media buzz word at that time,but as the 70s wore on they just became plain old lorries again.
Heh, it's funny to hear him say that the 1920s Vauxhall is was 50 years old, and saying he reckons a new car then wouldn't be around like the vauxhall in 50 years.
But here I am today with a 50 year old Triumph Dolomite right from that era haha, still going around no problem
But what's even more funny is that I've always held a sort of grudge against the modern car of today in the 2020s, thinking there's no way THESE modern cars will still be around in 50 years!
I guess I may very well be completely wrong, and there'll be someone else still using a car that's new now but 50 years in the future and thinking the very same thing
3:35 A VW golf starts at £29,195 now in 2024.
A V8 Rover P6 cost £2200 in 1970
Loved my Mini!… 1275GT!… Wooooeeee!