Notes From the Hard Shoulder - James May [21]
Interchangeability of parts? It sounds impressive but Meccano showed the way over 100 years ago. Indeed, its creator Frank Hornby (later of trains fame) was inspired by the apparent standardisation of components used in the day-to-day machinery of late Victorian Britain – cranes and so forth. Any two parts from any two Meccano sets in history are completely compatible, even the nuts and bolts. Will Mercedes-Benz be saying that in 2105?
Remember all that fuss about the Japanese technique of poke yoke? It's a system of foolproofing, of designing components such that they will only go together in the correct way. Build the Airfix l/72nd-scale Heinkel 111 and you will understand it perfectly. The locating pins on the two engines are positioned in such a way that you simply cannot build them the wrong way around. That kit came out in 1962, by the way.
I said in my programme that the story of toys is the story of everything: of society, of the economy, and most importantly of new manufacturing techniques. Closing the lid on my virtual toybox and returning to my normal day job, I find myself somewhat disillusioned.
I think it's high time the car industry stopped playing around and gave us something really new.
THE BEST DRIVING SONG IN THE WORLD EVER
Of all the senses, smell has the greatest power to evoke. It is impossible to remember a smell and you cannot imagine a new one, so there are no smells in the future. That means a particular scent, such as a perfume that once wafted from the dove-like neck of a loved one, has the power to come crashing through our ordered lives like a lager lout at an elegant cocktail party.
Next to smell comes sound, particularly music and especially pop music. Even now, somebody, somewhere, engaged in something menial such as washing up, and with the radio on in the background, has been transfixed because the distant and obfuscated memory of some personal reckoning has just been thrown into crystal-clear relief by the Electric Light Orchestra's 'Mr Blue Sky'.
I mention all this because for the new series of Top Gear we've devised a survey to find the nation's favourite driving song. The people send in their suggestions, we whittle them down to a shortlist and then you vote for the overall winner. Usual sort of thing – we got the idea from some other programme about houses or famous inventors.
Since we intend to arrive, once and for all, at the best driving song of all time, this is worthy of some thought. We would urge you, for example, not simply to think of a song with 'car' in the title (e.g. 'Driving in My Car' by Madness), or to nominate the Sweet's 'Blockbuster' because it has a police siren at the beginning, or the Stones' 'Honky Tonk Women' because there's a car horn in it that still takes you by surprise. Essentially, the competition is open to any song, so something by Black-Eyed Peas is up there against the Elizabethan lute song 'Fair, If You Expect Admiring' by Thomas Campion.
But we all know that this is really about pop – old pop, which was at first ephemeral, being of a time and for that time, but later has the power to mug you simply because it has lain outside the sphere of your existence for so long, having been borne away and dispersed on the very ripple that made it meaningful.
To placate the pedants, I should say that by 'pop' I mean anything that might once have been played on Radio 1 or your local station, and which is now heard on Radio 2. The radio is where pop belongs.
Contrary to the beliefs of my Top Gear colleagues, my music collection does extend beyond 1750 and does include quite a