E Types proves it's retro cool

When Easy Living needed a cool 1970s convertible for its retro 70s fashion shoot the Great Escape Classic Car Hire Jaguar E Type was the obvious choice. 50 years after its launch the Jaguar E Type remains one of the most popular and beautiful classic cars of all time. And the Great Escape car's white and black colour scheme fitted the style of the photography perfectly.
The feature appears in the February 2011 issue of Easy Living and includes a series of full page fashion images shot in London last summer. We provide cars regularly for photo and film shoots so we were able to pull together a schedule and plan the logistics at very short notice to suit the magazine's tight deadline. The car was delivered to the shoot in central London with a driver who attended for several days, including an extension to the schedule which we were able to handle. The driver assisted during the shoot with moving the car into and out of shot.
Easy Living magazine was very pleased with Great Escape Classic Car Hire's participation and praised our driver, who helped out on location over and above his job description.
"It is always great to see one of our cars featuring in a high quality fashion shoot," explains Graham Eason of Great Escape. "The E Type is a beautiful car and looks great on camera. Our customers are always interested to see the car they're driving featured in high profile TV and advertising work."
For more information on the Great Escape Classic Car Hire Jaguar E Type convertible for hire call 01527 893733 or visit http://www.greatescapecars.co.uk.
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Hire a 1950s classic Ford

The 1950s saw post-war austerity replaced with optimism and Baby Boomers. Our new Ford Consul convertible for hire from our site in Worcestershire sums up the times very well. Stylish but restrained, modern but not advanced, the Ford Consul brings to mind Grease and weekends on the south coast. We think it's a great addition to a wedding or as a weekend away classic car.

Our Ford Consul is finished in ivory with a cream and white interior and sits four people in comfort. The hood is easy to operate and finished in dark green, which goes well with the rest of the colour scheme.

Ford Consuls are a little before out time here at Great Escape and in fact recently we've been concentrating on adding 1980s classics like our Ford Capri 280 Brooklands. But when this Ford Consul became available for hire we couldn't resist - it just looks so good. And within a week of adding it on the fleet we have been taking bookings for it, so it seems that lots of people agree.

The Ford Consul from Great Escape Classic Car Hire can be hired by the day, week or weekend on a self drive basis. Or we can supply it chauffeur driven for weddings. Self drive hire prices include a full 24 hours use for every day you book, unlimited mileage, insurance for 1 driver and breakdown cover.

For more details visit http://www.greatescapecars.co.uk/ or call 01527 893733.

Capri is snow-perb

The snow hit quick and hard yesterday, rendering my everyday 1994 Jaguar XJR redundant - big tyres, loads of power and driver aids meant it surrendered in the snow. So it was back to the Great Escape Classic Car Hire unit in Inkberrow to choose a better car to escape back home in.

It had to be the Ford Capri. 1970s and 1980s Fords were rally car champions and a good dose of this snow and mud plugging capability passed into the genes of the company's everyday car range. The Great Escape Ford Capri is a Mark 3 2 litre S so it is lighter than a V6 but with plenty of power. This, plus rear drive and fairly narrow tyres, meant it made quick work of the hills and valleys that typify Worcestershire. In three trips around the local area it proved a hugely adept and very safe companion, quietly passing stranded modern cars in a whirr of wheelspin and power lock slides. The beauty of the Capri is that it is safe and predictable - slides are easy to correct and the car constantly tells you what the wheels are doing.

So there you have it - forget 4x4s and traction control, buy a Ford Capri. Or better still, give Great Escape a call on 01527 893733 and hire a Ford Capri. Prices start at £145 for 24 hours. And as added bonuses it has a great heater and good stereo.

How great was the Alfasud?

Some cars are born to greatness, some have greatness thrust upon them, some just rust. So it was with the Alfa Romeo Alfasud. If ever a car encapsulated the very idea of an own goal it has to be Alfa Romeo's baby family car of the 1970s. Here was a brilliantly designed and executed car that out-performed its competitors on every level and yet somehow succeeded in bringing a once great car maker to its knees for the next 20 years.

The story of the Alfa Romeo Alfasud brings together engineering wizardy and political incompetence. in the late 1960s Alfa Romeo was owned by the Italian government - not exactly world renowned as masters of efficiency and focus - but was a low volume manufacturer of expensive cars. This didn't exactly suit the government who wanted to create employment and cars for the masses. So they hatched a plan to create a low price, mass market family car with the evocative Alfa Romeo badge on its nose. This ostensibly simple and wise plan hit a stumbling block when the government chose a factory outside Naples to build it.

To those familiar with the Hillman Imp, Triumph TR7 and DeLorean DMC12 it may seem as if European governments in the 1970s were following some sort of strange ideology that required them to make unskilled workforces build cars in depressed areas of high unemployment. Because like Hillman in Glasgow, Triumph in Speke and DeLorean in Belfast, Alfa Romeo was forced to make cars in a run down area using people who had never made cars before. To compound the problem, the Italian government struck a deal with Russia to buy vast quantities of recycled steel.

Into this less than promising mix, Alfa Romeo threw possibly its best ever car design. Conceived by Rudolph Hurska, who had worked with Porsche, the Alfa Romeo Alfasud was a masterpiece of packaging and engineering. Under a body designed by Guigaro - one of his first independent commissions - was a spacious four seater car powered by a new Boxer engine and with exemplary ride and front wheel drive handling. The Alfasud was simply brilliant. It set new standards for ride, handling and packaging in its class, all at a price that undercut its European rivals. The Alfasud invented the sporting small family car before the term 'hot hatch' was coined and was arguably a better overall package than the Volkswagen Golf.

And yet, success was tantalisingly out of reach. The Alfasud failed for the company that made it and for the people that bought it. For Alfa Romeo, the new highly automated factory manned by car manufacturing virgins could never reach the required productivity levels that would have made the Alfasud profitable. Meanwhile customers could hardly believe that the brand new Alfasud they had bought six months previously was bubbling with rust.

The Alfasud could rust and certainly did. Stories of brand new cars leaving the showroom with rust are common. The poor quality Russian steel was the root cause, although Alfa Romeo's decision to inject foam into the bodywork cavities didn't help. The foam quickly got wet and the cars simply rusted from the inside out.

Alfa Romeo worked hard to eradicate the problems, albeit in a distinctly latinate way. Although they improved quality it wasn't quick enough and they kept using Russian steel long after the problem was known. The company addressed the productivity problem by pushing the Alfasud upmarket so that each car was more profitable, meaning fewer cars had to be made to hit their targets. By the time the last cars were leaving the production line in the mid 1980s the car was equal in quality to most European cars of the time and well protected against rust. But by then the legacy for quality and rust problems was well entrenched and it has taken Alfa Romeo until now to begin to reclaim its image. Producing shoddy cars like the 33 and Alfetta didn't help - starved of development funds, these cars were simply reworked older cars that struggled to survive in a market that had moved on considerably since the 1970s.

At Great Escape Classic Car Hire we have always loved Alfa Romeos - we have an Alfa Romeo Spider for hire - and we have harboured a soft spot for the Alfa Romeo Alfasud having owned several. Now we've just bought a beautiful 1983 Alfasud 1.5 Ti Green Cloverleaf that we are considering putting onto our classic car hire fleet. It is in excellent condition and has only covered 37,000 miles. The Green Cloverleaf Alfasud was the ultimate iteration of this wonderful little car and features a twin carb 105 bhp version of the 1.5 litre Boxer engine. It has taken us three years to find a decent Alfasud Green Cloverleaf because there are so few around. According to the Alfa Owner website - which we highly recommend - there are only about 65 Alfasuds left on the road. 10 years ago there were about 250. So this is now a very rare car indeed.

The Alfasud deserves much more recognition and praise than it has had so far. While the VW Golf GTI Mk1 has become a motoring icon that has cast a long shadow cast, the Alfasud is virtually forgotten. And yet here was a car that invented the sporting small family saloon and arguably created the mass market presence that has been essential to Alfa Romeo's recent success. It may also have created a legacy of poor quality and rust but beneath those problems it was a remarkable little car.

So now we're trying to decide whether to add this car to our classic car hire fleet or keep it for ourselves. Let us know what you think by calling 01527 893733, emailing info@greatescapecars.co.uk or visiting http://www.greatescapecars.co.uk/.