Tell a Story — Build a Company

I had the unfortunate experience of having to spend the recent lockdowns watching much of what I had worked for entropy until it became background radiation. The lack of travel opportunities (my country imposed trade sanctions on itself during Covid, and ceased to be a suitable place of business) and a reluctance among many associates to take risks meant that I was in danger of running out of momentum.

What I could do is plan.

I set out a design for life and began immediately. I started writing my answer to self-help books, which were somewhat abusive in tone and unlikely to succeed as a published volume. I’ll serialise it here, so you won’t miss out. I also laid plans to build electric cars from classic cars. You’ll notice that I didn’t use the word ‘conversion’ there. Products.

Bespoke, often; tailored, always.

“See my tailor, he’s called Simon. I know it’s going to fit”

Ian Dury

I will write in detail about my decision to only make battery electric vehicles soon, but rest assured I have explored the alternatives. The problem is that even though I started work on this in 2012, I was beaten to the market for conversions by those with existing facilities, so I decided upon a new approach.

Tell a story — build a company.

I’m attracted to storytelling and decided that I could use it to design a product with focused appeal. A car which would appeal to a fine sliver across humanity with a sense of humour, disrespect for authority, and the desire to destroy complacency. And some cash.

The world is as it is because it follows lines of least resistance. This gives us stability, but not joy.

I wanted a product with a point and a purpose. Something remarkable. If I wanted to scratch my own itch I would build a Citroën DS Chapron Coupé and sell just one; to myself. If I wanted this to be a product I would have to have a better idea. I allowed my cultural influences free reign and remembered something Roger Daltrey said about Keith Moon:

‘He liked to take things that were meant for the aristocracy, and destroy them.’

I paraphrase, but there we have it.

Keith Moon never drove a Toyota into a swimming pool, so neither would I.

When I looked at the history of my country, and the culture it has produced, I decided that I preferred the culture and came up with a list of the most astonishing anti-heroes.

Bonzos, Who, Beatles, Goons. Python. Blockheads.

The greatest Englishman was Thomas Terry Hoar Stevens, whom you will know as Terry-Thomas. This car will be for him.

The greatest English women; Shilling and Lovelace, will get their car soon. It will be faster than Terry’s.

All that is good about British culture is encapsulated in the lives of those mentioned above, and also a bit of a clue as to how I should proceed. I’ll invent a character who would be known to all of them. Someone they might have written a concept album about. Someone who means something even though his life is hard and he will not succeed.

I named him The Colonel. If you know, you know.

The Colonel saw the derivative thinking of those in charge; how they gifted contracts to school friends and filled senior government jobs according to excellence at the biscuit game. He wrote a list of what they liked and decided to make a fortune out of their lack of imagination.

People who demand leather seats are his victims; those who decided that every car made in the nineties be in a hue reminiscent of James Herriot’s forearm. The mock Tudor and the brass-buttoned. The herd. Can you imagine the shame of being branded a thinker at a golf club? The Colonel earns his living by exploiting poor thinking. He is not of them.

The Colonel was probably never a Colonel; if served in the military at all he’d have been in the ranks. Had he become a corporal or a sergeant he’d have been demoted to Private repeatedly because of various acts of larceny, amusement, or consensual sexual malfeasance.

Small things will give away his lack of breeding; the cheap cigars, the insistence on drinking champagne when he has nothing to celebrate, the rubber soles on his shoes, the slot mags on his car. Sometimes people will notice, but The Colonel knows that not every scheme or ploy will work. He knows when to move on, and how to do it. When it is time to move on it must be done with alacrity and stealth. To achieve this he must have a vehicle that is perfectly aligned with his activities. Unfortunately, no car can be a willing accomplice, in spite of what we’ve been led to believe by futurists and television executives. In the absence of a car with a character, he needs a car with character. He must be able to impress and to retreat swiftly.

The Colonel’s natural haunts are bars, hotels and clubs; anywhere he can engage people and draw them in. He is primarily an entertainer who does not charge the venue or the medium. You pay the Colonel directly. The genius of his schemes is that you don’t know that you’re doing it. You think you’re buying a vintage Omega Seamaster from his late father’s collection; you think you’re sending your vintage Breguet to a distant specialist for appraisal before it is included in a consignment of similar watches bound for a Chinese collector with a particular fondness for small watches with limited waterproofing. The Colonel sometimes wears one himself, when visiting somewhere for the first time.

It’s the psychology. The differences that make the difference. Conservatism is an interesting example. The Colonel exists in a conservative environment, where nothing must appear to change. It’s not a concern of the average golfer if their watch lacks a helium release valve. What is important is that it sits well in a manicured environment which is protected by history and social convention. Privilege, in other words.

So The Colonel chooses his accoutrements with care. He swedes his environment with taste and discernment, the very things a casual observer would believe he lacks. His clothing, his manner, his car, are all chosen carefully. As an example, I will describe the latter.

Whatever is known about the colonel, it seems certain he did not grow up with a sense of entitlement. He amassed what confidence he has by being competent and imaginative. For this reason, he could never quite bring himself to buy a Bentley, despite many main dealer test drives. For similar reasons, a Rolls Royce would be out of the question. It started as a laudable mission to build the finest possible motor car, in fact, to define that term as distinct from the various ramshackle contrivances that had been offered to the public in the eighteenth century. Unfortunately, the consequent list of owners is a roll-call of terrible, privileged, vain people. The Colonel takes money from the people who drive these cars while letting them think they’re the clever ones.

An Aston Martin is similarly out of the question. The public associate this, the invention of an unfortunate tricycle racer, with the secret service saints who keep us safe from foreigners by starting wars and spreading misinformation. The public believes these people drive Aston Martins despite the overwhelming evidence that intelligence officers drive rented Fords between distant filing cabinets, and spend more time typing than having sex. Aston Martins are driven by people who don’t just pretend to like rugby.

That leaves only one credible marque ideal for the purpose. Jaguar. Obviously, there are foreign marques but their combination of competence and artistic flair mark them out as being ‘other’ in the eyes of an Englishman. Though Englishness is hard to encapsulate, and this will not be an exceptionalist tract, there is a combination of confidence, entitlement and a willingness to exploit others which is both quintessentially English and exactly the combination of qualities required by a quick-witted independent businessman.

So The Colonel drives a Jaguar. A dark one, it’s difficult to tell which colour it is because he rarely washes it. A dark, dirty car blends into its environment, but it’s only a quick jet wash from an obliging Eastern European away from stealing the show. It is not, however, a showroom model.

It is an electric car, with engine sounds purely to deceive the small-minded into thinking The Colonel is similarly equipped. The Colonel refuels wherever there is a socket, and like most men, you’ll never hear him coming.

The Colonel carries with him the tools of his various trades and has places to keep them in. Secure storage. Should you be fortunate enough to be a potential business partner you will see such wonders as a watch display case which will glide in and out of a place where you wouldn’t suspect was concealed anything other than an excess of wiring. There is a complete dining set, carefully camouflaged as a picnic basket, for the occasions when it would not be wise to be seen in town, or when he fears he may be cornered in a building where the only way out is either into the street or through a kitchen full of angry, failed artists holding sharp and hot metal. There are many tartan blankets, which are easy to replace when the need arises, and The Colonel travels with a sleeping bag for the occasions when he is required on an alp. He favours a small double as he dislikes the feeling of his legs touching each other.

He carries a set of left-handed golf bats, which are purely for effect.

The necessity to travel, and to occasionally make repairs, makes storage for practical tools a necessity. The Colonel’s practical tools are very specific and could misunderstood. Be assured that a practical explanation is never far from The Colonel’s lips; “No, officer, that lever is for gently turning the engine of a car to see if it had seized; and no, that’s not a grappling hook, it’s for removing broken baffles from a car exhaust. Oh that, it’s a sex toy. I’m the exclusive sales agent for the Schengen Area. Would you like me to demonstrate?”

As a natural consequence of being able to dine al fresco at a moment’s notice, The Colonel has been able to include access to a very particular type of nourishment. In order to explain I must say a bad word. I’m a little prone to bad words, a trait I’ve learned from my dear mother, but this one is fucking bad. It’s a word guaranteed to strike fear into the heart of every Englishman. No, not Liptons… Mocktail. Hear me out, there is something to learn from all this. The Colonel long ago discovered that there is utility in being the only sober person in the room while deciding exactly how drunk he should appear. This has proven very useful when valuables are safeguarded for valuation, or perhaps when there are papers to be signed. For this reason, there is a system for dispensing cocktails which can be alcoholic when it suits the distributor. By choosing from two seemingly identical spouts, The Colonel can choose who gets the Tanqueray and who gets the Wanqueray.

Naturally there are holders for stemmed glasses where necessary, but not within easy reach of the driver’s seat. The Colonel would never endanger the life of another human being without appropriate financial recompense and a tenuous moral justification.

Document storage is probably the dullest of The Colonel’s requirements in a vehicle. Documents are a necessary evil, where the goal is to legally commit people to helpful schemes, or perhaps to incriminate them should their interests not align with the natural way of things. The traditional method is not available to The Colonel because, while he seems to be of the ruling class, he didn’t attend boarding school or Cambridge and as such has only ever been sodomised willingly. As always, the car provides discretion and you’d never find anything The Colonel doesn’t want you to see without The Colonel’s personal intervention.

Thus, The Colonel is equipped to implement a Grand Scheme in the same manner as his mentor and hero, Mr. Dick Dastardly, who was the instigator of a motorsport-based betting racket and died a billionaire while trying to fuck a pigeon to death on the wing.

So there we have it; the first car of a new marque of products which were once products for an entirely different class of people. I even have the brand name, which will be the subject of another piece.

Talking of other pieces…

On the basis that you don’t get to choose who does the body cavity search, I decided not to build this car for myself. I travel a great deal in Mainland Europe and it probably isn’t a good idea to drive a car which features many hiding places, especially when you’ve written about it.

The next story will be about the decision to go electric, and in the process create something different. This will be different. It will be for me. This car will be The Bellini.