ROBERT COUCHER

The Driver

- 

Not sure why I have never owned a Japanese car, because I like all things Japanese - the food, style, culture, crafted kitchen knives, and sake. And it's pretty obvious we have to thank the Japanese for disrupting the auto industries of old, making cars massively better for motorists who want reliable transportation from A to B.

In the 1960s, the British car industry was in decline. Lack of investment, myopic management, stroppy workers and unreliable products were becoming the norm as Japan sold its first car in the UK in 1965, a Daihatsu Compagno for £799. Over-priced and with a funny foreign-sounding name, it wasn't a good seller: only six were shifted in five years. But it was the harbinger of things to come. With the arrival of Toyota, Honda and Nissan, the Japanese sewed up the mid-market, and now the Nissan Qashqai is the first British-built car to top the sales charts for 24 years - though it too has a funny 'foreign'sounding name...

I started driving in the late 1970s, when most of my compadres began with old cast-off cars from parents, grandparents or the local car lot things like Triumph 2000s, Fiat 124s, Ford Anglias, all sorts of unreliable old nails. My father had the great idea of giving me, a naïve 16-year-old, a wreck of a Lancia to restore. His plan was to keep me away from the party scene and in the garage rebuilding the blasted Aurelia.