WHAT GOES AROUND...

...comes around. Mazda popularised rotary power with cars such as the R100 Coupé. This tastefully uprated example brings the technology full circle

-  MARTIN BUCKLEY

There is much to be said for starting from scratch in the car-making game. You can approach matters with fresh eyes, avoiding past mistakes and the manacles of tradition, and all while assessing the commercial landscape with a dispassionate rationalism. Thus it was with the Japanese motor industry as it blossomed in the late 1960s and early '70s. It was not merely a case of newcomers learning not to run before they could walk. The Japanese, with no real tradition of automobile manufacture, enjoyed the luxury of being able to sit back and see what worked – and what didn't – from both product and industrial points of view.

Simple, dependable and well-made cars appeared to be the message, built to serve the end user rather than satisfy engineers' egos. Characterless, tinny and gruesomely styled in some instances, for sure, but customers would prove more than willing to overlook these shortcomings if the price was right and the product was dependable. It was the birth of the car as a consumer durable – 'white goods' – and when individualism was engineered out in favour of a merciless banality.

The formula worked. Build them simple and build them bland, but build them well. Most of all, build lots and lots and lots of them, so when supplies from rival firms dry up (probably due to strikes), you can step in with immediate delivery in a full choice of colours.