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August 22, 2025 16 mins

Jon Summers is the Motoring Historian. He was a company car thrashing technology sales rep that turned into a fairly inept sports bike rider. On his show he gets together with various co-hosts to talk about new and old cars, driving, motorbikes, motor racing, motoring travel.

In this episode Jon recalls his mixed emotions about Ozzy Osbourne and the glam rock scene of the 1980s, his nostalgic relationships with certain cars, including a specific Ford Capri he regretted not purchasing, and his early jobs selling aerial photographs door-to-door. He delves into his appreciation for bands like Black Sabbath and discusses heavy metal's evolution. Shifting topics, he talks about the future of major car manufacturers, particularly expressing skepticism regarding Nissan's survival amid increasing competition from Chinese car makers and the rise of electric vehicles. He contrasts Nissan's approach with Toyota and Honda's strategic moves, lamenting a potential loss in Japanese automotive creativity.

==================== 00:00 Tribute to Ozzy Osbourne 01:44 Early Days with Sabbath 03:00 The Blue Ford Cortina Incident 04:39 The Red Ford Capri Temptation 06:57 Bugatti Museum Visit 08:00 Regret Over the Capri 08:38 Nissan's Uncertain Future 11:12 Nissan's Legacy in the Car World 15:05 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

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Copyright Jon Summers, The Motoring Historian. This content is also available via jonsummers.net. This episode is part of the Motoring Podcast Network and has been republished with permission.

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Episode Transcript

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(00:00):
John Summers is the motoring historian.
He was a company car thrashing technologysales rep that turned into a fairly inept
sports bike rider hailing from California.
He collects cars and bikesbuilt with plenty of cheap and
fast and not much reliable.
On his show, he gets together withvarious co-hosts to talk about new
and old cars driving motorbikes,motor racing, and motoring travel.

(00:36):
Well, sadly we can't, can we 'causeof copyright, but obviously, well not
obviously, 'cause you might be listeningto this at any point in time, but Aussie
recently died, the Prince of Darkness.
The face of heavy metal.
I can't believe the number ofpeople who've paid tribute to him.
I want to pay tribute to him becausethe number of people who've paid

(00:57):
tribute to him, because when I likedheavy metal in the eighties, metal guys
all thought he was a bit of a clown.
He'd like gone to LA and you know,was managed by that terrible woman,
Sharon, and all right, bark at themoon was good and over the mountain
was good, but didn't have metal,didn't have the crossover appeal here.

(01:18):
That it did there just didn't get playedon the radio 'cause of the Freddy dirty
B, b, C, so people didn't like it.
So what a bag of shit that was basically.
But that isn't why I startedtalking about this, uh, podcast.
This, that isn't why, whyI started recording this.
No, sir. I recorded this becauseI wanted to lay down some ideas.

(01:40):
This, uh, where my mind hadhad run on from, uh, from Ozzy.
I never really got that into Sabbath.
Club nights, people will playparanoid, but I always found the
early Sabbath stuff too slow.
Remember, this was this period whereI was enjoying Judas Priest and dio
and getting into Metallica and Slayer.
And Slayer were the fastest and the mostextreme thing that there was out there.

(02:03):
Really.
I mean, sure there was kind of then.
You know what I mean?
They always were kindof what they are now.
It was a bit like, are these guysreal or are these guys Spinal Tap?
They're like midway inbetween, aren't they?
Venom?
I love you Venom, and I gethow you birthed Black Metal.
That's a whole separate story.
Listeners, if you don't know thatone about how Black metal was born
out of Venom's black metal song.

(02:25):
Which was not really writtenvery seriously and they were more
like a punk band who couldn'treally play their instruments.
And it's ironic that these Swedishblack metals who've developed the
genre since have actually oftenbeen quite accomplished musicians.
I don't get black metal, so you won'tget any of that on, uh, with me.
But Sabbath, I first got intothem when I had a cassette that

(02:49):
had Sabbath Bloody Sabbath.
On it and I listened to that cassette,which the other side was Haw Wind's
Levitation, which are both great albumsand I love both of them to this day.
And I feel like both of them, I could justgo backwards and forwards and backwards
and forwards in that blue Cortina crusaderthat I had as a calf for, for my work that

(03:09):
summer, I was selling aerial photographs.
Door to door in the Worcester countryside.
Isn't that so old fashioned?
People thought it was a novelty to beable to look at their houses from a plane.
And if you persuaded them convincinglyenough, they part with money at
the doorstep for a framed photo.
The clothes involved stepping into thedoor and framing the photo in people's,

(03:32):
you know, living rooms or hallways.
On a Sunday afternoon or Mondayafternoon or or whenever they were home.
Really looking back, aninteresting job in many ways.
But in my Cortina, I listened to Sabbatha lot and I fell in love with Sabbath.
So I was listening to Sabbath when inthis particular incident took place,

(03:52):
which was that my blue Ford Cortina.
We were living in Marvin at the time.
When I was on my way to, to a location,I remember I was pulling out of
a T junction and I pulled right.
Pulled out to the left, rather as I gotinto my carriageway and took second,
the shifter just came off in my hand.
Like literally it was likewaving around in my hand.

(04:14):
I can't remember whether the carwas in first gear or in second gear,
but by the way, luckily we were on adownhill, so I just dipped the clutch
and rolled down the hill and rolledto a standstill as luck would have it
at a gas station and garage using asthe end of the story, but it's not.
The point of the story is whathappened next, which was that the

(04:37):
garage man offered to repair the car.
I had been perusing the yard,which is as so often with country
garages had cars that had been hiton the road hanging out in them.
Now one car that was parkedtowards the back was a red Ford
Capri, three liter ST plater.

(04:57):
If memory served, that would makeit a 78 or 79, but certainly.
Right in that area.
Now it was red.
Had it been black, probablythis would've gone another way.
Had it been white, probably this would'vegone another way, but because it was red,
when the Garage man said to me, do youwanna trade your Cortina on that Capri?

(05:18):
I can't remember what he said it needed,but he was like, you know that and some
money, and you could walk outta here withthe Capri and leave the Cortina with me.
The continue wasn't agood car, by the way.
I'll insert a picture of it.
It was a tired example, eh, when,when I shamefully I couldn't part with
it and my dad took it to an auctionand uh, some gypsies paid 30 pounds.

(05:41):
For it.
So you can tell what kind of car it was.
I mean, it was like the had beforeI had it, that was the one where
it had the carburetor was heldtogether with a carpentry screw.
So on the way home from purchasingit in Ponti front, it couldn't
climb a hill because it couldn'topen the second Venturi on the
carburetor, as I've observed before.
I don't know why I didn't just go toa scrap yard and buy another carretta.
I mean, it could have taken it offas easy as, but that really goes to

(06:04):
show, I mean, I'm not a great mechanicnow, but it really goes to show.
What an absolutelyhopeless mechanic I was.
So I turned the guy down andsaid, no, I will not take.
That Capri three liter s with thewheels that I really like, and that S
stripe down the side just like Bodhisilver car in the professionals.

(06:26):
But red never did like red that much.
I remember looking at the car and thinkingto myself, I really want to do this.
But I'm gonna be too deeply in thehole financially because the job I was
doing was a commission only sales job.
So obviously I wasn't gonna earn any moneythat day because the shift lever had come
off in my hand ina, you know, you couldn'tspend that too many days where you weren't

(06:50):
selling anything and you couldn't bedesperate with the selling 'cause then you
definitely weren't gonna sell anything.
This is a complete aside.
One day I went to a village, and inthe village there was a Bugatti museum.
Little did I know it was Chelsea Walsh.
Little did I know itwas the Bugatti Society.
However, the bloke who was in theregot talking to me, and although they
weren't open, I went in so long before.

(07:12):
The Pebble beach here long before Iever knew about anything other than,
well, I dunno, whatever I was excitedabout when I was a whipper snapper of
21 Capri three liters and Subaru andPrezis, and it was before motorcycles,
I should say at at that time.
But I remember at that time beingblown away by the craftsmanship

(07:35):
of the Bugatti Straight Ape.
I remember leaving being like.
I get it.
Like I totally, I went away withmy mind being blown, feeling like
this was the best day at work ever,even though I'd not earned a penny,
because I just probably tried to sellthis bloke an aerial photograph of

(07:55):
the bottom of Chelsea Wall Shore.
I can't even rememberwhich hill climb it is.
Yeah, so I didn't take the Caprithree liter SI bitterly regret
not taking the Capri three liters now at the, uh, age of 51.
I recently saw one cross the auctionblock and it made me think of the car.
It was not long after Ozzy himselfhad passed, and I was like, you

(08:19):
know, I still wanna say right.
He, he was a showman,but it was really lemmy.
That was the spirit of rock and roll.
It was really lemmy.
I think I'm gonna leave it there.
Actually I'm not.
'cause that's only 10 minutes, isn't it?
So I'm gonna pivot onto my second thought.
I don't think Nissan's gonna make it.

(08:40):
It's hard to say.
I really can't see a world inwhich Nissan's going to make it.
I think they are going to gothe way that Austin Rover went.
Either quickly or slowly, but I justcan't see a way of them surviving
what's happening at the moment.
Toyota have been very wiseto spot this move to hybrid.

(09:05):
Everyone else is scurrying backto making gas motors as fast
as as they can so that they do.
At Christmas time, I did that podwhere I talked about how I'd been
to Mexico and how in Mexico Cityit was like invasion of the Chinese
car makers and motorcycle makers.

(09:27):
And the motorcycle makers seemedparticularly well established
and I didn't really dig intothem too much, you may recall.
But the car makers I looked at closelyenough to, to realize that there
were four makers and each one of themhad introduced a range of models.
And largely it was Nissan andVolkswagen's lunch that was being
eaten because Mexico used to beNissan Centras left, right and center.

(09:50):
All the taxi camps usedto be, and they weren't.
I was, I was shocked at, uh, youknow, so, so that made me think,
gosh, Nissan, what your strategygonna gonna be going forward?
Just a, a word on that.
Toyota are Japan's largest.
Car Baker Honda a second.
So much as in the way that you seeGM being more conservative than Ford.

(10:13):
You know Ford Do the aluminum pickup truckFord do the turbo V six pickup truck.
The Ford truck offers.
Better value.
The Chevy is a more 5.3 small blockgoes on for hundreds of thousands of
miles, or at least the old ones did.
So that's the, the reputation.
You know, these are, uh, theslightly different positioning

(10:34):
between the two of them.
And, and certainly in terms of drivingdynamics, you know, Hondas traditionally
were always a little bit sharper todrive than Toyotas, you know, uh,
ACORD certainly of 20 years ago.
A little bit better than Camry'sand civics were definitely
better than Corollas and, andthe reliability, you know, it was
there or thereabouts, wasn't it?
'cause certainly Honda madea great engine, but you know,

(10:56):
the paint wasn't all there.
But I, I'm falling down a rat holeof comparing those two makers.
The point is, Nissan'snot in the conversation.
That's the the point here that oncethey were, and now they're not.
And it's crazy because any collectibleJapanese car event, you go to be my guest.

(11:18):
Tell me if I'm wrong.
I reckon half the Japanesecollectible cars are Nissans, not
Toyotas, not Hondas, but Nissans.
So that means that if they do goaway, or if they become, you know, a
badge engineered BYD or a sub-brand ofToyota or something like that, if that

(11:39):
does happen, we've lost the best ofthe Japanese in terms of creativity.
So let's stop and think aboutthat where we are with that.
Look, the skyline was thefirst time a Japanese car had.
Done something that couldn't be foundas a reference point in something that

(12:02):
had existed in Europe or America before.
So by that I, I mean that sure,the skyline looked at what the
Porsche Turbo was doing andsaid, let's be better than that.
But it was also differentfrom that, wasn't it?
It was also had its own kindof swagger and, and that's
why they call them Godzilla.
They're right to, it meant that,you know, they came from Japan and

(12:23):
dominated, I think, but to me italways felt like here was a expression
of something purely Japanese.
But with Nissan, it'sdeeper than that, isn't it?
It's the S fourteens.
The Sylvia's.
What you might have got isNissan two hundreds in your
market, or as one eighties.
They came with different noses andtails on them and different engines

(12:46):
and wheels and trims and all of that.
But the point is.
The S 14 platform, the Sylviaplatform is the basis of more
drift cars than, than any other.
It's, uh, truly it's the escortmark two ad drift, isn't it?
Let's frame it like that.
There's the Z cars as well, isn't there?

(13:07):
There's the, the two 40 Z, which yes,you can say, you know, it's a bit like
a Jaguar type and a bit like a FordMustang, or, no, that was the Sika.
That was like the Ford Mustang.
But no, the point is that Japanesething it, it brought the best of
what Jaguar were doing to a packagethat was very affordable and reliable

(13:27):
and reach people that couldn't haveotherwise accessed and enjoyed that
kind of straight six grand touring car.
Mark Gamy, who's not on the pod nowbloody well, should be really more than
a hundred thousand miles, 150,000 miles.
And in Nissan three 50 Z still gotthe same clutch and he's gamy so
you'd know like, you know, he'snot been that gentle with it.

(13:48):
There were a lot of motorwaymiles there, but there were also
a couple of nerve berg ring.
Track days in there, a couple ofother track days, you know, in uh, uh,
circuits around England and the company.
Car Miles was through thewinter, salt roads, original
cloud, all original body panels.
He did ding a wheel onit once when he span it.
We talked about that on another pod.

(14:09):
But yeah, there is a breadthand depth to what Nissan did.
The Z 31 300 zx, the Z 32,300 zx, that twin Turbo one.
I personally feel like ofall Japanese collector cars,
everyone knows the koska skyline.

(14:30):
I like the Ken Mary one.
I like them because I knew themfrom rallying when it was like the
180 SSS or something like that.
That's what they called them.
I didn't realize that they did.
Uh, skyline.
Race version of it.
I have an exquisite Japanesemodel of one that's on goal.

(14:51):
What an a base, which is like knockoff,American racing talk thrust, kind of, or
what we would call min, like kind of nottalk thrust, mini like kind of wheels.
I'll include a photo of, of that car.
Sincerely, hope I'm wrong.
But I feel like I've been here before andI feel like I wanted to hold up my hand
and say, Nissan, the engine's on fireand the plane is diving for the ground.

(15:14):
And I, I can't see you guys dealingwith this Chinese ev invasion.
These guys, they're just gonna eatyour lunch and, and I just don't
see anywhere for you guys to run.
Sorry.
Thank you.
Drive through.

(15:39):
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(16:00):
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