The car is King’ became a popular slogan of the road transport lobby in post-war years – but it took Beeching's Reshaping of British Railways to afford the car its Coronation. Without public transport, thousands of communities, denied their railway and with poor or non-existent bus services, had no alternative but to buy a car.
As most of the cars were still being built in the UK, it made sound sense from the point of view of government, too. Foreign cars consisted only of the odd (odd-looking, too) Fiat, Citroen, or VW. Wealthy pop starsmotorways and dual carriageways on which to drive their British cars and it was ‘win-win’ all round. Or so it must have seemed.
