Oh What A Time... - #118 Motoring (Part 1)

Episode Date: June 8, 2025

Let’s get behind the podcasting wheel and drive through a history of motoring. We’ll hear about the birth of the service station, the dawn of motorways and breakdown services and - and this really is a huge one - the rise and fall of Little Chef. And we’ve got a brand new feature which we’re calling ‘Could You Be Arsed Though?’.. Which job is easy in the modern world but would be almost impossible in the past? Send in your suggestions here: [e-mail] you fancy a bunch of OWAT content you’ve never heard before, why not treat yourself and become an Oh What A Time: FULL TIMER?Up for grabs is:- two bonus episodes every month!- ad-free listening- episodes a week ahead of everyone else- And much moreSubscriptions are available via AnotherSlice and Wondery +. For all the links head to: ohwhatatime.comYou can also follow us on: X (formerly Twitter) at @ohwhatatimepodAnd Instagram at @ohwhatatimepodAaannnd if you like it, why not drop us a review in your podcast app of choice?Thank you to Dan Evans for the artwork (idrawforfood.co.uk).Chris, Elis and Tom xSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wanderi Plus subscribers can listen to episodes of Oh What A Time early and ad free. Join Wanderi Plus in the Wanderi app or on Apple Podcasts. Hello and welcome to Oh What A Time. We're a history podcast and fun fact I've come up with a what I think is an exciting new feature. Do you want to hear it boys? Can't wait, yes. The feature is called Could You Be Assed Though? and it's and it's all of the things that are easy in

Modern life that are quite nice, right? So for instance, a cup of tea, but post-teabag, that's easy. Yeah. When it's loose leaf tea, if that's the only option, could you be arsed though? I was thinking about this with toast. Pre-toaster, could you be arsed though? Creating a fire for a slice of toast. And I like toast.

But pre-, I didn't even know when the toaster was invented. But you know, that made toast a very, very convenient breakfast meal. And you don't even think about it. Well, Ellis, even with the toaster, I can't always be asked to make toast. Yes. Oh, same with the kettle. Like our kettle broke a couple of years ago, and so it was a cup of tea on the hob. Could I be arsed? I couldn't be arsed actually. Take away a lot of modern conveniences. Suddenly my life is very simple and I am actually very dirty and hungry.

Washing clothes, could you be arsed though? What about washing yourself in a copper pot that you'd have to heat for ages and then lay in your front room? How often are you washing if that's the situation? It depends on your job, right? So if you're a coal miner, there's all the famous iconic photographs of coal miners in a bath in front of a fire, having their backs washed by their, often by their wives, with their children watching. Yeah, right. I'm gonna get sucked off, because otherwise it's gonna be all over the bed. It's gonna be... it's gonna be in everything. If I'm an accountant in 1905...

Oh, could I be arsed though? How much... How much sweating am I really gonna be doing? Get a little bit of ink off your fingers. Is it worth it? Yeah, ex... Is the juice worth the squeeze? Exactly. Could I be arsed? The toaster, I've just googled it, was invented in 1910. I reckon

in 1909 I am having a different breakfast. Can you imagine that first generation toaster? It's going to be an absolute death trap. And it's going to be massive as well. It'll be the size of a bungalow. About three people in England would be able to own a toaster. And it'd all be in the royal family. It's going to need its own substation round the corner. We had a very early microwave.

We were early adopters of the microwave. It was about the size of the photocopier we had in the British Gas Office when I did some temping in the early 2000s. It was absolutely massive this thing. And yeah, I'm sure it did have some terrible impacts on my health. But still, I'm still here just about. It is funny how massive so much early technology is. An example of this being how big TVs were in the early 80s. How far into the room they would jump from the corner of your... Basically take up half the living room because the back was the size of a bus.

It dominated the house, the early television. And yet cars, much smaller. So my mechanic, he's bought a Mark 1 Ford Escort, which was the car my grandfather had, so it came out in the 70s. He allowed me to sit in it, which was very kind of him, and it was very, very evocative, because, you know, it just reminds me of being very little. And the thing you notice when you get into sort of normal 70s cars, like there used to be a Ford Fiesta, a Mark 1 Ford Fiesta, on our street, and the old house we lived in. And that was the car my mum and dad had when I was very little.

They're so small. I don't know if we're much bigger as people now than we were in the 70s and 80s, but they're tiny, right? So I sat in this Mark 1 Ford Escort next to the mechanic and I am too close to him. Right? Mason- Emotionally? Like, no, no, no. You shared too much?

It's become very, it's become very physically intimate. And I went, oh, this is a small car. And he went, exactly. You know, people nowadays, they're driving around. It's basically a living room on wheels. But a little car like this, this is all you need. You get to know your passengers so well. I was like, yeah, I know my wife as it is. I don't need to be pushed up against it in the car

on every school run. I'll tell you another thing, Al, which is much smaller in the past, which is any house built in the countryside, which is more than 152 hundred years old. Now, my mother-in-law lives in a small fishing cottage, essentially, in North Norfolk and whenever I go there I hit my head on literally everything. Constantly. Yeah, yeah. The door frames won't be six foot six. They didn't get standardised until later. And at one point at two in the morning Claire heard me whack my head and go, this fucking f***!

When we were looking to buy this house, we looked at the oldest house in the area, which was built in 1790, and I banged my head, and I'm not a tall man, probably three or four times in ten minutes, and we sort of thanked the stage agent, and I left and I said, is he, it's unsustainable. I mean- It's not a house you'd show a door mouse around, it would say, have you got anything roomier? It's the kind of house that kids would love show a door mouse around, it would say, have you got anything roomier? It's the kind of house that kids would love for a sleepover because it's perfectly built

for them, like a proper sort of borrower's house. I said this is unworkable. But this is the thing that blows my mind. Were people in the past like a foot shorter? Like how much shorter were people? I know we were a little bit shorter, but some of these doors are like five foot ten, the tops of them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They can't have been that small. Well, surely this is builders cutting corners. Chris,

life was hard then. People just accepted that even in their own homes, they would bang their head time and time again. Can I add another one to this new feature of Can You Be Asked? Just any kind of travel more than a hundred years ago, visiting the in-laws in Norfolk Tom from London, that is a three day coach ride, isn't it? Like a stage coach ride and you're probably getting robbed four or five times on the way. It's hard enough travelling for three hours when you've got service stations, let alone a five day trip by horse. The point which nowadays is 15 minutes into a journey when you realise you've forgotten

something crucial, then, would have been equivalent to half the day. What, turning the horse around? You're like, oh god. Exactly, yeah. I've left the tap on. Left the bathroom light on. Sorry, it's been another 12 hours. The benefit of the pass though is you've got less stuff, haven't you? You never worry about forgetting an iPhone charger. Yeah, yeah. That's a very good point, yeah.

Oh no, I've forgotten one of my four possessions. One of which is a knife, the other is a fork. One is a Bible. And the other one is the other pair of socks I have. This is it. That's a really good suggestion, Ella. I love that. So this section is going to be called Could You Be Arsed Though? I think we should start generating a long list of things which make it into the Could You Be Arsed Though Hall of Fame. So send in your suggestions of things that you basically like now but couldn't be arsed to do in the past. And if we think it parses muster with the phrases, we will add it to the list. I think that's a great idea. Will Barron My friend Dan, who's from Liverpool, has

got a great scarce accent. Anytime I suggest anything vaguely difficult to him though, he goes, could you be arsed though? He makes me, could you be arsed though? No, no you have. Yeah, fair enough. Incidentally Al, by the way, you along the way said something which I think sounded inadvertently like the flashiest thing you've ever said, which is you referred to your mechanic as my mechanic, like your Jensen Button or something like that. No, it's actually the opposite. My car breaks down a lot and I go to the same place. Oh right, okay. It's not like you're a mechanic on the opposite. My car breaks down a lot and I go to the same bloke. Alright, OK. It's like you're a mechanic on the payroll. No, no, no, no, no. My car breaks down a lot and I go to the same bloke because he's very

reasonable. So he has ended up being my mechanic. OK, fine. But he goes, oh, how's the cars these days? They're too big, you know, there's no need for a big old car like that. This is all you need. Well, El, your mechanic would love this episode. Yes, he would. Why's that? Because we are discussing motoring. Yes.

Yes. Lovely link. Today, I am going to be talking to you about, this is quite a weird one, but I think it's charming, the history of the little chef. Fantastic. I would actually say my favourite restaurant in the until embarrassingly late in life. I mean embarrassingly late in life. I can't wait. I'm so excited to discuss that with you. What are you guys talking about later? I'm talking about the birth of the motorway and the birth of like the AA and the RAC and

motorway rescue. And I am discussing the very early service stations on those motorways. So this is going to be a very relatable episode because if you haven't ever been on a motorway, been in a service station or eaten in a little chef, I'd love to know the kind of charmed life you've lived because it's going to be all helicopters. There's one person living on it, those tiny islands in the Hebrides. It's like this means nothing to me. Before we get onto that though, and I think it should be a really fun episode, let's do a little bit of your correspondence.

It's always wonderful and today is no different. This email is from Laura Crickshack, who's emailed to say, Hello Tom, Ellis and Chris. I've been catching up with the pod and love the episodes on vaults. I've recently learned about a different kind of vault and thought you might be interested. Now this, I don't know if you've heard of this, but this absolutely blew my mind. I love that this exists in a way. It's also quite dark that it exists. Deep in the Arctic Circle is the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. I know about this. You heard of this?

It's a doomsday vault that contains over one million seed samples to ensure the world in the event of an agricultural catastrophe. It's built in the permafrost of Svalbard – apologies if I'm pronouncing that wrong – to keep things cold forever and act as a backup for other gene banks across the world. Unfortunately, due to climate change for permafrost is melting and they've had an issue with flooding in the past, but it'll probably work out fine though, yeah? It says, love the show, keep up the great work, Laura. So there's this vault out in Svalbard of the Arctic Circle which has samples of over a million seeds which basically means we can reboot the planet should things

go to shit. I've heard about that. The thing I always think is if all of wildlife has been destroyed and you've got all the different seeds of the plants, how much pressure on planting that seed and needing it to work? That guy watering the plant... Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. ...has got the most stressful job ever. I'd also drop that single seed, Chris. I see myself going out with that seed in my hand,

going to plant it and going, oh, where's he gone? I had it between my fingers a second ago. Where's nobody move? I drop the daffodil seed. Mudging here in cement, say drop the daffodil seat. Mudging hearing someone say, oh shit, a million times. Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit. Do you find that slightly scary? Or do you like that there's that preparatory mindset?

What's your take on that? How many seeds have you lost today, Tom? Wheat, maize, rhododendrons, hydrangeas and daffodils. Sorry. But I do still have Deadly Nightshade. You'll be pleased to hear. Oh shit. I feel slightly comforted that they've gone to the effort and that this seed vault actually exists. I do find that quite comforting, but it is sad that you need one in the first place. But then again, it needn't just be climate change or manmade climate disaster.

We could be hit by a meteor, and that could wipe something out. At least that wouldn't be our fault. Then we've got all these seeds in the Arctic Circle. We could sort of start again in the bit of the Earth that's been destroyed by a meteor. I'm trying to strangely put a positive spin on it, but it's all very good. Mason- In a situation where Mithri has struck the Earth and basically everything's been

wiped out and the only thing giving us a fighting chance of restarting is this permafrost vault, do you want to be one of the few people staggering around in the wasteland at that point or do you just want to be? of the few people staggering around in the wasteland at that point, or do you just want to be? Just take me out with impact. Let me die. Just you and your mechanic. I'm going to run to where that meteorite lands and try to catch it. Oh, yeah.

That's me. That's, yeah. Do you want a mind blown fact that I read recently? Scientists, just in 2012 this was, they brought back to life a native plant species, native to Siberia, that had been extinct for 32,000 years. It was called a Cylene stenophilia. And basically in the permafrost, scientists found the seeds that had been buried by an Ice Age squirrel and they were frozen and they warmed them up, planted them and successfully grew a plant that hadn't been around for 32,000 years.

An Ice Age squirrel isn't it? The squirrel from Ice Age? That's the plot, the plot! Apart from Ice, are you sure you haven't got confused? Okay, there was this group of friends, there was a wooly mamma. That's what an amazing adventure is. That's incredible, but they've done something, they did something very similar with the dire wolf, didn't they, quite recently, which was very interesting,

where they, it was an extinct species of massive wolf, and they were able to take some of its genetics and combine it, I think, with an existing wolf to sort of, it's not quite the dire wolf as it was, but it's a version of. So eventually further down the line they'll be able to, I suppose you could recreate Neanderthal man if you were, and there's all sorts of ethical and moral questions around that. It is quite frightening in a mad way that you can do that.

Mason- Similarly, once the once quite popular Australian soap Neighbours died, didn't it? And that was brought back to life. Will- Yeah, yeah. The amazing thing with Neighbours, having not been on the telly for years and years, I watched an episode and I was immediately back in and I could work out who everyone was and what everyone's relationship was. It's an amazing bit of writing. Mason- I used to love Neighbours so much when I was a teenager when we first got the TV that I would watch it twice a day sometimes. If it was summer holidays, I would watch the lunchtime and the afternoon. That's love. What other TV show would you do that for?

15 to 1? Yeah, that's a very… I used to watch Home and Away twice. Did you? Basically, if it was an Australian soap, I would watch it twice. So you're watching four Australian episodes of Soaps Today essentially? You're watching two hours of... Yeah.

You're mainlining two hours of Aussie Soaps Today. And when you put it like that, that is awful. But do you know the other mad thing about Neighbours is they've just cancelled it again. Yes they have. They'll bring it back. It's in the permafrost. This is why we shouldn't bring back extinct species because they'll end up going extinct again.

It's the same with neighbours. Neighbours proves the point. Unless in the last 500 years the dodo has suddenly become hard. It's going to last five minutes, isn't it? The most useless, flightless bird. You see them like stuffed ones in museums. You just think, you didn't stand a chance mate. You've got nothing.

Yeah. I think it was with Neighbours Sculpt, they were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think whether or not they should, but that was the thing. And I had to Google that, I literally quickly typed Jurassic Park quote. I could see you Googling something, I thought, oh it's going to be an interesting Neighbours fact. No. No. No. No. No. Thank you very much for emailing us that Laura. That is a superb email and genuinely very, very interesting. If anyone else has anything they want to send to us, first off the bat,

our new hot segment, Could You Be Arsed? Could you be arsed though? Email in with anything you think might meet that remit. If there's anything else you want to send us, of course our ears are open and we're excited to hear from you. Here's how you get in contact. All right, you horrible lot. Here's how you can stay in touch with the show. You can email us at hello at earlwatertime.com and you can follow us on Instagram and Twitter at earhatatime.com. And you can follow us on Instagram and Twitter at owhatatimepod.

Now clear off. Well, really looking forward to getting stuck into motoring. Two of the three presenters today are drivers. I'm a driver, Chris is a driver. How many driving tests did you do, Tom, out of curiosity? Just the five. Just the five. Five. I'm a driver, Chris is a driver. How many driving tests did you do Tom out of curiosity? Just the five. Just the five.

Just the five. But Brian, when you're really good they keep asking you to come back. So they get to see more of it. They enjoy it. Do you know what it proves to me that? Do you know what it proves to me? It proves to me that the system works. And the system is still keeping me off the road. Thank God for the system.

Is this lame? This year I'm going to learn and I'm going to learn on an automatic. Oh that's fine. That's alright. So I've decided I'm just going to get an automatic licence. I am who I am. I can't deal with the gear stick. It's too much for me. So let's just, let's simplify. Yeah yeah yeah that's fine. Let's make it simple for old Fico. Izzy didn't like gears, so we have an automatic now.

I personally like driving. That's quite an old fashioned thing to say. Quite an old fashioned opinion to have. And I personally love to be in control of the car. Is that the sort of thing you say to the mechanic with your knees are touching? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I put my hand on his knee, because there's nowhere else for my hand to go.

And I say, yeah, I actually love to feel like I'm in complete synergy and control with the car, but yeah. Yeah. Mmm, the wife likes an automatic. Is it hard to tell where you end and the car begins now? Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm like Ronaldinho and the ball. I'm like Ronaldinho and the ball. Tom just quickly talk us through how you failed some of those five driving tests. The main culprit was the roundabout.

That was the main one. The main roundabout and being too handsome. You're actually distracting two other drivers. Being far too handsome exactly is because they've got that mirror right in front of me and I kept glancing into my own eyes and thinking, you beautiful, beautiful man. Falling in love with yourself. Like diving into the with my own eyes and thinking, beautiful, beautiful man. Like diving into the sea when I should be concentrating on how to turn left. When you're on your driving test and the driving instructor's like,

okay, go down here, turn left and you know there's a roundabout coming up, does your bottom just fall out? At that point, and it's remarkable to think about, I hadn't basically stopped to work out how a map roundabouts work. So as I approached him in the test, I was entirely reliant on the big, completely empty. And if there was anyone else on the roundabout, I would not know what to do. But also that was up to your instructor, surely? Who was teaching you? Yes, but I was taught by my mum.

Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, Then I was given a few additional lessons by an instructor and I never really, in the five tests, ever really knew what I was doing when I approached the roundabout. I remember one of the times as well, this is not roundabout, I went at least 10 metres

past a temporary traffic light that turned red and then in an attempt to distract him, but I thought hopefully he hasn't noticed, I'd just been to see the first Lion Witch in the wardrobe movie in the cinema and I started talking to him about Aslan. I was talking about Aslan. I remember reversing and talking about the fact that there was a lot of religious significance in it because C.S. Lewis was like a mega Christian and he said the phrase, I can see what you're doing Mr Craig. Whoa. We can see what you're doing.

Oh my gosh, he saw through your life, the witch in the wardrobe. Scheme. So I said have I failed? He said I still have to finish the thing. He told me there I failed and I still had to finish the thing. That was, although in my defence, before we get into the history, the person before me did far worse than me. We came out into the car park where all the test cars were sat and you're going to get in your car.

There was this lady starting her test and rather than driving forward out of the car park and into her test, she somehow managed to reverse and go up this little bank with directly... And both wheels were off the floor which meant she could no longer go forward. They're spinning in the air. Cars now. They both open the door and they walk utter silence back across the car parking into the test centre. None of them say anything. So the test is about four seconds long. I think being a driving instructor is a terrifying job. You're in the car all day with people who can't drive. It's absolutely

mental being a... It's so stressful. I'll do that! Yeah. Second test. You know the thing where you have to explain what happens under the bonnet and what the different bits of the engine are? Remember that bit? I'd never been shown how to pop the hood of my mum's car. And I couldn't get through to my mum because she was at Safeway and this was before mobile phones or if she didn't have one. So I just couldn't get hold of her, I couldn't work

out how to open the boot, the car to show him anything. It's the very beginning of the test. This is meant with love. We've been close friends for 20 plus years. I hope you fail. I hope that your money is wasted and that Claire does the driving forever. Oh, well, you know the worst one of mine. Should we just say this? Should I just say it? I'm not sure I want to say this on air. I was just embarrassing. One of my tests, this might have been my third one, I had food poisoning and the emergency stop made me shit myself. Which is not the reason I failed.

It's not technically a major. I'm gonna be sick. I would say that's the ultimate major. What do you mean? So there we are. I'm sure it happens to a lot of people. It's just a classic fail. Oh my god. It's going to affect your confidence, isn't it, which is going to affect your judgement. It's going to throw the rest of the test for you. It's a brown mark against your name, isn't it? Let's be honest

It's a friend of mine. I found this so funny When we were when we were all learning to drive when we were 17, which is now crazily almost 30 years ago My friend he had massive feet. He was a really big guy with massive feet like he was six foot three or six foot Massive big wide feet, specially made shoes. But every time he would do an emergency stop, a part of his foot would go on the accelerator, because his feet were so huge. He's your friend, Ronald McDonald!

In his test. The instructor said, that's right, I'm going to tap the touch-pad with my clipboard and then I want you to perform an emergency stop. And as the car came to a standstill, it just went I had to say this and make my feet a massive. There's nothing I can do about it. It's not like you can get especially wide shoes. You've got to get them specially made.

Double width shoes. His feet were fucking huge this guy. Good on him. But you know the emergency stop I always found, like even when I was on a driving test, the instructor like performatively looks around and makes sure it's okay to do an emergency stop. So it's so telegraphed, it's not a pro- you know it's coming. Oh, that's a surprise!

How did the surprise shock you that much? Well, I think I was probably more real than I realised. That was the thing. I think it's safe to assume that. It didn't take much. Also, I remember as well, my driving instructor, he was very real in the way he spoke, okay. So when you do an emergency stop,

it's actually a very controlled thing. You're not sort of jamming the brakes on. I remember saying to him, because it's still because of the braking distance, depending on how fast you're going, because it's meant to be a controlled thing, you're not stopping immediately. I remember saying, oh, you know, I started the stop back there and we're here now.

I said, if a family were running out into the road, surely I'd jam the bricks on one night. And he went, no! I hate to tell you this, if a family's run out to the road, the family's dead, okay Ellis? I was like, Jesus Christ, it's alright mate. You've killed a family, okay? Thank you, right? Okay. Is that one of the rules? No, no, no, no. It's not part of the test. Okay.

Right, there's a family. You've got to mow them all down. If you're doing that, what's that test which is not the actual driving test? It's the other bit. The provisional theory test. The fact you're not even clear on the terminology of the test. The provisional licence is the license you get to basically have lessons. Mason- Yes, which I tried to book lessons this year and then five hours before, the night before, I realised that my provisional courses expired because it's from Asian play, so I had to cancel them.

Mason- I'm just saying, I hope you fail. Mason- My question is, if you're doing the theory test, you're looking at the screen and a family runs across, are you not supposed to click on the family? Is that not a house? No, you're given a hundred points if you kill the family. Careful. You've passed. You have to click on the accelerator.

Right, so that is today's subject. Today's subject is transport. I think this is going to be a fun one. Let's do this. So this week we're talking about motoring. And I'm going to begin with the birth of the motorway or more precisely controlled access highways to use the proper terminology. You can see why motorway caught on. Bit catchier. Controlled access

highways are a familiar part of modern infrastructure and the rules are on a controlled access highway no pedestrians no parking no crossings except at bridges and underpasses, and their purpose is very simple, to move vehicles quickly and efficiently, usually between major cities. A crossing on a motorway would be insane. Even if they marked it out as a pelican crossing, I'm not thinking. As I'm approaching out with the kids. It's all about being confident, okay?

When I say go, we all go. Everyone taking the starting position that you would at the Olympics in a 100m sprint. Fingers on the line. Only the strongest survive, okay? Which European country had the first motorway? Want to guess? Germany, isn't it? Germany, you're saying? Germany.

I would have guessed Germany. That is not correct. The first motorway was in Italy, the Ostrada di Laghi, the lake's motorway opened in September 1924 and was opened by King Victor Emmanuel III. It connected Milan to Lake Como and marked the beginning of a national push towards fast road travel. Italy led the way, but as you just mentioned, it was Germany that made the motorway famous.

The Nazi regime seizing on their symbolic value, poured resources into developing the famous Autobahn network in the 1930s. The Autobahn? When it's explained to you as a little kid what the Autobahn is, it sounds crazy. It's the motorway meets Mad Max. Yeah, yeah, you can go as fast as your car will take you, mate. No rules. So when England got to the final of Euro 2024, I drove from my house to Berlin, London to Berlin.

And so I got to experience multiple European motorways. Obviously, the Autobahn is the most famous one, I would say. And famous because there is no speed limit. What I found was, well I thought I could really go for it here, but you do end up just sticking around 70 anyway because of the terror of going actually that fast. Are other cars sticking around 70? No, but not as many as you'd think. I'd say probably one in 30 cars is ripping it past you at 120 miles an hour. But in the main, people aren't going absolutely crazy.

Do you think when the Autobahn was invented and the idea of no speed limit was included, that's slightly because that was a point when cars could go like 40 miles an hour. could go like 40 miles an hour on that. Will I have heard people say that they should update the motorway speed limit on British roads? Because cars are so much better and so much faster. And also brakes are better. Mason You think you should be faster? Will I've heard people make that argument because the motorway speed limit in the UK has been 70 for decades and Obviously, car technology has changed so much in the last... Mason Hickman

But I would say when you're in a rubbish small car on a motorway, that's the moment when you feel the speed of it. You're aware of quite how ferocious it can be. I think you forget how fast you're going. Will Barron It's like when you're driving a Mini. Mason Hickman Yes, exactly. yeah, yeah. And it just feels so quick. I used to have a smart car with a little two-seater. Oh yeah.

If you did 70 mile an hour in that, you would feel like you were travelling at the speed of light. Things start rattling, you feel like you're about to take off. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then, but if you keep going, they stop rattling. It's the smart car, that tiny one by the way, like a pop. Yeah, yeah. Remember that?

Little yellow one. Of course, yeah. Convertible. Once someone was driving the smart car on a high street with the roof down and the windows down and a kid pointed at me, like two metres away on the pavement and said, look mummy, a toy car. I've been to one a couple of times and I've never felt more vulnerable. Like, you're so close to everything. It just feels like if anything hits me I'm done here.

I've never been in one. I mean I've laughed at them but I've never been in one. Sure. Yeah. You think you're close with your mechanic in your car, El? Two of you in a smart car! Anyway, back to the Nazis. So they developed the Autobahn network in the 1930s, but it wasn't just about infrastructure, it was about propaganda, futurism and jobs. Hundreds of thousands were employed, many via the Reich Labour Service, and it's worth noting that the autobahn didn't begin with Hitler. The first section between Cologne and Bonn opened in 1932 under the Weimar Republic. Interestingly, I've read a few economic books about Nazi economic policy. And I thought,

and this may have been a misconception that you had as well, which is that the early years of the Nazis, they did a great job of resurrecting the economy and actually by ploughing people into labour to develop these autobahns. But actually what they were doing was getting themselves into lots of debt, debt which they planned to pay back by literally robbing other countries. It's really interesting. Ah, that's fascinating. So like, yeah, the invasions of other countries was like an economic necessity, according to some of the books I've read. Anyway, elsewhere enthusiasm for the motorway was slower to build.

France and Britain with their highly developed rail networks didn't prioritise motorways until after World War II. In fact, Britain's first stretch, the Preston Bypass, opened in 1958. At the time, this is interesting, at the time car ownership was still relatively low. In 1950 there were just two million cars on British roads versus a population of 50 million. Wow. Pretty mad, that, innit?

That's so much later than I thought. If you consider how early it was under Weimar, probably that's a good 20 something years, isn't it? What is that, Rob and I, 30 years? It's something to me very depressing about rail travel, that the reason rail travel is shit in the UK, is that basically we're still using A-roads. Everyone else, some French rail travel and Japanese rail travel, they updated to the rail travel equivalent of the motorway,

and we're still trying to get everywhere on A-roads, and that is why it's also rubbish. because my dad talks about driving from West Wales to London before the M4 and it just took forever and it must have been so frustrating. Oh man. In 1950, two million cars on British roads with a population of 50 million. But by 1960, there were four million British cars on the road. And then, by that point in the 60s, roads were not just desirable, but absolutely necessary. So much of Britain's motorway network was laid down between the 50s and the 80s. Its development informed partly by post-war mobility and partly by military history. The Autobahn had helped fuel Germany's rapid early advances during World War Two, a lesson not lost on British planners.

But motorways brought new problems, chief among them, what happens when you break down? Now this is something I think about almost all the time. In the 50s and 60s, if you're driving down a dark A road and you break down, what do you do? I think you just live wherever you've broken down now. Yeah. That's it. There's that great Sean Lock routine about how if you're a woman with children or if you're just a woman, I think you're a

priority as you should be obviously for the AA of the RAC. The idea that if you're a man you're just just constantly beating off attackers. You're like, what's that? You want to steal my possessions? Thwack! What, you're trying to steal a car? Bosh! Trying to steal my wallet? Thwack! It's a very, very funny, it's a very funny act though. That is a very good point though. If you break down your car on a dark lane somewhere in the 70s before mobile phones and that sort of stuff. You've just got to sit there and wait until... What are you doing? Maybe people are more proficient with

fixing it themselves. Maybe that was Morgan's idea. Will Barron On a motorway, there's an emergency phone every half a mile. Mason Hickman Little phones, yes. Will Barron On an A-road, I think you'd probably just start walking and look for the next village. Mason Hickman Or someone's house. God, isn't it funny how like, basically like 1950s motor like driving is a bit like alive, you know the film where they crash in like the Chilean mountains.

It's the same principles. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A couple of days from having to turn to cannibalism. Like if you're down an A road in the 50s you break down. So what do people do when they broke down? Well the answer came in the form of the emergency roadside telephone. These were big, I don't remember these much anymore, but orange SOS boxes installed at intervals of roughly one mile, drawing inspiration from services already offered by the AA since

1911 and the RAC since 1912. These phones provided direct contact for help. By the mid-2000s there were almost 7,000 emergency phones across Britain. Today there are around 8,500. I would have guessed that number would have dropped but it's gone up. The majority are in England with the rest spread across Scotland and Wales. Before that the AA and the RAC had their own call boxes but these were locked and only usable by members who were issued with special keys. That is annoying!

Wow! Tom, you are absolutely breaking down in the 50s and forgetting your RAC box key. You've paid your bloody subs all year and the key is in the house. Can you imagine? Oh my gosh. The RAC boxes were blue and white, the AA's black and yellow, but both were eventually phased out in the early 2000s as mobile phones made them redundant. I'd argue, by the way, they didn't need to lock them and have some special key. They could just be open. You ring up, they say, what's your registration number?

If you're not a member, they'll say, I'm sorry, we can't help you. That's it. You don't need to be locking these things and forcing people to bring key. They're not going to be inundated with prank callers pulling over for the dry to the M4. Oh, I've got a car and I've got a flat tyre. Have you? Yeah. Is this you again Tim? Yes, it is. So if you broke down in the 1950s and you called the AA or the RAC, you're going to get a little Patron one.

Well, he might not be little, but a Patron would come out and often arrive on a motorbike and he'd have a son. I don't know why I just imagined a little guy. He's always tiny. The AA child. With a sidecar full of tools. By the 1960s, however, the much more familiar mini van had been rolled out and Land Rovers, especially in rural areas, and their goal was to fix your car

on the spot. If they couldn't, they would take you home basically. That was where special new recovery clubs stepped in. One of the earliest recovery clubs was the National Car Recovery Club founded in Hull in 1968 and it was joined by others the National Breakdown Recovery Club set up by Bradford Chippy in 1971, also the Scottish Northern Car Recovery Club and Leicester's Good Samaritan Car Recovery Club and they all promised the same thing if you couldn't get your car fixed they'd get you and your car safely home. By the 1970s outfits like National Breakdown were claiming memberships in the hundreds of thousands and AA and RAC were forced to compete. Both launched their own full recovery services, the AA with Relay

and the RAC with Recovery. And if the National Breakdown Recovery Club sounds unfamiliar, that is because in 1994 they rebranded as, it's a good football reference this, Green Flag. Green Flag. And to mark that name change for branding and marketing purposes they signed a four-year sponsorship deal with the England football team. The England football team and were therefore sponsors during the glorious summer of Euro 96 and that is the perfect note to end on surely. When you say it was set up by a Bradford chip shop, you mean like a fish and chip shop? That's what I imagine.

Or do you mean electrician? Or someone turning up stinking of cod? Or do you mean carpenter? Or the third option, do you not know? Could be a mix of all of those. But I'm imagining a Bradford fish and chip man. If you know more on this story, hello at owhatatime.com. If he turns up, he picks you up in the freezer cold at two in the morning and he hasn't

brought you a haddock and chips, I would be absolutely livid. Bring a bag of chips, mate. Surely he's turning up as well with an apron covered in oil and batter. Our car broke down on the way to Margate because we were going to Margate for the day and we had to get driven back to London and the guy who worked for the AA or the RAC, I can't remember who it was, he didn't have any teeth and my kids are still talking about it. They could not believe.

He didn't have a single tooth in his mouth and they were absolutely flabbergasted. You need a new car, L, what a sound of things. If you're either breaking down and away from the car gate or spending half your life in a mechanic, it's time, the time is done. But I just think kids love a sense of jeopardy. Yeah, that's true. They love that cool, calm sense of peril. What's gonna happen? And if ever there was a finer reason to become a no-watter time full-timer for £4.99 a month. Buy me a new car, guys. Come on.

I've got quite a good grip on macro and micro economics. I don't have a good grip on why you have such a crap car the most bewildering Financial decision anyone has ever been factors a Laziness and that can't be asked are three factors. It's nice and small so easy to park the third factor my wife We if you listen to the Alice and John podcast I do for the BBC She poured five litres of paint into the World Cup police car the night before we went on holiday. So the car is just, I mean, it's covered in fucking paint. On the outside, on the inside, on the seats.

She's driven into lampposts. So that's careful use of the plural there. Something more than once. And so occasionally I say, I prefer you to drive a terrible car into a lamppost than a nice car. So, but it is, it is like something from the wacky races. So when I go to pick my kids up from like sleepovers and stuff, it looks like I've stolen a smashed car from a scrap yard. But yeah. You know, webuyanycar.com is now re-named, webuyanycar.com open brackets apart from our dis-car clothes brackets.

Yeah, yeah, but not that one, yeah. We're not mad. So that's it for part one of motoring. If you want part two right now you can become an Oh What A Time full-timer where you get access to all our bonus archive episodes, two per month, lots of correspondence episodes and good book reviews of books including the nation's favorite The True Adventures of Radio 1 by Simon Garfield, which last month I hosted and we went through all the drastic changes at Radio 1 in the 90s, including the sacking of Dave Lee Travis. If you want to catch up on all that good stuff, become an O What A Time full-timer, you can pursue your options over at owhatatime.com. Otherwise, we'll see you tomorrow for part two.

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