LETTERS Driven abroad
Sir: I suppose it was about par for the long- time Paris resident Lord Rothermere's Daily Mail to front-page-spread the 'news' that the Princess of Wales had patriotically returned her beloved Mercedes-Benz 500SL (the world's safest coupe) to its importers and would, with her husband, in future content herself with 'mainly British- made cars'. The Yanko-Strine-owned Times put the same story on an inner page, adding to the Mail's list of such vehicles the admission that the Waleses' (Ford) Grana- da and (Vauxhall) Senator are 'built on the Continent'. Both are in fact made in Ger- many, like the sacrificial Stuttgart 'Mere. As for their Ford Sierra, it is manufactured in Belgium, all too near abhorred Brussels, at Genk. The Waleses' Jaguars, like the Prime Minister's, come from the American- owned Ford company, who now also own the Aston-Martin company that once made the Prince's favourite Windsor runabout. His more modern Bentley (recently used by him in Czechoslovakia) is the work of a ter- minally sick Rolls-Royce factory at present, I believe, under offer to Munich's BMW company. And so it goes, as anybody visit- ing the Royal Mews can establish for him- self. The place pullulates with German- built cars and no doubt the Queen's favourite in-laws, Prince and Princess George of Hanover, feel a sense of satisfac- tion at seeing her so happy at the wheel of her Opel Omega station-wagon, even if on its way across the North Sea it has been rechristened a Vauxhall Carlton.
Alastair Forbes
Beefsteak Club. Irving Street. London WC2
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