PRIME TIME
The status-loving UK market’s love affair with German cars is all too obvious today, the engineering prowess and brand management savvy having combined with tempting finance arrangements to make 3 Series, A4 and C Class as affordable as the mainstream brands’ models they’ve successfully killed off. For a perfect illustration, look no further than the fact that Ford has recently given up on the Mondeo, whereas you can hardly see BMW axing its mid-sized saloon car bread and butter.
It wasn’t always this way though. Wind back just a few decades and today’s aspirational German marques were tiny players here: BMW was a smaller enthusiast brand almost like Alfa Romeo, while Audi was still flogging rebadged Passats, Porsche could also sell you VW-derived creations in the shape of the 924 and 911 (the 928 having signally failed to catch on) with only Mercedes-Benz an accepted status symbol – and even then as a purveyor of big limousines to business types rather than private buyers.
Forty years ago though, BMW launched the second generation of its 3
