Project Petrolhead

Have you ever looked at all the cars currently on sale in the UK? If, like me, you have then you probably noticed that there are some broad, sweeping trends across the market at the moment. In the last ten years, as more manufacturers quietly cull their hatchbacks and saloons, the homogeneous jacked-up box known as the SUV has taken their places. Don’t just take my word for it. Auto Express reported that the amount of cars we import from China has more than doubled since 2023, with the vast majority being electric SUVs, scrolling through the “Latest Reviews” tab on Autocar’s website (information correct as of November 3^rd 2025) I noted that thirteen of the last twenty reviews were for SUVs (seven of which were EVs), and online marketplace CarWow have reported that, since Ford canned the Fiesta in 2023, dealer enquiries for its replacement – the dull as dishwater Ford Puma – have increased by 540%. To put it simply: Everything’s a big grey box now.

The reason for this is simple. Car manufacturers are businesses, designed – with the possible exception of Aston Martin – to make as much money as possible. The easiest way to do this is to make a car that appeals to as many people as possible. It must be big enough for the nuclear family with two-point-four children, jacked-up and high riding for the gilet-wearing alpha dads and yoga mums who like to feel imperious on the school run, and economical enough for a fleet of middle-managers to claim them from a company car scheme. Thus: the diesel or EV SUV. The ultimate “Jack-of-all-trades” car. Jack-of-all-trades is one of those descriptors that has seemingly lost all meaning over time. Much like “A few bad apples” being used to dismiss systemic issues as the actions of individual ne’er-do-wells, even though the original idiom is “A few bad apples spoil the bunch”, people often forget that a Jack-of-all-trades is a master of none.

The solution to this self-imposed problem might be found – believe it or not – in the jarred, tomatoey world of pasta sauce. Howard Moskowitz is an American psychophysicist who specialises in market research for the food industry. In 1986, he was hired by the Campbell’s Soup Company to try and boost sales of their line of Prego spaghetti sauce. Essentially, Campbell’s wanted to tailor their sauce so that the most consumers liked it, creating the single ultimate spaghetti sauce for any pasta-based occasion (sound familiar now?) so sent Moskowitz out to their development kitchen with free reign. Rather than trying his best to create a homogeneous singular sauce, what Moskowitz did was create forty-five distinct variations of sauce and then, through years of intensive focus testing, narrow that down to three sauces; Plain, Spicy and Extra-Chunky, and presented those to the board. He explained that there is NO way to create one sauce to please everybody because, quite simply, the consumer doesn’t really know what they want unless you give them the option to have it. Because people had only had the option to buy plain sauce, they all bought plain sauce, and then when they started to go off it and fancied a change instead, they all stopped buying plain sauce. By broadening their range, Prego became an alternative to themselves, allowing the consumer to try each variety and deciding for themselves which one they liked best.

“Well, that’s all well and good, but how does this have anything to do with cars?” Well, Mr Strawman, if you’ll calm down for a moment, this can be translated DIRECTLY onto the motoring industry. I posit that people are only buying boring diesel SUVs in droves is because that’s basically all there is on offer. If you gave people a wider range of cars to choose from, then you’ll really see what cars people actually want. All we need if for a car company to take a huge financial risk and devote years of research and development to building a mythical new car that nobody knew they needed in the first place… And therein lies the issue. Cars are more expensive to develop, build, market and sell than ever before, so our breakthrough moment is very likely to be swept under the rug by the accountants that are secretly in charge of all car companies.

The breakthroughs have happened before. In the 1960’s, during a time of oil crisis and conspicuous consumption, Alec Issigonis gave us that icon of ingenious packaging and frugality; the original Mini, in the late 90’s when versatility was king, Renault gave us the endlessly functional and configurable Espace, and in the 2010’s when the world sought out a cleaner, greener future, Nissan gave us the Leaf a practical and functional electric car that didn’t cost the Earth and slotted seamlessly into everyday life. And, of course, there’s the most famous example of them all. In the apocryphal words of Henry Ford: “If I’d asked people what they wanted, they would have said ‘faster horses’.”

Or should that be “Chunkier Sauces”?