With time travel, you can only witness history, not change history."Gidley thought about this for a moment "All right I'll accept that. Voters judge state power by their recollection of it, not by contrasting it with Edwardian, or indeed Victorian, times.Nor was that a pre-statist idyll, when the British state had little economic power and used it timorously. In a desperate attempt to ease the pain we tried to strike a bet on Liverpool in the European Cup "Game's already over," came the reply Some experts!. The championship may seem all but over mathematically, but there is much that Damon Hill can retrieve from the three remaining races to enhance his prospects for next season. Starting with Sunday's Pacific Grand Prix and on through Suzuka to Adelaide, Damon has the opportunity to dominate his team, Williams-Renault, re- establish his influence, and lay the foundations for 1996. It is not yet over this season, of course, and in our game anything can happen. It is, for instance, possible for a driver to be deducted points for a breach of regulations. But Damon would need that kind of assistance - or snookers - to stop Michael Schumacher winning his second title.The important thing for Damon is to impose himself on proceedings.
He has made a couple of clumsy mistakes of late, which have left him out of touch with Michael and portrayed him as a not particularly great racer, and that is probably not so.Damon has a strong view of things, but some of the aggression he has encountered recently should not have been acceptable under the overtaking regulations, and all drivers may shortly have the further clarification he seeks on this issue.However, I feel strongly that when you are rushing into a corner at over 190mph and you are in close company, anything you do has to be instinctive Everything happens incredibly quickly There is no logical thought process You can't be running through a series of regulations. Mr Hunter-Pease points out that the policy has helped to reduce the total number of cars in stock from 11,000 at the end of 1993 to a few hundred now, with consequent reductions in storage costs.Moreover, conscious that getting the car from the plant to the customer can account for 30 per cent of the total cost, the company is constantly reviewing transport techniques. Being able to achieve a better match in this way not only makes the customer more satisfied in the long term, it also helps to reduce the cost to them. And what they translate into is that customers can now choose the car they want for delivery within weeks and that the end product is desirable enough that they would want to spend time making decisions over such features as engine design, upholstery material and style of wheels.By making the cars "bespoke", the dealer is able to concentrate on selling the customer what he or she wants, rather than pushing what is in stock in the interests of meeting sales targets, Mr Hunter-Pease says. Like just about everybody else in business, he wants greater emphasis on the customer. The difficulty he has is that the motor trade is noted for its heavy sales techniques.Mr Hunter-Pease acknowledges this, saying: "To improve customer service, you've got to take away the pain of high-pressure selling." He wants to bring about a "fundamental shift in the way the industry thinks" and so change the "buying experience".The twin drivers of this are the greater efficiency of manufacturing and the desirability of the products.
In particular, staff now find themselves trying to win over customers, when in the past they must have felt halfway to a sale as soon as somebody entered the showroom simply because Volvo had a clear image.As if this were not enough, Mr Hunter-Pease is intent on changing the relationship between the company and the people who buy its products. But for the most part, in the words of Charles Hunter- Pease, managing director of Volvo Car UK, the management has had a "clean sheet of paper" to establish a fresh strategy.Though the plan to expand the customer base by taking on prestigious marques may appear sound, it brings certain problems. But they are only the most obvious signs of something far more significant.Since the proposed merger with the French group Renault was halted, Volvo has had to come to terms with going it alone in an increasingly competitive market. It is still involved in a number of joint ventures, such as the one that will see Audi diesel engines powering some models and the Edcar initiative owned equally by Volvo, Mitsubishi of Japan and the Dutch government. If the company was a watchword in safety, it was also seen as the epitome of boring. The 850, and a restyled 960, are the first results of an attempt to add some enjoyment to the practicality of owning a Volvo Other models are in the pipeline.
The problem was that, although everybody agreed that the huge estates were practical for farmers and antique dealers, nobody who fancied themselves as a bit of a Stirling Moss was going to admit to owning one. For, helped by the new 850 series' success in motor racing and a stylish advertising campaign, the Swedish group seems to be winning customers from the likes of BMW and Mercedes. Ever since it lumbered out of the Scandinavian forests, the Volvo has been the car that everybody has wanted to be in if they knew they were going to get hit by a truck. Soon they will be driving off into the night, back to face their own particular firewalks waiting for them at home.Success Formulae will hold its next firewalk and seminar on 22 Oct Details: 01344 874101.
If recent trends are anything to go by, visitors to the Volvo stand at this weekend's London Motor Show will be drawn from a wider spectrum than the stereotype would allow for. "I feel quite proud I've done it, but it's not the experience I thought it was going to be," she says Colin agrees: "There's nothing to it. It's over really quickly and you don't feel a thing." Even Sue, earlier a shell-shocked housewife brought along by her sports-mad son, took the purposeful strides as calmly as if she were walking into her local greengrocer's.Back in the crude light of the hotel, they all euphorically clean the charcoal off their feet. "It's much better than sex - more like a million orgasms rolled into one," affirms Mick.Carol, another first-timer, is more philosophical. "You don't see or hear anything, all you hear is a voice inside your head saying 'Yes I'm going to do it'," he explains. As each walker takes their first step with the chant "yes, yes, yes", the garden echoes like a thousand motel bedrooms. This sports-day-from-hell seems finally to galvanise the group, which then surges like a lynch mob towards the fire chanting "easy, easy, easy".Beneath a now star-filled sky, the metamorphosed firewalkers stop at the edge of the layer of heat ahead of them like pagan worshippers.