Museums
My first car was a Singer Chamois, a slightly upmarket version of the Hillman Imp with better plastic trim. It should have been made in Coventry, where Singer was one of the grand old names that had turned the place first into the UK’s bicycle city, then into our Motown. But it wasn’t. Instead it came from Scotland, part of well-meaning but fruitless government plans to share Coventry’s auto-derived wealth more evenly.
Less than 20 years after my car was built, the idea of sharing Coventry’s wealth would have seemed laughable, and an exhibition that has joined the permanent displays at Coventry’s Transport Museum shows why. Called Ghost Town and featuring the track of that name by Coventry group The Specials, it charts the decline and fall of Coventry’s motor industry from 1980 to 2010, Canley to Ryton via Browns Lane.
Gloomy stuff, then? Well, says Steve Bagley, the museum’s head of collections, there’s certainly a downbeat element to the exhibition, but he thinks it’s justified to give a completeness to the museum as a whole. Ghost Town contrasts with Boom Town, where the upmarket Triumphs, Alvises and Armstrong Siddeleys of earlier years sit alongside humbler Hillmans and Singers.
“The point is that we’re telling the story of Coventry,” he says. Some motor industry firms may have been less than happy with it, but it’s the city’s tale, not theirs.
And it’s not exactly done in a downbeat museum-ish way. Ghost Town is a startling design with the story told in black-and-white montages of coverage of problems and closures by the local evening paper, and where the only other colour throughout much of it is red. Its brashness contrasts strongly with the staid display of glory days downstairs.
There are interactive elements, including a “vote” on whether Peugeot’s decision to shut Ryton was justified that is running heavily in favour of keeping it open. But much of the interaction with visitors, Bagley says, is nostalgia, with former car workers and their families spotting themselves and past colleagues in newspapers and gazing fondly over the old cars.
And it’s not just a backward look. Coventry’s motor industry days are not entirely finished, with Jaguar’s Whitley research centre and London Taxis still working in the city, and Spyker aiming to arrive. Ghost Town may just be a phase in the city’s development.
See www.transport-museum.com for more information