As a road tester for some of the biggest car magazines in the country, Askew drove pretty much every car to go on sale between the mid-1990s and 2000s.
He now hosts the Clangers Podcast, alongside industry colleagues Tom Barnard and Craig Cheetham, in which the trio look back at cars, which do not fall into either the category of bangers or classics.
Explaining the concept of the show, Askew told James Baggott and Jon Reay: ‘We worked at Auto Express from the mid 90s to the mid 2000s and I think during that period, we pretty much drove every new car that was launched.
‘There was bound to be some that slipped between the cracks, but we either did the launch or we would have done group tests with the cars during that period.
‘Those cars that were built during that time frame are what we call clangers. They’re caught between being classics and bangers, so they’re typically not a lot of money, but they’re cars that we remember.
‘It’s always a shock when there’s stuff that you and I will have been on launches of, and then you see them in scrapyards.
‘You think “my goodness, that’ll still be worth something – it turns out they’re not!
‘Craig buys cars like he’s running a dealership. He just acquires stuff. He’s got public car parks just full of tat he’s bought from auctions and things, and they’re all clangers.
‘He will get incredibly excited about a base level Megane 1.6 non-turbo diesel. He would buy that and he’d say, “oh, there’s only three of these left”.
‘I can see why there would only be three of them left in the world, but he loves them.
‘He buys them. We have a section in the podcast, which is what Craig bought this week so far. And we thought we’re going to do this every fortnight.’
Over the course of the latest podcast, we also chat to Mike about his favourite memories of attending car launches, the best car he’s ever driven and why modern cars are getting to confusing.
The Car Dealer Podcast sees an industry guest join our hosts to discuss the motor trade’s biggest headlines of every week.
You can listen to all episodes of the Car Dealer Podcast on Spotify, or watch them in full on our YouTube channel.
