By K.S. Wang
Quick Stats: Ian Hill bassist and founding member of Judas Priest
Daily Driver: 2004 Mercedes-Benz ML 500
Favorite road trip: I-40 around Tucumcari, New Mexico
Car he learned to drive in: 1969 Austin 1100
First car bought: 1965 Hillman Imp
Ian Hill, founding member and bassist for pioneering heavy-metal band Judas Priest, drives a 2004 Mercedes ML 500. But he would prefer to own more cars made by a British-owned company.
"I sort of mourn the British car industry that's now owned by foreign concerns," Hill said, from Luxenbourg, during the band's European leg of the tour to promote their new album, "Nostradamus."
Jaguar is now owned by Tata Motors of India, Bentley by Volkswagen, and Rolls-Royce is a BMW subsidiary. Belying the image and music he's made for almost 40 years, Hill is mild-mannered on the phone, with spurts of polite British humor.
He wistfully recalls growing up in the Midlands region, where the heart of the British motor industry once was. The British Motor Corporation had such marques as the Austin, Austin-Healey, and MG and made the popular Austin Minis in the 1960s.
"At one time, the British Motor Corporation, was one of the world's leading manufacturers of everyday cars," Hill said. "It was technologically streets ahead of the opposition. But because of bad management and communist union leaders who seemed to be striking over the slightest little things, it went under. Which is a great shame."
He continues: "They used spoiling tactics all the time. The workmanship went down, they weren't working that often, they were on strike more often than they were working -- stupid things, bringing the whole factory to a close. Management was run by the government, and they didn't really have a clue of what to do. So it was a whole bunch of little things."
Hill describes the climate among a lot of the British automakers in the 1970s and early 1980s. "There were strikes every week somewhere. It was terrible. The Germans used to call it the English disease," Hill, says. "They were laughing. While our guys were not producing anything, they were selling thousands of cars."
Hill was practically born and raised around cars in the auto manufacturing town of West Bromwich. It's near Birmingham, where the Longbridge plant built Austin Minis, as well the town of Coventry.
"Austin was based in Longbridge, Jensen was made in West Bromwich, and just 20 miles down the road was Coventry. A lot of motoring industry was there - Triumph , Jaguar, the Rootes Group, which made the Hillman I had - that was built in Coventry."
One of the last new cars he bought, in an effort to support his local economy, was the new MG version of the Rover 75, a 2004 MG ZT 190. "I bought my present wife a brand-new Rover, as well. I tried to do that for the British motor industry and two months after I bought it, they went bust," he said.
"They're making cars there; they're just not owned by the British," he says of his area in the U.K. "Bentley is British, but it's owned by the Germans and Rolls-Royce is now as well. The future is there but it's not owned by any British concerns. At least Land Rover and Jaguar are still made there."
Car he learned to drive in
Around the time he started Judas Priest with childhood friend K.K. Downing, Hill took lessons at a nearby driving school in the Midlands. He learned how to drive on the school's new 1969 Austin 1100, which he describes as "a little family car" with a stickshift.