A supergroup consisting of two British rock titans, an amateur songwriter and bits from two dismantled Ford Focuses has made musical history, writes Nicholas Rufford.

What makes a truly great driving song? A killer hook; a thumping, hot-hatch-shaking bassline; Bruce Springsteen? Last week The Sunday Times set out to record a new type of motoring anthem, with a little help from Mike Rutherford, the guitarist in Genesis, and Kenney Jones, a former drummer for the Who. And to capture the essence of the driving experience fully, these rock heavyweights would be playing instruments made entirely out of car components.

You can see the fruits of our labours above. Hopefully, you’ll agree that it’s not bad, for music played on the remains of a dismantled hatchback.

“It’s a great driving tune,” said Rutherford, who played the guitar parts on a weird-looking instrument made from a clutch plate. “It’s a cracking number and dead catchy. You’ll find yourself humming it in the car, even if it’s not playing,” said Jones, who laid down the beat on wheels fashioned into drums.”

Before going any further we should add, in the best Smashie and Nicey tradition, the exercise was all for charidee. The Teenage Cancer Trust will get all the proceeds, so if you listen to the song and like it enough to download it, please make a 79p donation (the price of one track on iTunes).

Rutherford, the mainstay of our improvised band, called Carparts, has sold more than 150m records as part of Genesis, as well as fronting Mike and the Mechanics. Jones was a founding member of Small Faces and Faces. When the Who’s original drummer, Keith Moon, was found dead, Jones took over. He also recently topped the American charts with a single from his new band, the Jones Gang.

We also recruited some of the country’s leading classical musicians, members of the National Symphony Orchestra, to play other carparts instruments including the rear-suspension spike fiddle, the fender bass and a flute made from part of a strut and some air-conditioning tubing.

All the instruments have appeared in a recent television advertisement for Ford, which features an entire orchestra playing instruments assembled from the components and body panels of a Ford Focus. They were designed by Bill Milbrodt, an American musician who began making music from bits of cars in the 1990s. He formed a New Jersey band called the Car Music Project in 2005, who were spotted by Ford’s UK advertising agency.

With his colleague Ray Faunce III, a luthier (a maker and repairer of stringed instruments), Milbrodt had just over a month to transform two brand-new Focuses into a 20-piece orchestra for the ad. “These are so much more advanced than my first attempt at carparts instruments,” he said. “And they look much better too. They’re painted with proper car paint, which costs $400-$550 a gallon.”

The vocalist for the Sunday Times’s recording was Richard Watson, who co-wrote the song. In the best tradition of talented hopefuls, he’s never had a hit or a record deal and composes in snatched moments between office meetings at a busy London recruitment agency.

The first step was to get to grips with the instruments. Rutherford, a pioneer of the double-neck guitar and various Moog synthesisers, was wrestling with all four stone of the clutch-plate guitar. “This is without doubt the weirdest thing I have ever played,” he said, inspecting the welds holding the thing together. “But I guess after playing the double-neck for most of my career this is the next step. And there has always been that link between music and cars.

There is no prog-rocking-out with this instrument strapped over your shoulder, however. Rutherford had to spend most of the recording session sitting on a stool with the guitar resting on a piece of sponge in his lap to stop the metal edge digging into his legs.

Jones rolled up shortly after 11am in his Jaguar XK, wearing a modish black donkey jacket and with the same fuzz of suspiciously brown hair he’s had since the 1960s. Rutherford made him a mug of instant coffee (“We’re out of the proper stuff – sorry. This is rock’n’roll”) and he began experimenting with the 16in wheel-rim drums while creating strange sounds with the assorted carparts percussion, including cogs, springs and a mixture of gears for tapping, jangling and scraping. He looked slightly bemused (although that could just be an unavoidable side effect of four decades of rock stardom).

“I saw these instruments in the ad but to be honest I presumed they were miming. I didn’t think they would actually play in tune,” he said. “I remember drumming on a guitar case for a track with Andy Fairweather Low, but that’s nothing compared with this. This is fantastic.”

Additional reporting: Emma Smith

Kenney Jones, drummer with Small Faces, Faces and the Who: “I think the best driving song would have to be No Particular Place to Go by Chuck Berry. It’s a fantastic song and it starts with the line ‘Riding along in my automobile’, which is pretty ideal. It’s all about him trying to pull this bird and not being able to undo her safety belt, so to speak. I also like listening to the Eagles while I’m driving.”

Mike Rutherford, guitarist with Genesis and founder of Mike and the Mechanics: “I think it would have to be a Steely Dan track called Reelin’ in the Years. I associate it with one of the long tours we did with Genesis in the 1970s and this song was just always in the air. We used to tour in two cars, a Merc and a four-door sedan, which was quite cool at the time. I hated tour buses. I think a good driving song has to give you a bit of a lift, a bit of energy.”

Best driving songs as decided by Rolling Stone 1. Immigrant Song, Led Zeppelin (1970) 2. Born to Run, Bruce Springsteen (1975) 3. Highway to Hell, AC/DC (1979) 4. Runnin’ Down a Dream, Tom Petty (1989) 5. Truckin’, Grateful Dead (1970) 6. Ol’ 55, Tom Waits (1973) 7. Radar Love, Golden Earring (1973) 8. Tush, ZZ Top (1975) 9. The Passenger, Iggy Pop (1977) 10. Wanted Dead or Alive, Bon Jovi (1986)

And the ones they missed 1. The Boys of Summer, Don Henley (1984) 2. Ace of Spades, Motörhead (1980) 3. Route 66, the Rolling Stones (1964) 4. Silver Machine, Hawkwind (1972) 5. Drift Away, Dobie Gray (1973)

[credit: Times Online]