SOMETIMES, when you're out, you're out. The innings are over. After Kylie Minogue appeared in a pitiful Jean-Claude van Damme film in the mid-1990s with a fake British accent—and then one with Pauly Shore (who? Right)—few could imagine that she would begin the next century as one of pop's great icons.
   The Kylography is folklore to most Australians: The Sullivans child actress, Neighbours teenage star and teen sensation singing a remake of Little Eva's 'Locomotion', buoyed by the TV soap's popularity in the UK, but not many other than hardened fans can remember where she was between her movie The Delinquents and her Impossible Princess album of 1998. It was during ex-boyfriend Michael Hutchence's 1997 funeral that the public saw Kylie and somehow the rise began again.
   Was there a movement that thrusted the teen pop star—Australia's 1980s answer to Britney Spears—back into the limelight to achieve diva status? Those missing years had seen Kylie change record labels and collaborate with Nick Cave, but she had already unwittingly laid down some foundations for the return.
   Examining Olivia Newton-John—who went from Sandra Dee to the sex siren of her album Physical and the banned inside image—and Britney Spears, going from sexy-but-sweet to plunging necklines and cropped tops, Kylie seemed to have gone through a '90s version of the transformation. Just as the future sitcom That '90s Show might comment, 'Kylie Minogue. Yeah right, we'll never see her again. I should be so lucky,' she returned when her chips were down, but strangely her audiences were in line ready for her conquest.
   There was the first 1980s group looking nostalgic, a second gay group who remain fiercely loyal to Kylie's camped-up glamour, and the new lads of new Britain, to whom she's the stuff of fantasy (evidently so when Lucire ran pictures by Ellen von Unwerth of the Australienne in her knickers in 1998). Thanks to that, there's a whole new set of teenage boys ready to hop on the Kylie Minogue bandwagon. There's the romance (to Britons) of faraway Australia, the isle which still remembers her sons of the United Kingdom in her national anthem, the upcoming Olympic Games in Sydney and the maturity of the same forces that first brought the nation to the world: a safe distance from the Bicentennial, Crocodile Dundee, Jacko and Young Einstein.
   Kylie is strangely respectable. 'Especially for You', the duet she made with Neighbours co-star and screen beau Jason Donovan, was even remade. The Times—which one must remember is in a round-about way Australian-owned—devoted editorial space to Miss Minogue's posterior, reaching new heights as a British national icon (however, this is the same nation that gave us the Carry on films, Benny Hill and Jeremy Clarkson's jeans).
   After winning Best International Female and Best International Album at the Brit Awards and Best-selling Australian Artist at the Monaco World Music Awards last year, Kyles faces another tour for 2002: the 39-date European Fever tour beginning in Cardiff, Wales on April 26 and ending in Barcelona, Spain on June 20. And it's not about teen product placements these days: the Ford Motor Company has hopped on board with its StreetKa, its subcompact roadster that's ready to hit the streets as a 2003 model in Europe.
   'Linking with Kylie will allow us to show this car before launch in an environment where we know StreetKa will have great appeal,' said Earl Hesterberg, Ford of Europe's VP of Marketing. That's well and good but there's a reference to the pop diva's petite 5'1" frame: 'StreetKa and Kylie have a lot in common—they are both small, beautiful and stylish.'
   Is it about being petite, even if Kylie is in perfect scaled-down proportion to a supermodel? We don't think so: it's simply that Kylie is contemporary, the star of the moment helped by the fact she's hardly aged since the 1990s, by her familiarity to British and Australian culture which is nostalgic—thanks to the UK's Labour Party finding new ways to say 'recession' and the public going, 'Remember when …?'—and just so darned marketable.
   We know Ford's after a slice of that. You can build the best cars in Europe, with the Golf-eating Focus and Mondeo winning an untold number of awards, but there's got to be an injection of inspiration. In fact, Ford's trying to be rather auto-erotic. It may be FoMoCo's (now there's a youth brand) entry into the youth market and we know that this time, Kylie is behind the steering wheel.
   Meanwhile, are there any bets for Britney?

Lucire: ‘Kylie in Paris’ (December 6, 1998)
Kylie.com, the official Kylie Minogue site
Kylie Minogue Online (UK)
Kylieminogue.co.uk (UK unofficial site)
Kylie.de (Germany)
Ford StreetKa
Neighbours official site