Born to Be Riled (31 page)

You’ve been sitting there for the best part of a decade when the need for a crap becomes utterly overwhelming. So you scoop up the bog roll, a copy of
Viz
and disappear behind a rock. And while you’re gone, Froggy comes out of his muddy home and struts his stuff with Mrs Frog.

Well last month, Britain’s motoring journalists were on
the bog while all hell was breaking loose all around. Some had driven the Mercedes A Class and glowing reports were appearing in magazines all over the land.
Autocar
said it could dive through tight bends with agility.
Car
magazine said much the same thing, while
Auto Express
praised its responsive chassis. Now I don’t want to sound smug about this, but after half a mile in the new baby Benz it became very obvious that its handling was not agile and it certainly wasn’t responsive. It was utterly and completely crap. Contrary to what many may think, we road testers do get swayed by the opinions of colleagues and I found myself in a quandary. Here was a car from one of the world’s most ruthlessly efficient manufacturers, a car that my colleagues liked very much.

It takes a very special kind of bombastic arrogance to be that little boy in ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ – to stand up and say: ‘Actually, its handling is appalling.’ But thank God I did, because just a week later a Swedish magazine found to its cost that, while performing what’s become known as the ‘Elk Test’, the A Class rolled over and put its occupants in hospital. A German magazine then repeated the procedure and subsequent examination of the film showed that what we had here was A Class One Disaster. Experts immediately dismissed the Elk Test as unrepresentative, but I disagree. Swerving one way, then the other, to miss an obstacle is worthwhile in any environment. Sure, we don’t have elks in Britain but we do have children and dogs, and debris in the outside lane of the motorway. And Mercedes agreed because first they said they’d change the tyres, then they said stability control would be fitted as standard, then they stopped the production lines. The fact is, Mercedes screwed up
and our journos missed the biggest story since the Ford Pinto.

Well now it’s time to wake up and smell the coffee. Drive into a roundabout at a sporty, rather than aggressive, pace and understeer is colossal. Switch direction and massive body roll attaches itself like a 2 ton barnacle to a problem that shouldn’t have been there in the first place. It’s impossible to miss. I only feel guilty that I majored on the car’s good points. But at least I spotted the flaw. In the early days of car journalism, it was important to be on the ball because rotten and dangerous cars lumbered onto the market every week. But in recent years, the whole game has shifted. We assume a car is safe and reliable and make our judgements instead on what the badge says about the driver, value for money and so on. Sure, not many magazines can afford to do crash testing like car companies do, but most have forgotten how to do any testing at all other than zooming up and down with stopwatches. Thank God a little Swedish magazine still does things properly.

Everyone else took it for granted that the A Class would be safe and steady, and talked instead about the space inside and the fact you could park a three-pointed star on your driveway for just £14,000. No one actually stopped to think, hold on, this is Mercedes’ first ever attempt at a front-wheel drive car. Let’s assume nothing. Let’s do a lane-change manoeuvre. Let’s wiggle the wheel a bit to see what’s what. It doesn’t matter what Mercedes do with the design of their new car now. The A Class is dead. And with it has gone the reputation of Britain’s motoring journalists.

We should all be sent to Iraq, but I fear that as the
F-15s sweep in from Turkey to post bombs through Saddam’s letterbox, we’d all be on the beach, filing copy about fine wines and nice cheese.

In Britain, the great European debate centres on two issues – tradition and trade.

One group says if the Queen’s head is removed from our banknotes, fire and pestilence will rain down from the heavens and a plague of locusts will infest Gordon Brown’s underpants. The other says this is jingoistic nonsense and concentrates on the implications for business, pensions and immigration. Frankly, it’s all so dull I’d rather eat cardboard.

But over dinner the other night with Wolfgang Reitzler, who is a significant oberlieutenant at BMW, I discovered that in Germany things are rather different. He said, ‘I am in favour of the EU because it would prevent another war,’ and I damn nearly fell off my chair.

I mean, my God, this is something I’d never even thought of. In Britain it is considered inconceivable that any two Western European nations could open hostilities with one another, but obviously the Germans are still looking wistfully at Poland.

So, frankly, I was delighted this week when I heard that BMW has added Rolls-Royce to its portfolio of British investments. The more they own over here, the less likely they are to drop bombs on us.

I was, however, a little upset by the £340 million that
Vickers seem to have accepted for what everyone seems to agree is the ultimate British brand. When you consider Rolls-Royce has just spent £200 million developing the new Seraph and its sister car the Bentley Arnage, it could be argued that the actual sale price is just £140 million.

But in fact it’s even less than that because remember, much of the £200 million went to BMW, who are supplying engines and various ancillary parts for the new cars. In real terms, BMW has bought Rolls-Royce for about 18p, which seems rather low.

Still, it’s all irrelevant because who’s going to buy a Rolls-Royce now that Mr Prescott is offering a 50 quid cashback offer on the road tax of a Daihatsu Cuore+?

This is a remarkable offer which I just know will have all of you perched on the edge of your seats. Secretly, I suspect, you’ve always wanted such a car, and now that it comes with New Labour’s seal of approval the temptation is almost too much to bear. So come on Clarkson, tell us. What is it like?

Well, it is 20 inches shorter than a Ford Fiesta and, amazingly, 7.5 inches narrower, which means you don’t ever have to worry about parking. You just put it in your briefcase. If you don’t have a briefcase, don’t worry, it comes with a carrying handle that’s been cunningly disguised as a rear spoiler.

However, despite the diminutive dimensions the + model I tested comes with five doors and enough space, even for 17 stones of me, behind the wheel. Indeed, it needs a big heavy driver or it would simply blow away in the breeze and you’d spend your entire life looking for it up trees.

I, however, tied it to some stones and spent the best
part of a day trying to find the engine. With the bonnet raised I climbed into the engine bay, initially dismissing what appeared to be a small matchbox nailed to the inner wing. This, however, was a mistake. This was the engine – all 850cc of it.

It only has three cylinders and produces a catastrophically miserable 42bhp, making it 30 per cent less powerful than a Mini. I suspect it is also 10 per cent less powerful than my Moulinex Magimix.

So, though I could fit inside, there was some question about the car’s ability to actually move me around. But it did. Obviously, I wasn’t going to build up much of a supersonic shock wave, but even though the 0 to 60 time of 16 seconds looks feeble on paper, it felt quite sprightly.

With the missing cylinder causing an imbalance in the matchbox, it sounds almost exactly like an air-cooled Porsche 911 which is rather endearing. But just as Porsche Man is shifting into second, Daihatsu Man is out of puff. I saw 85 on the clock once, but as I was being overtaken by continental drift at the time it’s possible the speedo may have been lying somewhat.

Of course, a car like this isn’t supposed to be fast, and nor is it supposed to go round corners very well. So it doesn’t. What did come as a surprise was the fitment in the luxury Cuore+ of electric windows, a stereo and, particularly, central locking. Why do you need central locking, pray, in a car where you can reach all four doors from the driver’s seat – with your eyelashes? I think I’d prefer the standard three-door Cuore which is £700 less expensive and comes with four wheels and a seat.

But either way, you are in for one very special treat. Even though I drove this little car with verve and aplomb
I managed to go 53 miles on one gallon of petrol, making it by far and away the most economical car ever to come under the command of my size nines.

It is also one of the cheapest. The Cuore+ is £7200 while the standard model is just £6500.

The only way you can do better is by fitting wheels to your rabbit hutch and attaching the motor from that juicer you never use. Or jogging.

Reviewing music has to be the hardest, most pointless job since Twinkletoe-Winkletoe Fffiennes walked to the North Pole wearing nothing but a dressing gown and slippers. Or something.

Imagine, please, being instructed to write about the latest All Saints album. You’d listen, hate it and say so. And a week later, all the 14-year-olds who took it to number one would burn your house down.

I could sit my mother in front of the stereo and play her ‘Life Through a Lens’ by Robbie Williams and she’d look like someone was using a staple gun on her nose. Ask me to listen to Joni Mitchell, and I have to put my finger in my ears and sing ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’ at the top of my voice. Tell me to review one of her albums and I’d say it was like chewing on polystyrene.

Cars are so much simpler. They’re either fast or slow, spacious or cramped, expensive or not so expensive. And reviewing them is a black-and-white science right up to the moment when you surge past, say, 60,000.

At this point, if you’re buying a car you’re not buying it for practical reasons. You’re buying a brand that you’ve dreamed about since you were two. And it really doesn’t matter if the brand in question has, in the meantime, become a joke. For some reason, the name ‘Bristol’ has just sprung to mind. And here comes another one: ‘Maserati’.

And then there’s the Porsche 911, which, of course, is emphatically not a joke. I have just spent a week with the very last of the old air-cooled monsters and it failed to raise a smile even once – a bit like Rory Bremner’s BAFTA presentation last weekend.

Now for some, the passing of the old 911 is right up there with the passing of Princess Diana. I have seen people weeping in the streets and threatening to hurl themselves off a tall building unless Porsche bring it back.

I, however, couldn’t care less because, at two, I dreamt about Ferraris and in the playground I would fight people from Planet Porsche. I would push their heads down lavatories until they admitted the 911 was smelly. Say it. SAY IT or I’ll give you a Chinese burn.

And as a result I now find it rather difficult to review this, the last of a breed, sensibly. I can tell you that it’s got a twin-turbocharged 3.6 litre engine which develops 450bhp. I can tell you that only 33 examples of this so-called Turbo S have been made and all are sold. I can tell you, too, that this car is supposed to be the ultimate 911, that it brings together everything Porsche has learnt from 35 years’ practice.

These are the facts… and now, here come the opinions. It is, without doubt, the scariest, nastiest, ugliest piece of donkey dirt that has ever graced my drive. The
only possible way you could have fun with this car is by dropping a lighted match into the petrol tank.

On the motorway, the ride is so firm it blurs your vision and in town, the ground clearance is such that some of the more vigorous speed bumps in the Socialist Republic of Hammersmith and Fulham brought it to a dead halt.

Sure, the technologically sophisticated four-wheel drive system would enable the Porsche to keep going in a ploughed field, but not with that nose – it’s so low it snorts the white lines off the road.

Then you’ve got a mixed bag of turbo lag, fearsome acceleration and brakes which inspire no confidence at all. Hit them gently and nothing happens – hit them hard and your nose slams into the windscreen, which is too close at the best of times. You don’t so much look through it as wear it like a pair of spectacles.

I truly hated this car and am glad it’s no longer in production. Indeed, I believe that the devil himself would drive such a thing.

So I was horrified to hear a man from Porsche say the other day that so long as there is a Ferrari, there will be a Porsche Turbo… which means that in the year 2000 we can expect a blown version of the new 911 – a car I quite like as it is.

Anyhow, that’s then and this is now and I’m still stuck, trying to review a car that’s about as much use as a CB radio in a Vodafone world.

So, in the interests of balanced journalism, I managed to find a five-minute gap in the Marquess of Blandford’s diary when he actually had a driving licence, and asked him to have a go. He is a huge 911 fan and approached
the egg-yellow monstrosity as though it were the Turin Shroud. ‘To drive the last of the air-cooled 911s,’ he whispered, ‘is a real privilege.’

One hour later he was back, beaming the smile of a man who’d been taken a little closer to Godhood. ‘You’ve got to understand a 911’s little foibles. If you really understand these cars, you will know that this is just the best of them all,’ he added bouncily.

He’s sitting behind me now, tied to the chair with a bar of soap in his mouth. And I won’t let him go until he stops calling my Ferrari a Fiat, and admits the worst car in the world is not, as we’d suspected, the Vauxhall Vectra.

For the first time in years you can now buy a brand-new car for less than £5000. It’s from Malaysia and it’s called the Perodua Nippa.

Now I want to make it plain from the outset that I have not driven this car, and there’s a strong possibility that I never will. I mean, if we live to be 70, we only have 600,000 hours to play with and I’m not prepared to spend even a tiny fraction of that in a car that has no radio.

Besides, it’s not that long since I spent a whole day playing with its rivals – a bunch of so-called microcars to delight Crasher Prescott and his team of weird beards.