Born to Be Riled (32 page)

After the budget in which Golden Brown said he’d provide a £50 cashback offer to those who bought a small, clean car, I thought I’d better wise up on this new
breed of city car, to see if £50 was enough of an incentive to entice people out of their BMWs and into a wheeled shoe-box.

Let’s start with a car that’s ghastly – the Suzuki Wagon R. Powered by a 996cc engine, you don’t expect it to be the fastest car in the world, and it doesn’t disappoint. It isn’t. With a top speed of 87mph, it is exactly half as fast as the Porsche turbo I wrote about last week – and, unbelievably, it looks twice as daft.

It’s very narrow, very short and for some extraordinary reason, very tall. I, for instance, enjoyed a good foot of headroom, but why? The only people who could possibly need such an enormous amount of space above their heads are people who wear bearskins, and let’s be honest here – a guardsman spends all day standing in a Wendy house so why should he want to drive home in one?

So, unless you enjoy being laughed at, avoid this stupid Suzuki like you would avoid unprotected sex with an Ethiopian transvestite.

I wouldn’t mind, but it isn’t even desperately economical, which, surely, is the whole point of a small car. The cheapest model costs £7400 and only does 47mpg.

Which is why I was led to the door of the 1-litre SEAT Arosa, which costs £6995 and does, as near as makes no difference, 50mpg. Now this looks like a normal car and goes like one too. With determination and a hill, you could do 100mph.

I still think the Daihatsu Cuore+ is a better bet, for all the reasons I outlined a month ago – four doors, low price, greater economy, etc.

But since then we’ve heard news of a new small Fiat called the Seicento, that Perodua, a Volkswagen version
of the Arosa and, at long last, a replacement for the Mini. Having failed to make cars run on electricity, hydrogen, runner beans or any other fuel of the future, car makers have obviously decided to give us half what we’re used to.

And this is bound to have an effect. You’re bound to be impressed with the promise of halved fuel bills, halved insurance and easier parking in a car which can now be had for less than five grand.

But there is one significant drawback to these cars. Basically, if you crash a microcar there’s a greater chance of dying than if you crash something large.

It’s all very well saying that these are city cars, and that you’re only likely to be doing 7mph at the time of impact, but come on; from time to time you will take them on the motorway, where their miserable acceleration will put them in wheel-to-wheel combat with Scania Man.

And while you may marvel in a showroom at how the bodywork of these cars seems to have been moulded to fit your body, consider this. Your feet are no more than 2 feet from the front bumper. Your shoulder is jammed against the B pillar and your children’s heads are perilously close to the rear tailgate.

Last week, the chairman of Jaguar climbed unscathed from a Daimler that had barrel-rolled several times up a motorway embankment. And I feel sure that if he’d been the chairman of Perodua, or Suzuki or any of the others, he’d have been drinking through a straw for several months. Or playing a harp.

America is currently awash with statistics, one of which suggests that you’re four times more likely to die in a small car than a Range Rover. Another says that as downsizing
takes hold, up to 3900 more people will be killed on the roads each year.

But statistics can be moulded to say anything you want, so let’s ignore them and concentrate instead on simple laws of physics. I think it was Isaac Newton who said that if you crash a big car, you’ll be better off than if you crash a little one.

Actually, I might have made that up but I’m sure he would have said it, if he’d been good at sound-bites and aware of the car.

So, here’s the deal. Don’t swallow the government’s line on small cars. The whole point of environmentalism is the preservation of life – but what’s the point of helping to save the trees if you wind up dead after running into one?

If you’re limited by budget, don’t buy a new small car. Buy a used big one.

Since Rover fitted chrome kickplates to its mid-range saloons, the British fleet market has been left to Ford and Vauxhall. Vauxhall made the early running with all sorts of new and exciting products – the Frontera, the Calibra and the Tigra, which, we were told, went from concept stage to production in 14 minutes. Ford, meanwhile, were fast asleep. They’d hit us with the new Escort in 1992, but it was such a dog people were surprised it didn’t have a tail. Then there was the Probe. A nice enough coupé, but we all knew it cost £28.50 in America and couldn’t see
why it was more than 20 grand here. To fight the Frontera, they teamed up with Nissan – always a mistake – and launched the Maverick, which was ugly and hopeless.

But, all of a sudden, things began to change. It turned out the Frontera was built like an Airfix kit and so was less reliable than Israeli politics. And when the launch-time brouhaha around the Calibra and Tigra died down, people began to notice that, as driver’s cars, they fell some way short of the mark. Indeed, the mark was in Latvia and these things were just outside Leamington Spa. Things went really pear-shaped, though, when the Cavalier won the British Touring Car Championship. Great – except it walked off with the laurels at exactly the same time as it went out of production. Its replacement brought the whole house of cards tumbling down. The Vectra was unpleasant to drive, uninspiring to behold, not especially cheap, and took tedium to unprecedented heights. If Vauxhall can be likened to Manchester United, the Vectra was a performance that would have guaranteed a 4–0 defeat at the hands of Doncaster Rovers. Using football analogies, actually, is a highly dangerous game because I know nothing about it, but I’ll give it a go. Just like Vauxhall ‘gave it a go’ with the Vectra. Right now, watching Ford and Vauxhall slug it out is like watching a game of soccer. Both teams field 11 players, with some geared for attack and some for defence.

Ford’s new star of the front row is the Puma, which can run rings round the Tigra – bad news for Vauxhall, whose Calibra has been sent off just as Ford substitute the tolerable Probe with the amazing Cougar.

Out on the wings the Frontera is still falling to pieces while the Maverick spins its wheels in wet grass, so we’ll
call that one a draw. But there’s no doubt the Explorer is a damn sight more able than that Japanese player, the Monterey. It’s the same story on the other side of the pitch, where the Sintra is made to look wooden by the Galaxy – even though identical players are on offer for much less money elsewhere. Vauxhall gain a little ground in the midfield because while the Omega and Scorpio are equally talented, there’s no way you could raise additional funds by flogging posters of the Ford to teenagers. It doesn’t matter, though, because in the midfield Ford scores its biggest trump of the lot – the Mondeo. Even if Vauxhall’s front row could break past Ford’s, the Mondeo would stop them dead. The Corsa, too, is no match for the Fiesta, and Ford even provide the ball, in the shape of the Ka.

And now we come to the defence. Ford has the Escort, and Vauxhall has the Astra. And both are utter crap. They just bumble about, earning both teams a poor reputation for shoddy, unimaginative thinking. However, both are about to be pensioned off to run bars in the East End, allowing new, and apparently fresher, players to take over. For Vauxhall, the new Astra is critical. At the moment, their entire team is out of date or useless, or both. Ford’s army of fresh-faced attackers has a clear run of the whole pitch. If the Astra works, however, the blue-and-white team from Essex will be in trouble. They have a great front row and a stronger midfield but they’ll be up against a great defence.

One of these days, Vauxhall is bound to wake up. Two years ago, Man United would have beaten Derby without trying. But today?

Ford has to remember they’re up against General
Motors, which has slightly more money than God. And in the end, as Fulham are about to prove, money is what matters.

As I see it, there are three possibilities after death – heaven, which should be very nice; nothingness, which will be just like sleep; or hell, which no longer concerns me.

I don’t care what foul vat of sewage has been dreamt up by Lucifer because it cannot possibly be any worse than life on board an American aircraft carrier.

As you were heading for work on Monday morning, I was on board what looked like a winged washing machine, outbound from Norfolk, Virginia, to the nuclear-powered, 100,000 ton USS
Dwight D Eisenhower
, the biggest, fastest warship the world has ever seen.

Now I’ve talked before on these pages about the braking ability of a Porsche turbo, which goes from 70mph to 0 in 2.8 seconds. But that’s nothing. My plane, which was called a ‘cod’ and flew like one, hit the deck at 175mph and was stationary two seconds later.

Picking bits of spleen from the inside of my float-coat, a loud and hectoring sailor ushered me from what he called ‘the most dangerous place on earth’ – the flight deck of a carrier – into what I now know to be the
worst
place on earth – the bowels of a carrier.

A crew of 5000 live down there, spread over 17 decks which are interconnected by 17 miles of corridor, 66 ladders and a thousand watertight doors on which you bang your head.

There are no open spaces to sit and chill out. You aren’t allowed to have sex with the 500 women. Everything is fashioned from steel. And there are no windows. Then there’s the total lack of privacy, even when you’re on the lavatory, and the constant, deafening noise, 24 hours a day, for month after interminable month.

To get even the slightest idea what life is like for these sailors, imagine being locked into the back of a steel container and driven around on the back of an articulated lorry for six months. For company you have two eight-year-olds, one of whom is learning the recorder, and the other the violin. Then there are 30 young men with spots who shout at one another all day, and night, and for good measure one bloke who follows you around blowing a hairdryer in your face.

On the
Eisenhower
I was allocated a guide who walked like Herman Munster and talked like Barney Rubble. He was not a bright man. If I asked him a question he would repeat it, very slowly, and then, before answering in navy gobbledegook, say, ‘Now let’s see.’

On the second day, the ship’s tannoy announced that an F-18 had suffered an engine fire and was limping back to the carrier on just one of its General Electric turbofans. Barney, however, couldn’t care less because I’d just given him $10 to settle an $8 bill and this was confusing the hell out of him. ‘Now let’s see,’ he said.

It all ended well though, and a booming voice rose above the violin practice to say the plane had landed safely and that everyone on the ship, including Barney, I presume, had done, ‘an outstanding job’. This happens a lot.

At four in the morning, you will be woken by the
booming tannoy: ‘Someone you have never met has done something you don’t care about in a part of the ship that you will never go to. Outstanding job.’

All I wanted was a drink and a cigarette, but there was one small hurdle that stood in the way – my fish/washing machine had to be attached to a steam catapult and hurled over the front of the ship.

Now this catapult is quite a thing. If it could be angled properly it would throw a Volkswagen Beetle 12 miles. But it was not angled and my cod weighed much more than a car. I just knew the plane would flop into the sea and tumble under the ship until it reached the stern, where the four 30 foot propellers would shred it, and me, into bite-sized chunks.

Here’s what happens. They attach the front wheel of your plane to what looks like a half-brick, which is then fired down 100 yards of track by a steam-powered piston. At the far end the wheel detaches itself and, hey presto, you’re airborne.

So in 100 yards, and just 1.5 seconds, I would accelerate from 0 to 175mph, and at long last we have a motoring flavour.

Apparently, there was some discussion at the very highest levels within BMW about the new M5. Burnt Fish Trousers himself was quoted recently, saying that there’s only a small gap between the current 540i and the physical limits of acceleration.

The Bee Em boffins were seriously concerned that they’d expend a great deal of time, energy and money designing an M5 which, in the end, would not be that much faster than a standard 540i.

But I’m delighted to say they went ahead anyway, and
really, they needn’t have worried about this acceleration business. Even if the new 400bhp car does 0 to 60 in a single second, which it won’t, it’ll be nothing compared to the power delivered by that steam catapult. Only by stepping into the path of an Intercity train could you have even the vaguest inkling of what it’s like. You’d die, of course, but don’t worry; that’s much better than having to spend time on a carrier, believe me.

You’re fast approaching middle age. You have a child. You live in London. All your friends live in London. You love London but those earnest men and women from the BBC’s Newsroom South East have planted the seeds of doubt.

Every night, they tell you that traffic has reached crisis point and that teams of scientists from the World Health Organization have found enough air pollution in Camden alone to kill every man, woman and child within a week. There’s anthrax in the Serpentine and a mugger in your wardrobe.

This has an effect, and you’re starting to wonder if maybe it’s time to move out. And then, one day, you pick up a copy of
Country Life
– the most dangerous magazine published today – and there, between the story about handkerchief makers and some bird with straw up her backside, you note that for the price of your four-bed-roomed house in Fulham you can buy Oxfordshire.

Instead of a backyard, you can have six buttercuppy
acres, an Aga, a barn, a brook and a wide and varied selection of something called reception rooms.