Clarkson on Cars (29 page)

They take them to special tracks for specialised development work but no circuit in the world provides feedback quite so well as a real road in the real world. Not until you’ve actually overtaken a British-registered Volvo on a blind bend will you really know what it feels like to overtake a British-registered Volvo on a blind bend.

The locals know that at any minute, their rear-view mirrors may fill with the ground-hugging snout of a supercar, and they’re always ready to pull over and let it fly by, but the cars from out of town are not. And the test drivers don’t know which is which until they’re close enough to read the licence plate. And that, at 150 mph, is pretty close.

Furthermore, when the Ferrari test drivers run into their adversaries from Lamborghini, they just can’t help racing. ‘We try to slow down in the villages,’ said one. ‘To about 100 mph,’ he added, smiling.

This made my Adam’s apple wobble a bit because we were just about to set off with a Bugatti EB 110, a Lightweight Diablo and my steed for most of the trip, a brand-new Ferrari F355 Berlinetta.

And sure enough, we did some truly incredible speeds up that mountain. Up front, the rear wheels of the mighty Diablo were constantly spinning, its tail wagging from side to side as its exhausts barked the bark of a large and angry dog.

Twice we whistled past police cars whose occupants merely leant out of their windows to urge us onward. In the villages, children came running out of their houses to cheer. They’re used to seeing one supercar go by but not three and not doing the ton.

Now you may moralise and tut but this is Italy, and Italians love to see fast cars being driven quickly. They cannot see how such a thing could be a crime. And besides, this is a peasant farming district whose only claim to fame in the outside world is the fact that three of the planet’s five supercar makers are based there.

The car they liked most was the £300,000 Bugatti, a remarkable looking brute with a 3.5-litre V12 engine that is force-fed by an incredible four turbochargers. When they cut in, you really do need the four-wheel drive because the whole car seems to squirm under the onslaught.

But they don’t cut in until the engine is past 4000 rpm and that can be a huge nuisance. Truth be told, the Bugatti left me feeling a little bit cold.

The Diablo, on the other hand, did not, because it was 94 degrees in the shade and its air-conditioning system had the same effect as someone blowing through a straw.

Couple that to non-power-assisted steering, a gearbox that blistered my hand after half an hour and a clutch that appeared to have been set in cement and you will understand when I tell you I very nearly drowned in my own perspiration.

This, too, is an expensive car at £175,000 but it comes with no creature comforts at all. Everything that is not essential has been thrown away to save weight so that the 5.7-litre V12 has less work to do for more rewards.

It’s a 200-mph car but that’s all academic because it is so damn frightening and noisy and vibratory that only the terminally insane would ever dream of keeping the throttle hard down for more than a second or two. It’s fun for a while, like a roller-coaster ride at Alton Towers, but day in and day out: thank you, but no thank you.

There are no such problems in the car I drove for most of that two-day thrash. The Ferrari 355 is, without any question or shadow of doubt, the most complete sports car I have ever driven. Nothing even gets close.

Visually, it looks pretty similar to its predecessor, the 348, but there’s now a little spoiler at the back, a completely flat undertray and some beautifully sculptured air intakes. Pininfarina has made a pretty car ravishing.

The engine is still a V8 so you can still potter around town in fourth gear with no fuss, but it now has five valves for each of those cylinders so that it will reach 9000 rpm with absolutely no drama at all. Of course, it is nowhere near as fast as the other two – with a top speed of just 183 mph – but then it is nowhere near as expensive either. It’s yours for around 80 grand.

The interior is trimmed in leather with all the switches on the centre console, clustered around the six-speed gear lever. And it all works just fine, though you still have to sit with your arms outstretched and your knees three feet apart.

It’s a small price to pay though because this car just flies. Through the bends, I could see the Bugatti driver struggling to keep the turbos spinning and the Diablo was wandering around all over the road, but the Ferrari just grips and goes.

When a bend tightens up more than you think it will, you just turn the wheel some more and there isn’t even a chirp of protest from the tyres. Floor the throttle too early, and the tail swings wide, but it’s a slow, graceful, easy-to-catch response that will not baffle even the most butterfingered driver.

You can flip the suspension on to a sports setting but even Nikki Lauda says this is a waste of time on normal roads.

I pushed that car with the sort of vigour I normally reserve for vegetarians at dinner parties yet, unlike the beardies who only need one prod to fight back, the Ferrari just kept on taking the punishment, hurling itself from bend to bend as though it had been fired from a steam catapult. It was dynamically perfect.

Ordinarily, I treat supercars with a certain amount of admiration but they tend to be a bit like Chinese food. Delicious when you’re in there but perhaps a bit forgettable. I’ll never have a Diablo or a Bugatti so who cares what they’re like.

But the Ferrari costs less than a house and is therefore realistic. It is now my only real goal in life. One day, I shall buy a 355.

The more you pay for a car, the less reliable it will be.

And it’s not just cars either. My old Casio watch used to be second perfect, week in and week out, but the Breitling that’s replaced it sheds nine seconds a day and sometimes stops completely in the night.

My £8 Zippo is capable of lighting cigarettes in a hurricane but the Dunhill I take out on posh-frock nights refuses to ignite if someone on the other side of the room is waving their arms around a bit.

I have an Umberto Ginocchietti jacket which has worn through at the elbows in less than a year, yet my Lee Cooper jeans are unburstable.

And so it goes on. I read about a woman the other day who has enjoyed 120,000 trouble-free miles in her Daihatsu Charade, yet the new McLaren, which costs more than half a million pounds, broke down on its first-ever journalistic road test.

Prince Charles suffered the ultimate ignominy the other day when his brand-new £150,000 Aston Martin Virage Volante conked out, rather conspicuously, on the Cromwell Road.

We may all drool over a Ferrari but if you used one every day, its engine would go out of tune and then break altogether. You would grow to hate the steering which is more stubborn than a dog which doesn’t want to go to the vet’s, and the gearbox, which is heavier than a washing machine.

But this is part of the appeal. You’ve got to be some kind of triangular-torsoed he-man to drive a Ferrari, and you have to be rich enough to have another car for the other six days in a week. You only take the Ferrari out on special occasions – that’s what makes it special.

If you have a car that you can use every day, it will be an everyday car; humdrum, and tedious. Unless it’s a Porsche.

Porsches are unique as they, like no other cars made, blend quality with sophisticated get up and go. And I have to say that some of them, these days, are pretty good value for money.

The 968 Club Sport does not have much in the way of creature comforts but you find me a more invigorating coupe for less than £30,000. And all you lot at the back with your Mazdas and your Toyotas can put your hands down now. They are not in the same league.

The 911 too is something of a bargain. I recently spent the weekend with an egg-yellow Carrera convertible which can haul itself from 0 to 60 in five point something seconds. It sounded great. Yobs spat at it. Taxi drivers asked if I’d swap. And yet it costs a mere £59,000 which is £20,000 less than the equivalent Ferrari.

Now, I’m no great fan of the 911. It’s 31 years old and in some ways, you can tell. The dash was put together during a game at a children’s tea party, and a blindfold was involved. And I reckon the new suspension is a triumph of engineering skill over a flawed design. That engine simply shouldn’t be where it is.

Furthermore, the latest version, which was launched six months ago, has a pair of headlights which make the whole car look like a startled rabbit. And it’s just too easy to drive; the steering’s too light, the clutch is no harder to depress than a member of EXIT and changing gear is no harder than stirring soup. The end result is a car that just doesn’t feel special enough even if you have just gone round a corner at 150 mph and all the girls in the street are trying to leave their phone numbers under the windscreen wipers.

Me, I’ve always preferred the Porsche 928, the Big Daddy. At £73,000, it is reassuringly expensive and it is capable of achieving speeds far in excess of what is practically possible.

It also has a proper engine where engines should be – at the front. Lift the bonnet and you are greeted with the sight of a huge 5.4-litre, quad-cam, 32-valve monster which sends 350 brake horsepower to the back wheels through a rear-mounted five-speed manual gearbox. Or, in my case, a four-speed automatic. This is all good beefcake stuff.

And when you climb inside, it gets better. Whereas most cars have measly pieces of wood which aren’t big enough to make a pencil, this has two dirty great slabs, like upended coffee tables, on each door. And the massive, swooping dash is just delightful.

There are, of course, plenty of toys but it’s what controls them all that I love – knobs the size of ice-cream cones. To turn the lights on, you grab a great fistful of rubberised plastic and give it a big old twist. Perhaps that’s why there’s no CD player – too fiddly, too high tech: not beefy enough. I’m surprised it doesn’t have an eight track.

So far then, it’s like motorised rock music: big, honest, down to earth and heavy. That body – a familiar sight now that it’s been around for seventeen years – is just enormous; so wide that parking meter bays are too narrow by 18 inches, and long too.

Sitting inside, you feel cocooned so you find yourself trying to squeeze into spaces that turn out to be five feet smaller than necessary. It’s a good job that bumperless front end is damage resistant because you just can’t see it, or the back, or the sides. The last time I drove a 928, I crashed it, and driving this new one, I can see why – you can’t see where its enormous body stops.

Happily, the engine is powerful enough to make light of the resultant weight. Prod the loud pedal, and immediately, the rear wheels chirp and lose traction, only being brought back into line by the various silicon chips. A green light comes on to tell the driver when the traction-control computer has just kept him out of a hedge.

The first time I went out for a spin, I dived into a small gap on the Wandsworth Bridge roundabout and such was the almighty leap forward, I couldn’t help whooping out loud.

I’ve driven faster, more nimble cars but what I love about the 928 is its old-fashioned muscle.

Fair enough, the ride is far too hard and the steering could do with a bit more ‘feel’, but when you put your foot down and that raucous engine begins to sing its good ol’ V8 song, you tend to forget about the various shortcomings.

Who cares about the microscopic boot or the joke rear seats. The back may well sing tenor but the front sings baritone.

And though £73,000 is a lot of money, it’s important to remember that this is half what Aston Martin charge for the similar, though even more brutal, Vantage and £60,000 less than a Ferrari 512TR.

With that in mind, I began to formulate a pretty good case for the German equivalent of Giant Haystacks, until I remembered the Corvette. Here is another 2 + 2 coupe with a big V8, a hard ride, and prodigious power which is now available with right-hand drive for £45,000.

There’s no doubt the Porsche is built to higher standards than the Chevrolet and that, curiously enough, is where my argument falls flat on its face.

The more you pay for a car, the less reliable it will be. Unless it’s a Porsche.

The Highway Code is a very useful document but only if you accept that all other road users are friendly, cheery, obedient, Dixon of Dock Green type characters. Which they aren’t.

So here is a Highway Code for the real world.

Confusing, this, as it could mean any of four things:

Hello, I am a friend of yours. Please feel free to pull out in front of me. Get out of your car and let’s do pugilism. Look out, there’s a police radar trap ahead.

Much easier. If it’s a series of short toots, then someone friendly is trying to attract your attention. Your response is an omni-directional wave. If it’s a prolonged burst, then someone somewhere thinks you’re an onanist. Put your foot down and get out of there.

When the car in front is indicating left, beware. If it’s a Datsun, with a large floppy aerial on the boot, then you are behind a mini-cab driver who is lost. A left-hand indicator could mean that he is going straight on or right or even that he is not, in fact, going anywhere at all. What it definitely means is that he is NOT going left.

In towns, when at a multi-lane junction with traffic lights, never, ever, ever pull up behind a Nissan Micra. The driver will still be searching for his long-distance spectacles when the lights go green. Then he will forget to depress the clutch before trying to select first. Then he won’t have the strength to disengage the handbrake.

Run them down. Pedstrians must learn that they don’t pay road tax and have no right to be milling around on something that isn’t theirs.

Run them down and to make sure, back up and run them down again. Cyclists must be taught that they should stick to the side of the road and not try to weave around in the middle of it. Some even believe they’re so fast that they’re not being an inconvenience. Run them down to prove them wrong.