Don't Stop Me Now (28 page)

Think of it as an Aussie from the Outback. Maybe he can’t quote Shakespeare. Maybe he’s never heard of Terence Conran. But he can smash all the teeth clean out of your mouth with a single punch. That was the Monaro.

And now there’s a new version. At first glimpse the prospect is even more exciting because it has a restyled bonnet full of aggressive vents and holes, and because underneath it gets an even bigger engine. A 6-litre V8 from the last Corvette.

Sadly, all is not sweetness and light, because the Monaro is sold in America as a Pontiac GTO and the new version was designed specifically for Uncle Sam. That
means it’s all gone a bit soft. And for some extraordinary reason they’ve moved the 60-litre fuel tank to a point directly above the rear axle. This means the car’s handling will change, depending on how much fuel you have on board, and also that the boot is nowhere near as big as it should be.

So, does the extra power from the bigger engine compensate for this? Or is this the automotive equivalent of the American version of
The Office
: a good idea ruined by the Septics? To find out, I took it to a track and drove round and round until, as we know, my spine disintegrated.

The first thing worth noting is that the power isn’t delivered in a zingy, revvy, European way. It’s more a suet pudding than a champagne sorbet, but there’s certainly no shortage. And as a result you’ll go from 0 to 60 in 5.3 seconds and onwards to 185. That’s pretty quick.

The lazy engine certainly suits the whole feel of the car. It lumbers rather than darts, it feels heavy and lethargic. But then you might have said all this about Martin Johnson. And that really is the point of the big Vauxhall. It’s second row, not a winger.

The gearbox, especially, is worthy of a mention. The lever looks like it’s come from the bridge of a nineteenth-century ocean liner, and the effort needed to move it around is huge. But then this is a muscle car. It’s not for sheilas.

My favourite part, however – and you’ll only really trip over this on a track – is the way it goes round corners. The angles of oversteer it can achieve, thanks mainly to
its long wheelbase, are absolutely ludicrous, and, if you keep your foot planted, so too is the volume of smoke from the back wheels. If you have the mental age of a six-year-old, and I have, you would never tire of sliding this massive car from bend to bend.

In fact, after I wore one set of tyres down to the canvas, I went straight round to a tyre shop, bought two more, and then proceeded to wear those down to the canvas as well. This car is that much fun.

Of course, it’s not what you’d call luxuriously appointed. There are plenty of toys to play with, and lots of space for four, too, but the quality of the plastic and the feel of the carpets beggars belief. Until you look at the price. This car, this 6-litre V8 185 mph muscle car, is less than
£
37,000 – the same as a BMW 535 diesel.

Yes, the BMW is more of a quality product, but which would you rather have, a night out with a vicar or a few pints with your mates at the pub? When it comes to fun, the Monaro is truly wonderful, and it’s not bad at cruising either.

The seats are sublime, it glides over bumps, and at 70 mph the engine is barely turning over, so it’s quiet as well.

It all sounds great, but there’s one problem. You can still buy the original, harder, 5.7-litre car. Yes, this only offers up 349 bhp compared with the 6-litre’s 398 bhp. But you’re pressed to spot that difference on the road.

And here’s the clincher. The 5.7 is only
£
29,000. Put simply, there is no better bargain on the market today.

Thank you, by the way, for all your emails on the Ford
GT. There have been hundreds and hundreds. Now that I can’t go anywhere I have time to read them. And I’ll let you know what you’ve all decided.

Sunday 10 July 2005

Travelling. The unfortunate end result of internal combustion and jet propulsion. The scourge of the modern age. It’s dangerous, it’s time-consuming and it’s irretrievably boring.

In the olden days when men wore hats made from wolves, no one wasted their lives by travelling from A to B, because B was too far away. Now, though, people are quite happy to spend 10 hours in an aluminium tube, watching all their veins clog up with lard, simply so they get a tan.

When you are on a plane you are achieving nothing and you are not enjoying yourself, so you are wasting the most precious commodity you have: time. If you’re middle-aged now, you only have 200,000 hours left, and are you prepared to spend 20 of those being squashed, plus another 20 waiting to be squashed while someone confiscates your knitting needles? Especially as a recent survey found that, on average, the modern Briton now spends four years of their life in a car. That’s four years moving from place to place. Four years just travelling.

This is why I like cars that are fast. In the same way that an F-15 fighter can enliven air travel, a powerful engine can turn the most tedious slog into an adrenalin rush. I like the feel of G when a quick car accelerates, I
like the cornering forces as it slices through the bends, and I love the sense of danger when you pull out to overtake and you’re not sure you’re going to make it.

Drive quickly and you turn the act of travelling into an adventure. You make those four years in a car exciting. You give them a point. And you will arrive at your destination sooner, too, which means you have more time to have fun. Put simply, 500 bhp enriches your life.

Unfortunately, our present government has somehow arrived at the conclusion that it’s possible for there to be no accidents at all on the road, and that this can be achieved by removing the thrill of driving. So we’re being watched, and controlled and punished if we break its rules.

What’s more, ministers are saying that if we all drive around in Toyota Priuses at 17 mph we will save not only ourselves but the planet as well. They cannot see the car as a thrill machine. They view it simply as an alternative to public transport. And as a result it is becoming increasingly difficult these days to hurtle round a corner, because hidden in a bush on the other side is a civil servant in a van.

So, if we can’t go quickly in a bid to make travelling more fruitful, then we must turn our attention to other alternatives. And that brings me neatly on to the question of club class.

Flying in the front of an aeroplane does not make the journey pass any more quickly, but at least you don’t have to spend 10 hours with your face in a fat man’s armpit. The jump in price from economy to club is vast, but there’s no doubt in my mind that it’s worth every penny.

So does this apply on the road, I wonder. Is it worth spending
£
300,000 on a Rolls-Royce Phantom or a Maybach? Are they really three times better than a Mercedes S 55 AMG? And is the last word in automotive luxury a realistic alternative to power and speed and excitement? We shall begin with the Maybach 62, which nosed through the gates to my house, as requested, at 7.30 a.m. The rear arrived about 40 minutes later. It is a vast car this, more than 20 feet long and almost
6½
feet wide.

So I think it’s fair to call the back-seat area generous. It’s so generous in fact that, stretched out on one of the airline-style seats, my legs did not even touch the partition that separates those in the rear from the driver.

With barely a sound, the twin-turbocharged V12 engine whispered into life and off we went, with me already starting to experiment. After a while I had one television set showing a sat nav display and the other showing breakfast news. Then I found the fridge, the button to move the headrest just so, and both the mobile phones.

And then I found the roof. It’s made of photochromatic glass, which at the twiddle of a switch can be fully frosted, very frosted, not frosted at all or completely opaque. I liked playing with this feature. In fact, by the time I was bored with it we were in west London, at a set of lights where many Eastern European builders were hanging around waiting to be picked up by contractors.

I don’t think they liked me very much, so I pushed another button and closed all the curtains.

Ah, the curtains. They were hideous, unless your name is Hyacinth Bucket and even your bog-roll cosy is ruched. In fact, come to think of it, the whole car was hideous. The exterior styling, the polished wood, the chromed uplighters. It was like one of those really expensive cabin cruisers that back up to the harbour wall in St Tropez.

What’s more, in a brief idle moment I caught sight of the dashboard on which, picked out in the finest plastic, was the legend ‘SRS Airbag’. Just like you find on a Mercedes S-class. And that’s the Maybach’s biggest problem. When all is said and done, and there’s much to say and lots to do, it is only an elongated Mercedes. So I always think of it as bespoke tailoring from Marks & Spencer. Fine, I’m sure, but not quite the same as bespoke tailoring from Rolls-Royce.

There’s a lot less to do in the back of the Phantom, even in the new long-wheelbase version I tried. This is 10 inches longer than the standard car and about
£
30,000 more expensive. That’s
£
3,000 an inch, and that’s expensive. Every day I receive emails offering me extra inches for a lot less.

But when you climb into the back of this car and wade through an acre of thick pile carpet to your seat, let me tell you, it feels very good. Stepping out of the Maybach into this is like stepping out of a Sunseeker Camargue 47 and into the library at Blenheim Palace. Only with the most fabulous art deco fixtures and fittings.

Despite the BMW ownership these days, there’s nothing on the dash to suggest that this is anything but pure Rolls-Royce. You don’t have a rev counter, for instance.

Instead you get a dial telling you how much power the engine has in reserve. Even at speed it usually reads 95 per cent.

I’m sure the Phantom has an airbag, but there’s no sign advertising the fact. It’s probably a brown paper bag and arrives in the cabin after a discreet ‘Ahem’.

My test car was fitted with a Stuart. The Stuart’s ability to accelerate and brake without causing my champagne to fall over was remarkable, and in direct contrast to the Gary that was installed in the Maybach. The Gary hustled. If you’re in a hurry you need a Gary. The Stuart drove like a Buddhist butler.

And that sums up how the cars feel. In the Maybach you sense all the time that you’re connected to the road, that you’re in a car. Whereas in the Rolls you get the sense that you’ve been picked up by a huge velvet glove. In the Maybach I played. In the Rolls I dozed.

It had a computer and televisions, of course. But if I were to buy a Phantom I’d specify it with a nice coal fire and a chimney. It already comes with wingbacks.

I spent four wonderful days being driven around in these monsters and can report that they are a realistic alternative to speed. Yes, you can get home faster in a Ferrari, but in the back of a Maybach or a Phantom you are doing what you’d be doing at home anyway. Sitting back, watching the news, with a glass of something chilled.

Are they worth three times more than a top S-class Mercedes? Oh, absolutely. In the same way that a Gulfstream V is worth a damn sight more than a Piper Cherokee.

And now we arrive at the big one. Which is best? I’ve mocked the Maybach for being a jumped-up Mercedes, but that’s unfair. The sheer volume of gadgetry in its rear quarters means you quickly forget you’re on Mercedes suspension, behind a Mercedes engine. It is a wonderful way to travel if you are a northern businessman or a Kuwaiti or you have the mental age of a six-year-old. Which is not a criticism, by the way.

However, I would choose the Rolls. I like the engineering, I like the style, I absolutely adore the looks, but most of all I love the sensation that you’re inside something that was designed to be ‘the best car in the world’. I think, though, it’s more than that. I think that in these difficult and dark days it’s actually the best way to travel.

Sunday 24 July 2005

What with the bombs and everything, we haven’t really learned much about Britain’s big Olympic sports day. It’s almost as though the whole thing has simply gone away. But don’t worry. Behind the headlines, the organisers are hard at work and have already made one important decision. These will be a low-carbon, sustainable, public transport Games with no provision for any car parking whatsoever at any of the major sites.

Can you believe that? No, really. Can you honestly believe that with all the things that need to be achieved in the next seven years, the powers that be have decided that global warming is somehow the most important issue.

‘Right. We need to compulsorily purchase half of east London, we need to bulldoze it, we need to get some stadiums designed, we need to find some steel that isn’t on its way to Shanghai, we need to build a whole village for the athletes and we need to ensure nobody explodes. But first things first, comrades. Are we all agreed that these Games should be car-free?’ Don’t these idiots remember the Millennium Dome? Over the years, many enquiring minds have speculated on why this billion-pound umbrella failed. But there’s only one reason, really. Even if you wanted to see the multi-faith exhibits and
learn how a turd was made, you couldn’t get there. Because there was no car park.

Of course, those in charge of the Olympics will say that the Games give us a chance to show the world that London is a shining beacon of environmental responsibility… in the same way that London was a shining beacon of multiculturalism, right up to the moment when a small group of deranged Muslims started blowing themselves up on Tube trains. The Olympics are a test designed to quantify and celebrate human physical achievement. They are not an opportunity for a bunch of stupid, left-wing, weird-beard failures to make political points.

I make this prediction now. The woolly-pully brigade will be so busy over the next seven years ensuring that the Games are eco-friendly that they’ll forget to build a running track. And the health and safety department will outlaw the swimming pool on the basis that someone might drown.