Notes From the Hard Shoulder (9 page)

I've had the AA out five times in the last six months. Once for a motorcycle, twice for the Range Rover, once for the '70s Lamborghini and now for the 911. If I carry on at this rate I'll be blackballed and required to go into the club library with my revolver to do the decent thing.

Most
breakdowns are pretty tiresome – flat batteries, wonky starter motors, fuel-pump fuses and what have you. And on the whole they seem to occur when the car isn't even running, which invites comparisons with the old saw about the Christmas tree lights that were working when you put them away.

But the 911's was interesting because it resulted from the failure of a small electronic sensor on the crankshaft, the signals from which are vital to the function of the little computer that ministers to the engine. So when that went, everything packed up. There was no misfiring, no clattering, no precursor of dissent from the workings of the flat six, in fact no warning at all. One moment the 911 was functioning perfectly, the next it wasn't functioning at all.

There must have been an exact point in time, yet occupying no time in itself, that divided the era when the 911 worked from the era when it didn't. It was a good, clean breakdown.

Curiously, I'd been reading Ralph Barker's excellent
Brief History of the Royal Flying Corps in World War 1.
Engine failures were common in early aeroplanes, especially during the full-power stress of take-off, and the correct course of action was (still is, in fact) to pick
a field as near to directly ahead as possible and return to earth with the aeroplane in a reusable condition. The wrong course of action was to give in to the impulse to turn back to the airfield, which would usually result in a stall, a spin and a crash.

This bit of early aviation lore served me well on the dual-carriageway portion of the A4 near London. With the 911 suddenly, utterly and irrevocably dead in the outside lane, there were but a few seconds in which to choose a place to land. With just a few mph left on the clock, I rolled safely into the car park of a corporate complex.

Contrast this with the demise of my chum Hammond's ancient MG
Midget. That
breakdown was such a drawn-out and agonising episode that there was time for us to have an argument about it while it was still happening.

It was an early autumnal evening, the air crisp and damp; just the sort of air, in fact, that a simple carburetted British sports car engine likes to breathe. We bowled along past hedges and ditches, the gleaming road illuminated by the urine-yellow glow of the Lucas so-called 'headlamps'.

A shudder in the bowels of the thing presaged its end. But it was still running, just not quite as vigorously as before. Then another, and irrefutable indications that power was tailing away: the headlamps became even dimmer. 'Fuel pump,' he cried. 'No, no, ignition,' I retorted, above the howling, but diminishing, 35mph slipstream.

Now we were like the crew of a
Bristol F.2b Fighter, nursing our crippled kite back to base after
an encounter with the Baron. We could turn back to the petrol station where we'd just refuelled, and give ourselves up. Or we could drive on, fortified by the thought of a hot cocoa back at the Hammond mess.

Another lurch, as if the far end of a long rope paid out behind us had snagged on something. And then another. The Midget was clearly doomed and yet refused to go quietly, continuing to rage against the dying of the headlights. If this were a crash there would have been time to ring the insurer and describe the damage as it happened.

Of course, we didn't make it, but this time it was impossible to discern the precise moment when the engine gave out. It simply diminished to nothing, as the sound of a bell does. Like an old soldier, it just faded away.

For the early RFC fliers, battling against a prevailing wind that usually blew east, the risk was always that you'd come down in no-man's land. And now here we were, alone and in the dark, somewhere only marginally less dangerous – rural Gloucestershire.

Still, I like a good breakdown. I like the drama, the tension, the heightening of the senses as you seek through fingertips, buttocks and ears for signs that you might just get home. And I like the finality of the silence that comes afterwards, when I sit and await the curling echo that heralds the yellow van of my despair.

Little is of less consequence to the car enthusiast or general car consumer than the
UK motor industry's sales figures.

I mean, who really gives a stuff? So Jaguar sales are down 19 per cent, and Jaguar is apparently 'in crisis'. But a mate of mine has just bought one and he's chuffed to bits. Aston Martin sales were up 182.4 per cent, which is nice for them, but another mate has bought one of those and he's very cross, because it keeps conking out. Maybach sales were down 26.1 per cent, but should that put the prospective buyer off? Of course not. There are far better reasons for not having one, such as a Rolls-Royce Phantom (up 7.1 per cent).

I am indebted to
Autocar,
a magazine that once fired me, for the brightly coloured bar chart currently laid out on my desk. And although it is really of relevance only if you happen to own a car factory, it's strangely compelling reading. For example, last year 18,137 of you came up with a presumably sound reason for buying a Chevrolet-nee-Daewoo, or Chevrolaewoo, which is 18,137 more reasons than I can muster. Elsewhere, I am surprised to learn that 1,281 UK residents bought a Ssangyong in 2005. I'm not sure I've ever seen a Ssangyong.

But here's the thing I find really shocking. UK Lamborghini sales were down 56.9 per cent in 2005. This is a tragedy.

Now. I realise that percentages are dangerous and misleading, and that in a sales operation as small as Lamborghini's, a few cars one way or the other are
going to make a bigger percentage difference than they would at Ford (whose
Focus remained the nation's favourite, topping the table with
shut up).
We're talking here about total sales of 78, which means one extra Gallardo out of the door would represent an increase of 1.3 per cent, or better than Mercedes-Benz managed in
2005 despite selling 82,247 cars. See what I mean?

On the other hand, it still means that there were 100 fewer Lambos ushered out on to Britain's roads last year than there were in the year before, and that means 100 cars not available for small boys to point at and chase on bicycles. And that's not right.

My experiences with
Lamborghinis have not been good. After 25 years of waiting, I finally drove the legendary
Countach, pin-up of my boyhoood bedroom wall, and hated it with every fibre of my battered buttocks and bleeding eardrums. My
Uracco disintegrated. The
Diablo I borrowed was pink and became stuck in a side road. By the time we arrived at the
Murcielago, Lamborghini had become the geography homework of my motoring education, and I simply didn't bother.

Nevertheless, a Lamborghini remains my favourite of all the supercars I wouldn't buy. Nothing brightens up my day quite like spotting a Lamborghini, not least because it will probably be orange or lime green.

I can't help but have a sneaking regard for the sheer effrontery of these things. Ever since the 350GT of 1964, Lamborghini has been baring its bottom at Ferrari and singing nah nah nah nah nah, and has become the perfect antidote to all that tiresome old toot about race breeding and
passione.

Everyone knows
Feruccio Lamborghini was a tractor maker turned bad. There's an apocryphal story that he bought a Ferrari and thought he could do better; the truth – and I heard this from someone who knew him – is that the clutch burned out on his Ferrari and he asked one of his tractor mechanics to replace it. The spanner man later entered his office with the new component, pointing out that it was exactly the same as the one in their tractors but cost 10 times as much. Lamborghini then realised that he'd make more money from selling supercars to playboys than he would flogging mechanical horses to horny-handed sons of honest agrarian toil.

So a Lamborghini is an upstart, a pretender. But it's a bit like Charles Kennedy, in that we're obliged to disapprove but, secretly, we quite admire him. Ferraris are too often owned by uptight people who attribute great significance to some overtaking manoeuvre that occurred in a grand prix back in 1969.
Rod Stewart bought a Lamborghini, just as soon as he'd finished shopping for some leopard-skin trousers and hair product.

There are 100 like-minded people out there who didn't do the decent thing in 2005. Shame on you. I don't want a Lambo, but I want you to have one so that I can see it and smile.

I feel about Lamborghini the way I feel about the Salvation Army. I'm not a member, and I don't especially want anything to do with them. But I still like to think all that stuff is going on.

Once upon a time, you rode a
bicycle because you were either poor or still 12. Cycling was a simple matter back then: you bought a bicycle because it was the only way of getting around.

Today, of course, things are much different. Cycling has long since been hijacked as a socio-political movement by militants, and I know this because I was sitting in my local Chinese the other day, watching the stream of bicycles going past the window.

They were all being ridden not so much by people who needed to be somewhere but by people who wanted to draw attention to themselves. How can I be so sure? Because they were all in fancy dress, and you only appear in public in fancy dress because you're trying to make a statement. It's why the Fathers for Justice always turn up as Spiderman.

Unfortunately, the cyclists' statement seemed less compelling than the fathers'. It seemed to be either (a) I am an eco warrior of greater moral rectitude than you or (b) I'm stupid enough to spend £75 on an item of headwear that anywhere else would be regarded as a disposable medium for the shock-free transportation of television sets.

As someone who still enjoys a good bike ride, I'm saddened by this sort of thing. But then I saw something even more alarming. A chap pedalled past on a Porsche bicycle.

I'd completely forgotten that Porsche made bicycles. In one sense, of course, there's nothing remarkable
about it. The motor industry has always owed an incalculable debt to the bicycle, not least because it was the bicycle that gave ordinary people a taste for the personal liberty that led naturally enough to the desire for cars.

More significantly, countless car companies began life as cycle makers and only gradually progressed, often via motorcycles, to cars; in fact, there are few that don't have a rusty bicycle somewhere in the back of the corporate shed.

But I've decided that the only car makers who should be allowed to make bicycles today are those with an uninterrupted history of doing so. And the only one that would appear to qualify is
Peugeot.

What, exactly, is Porsche achieving by dabbling in bicycles? It would be tempting to think that with their expertise in manufacturing and their knowledge of new materials, they would be well placed to raise the state of the bicycle-making art. However, a quick trawl through the bicycle media suggests that Porsche bicycles are entirely conventional. All they have done is raised the state of the art of bicycle pricing: the most basic Porsche, the 'Bike S', costs £1,200, while at the top of the range is the Bike R Dura Ace, which is £3,900 and made of carbon-fibre.

This is the first thing that bothers me. Carbon fibre has become so hackneyed that people are making briefcases out of it, and for no other reason than that they can. It's nothing more than high-tech tinsel, and for a leading car maker to produce a perfectly conventional bike made from an exotic material is a bit like Hotpoint launching a titanium mangle.

What am I to make of a man who rides a lightweight Porsche bicycle? Obviously he's not interested in exercise, or he'd have bought a heavy one. Why not buy some lightweight carbon-fibre dumbbells, or pay a cub scout to go jogging for you? Again, I am forced to conclude that he's drawing attention to himself.

But, as the marketing people might say, the message his bike sends out is the wrong one. There are a lot of people out there who are riding bicycles because they have no choice.
Norman Tebbit's dad, for example. For a car maker like Porsche to produce an exclusive £3,900 bicycle is rather rubbing his nose in it. It's a bit like a member of the
That's Life
team spending the night in a cardboard box and claiming to understand the plight of the homeless.

This is what really annoys me about clever-dick car makers' bicycles. They're actually not clever at all. Given the luxury of being able to charge £3,900, anyone should be able to build a good bike. Much more impressive is what Dawes and
Raleigh does; that is, building good-quality and perfectly usable mountain bikes for a few hundred quid. For the same reason, the
Mazda MX-5 is ultimately a greater engineering and commercial achievement than a £250,000 supercar.

All things considered, the best bicycle in the world is still my
Brompton folder. It rides remarkably well for a bike actually designed to collapse, and it folds up much smaller than other folding bikes. It does what any bicycle does, and then something else as well, and is yours from around £370.

Incidentally, Brompton have never made a car. A part of me wishes they would.

I feel I should begin with an apology. On one end of my desk is a large blue folder marked 'reply to these', and in it are all those letters you've sent me over the last few months. Hundreds of the buggers. And, in contravention of my usual policy of accountability and openness, not one has gone answered.

I'm very sorry. I've been busy, I let it build up a bit too much and then it sort of got away from me. I don't have any envelopes and I'll need to buy hundreds of stamps, and since the 24-hour petrol station at the end of my road closed down, I don't know where to get them.

But I'll do it eventually. In fact, I can make a start now with a letter from
Phil Snook, who I've just realised was the biology teacher at my sixth-form college. His question concerns petrol consumption.

Which is the more economical way to drive in town, he wonders: to accelerate briskly between sets of red lights so that you spend longer with the engine merely idling, or to drive gently between them, which would mean less time spent at the next lights but more time working the engine?

Well, I like a bit of amateur physics and I think I know the answer to this one. The fact is – and it's one on to which most motorists have failed to cotton – that
braking consumes petrol.
In essence, the brakes work by converting the kinetic energy of the car (i.e. that which it has through motion) into heat at the brake discs. Maybe also a bit of heat in the tyres as well, if you've overdone it.

If you overdo it a lot and hit a tree, some of the kinetic energy of the car will be converted into noise and an inflated insurance premium. But either way it has to go somewhere because, as we know from Newton, it cannot be destroyed.

It cannot be created, either. So the kinetic energy of the car must have come from somewhere, and that somewhere is the petrol, which has energy locked in it waiting to be released by combustion and converted to motion through pistons and gears and what have you. So if you're thinking of braking heavily, maybe you should consider simply emptying a bit of your fuel tank on to the road and setting fire to it. At least you won't be wearing out the brake discs.

Therefore the most economical way to drive between the traffic lights is to accelerate at such a rate that the next set will have changed to green just before you get to them, thus removing the need to brake at all. And there you have it. I believe that was a lot easier than some of the questions we used to ask Mr Snook about 'biology'.

Unfortunately, this brings up a rather more sensitive question, namely, should we worry about saving petrol anyway? I think not.

Every time I do the arithmetic I come to the conclusion that saving petrol is pointless. I know we now have some of the most expensive gravy in the world, but the cost of it still amounts to a hill of beans compared with the real cost of owning a car.

This is true even of a supposedly depreciation-proof classic, as I have proved through scientific experiment with my old Bentley. It does 14mpg, and then only if I
drive like an undertaker, which makes it quite expensive to use. But maintaining it has ruined me, so the only real route to better economy is to get rid of it altogether. Trying to drive it economically would be fatuous.

So the old adage that says 'if you can't afford the fuel you can't afford the car' is probably as true as it was when it was coined, which was when four-star cost three-and-six and most British people only had one pair of shoes.

Here's what I honestly think. If you're the sort who regards motoring as a necessary evil, don't try to drive economically. Just buy a truly economical car, since they're generally cheap to buy and maintain as well, and drive normally. If you're a car enthusiast, forget the cost of fuel. Worrying about it is like an alcoholic drinking less to save money.

Trying to save fuel is a truly false economy, and for proof of that consider
WO Bentley himself. He advised that you should 'drive as if your brakes had failed', which I always took to mean 'drive in a gentlemanly fashion'. But now I suspect he was just trying to eke an extra few mpg out of a Speed Six.

And what good did that do him, eh? A few years after he wrote that, he went bust.