What Could Possibly Go Wrong. . . (10 page)

How you feel when you arrive somewhere in a car is more important than how you feel on the way. On the way, a car is just a tool, but when you get to your destination, and your hosts are waiting for you, and people you know are looking, that’s when the true value of your wheels shines through.

I went to a party the other night, and when I arrived, there were twelve Range Rovers already parked in the drive. Mine made it thirteen. This made me feel gooey and part of a club: like I’d read the social circles in which I move well and that I was keeping up. The drive to the party had been normal – a row about why it had taken my wife so long to get ready and some light rain – but the arrival was terrific.

However, then the fourteenth car arrived. It was my friend Alex. He screeched into the yard in a seven-year-old Renault Clio and that looked bad. He knew this. So to make up for the deficiency of the rust bucket, he didn’t just pull up and park. He kept his foot on the throttle, turned the wheel slightly and applied the handbrake. This was a cool thing to do, and it more than made up for the brownness of his wheels.

The fact is that, if you exclude the very cheap and the very expensive, all cars feel broadly similar to drive. A BMW and a Merc? Essentially, they are the same. A Renault and a Fiat? Same story. Look at the brakes on your car, then go and look at the brakes on your neighbour’s. Both sets are made by the same people in the same factory. And it’s a similar story with the power-steering system and the wiper motor and the shock absorbers.

Take the engine in your Mini Cooper S. You may think that it’s
lovingly hand-crafted by gnarled old men in Oxfordshire and that BMW is fiercely protective of its secrets. Not so. You will find the same engine in the Peugeot RCZ and the Citroën DS3 Racing.

And then there’s the Fiat 500. Lovely little car, so cute and chic and perfect. Except that if you peel away the body, it’s exactly the same as both the Fiat Panda and the Ford Ka. Do you want a Ford Panda or a Fiat Ka? Why not? They will drive and feel and go just like the 500. But they will not feel even remotely similar when you arrive at your friend’s house because your friend will not come out and go, ‘Aaah.’ As they would if you pulled up in the Fifties throwback.

All of this means that brand image is critical. But even more important than that is the styling. And that brings me on to the Mazda CX-7.

There are now many crossover 4x4 family school-run SUV MPV, whatever you want to call them, vehicles, and for the most part they are all absolutely terrible. Pull up at anybody’s house in any one of them and I can pretty much guarantee that no one will open the door. I’d rather be friends publicly with Piers Morgan than friends with someone who has a crossover car.

Crossover cars are for fools. They offer no more space inside than a normal family hatchback but they are perceived by the idiots who buy them to be tougher. Why? They are made from the same grade of steel and the same quality of plastic and they have the same suspension components. You are fooled by the high-riding stance into thinking that they have been built to take on the Kalahari but they have not. All the tall stance means is worse handling and inferior fuel consumption.

The trouble is that crossover cars do look quite good, in a Tonka Toy sort of way. They look better than a Ford Focus. More interesting. They are like accountants underneath but they are wearing lumberjack shirts and Timberlands. It makes them stand out. And just about the best-looking of all of them is the four-wheel-drive Mazda CX-7.

I love the flared arches and the way its window line tapers. If you were in the market for a car like this, you might well see one in your local town and think, Mmmm. That’ll do nicely. I’m with you. I liked the old model quite a lot, but the new one has a few issues. Take a deep breath – we’re going in …

First of all, you would imagine that, being Japanese, it is built to outlast Scotland’s mountains. Well, you will be disappointed to note that when you slam the doors, they sort of clang, and that when the electric window goes up, it crashes into the door frame with such a thud you think the glass will break. Oh, and the offside wiper hit the A pillar on every sweep, which was deeply irritating. It was more relaxing to drive in the rain with the wipers turned off, seeing where I was going using nothing but the Force.

Then there’s the gear change. First, third and reverse are separated by a millimetre, so every time you set off you don’t really know whether you will go forwards, go backwards or stall.

And stall you will, because the turbocharged diesel engine is woeful. They say it will get from 0 to 60 in eleven seconds, which raises the question: sixty what? Certainly not miles per hour. There doesn’t even seem to be much in the way of torque, normally a pleasant by-product of diesel motoring. On even the slightest incline, you need to change down. Which normally means engaging reverse by mistake.

Mazda says the CX-7 produces less nitrous oxide than just about any other car made, which is lovely. But that’s like saying it produces very few eggs or rice pudding. All anyone cares about these days is carbon dioxide. That’s what the tax is based on, and on that front it produces a lot.

And don’t think you can get round all these problems by buying a petrol version with an automatic gearbox. Because there’s no such thing. It’s a diesel manual. Or something else.

I haven’t finished with the problems yet. The satnav screen is the size of a Third World postage stamp, the boot is even smaller
and there is only enough room in the rear for people who have lost their legs.

Now this might just be acceptable if the car were small. But it’s chuffing massive. So big that it would not fit into the parking space in my local underground car park. I even struggled to fit it into a standard London meter bay. And to make matters worse, you cannot see any of the corners from the driver’s seat.

So, big on the outside, small on the inside, badly made, ill-conceived, woefully slow, hard to drive and I wish that were an end to it. But no. It’s also uncomfortable.

The only good thing, apart from the alluring looks, is the price. Considering the equipment provided as standard, it’s not bad. But that, be assured of this, does not make it good value.

It’s strange. Because most cars these days are fundamentally the same, I thought the days of the truly bad car were a thing of the past. There are boring cars and ugly cars and slothful cars. But bad? Outside America, I haven’t driven one of those for years.

I have now, though. So if you must have a CX-7 for whatever reason, please remember to take a leaf out of my mate’s book. Arrive everywhere in it with a handbrake turn.

31 July 2011

The biggest problem with really fast cars these days is that they are way too fast. I was made aware of this recently when driving the Lotus T125, a sort of quasi Formula One racer.

It is capable of accelerating so savagely that when you put your foot down, your head comes off. And it brakes with such ferocity that all your internal organs become detached and your face squelches into the front of your helmet.

Think of a corner that you encounter on the way to work. Any corner you like. And think of the speed you drive round it. Well, if you tried to do that corner at that speed in the Lotus, there would not be enough air passing over the wings to generate downforce. So you’d crash and be killed.

You have to take the corner you have in mind at a speed that is insane. And it’s hard to convince your mind that this is possible. You know that if you lift off, you will die. But you also know that if you don’t lift off, you will die. It’s all very terrifying.

And in a Lotus T125, no one can hear you scream, partly because your larynx has been crushed and partly because you’ve just trodden on the accelerator pedal and your head’s come off again.

Happily, you cannot take this car on the road. But you are allowed to drive about on Britain’s highways and byways in a V8-powered Ariel Atom. This is like being licensed to drive a horse that is propelled by a Saturn V rocket. You accelerate. You hit a tree. Your head comes off.

And it’s not alone. A modern Ferrari comes with a telephone connection and iPod connectivity and electric windows. So it’s
like the perfectly reasonable-looking man at the school gates with a bag of sweets. Apparently harmless. But if you make the mistake of getting inside? Well, it’s going to be ugly.

I cannot think of one yard of British tarmac where you could sensibly put your foot down in a modern Ferrari. Not one. Because by the time it’s gone through second gear, it’s broken even our most relaxed speed limit, and by the time you’re through third, your head is in the boot.

A lot of people wonder why
Top Gear
films these really fast cars on an airfield. The reason is simple. On a road, almost all of them are borderline idiotic. And that’s why I was so pleased to climb on board the BAC Mono this morning. Because it isn’t.

BAC is the world’s newest car company. I first heard about it last year and I must confess, I smiled. It had based itself in Cheshire and I thought, I see. So, soon we will be treated to the first car made entirely from onyx. I expected it to have gold fixtures and fittings and a stone dog by the door.

It didn’t turn out like that at all. To get inside, you remove the steering wheel and then lower yourself into the single seat until you are completely wedged. All you can move are your feet and your hands. It’s like you’ve been tinned. You then pull on your helmet – it would be silly to drive it without one because you might be hit in the face by a bee – and start it up. It all feels very racy. And a bit scary.

This car was designed to look like an F-22 Raptor and it’s festooned with all sorts of imagery and branding from the world of motor sport. The F3-spec gearbox is from Hewland. The brakes are from AP Racing. The pushrod suspension is from Sachs. You fear that if you even go near the loud pedal, you will die, terrified and alone.

Its maker claims it can get from 0 to 60 in 2.8 seconds and onwards to a top speed of a billion. So, with much trepidation, you start it up. There’s an explosion of noise behind you and the steering wheel comes alive with readouts that you don’t understand. You push the neutral button with your left hand and pull
a paddle with your right to engage first. There’s an almighty clunk. You have just booked an appointment with your executioner.

You engage the clutch. The car moves. You change into second. There’s another enormous clunk. The executioner is on his way. So you think you may as well get it over with and open the taps.

What happens next is odd. You know you are moving very quickly indeed but you feel like it’s a speed you can handle. Perhaps that’s because you are always aware that while the 2.3-litre engine was made by Cosworth, it is basically the same four-cylinder unit Ford uses in its Galaxy. And there is nothing on God’s green earth less scary than a people carrier.

Still, there’s a corner looming and you know what happens when you try to do one of those in a car that weighs about the same as a hot-water bottle. It goes straight on. So you brake, and you notice straight away that the Mono doesn’t pitch forwards. Then you turn the wheel and it doesn’t roll, either. It stays level.

In the next corner, you try a little harder and it’s the same story. This gives you the confidence to really push and there are no unpleasant surprises at all. Because the engine and the gearbox and you are all in a line, low down, right down the middle of the car, it handles absolutely beautifully. There’s a whiff of understeer to let you know that you’re getting near to the limit, but a little more power corrects this and you end up cornering like Fangio, in a controlled four-wheel drift.

And because the speed of the thing feels manageable, you can concentrate on what you’re doing rather than not dying. With most cars of this type – the Caterham 7 Superlight and the Atom, for example – you need to know what you’re doing or they will kill you. But in the Mono, a complete numpty could manage, no problem at all.

There’s more good news, too. It is designed so that it can handle speed bumps. It has lights and indicators and there’s even a boot that is big enough for your helmet. It’s a road car. Of
course, if you use it on the road, where there are other people, you will look a bit foolish. But the fact is you can.

Of course, it’s not cheap: £79,950 is a lot for a one-seater car that has no radio, windows, satnav or even carpets. But that said, a similarly specced V8 Atom is £146,699.

Sadly, though, there were a few flies in the ointment. First of all, I experienced a small fire. And then the gearbox broke. And then the engine decided it wouldn’t work at all below 4000 rpm. All of this was very bad, but in BAC’s defence, this was a prototype, work-in-progress car. Deliveries don’t start for a little while so it still has time to, I dunno, move the carbon trim a little further away from the hot exhaust tail pipe.

If BAC can get it all working properly, it’ll be great. The only really fast car that isn’t actually too fast.

Neill Briggs, the engineering director of BAC, said, ‘The exhaust trim that started smouldering when Jeremy pushed the prototype car to its limits – and watching Jeremy put a car through its paces is an impressive thing – was temporary. It will be replaced in the final version of the car and we’re confident that the minor problems he experienced will be sorted out.’

14 August 2011

Don’t you think it’s strange? You buy a BMW one day and you are told that it is the ultimate driving machine, that it is all about balance and grip and immediacy. Whereas the very next day you are told that exactly the same car is all about joy. It was designed and built to be happy and to make you happy as a result. Welcome to the world of advertising.

Volkswagen’s advertising agency told us for years that its cars were very reliable. But then the agency decided that actually you don’t buy a VW because it’s well made; you buy one because it’s cheap. Right? So. Has there been a philosophical sea change at the factory in Wolfsburg? Or has there been a meeting in Soho?

In the olden days engineers would tell advertisers what they had made and advertisers would pass the message on. Now it’s the other way round. Advertisers tell us what the engineers were thinking. Even when it’s plainly obvious they weren’t.

Do you really think for a moment the new BMW 5-series was built with ‘joy’ in mind? It’s German. And in Germany the word for ‘joy’ will almost certainly be 16 miles long and mean, literally, ‘the unusual and unexplained phenomenon that occurs in your inner being when someone of your acquaintance accidentally slips on a banana skin’.

All things considered, the current BMW 5-series is possibly the best car on sale today. It is handsome and well made and spacious and economical and comfortable and fast. It is a brilliant driving machine. But it is about as joyful as a technical lecture on the inner workings of a telephone junction box.

Things on the advertising front are particularly difficult for
Mercedes. It knows that its two-seat convertible models are particularly popular among women. This seems to annoy the marketeers. So with the SL we had Benicio Del Toro hammering through the desert, and with the SLK we had a good-looking chap being chased by what appeared to be the god of thunder. And neither worked. The cars remained very popular with girls. I shouldn’t be surprised if the next ad showed a docker spitting and scratching his backside. Before we cut to the pack shot: an enormous scrotum.

The only ‘lifestyle’ ads that match the car they’re promoting come from Honda. ‘Isn’t it nice when things just work?’ The message is simple. We don’t do fuss. We don’t do flimflam. We are sensible. And that’s what Hondas are. Sensible.

Because they are so sensible, my shoulders sagged quite a bit when I walked out of the house last Monday morning to find that a brown Accord with a diesel engine was sitting in the drive. I had many miles to cover that week and, frankly, I didn’t fancy doing any of them in the motoring equivalent of wholemeal bread. So I loaded up the boot of my Mercedes and took that instead.

Sadly, the following Monday, the Accord was still there and I was overcome with guilt. So, with a heavy heart, I climbed inside, fired up the motor, pointed its sensible, car-shaped nose at the capital and pressed the accelerator.

What happened next was alarming. We are conditioned to expect a certain level of response from a diesel engine. It’s the response you get from a fat man in a vest who’s spent the afternoon sitting in a deckchair. Not this diesel engine, though …

Honda – the last mainstream car maker to get into diesel engines – brands this top-of-the-range paraffin stove the Type S, and that means the 2.2-litre turbocharged motor now develops 178 horsepower. That’s 30 more than you get from the standard car and, boy, oh boy, do you feel it. This car may be brown and as interesting to look at as the periodic table, but it goes like a scalded cock.

Of course, you may imagine that by upping the power, Honda has sacrificed fuel economy. And you’d be right. It has: 1.9 mpg of it. But you should still be able to get more than 50 mpg, and that, thanks to a massive fuel tank, means you need visit the filling station only once every 650 miles. Let me just say that again. Once every 650 miles. That, all on its own, is a good enough reason for buying this car. But there’s more.

The Type S package means an ‘aero’ body kit – which I couldn’t spot – bigger wheels, low-profile tyres and sports suspension. You would imagine, therefore, that you were in for a bone-shaking ride. But you’re not.

At the BBC’s underground car park in White City there are speed bumps of such severity that in most cars I weave about through the bays rather than drive over them. Even at 1 mph they hurt. But with the Accord they weren’t there. I didn’t feel them at all. It was as if I was trying to park a hovercraft.

So, it’s fast, economical, comfortable … and almost unbelievably well made. Slam the door on a Subaru Legacy – another well-made car – and it makes the sound of a shot pheasant hitting the ground on a frosty morning. Slam the door on the Honda Accord and it makes the sound of a pheasant coming in to land … after you’ve missed it. It’s almost silent.

There’s a similar sensation of quality on the inside. This is a car that doesn’t feel assembled. It feels as though it’s been hewn from one solid block of steel. It’s a Barbour jacket. It’s a Scottish mountain. Push a button in a Honda and it feels as if you could push it a billion times and it would still be working. It’s the exact opposite, then, of an iPhone.

Right. Now it’s time to talk about the drawbacks. Well, while this car is available as an estate, it is not available with an automatic gearbox. And that’s odd. Also, it comes with many electronic features that are understandable to only the sort of person that would switch from vodka to sherry more readily than they’d switch to a Honda Accord.

I suppose I ought to point out as well that while the engine
delivers all that you could ask, it is not quite as refined as the diesel engine you get in a BMW. And that’s it.

The diesel Accord Type S is well priced, considering the amount of equipment it comes with as standard, it’s pretty spacious, it’s lovely to drive and – I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned this already – you only need take it to the pumps every 650 miles.

Yes, it’s boring to look at, but even that can have its advantages. It’ll never be vandalized, and I think I’m right in saying that not once in all of human history has an Accord driver been stopped randomly by the police. That’s because they know that anyone who bought a car as sensible as this will have the correct paperwork, no alcohol in their bloodstream and no sub-machine gun in the boot.

If it were available with an automatic gearbox, I’d be tempted to give it five stars. But it isn’t, so, reluctantly, I won’t.

Instead I’ll sum it up by saying that it’s nice to find something that just works.

21 August 2011