What Could Possibly Go Wrong. . . (22 page)

Tall people never really think about how far they are from the ground unless they are presented with an economy-class seat or a row of off-the-peg trousers. With small people, things are different. They think about their height all the time. They think that people like me are tall deliberately, that we do it on purpose just to annoy them. This gives them what doctors call SMS – small man syndrome – and what we call a bad temper.

At parties they feel excluded from conversations as they scuttle about banging their heads on coffee tables. On crowded Tube trains they feel bullied. With girls they feel left out. And when shopping for clothes they quickly become fed up with being directed to Mothercare. This is why most bar-room brawlers and emperors are vertically challenged.

It is quite correct to say that in evolutionary terms they are closer to the amoeba and that tall people sit at the prow of civilization. But these thoughts don’t occupy my mind all the time. I don’t feel superior to a small person just because my head is nearer to incoming weather systems. But they definitely feel inferior. Which is why they are engaged in a constant and deeply irritating battle to prove themselves worthy.

We see the same problem with dogs. My west highland terrier is in a permanent state of rage. Because she can’t climb into the back of a Range Rover by herself or leap over fences, she bites the postman, the paperwoman and people who come to mend the computer. She bites my other dogs, too, and since we haven’t seen the milkman for months, we can only assume he’s been eaten. She barks a lot as well, making up for the shortness of her
legs with volume. If she were a human she’d have been sent to Elba and the world would have been a safer place.

Strangely, at this point, I need to talk about Richard Hammond. He told me the other day that when driving his Fiat 500 he is constantly bullied by other motorists. That he’s always being undertaken and tailgated and made to wait longer than is necessary at junctions. And I sighed the sigh of a tall man and thought, It’s not the car, sunshine. It’s your inferiority complex.

But, having spent a week with the new Mini roadster, I think he may have a point. Small cars do get bullied. Especially when they are pretending to be something that they are not.

My youngest daughter, who is extremely tall, pointed at the little car that had come to our drive and said, ‘That is not a Mini.’

Her views were echoed on the road. ‘That is ridiculous,’ was the most commonly expressed view.

And the roadster is ridiculous because it is about as far from the concept of a Mini as it is possible to get. The genius of the 1950s original was packaging – fitting an engine and four people into a car that was just 2 inches long. The rallying and
The Italian Job
came later.

Well, the new roadster is about as long as the Norwegian coastline but has only two seats. In terms of sensible packaging, it’s right up there with the underground bunkers De Beers uses to store a few diamonds. Or those massive boxes that contain nothing but a USB dongle for your laptop.

Of course, the whole point is that it’s supposed to be a sports car. But despite the stripes, the lights, the William Wallace war paint and the massive Cuban wheels, it doesn’t look anything like, say, a Mazda MX-5. It looks like a Mini. That’s been beheaded.

Inside, the news is just as grim. When the new Mini was launched, the wacky interior was interesting. Now it’s just annoying. The speedometer, for instance, is the size of Eric Pickles’s face, but you have to study it carefully for several minutes to work out how fast you’re going.

Then you have the electric-window switches, which look great but are in the wrong place. As is the volume control for the stereo. It’s as though one hundred people – all children – have contributed an idea, and they’ve all been accepted.

Oh, and then we get to the price. The Cooper S version I tested is £20,905. This makes it nearly £500 more expensive than the more practical, less idiotic-looking four-seat convertible. And about £5,000 more than a Mini should be.

Subliminally, other road users know this, too, which is why I spent most of my week in a blizzard of hand gestures and cruelty. I felt like the jack in a game of boules. I felt like Richard Hammond. And the biggest problem with all of this is that the car itself is absolutely fantastic. A genuine gem. A nugget of precious metal in a sea of plastic and Korean facsimiles. I absolutely loved it.

By far the best bit is the engine. It’s a turbocharged 1.6-litre that produces 181 bhp. That doesn’t sound the most exciting recipe in the world, but after a whisper of lag you barely notice, the torque is immense. It feels as if there’s a muscle under the bonnet and you never tire of flexing it.

The only real problem is that on a motorway – and I’ve noticed this in all Minis – its natural cruising speed is about 110 mph. Because of a combination of where you sit, the angle of the throttle pedal, the gearing and the vibrations, this is how fast you go when you’re not concentrating. You need to watch it.

Or get off the motorway. That’s a good idea, actually, because although there’s a bit of typical big-power-meets-front-wheel-drive torque steer, the chassis is mostly brilliant. It’s like an old-fashioned hot hatch: a Volkswagen Golf GTI or Peugeot 205 GTI – the sort of car you can fling into a bend at any speed that takes your fancy.

You would expect the ride to be as awful as the handling is good, especially with all the strengthening needed to make up for the lack of a roof. But no. It’s firm, for sure, but it never crashes
or shudders in even the worst pothole. It’s never uncomfortable. It’s a joy. And it’s not unduly thirsty, either.

At this point I’d love to tell you all is just as well when you put the roof down. But I can’t, I’m afraid. Because in the seven days I spent with this car it never stopped raining even for a moment.

I can tell you, though, the roof is only semi-electric and some of the operation has to be done by hand. That’s no biggie. I can also tell you that the boot is much bigger than you might be expecting. But the last thing I have to say is the most surprising of all: this car is worth a serious look.

It’s not as well balanced as a Mazda MX-5, but it’s faster and it has more soul. In many ways it reminds me of Richard Hammond. It’s small and it’s annoying and it wears stupid clothes. But when you get to know it, it’s a bloody good laugh.

27 May 2012

The Volkswagen Golf. The Vauxhall Astra. That medium-sized Toyota that is not called the Corolla any more. What is it called? It’s a name that’s sadly not on the tip of my tongue. My mind is blank. The Areola? Or is that the ring around your nipple? Whatever, the reason that I rarely test such cars on these pages, or on the television, is simple: what’s to say?

For some time car makers have been treading water in a stagnant pool. If they wanted to launch a new car, it was easy. They called a company that made shock absorbers, a company that made pistons and a company that made satnavs. Then got some Poles or Slovaks to Sellotape them together –
et voilà
.

In the mainstream there was no fizz, no drama, no inventiveness and no risk. It got to the point where Ford’s engineers made a big noise about the Focus having expensive-to-make independent rear suspension. Yes, this made it lovely to drive at the sort of speed it would never travel but, really, the main reason they were so proud is that they had won a minor internal battle with the bean counters, who doubtless would have wanted them to use a cheaper fixed-axle setup like everyone else. Car making. It had become accountancy.

But a man called Swampy had taken up residence in a tunnel just outside Newbury in Berkshire and started talking about something called ‘the environment’. Now there had been lots of anti-state, anti-system Swampies in the past, shouting about workers’ rights and peace and communism, but none had gained any traction with the middle classes. So they had remained a noisy but minority interest, like bell-ringing.

Swampy, though, had hit upon an idea that did strike a chord with the nation’s jam makers. They liked gardening. They liked peace and quiet. They liked the idea of this young man in his dirty trousers trying to stop the government building a bypass. So suddenly he was joined in his campaign by lots of ladies in camel-hair coats.

It wasn’t just in Newbury, either. Environmentalism was taking off all around the world. Leninism had a new face. It was the face of a drowning polar bear. And everyone seemed to like it.

To show they were in tune with the times, politicians started to make green noises, too. Mr Cameron went on a plane to the Arctic to look at a dog and then put a small wind turbine on his house. In America a former presidential candidate called Al Gore made a film called
Workers’ Control of Factories
. And global warming became the new terror.

Naturally the motorcar was quickly identified as the main problem. Not only did it allow workers personal freedom but also it produced vast quantities of carbon dioxide from its tailpipe … as a direct result of environmentalists insisting in the Eighties that it had to be fitted with a catalytic converter. A device that converts gases that don’t warm the planet into CO2. Which does, apparently.

So every year governments imposed tougher and tougher legislation that forced car makers to wake up. They were being forced by law to make their products chew less fuel. This meant they had to get inventive. And while I don’t like the reasoning behind that, I do like the results. Mainstream cars are getting interesting again.

We now have hybrids, and I love the way they obey the letter of the law but completely ignore its spirit. Because how can a car with two power plants possibly be good for the planet? It can’t. These cars – they’re tools for fools.

More recently we have been seeing some clever variations on the hybrid theme. From Vauxhall there’s the Ampera, and from a small firm in America there’s the Fisker Karma, which works
like a diesel-electric locomotive. Elsewhere people are working on hydrogen fuel cells, and there are pure electric cars, too, such as the Nissan Leaf. But the less we say about those, the better. Because let’s be clear. They are interesting to write about, but … They. Do. Not. Work.

They are expensive to buy, their ecological benefits are debatable – they run on power that comes from Drax B – and if you want the costly battery pack to last, it takes several hours to charge it up. This means it would take several days to drive from London to Edinburgh.

All of which brings me to the Ford Focus. It’s called the EcoBoost and it meets the new green legislation in the cleverest, simplest, bestest way yet. It runs on an engine so small, the cylinder block would sit neatly on a piece of A4 paper. That small.

And before you think that a 999 cc three-cylinder engine could not possibly produce enough power to move a car as large as a Focus, look at the figures. It produces 123 bph – exactly what was delivered by Ford’s old 1.6 Focus. But amazingly you get more torque and, of course, greatly reduced fuel consumption.

This best-of-all-worlds solution has been achieved thanks to some extremely clever thinking. The torque comes from a very long piston stroke and a turbocharger that can spin at up to 248,000 rpm. That’s sixteen times faster than the blades in a jet engine.

There’s more. In most engines the pressure on the top of the piston is around 150 psi (pounds per square inch). In a normal turbo that might get as high as 200 psi. But in the EcoBoost’s micro-motor it’s more than 350 psi.

Then there’s the detailing. The cam belt runs in oil, so it’s silent and will last for ever. Ford has even split the cooling system so that the business part of the engine and the people in the car can warm up as quickly as possible on cold mornings. And the exhaust manifold is water-cooled as well. It’s probably fair to
say that there is more innovation and technology in this engine than you find in a Lamborghini V12.

Which is why I was so cross with the elderly Australian tourist I encountered on London’s Kensington High Street recently. ‘Why are you driving this piece of shit?’ he asked. I explained that I was testing it and that, actually, it was rather interesting. But that didn’t calm him down one jot. He was so angry that I should be driving such a thing, he started hitting it with his shopping bags. ‘It’s shit!’ he screamed. ‘And you should know better.’

It’s not, though. It’s great. There’s so much torque that you can spin the wheels into second, and it’ll easily hold its own with Johnny Van Driver in a traffic-light grand prix. And best of all, because the engine is so light, some of the agility that’s gone missing from recent Focuses is back. To drive, it is brilliant, and apart from a gruff but rather endearing three-cylinder engine noise, there’s simply no indication at all that you are being pulled along by an engine the size of Richard Hammond’s left testicle.

Inside? Well, it’s a Focus. It’s spacious, and my test car was loaded up with every conceivable extra. The only item I wouldn’t bother with is the lane assist. You get a barely detectable wheel wobble and small red light on the dash if you wander out of your lane on the motorway, but, I’m sorry, if you haven’t noticed you’re about to crash into a bridge parapet, you’re unlikely to be brought to your senses by what looks like the standby light on a television.

That’s it, though. The only real fault I could find in what’s certainly the most important Ford since the Cortina.

And now we get to the clincher. A top-of-the-range Toyota Prius is around £24,910. With the £5,000 government grant, an all-electric Leaf will cost you £25,990 and a Vauxhall Ampera £32,250. Prices for a similarly sized, faster and nicer-to-drive Focus EcoBoost start at £16,445. I could go on. But there seems little point.

3 June 2012

BMW very kindly agreed to lend me a brand-new V8 X5 while I was in Germany for the recent Champions League final, with the understanding that I would review it if Bayern Munich beat Chelsea. So. Let’s have a look, then, at the new Citroën DS5 DSport.

Truth be told, I can’t remember much about the BMW. I know it was driven by a polite man called Christian and that it was brown. But engine performance? Seat comfort? Space in the back? Lost, I’m afraid, in the fog of warm, fuzzy satisfaction that England had beaten Germany on penalties. That Chelsea had won the biggest prize in European football. That Didier Drogba – the giant, the colossus – had waved goodbye to his career in a blue shirt by saving the day.

It’s strange, isn’t it, that twenty-two strangers kicking an inflated sheep’s pancreas around a foreign field – that is forever Chelsea, by the way – can elicit such extraordinary emotions in a grown man? It would be like running around in circles because your son beat somebody else’s son in a pre-school game of Connect 4. Certainly there’s no reason why the win meant I should jump up and down so vigorously that I broke the credit card in my pocket. I may have even hugged a taxi driver, too.

Actually, there is a reason. It’s this: back in 1970 some Leeds supporters put dog dirt in my school cap because I had dared to walk through a Yorkshire town sporting a Chelsea scarf. That, then, is what made me so happy in Munich. Because I knew that in a working men’s club somewhere, the little gang would be
sitting, staring into their stout, feeling terrible. I was happy because they weren’t. That’s what football is all about.

Anyway, the next day, the elation had been swallowed by a dreary list of appointments and the car that would transport me between them: the aforementioned Citroën.

In the olden days Citroën made its reputation by being different. It would use different engines from everyone else, different suspension, different braking. As a result, it won a strong appeal among oddballs – people who thought whales were intelligent, that vegetables had feelings and that the best way to combat the threat of a Russian attack was to chain yourself to a fence post at Greenham Common.

Of course, when Russia was no longer perceived as a threat and beards had become a joke, the customer base melted away, which meant Citroën had to come up with a new idea. And it did: value for money.

The company would advertise the car for £5,000 and then, with a hysterical television advertisement, explain that you would be entitled to a 100 per cent discount, £1,000 cashback, free financing, no VAT and the opportunity to sleep with any of the sales assistants who took your fancy.

Soon, however, an accountant must have noticed that while many cars were leaving the factories, no actual money was coming back. And anyway, the VFM rug had been snatched away by the likes of Kia and Hyundai, which were offering 2,000 per cent discounts, free holidays in the Far East and £20 million for your old car.

Citroën was forced to come up with a new plan to disguise the fact that underneath, its cars are nothing more than dreary Peugeots. And the plan it came up with was styling. In the company’s words, it set about industrializing haute couture.

There’s no getting around the fact that the DS5 you see here this morning is extremely striking, and I don’t mean ‘striking’ in the way you’d describe a friend’s hopeless attempt at an oil painting. I mean striking as in Kate Moss. This is one good-looking car.

You may, therefore, be interested enough to have a closer look, and when you do, you will not be disappointed. Because inside, if anything, it’s even better. You sit behind a styled steering wheel cocooned not only by a high central transmission tunnel but also by a drop-down pod mounted to the roof lining.

And both of these features are festooned with highly stylized buttons. They are arranged in the manner of a Rhodesian ridgeback’s neck and look fantastic. But Citroën obviously had a problem.

If you use buttons as a styling feature, you need to give them all a job. Which is why the DS5 DSport that I drove was equipped with every single feature ever fitted to a car, house, spaceship, train, sex toy, fighter jet, submarine, vacuum cleaner, laptop and mobile phone. It’s also why there is not a single electrically operated sun blind in the roof. There are three.

This makes for excellent sport in a traffic jam: pushing things to see what happens as a result. I was especially excited to find at one point in a nasty jam on London’s Euston Road that I could direct cool air into the central cubbyhole.

Now. As I see it, there are a couple of issues with Citroën doing this. First, this is not a company with the best reputation for electronic reliability, and second, it all adds weight. And more weight means less acceleration, higher fuel bills and the need for firmer suspension.

Couple that need to the fact that this car is sold as a DSport, and the result is an extremely harsh ride. This is a disappointment. Citroën has made fast, even sporty, cars in the past and all have retained the brand’s famed reputation for comfort. The DS5 DSport does not. It rides like my AMG Mercedes.

And do not think the upside is a great swathe of agility. Because of the rather vague steering, sharp brakes and all that weight, it’s about as much fun to hustle as a hill. Or indeed a Peugeot 308, on which it is based.

The engine’s not bad. You can specify a 197 horsepower
hybrid if that’s your bag, but to be honest, the 158 horsepower 2-litre turbodiesel in my test car was good enough.

However, even here there’s a problem. Because for £29,500 minus the whistles and bells, I’d expect more than a four-pot turbodiesel engine. I’d expect more than 0 to 62 mph in 9.8 seconds.

In fact, the price has got me scratching my chin in many areas. Yes, this is a big car with a big boot and lots of legroom in the rear. But it doesn’t look big enough to wear a price tag of nearly £30,000. Especially when we know that Citroëns don’t hold their value well.

So what’s the alternative? Well, again, I’m stumped because there is no car that looks, drives or feels like this. Maybe the Ford Kuga? But then again, maybe not, because that doesn’t have three electrical roof blinds. An Audi Q5? Yes, but that can cost up to £37,310 and doesn’t have anything like the Citroën’s ‘want one’ styling.

There’s only one way really to sum this car up. It’s ideal for those who want a fast-depreciating, possibly unreliable and uncomfortable car that looks fantastic and is unbelievably well equipped and charismatic.

In short, it’s undoubtedly a car you want to buy. But I suspect that after a while, it’ll be a car you’ll want to sell.

10 June 2012