What Could Possibly Go Wrong. . . (25 page)

It is obviously very bad when someone becomes so consumed with a project or hobby that they lose the ability to talk or even think about anything else. Hobbies are a bit like crack cocaine. You think that maybe you’ll just dangle a worm in some water to see if you can catch a stickleback, and the next thing you know, you’re divorced because you spent all your life savings on a carbon-fibre rod, and you’re sitting by the side of a canal at five in the morning trying it out.

I’ve been there. Back in 1975 I became mildly interested in what we used to call hi-fis. And then, in the blink of an eye, I was very interested indeed and my girlfriend had gone off with someone who wasn’t really interested in anything very much at all.

I barely noticed because my new Marsden Hall speakers had arrived. Some say Wharfedale made a better unit but I disagreed. The Marsden Halls were perfect for my slimline black Teleton amp. I caught a train all the way to London to buy that.

The deck? At the time the Garrard SP25 was popular, but I took a holiday job as a milkman so I could afford the 86SB, which I teamed with a Shure M75ED cartridge. I’m not looking any of this stuff up. It was all ingrained in my head back then and it’s still there now. I actually know what sort of stylus I used, and its code name.

While my friends were out stealing traffic cones and trying to get into Annabel’s bra, I was to be found at my desk, soldering an unbelievably fiddly seven-pin Din plug so I could connect my recently bought Akai tape deck to the school’s PA system. I was very boring.

So you can imagine how I felt about the home-brand all-in-one ‘music centres’ that Currys and Comet started to sell in the 1980s. Oh, they looked all right, with all their flashing lights and damped cassette-release mechanisms. And I’m sure they were fine for listening to Dire Straits’ albums at suburban dinner parties. But for someone like me, they were only a forked tongue short of being the actual devil.

And so we arrive, naturally, at the Volvo 340 DL. As we know, this was a ghastly car. Made by people in Holland who thought Jesus was coming, it was powered by rubber bands, fitted with Mr Universe steering and styled during a game of consequences.

However, it was perceived to be strong and safe, so it attracted all the people who were not very good at driving and thought they may crash. This was unbelievably useful for the rest of us. If you saw a Volvo 340 DL coming the other way, you knew to be on your guard.

Eventually, however, Volvo decided to stop making bad cars for useless drivers, so the incompetent and weak decided en masse to switch to Rover. And again, this was good: see a 45 in the left lane, indicating left, and you knew not to assume it was actually going to turn left.

But then Rover went west and the bad drivers were suddenly hard to spot. Some were in Hyundais and Kias. Some were in Volkswagen Golfs. It was a dangerous period, but luckily Peugeot rode to the rescue. For many years this French company had made excellent cars but one day it decided to make a lot of very cheap rubbish for people with hearing aids, hats and a tendency to hang something from the rear-view mirror.

The other day I saw a Peugeot upside down at the entrance to the Hanger Lane underpass in west London. It is physically impossible to roll a car here, on what is a dead-straight piece of road. But Mr Pug Driver had managed it. And I recently saw another, balanced in pretty much the same place on the Armco.

Last week I came as close as I’ve been for years to having a head-on with a 308 that was on completely the wrong side of
the road. It is uncanny this: Peugeots are invariably driven by someone who finds every single motoring event a complete surprise. ‘Oh my God, look. Those lights have just gone RED!’ ‘Holy cow. There’s another CAR!’

If I were running the police force, I would ask my officers to pull over all Peugeot drivers just to make sure they aren’t driving under the influence of Vera Lynn. Because they’re sure as hell driving under the influence of something.

To find out what it might be, I’ve just spent a week with a 208, or to be specific, the mid-range 1.2-litre VTi Allure. It’s a good-looking little thing and at £13,495 it’s well priced, too, especially given the amount of equipment provided as standard.

The only slight oddness is the steering wheel. It’s the size of a shirt button and it’s located very low down. So low that in the event of a crash, your testes would get such a thump from the airbag you’d wish you had died.

There were many nice things, though. For a 1.2 the engine delivers a surprising lump of punch. At one stage I was doing 70 mph, and that’s faster than a Peugeot has travelled for twenty years. I also liked the central command system that is used to operate everything.

The 208 is actually smaller on the outside than the car it replaces – the dreadful 207 – but inside, it’s bigger. So big, in fact, that there was space in the back, with the rear seats folded, for three dogs, one of which was larger than a diplodocus. Other things? Well, it was quiet and comfortable and the visibility was good.

All the time, though, I had a nagging doubt. On the face of it all was well, but every time I started the engine there was a beat before the electric power steering woke up. It was only a moment, but it told me that behind the flashing lights and the nice design touches, the engineering wasn’t quite as thorough as you might have hoped.

There’s more evidence too. It’s never an annoying car but it’s not what you’d call delightful, either. You don’t get the little
shiver that you sometimes experience in a Fiat, or even a Volkswagen. This, then, to a car enthusiast is what those music centres were to me back in 1981. An attractive package with many features that is fine for playing Dire Straits as you drive to the shops. But not much else.

It is, therefore, a car for people who are not that interested in cars. And that explains everything. Because if you are not interested in something, you will be no good at it.

Perhaps that’s why Peugeot says in its advertisements that the 208 is a car that lets your body drive. It does, leaving your mind free to think about stuff that matters to you: the Blitz and how it used to be all trees around here.

I suppose, however, we can draw an interesting conclusion. If you – as a good driver – do buy a 208, you will find that all the traffic parts as you motor along. They will assume you are about to crash into something.

It might, therefore, be a faster and safer way of moving around than almost anything else on the road.

5 August 2012

A man was apprehended by the constabulary recently for turning around to admire a girl on the pavement. He’d seen her bottom as he drove by, and officers spotted him looking through his rear window to see if the front was as good as the back.

I realize, of course, that when we are behind the wheel we are expected to become robots, immune to the ringing of a telephone, the crying of children in the back and the stupidity of other motorists. We may not talk, listen to the radio, eat a sandwich or become irritated. And all of this is ridiculous. But now we discover we may not drive while under the influence of a scrotum, and that’s worse.

I try not to look at pretty girls on bicycles because it is probably annoying to have half the population looking up your skirt and praying for a gust of wind. But it is not possible. I have just about trained my head to stay still but my eyes are controlled by testosterone, and as often as not I don’t see the lights turn green because they’ve swung around so far I’m actually looking at my own frontal lobes.

I’m also distracted by roadside advertisements, new shops, the amusing driving position of shorter motorists, interesting cloud formations, work matters, idiotic signs that have no meaning, a constant fear that one of the wheels is about to fall off, the mind-numbing noise of high-power motorcycles – pretty much everything. Except other cars.

I don’t turn around when I see a Lamborghini or a Ferrari going the other way, in the same way that people who work at
the chocolate factory don’t stand and salivate at the petrol station’s confectionery counter.

That said, I can never resist a sneaky double take when I am presented with a Jaguar XK. Designed by the same man who gave us the Aston Martin DB9, and engineered by Jag when it and Aston were part of the same company, it’s always been a thinking man’s Bondmobile. No, really. It was nearly as quick off the mark and only half the price.

What’s more, it managed to combine the rakish good looks of the Aston with more aggression. It managed therefore to be pretty and fighty at the same time. It’s such a head-turner, in fact, that whenever I see one I become consumed by one of life’s great mysteries: ‘Why don’t I have one?’

To find out, again, I’ve just spent a week with the newest, latest version, the super-hot, super-aggressive XKR-S convertible. And straight away I could see many problems.

There’s no getting away from the fact that this is an old car now. The dials look as though they’ve been lifted from a thirty-year-old Peugeot, the back seats are as useful as having no seats at all, the touchscreen command system, which operates the radio and climate control, is as counterintuitive as an old twist-key sardine tin, and while an iPod connection is supplied, it won’t play tunes from your iPhone – or at least it wouldn’t for me. ‘What!?’ it says, when you try. ‘Are you suggesting you can play music on your telephone? Don’t be stupid.’

There’s more. To distinguish this new hot model from its lesser brethren, Jaguar’s stylists have seen fit to spoil the very thing that gives this car such appeal. Its looks. Up front, there’s a new nose that suggests the car is frowning. Then you have two suitcase handles on the corners – I have no idea why – and at the back a large spoiler, which is fine if you are eighteen and a yob. But not if you are forty-eight and a solicitor.

What Jaguar has done is taken, say, Keira Knightley and ‘improved’ her looks with several nose piercings and, on her forehead, a dirty great tattoo.

And now we get to the 5-litre supercharged V8 engine. It, like the car, is old, but that hasn’t stopped the engineers squeezing about 40 more brake horsepower out of it. Inside, it must look like a lemon that’s been run over by a bus.

So. There we are. The looks are gone. The interior is old and the engine’s a pensioner with a new pair of training shoes. And yet …

In two important areas, the car’s age pays dividends. First, it still uses a proper automatic gearbox, not an eco-sop flappy-paddle manual. And its roof is still made from canvas rather than steel. Normally, I’m not given to camping, but somehow, in a car, it’s nice to be protected from the elements by nothing more substantial than one of Bear Grylls’s hats.

Not that I needed the roof up much because at the precise moment this car was delivered, the rain stopped, the sky turned blue and the temperature shot up to what felt like a million. You’re going to like driving any convertible in conditions like this, and I must say, I liked driving this one a lot.

Foremost, there’s the speed. It’s properly fast. And for once in an XKR, the exhaust thunder is audible not just to passers-by but to occupants of the car as well. I particularly enjoyed the distant gunfire rumble it makes on the overrun. I was on the overrun a lot. In fact, I spent most of the week speeding up, just so I could slow down again.

I also liked the steering. It’s not an especially light car, but it feels nimble and agile. The only thing you have to remember is that the chassis was set up by a man who likes to go sideways all the time, so you have to be a bit careful before engaging the full enchilada.

Not to worry. Unlike other XKRs I’ve driven in recent times, this one doesn’t bang and crash over potholes. It’s actually quite smooth. You can therefore cruise about the place, no problem at all.

Soon, though, you start to encounter some issues again. When, for instance, you use the paddles to override the auto
box, there’s no easy way of getting it back into ‘Drive’ again. Also the seats aren’t very comfortable. And I’m afraid that when you arrive at a friend’s house, they will see the blingarama styling add-ons and will not be impressed. ‘Oh dear’ was the most common reaction.

At this point, I must get to the price. It’s £103,430. And it doesn’t matter if you squint or stand on your head or say it really fast – that is a lot of cash. Half-price Aston DB9? Not any more.

It’s easy to see what the people at Jaguar have done here. They are busy developing the new, small sports car that many are billing as the next E-type. And over at Land Rover, finishing touches are being put to the new Range Rover. There simply isn’t the money, or the manpower, to come up with a new XK, so, to keep it alive, they’ve sprinkled a bit of mustard powder on the old girl in the hope they can sell a few in Qatar.

Jaguar might pull that off. But here? No. It’s a lovely car to drive and it’s very fast. But it’s too expensive and too embarrassing when you get where you’re going.

Buy a Mercedes SL instead. Or, if you’ve been swept up in that ‘Aren’t we marvellous?’ euphoria from the Olympics and you really want an XK, look in the second-hand columns of this paper and buy one from a period when it was new.

12 August 2012

On a recent trip to America I maintained my 100 per cent record of never having driven though Nevada without being stopped by the police. Six trips. Six heartfelt roadside apologies to a selection of burly-looking men in beige trousers.

I was pulled over the first time for travelling in a Dodge Stealth at a very huge speed indeed. So huge, in fact, that they’d had to use an aeroplane to catch me. So vast that it would have needed three boxes on the official form. And only two were provided.

Seeing that bureaucracy would prevent him from recording how fast I’d actually been going, the extremely good-natured policeman said, ‘Listen, son. I know and you know how fast you were going. But, hell, it’s a beautiful evening. Let’s call it eighty-five.’ And then, after I’d said I was going back to Britain in a week, he gave me two weeks to pay the fine …

A few years later I was back and going even faster in a Chevrolet Corvette when, once again, Frank Cannon arrived on the scene with a stern face and a big piece. This time he was so staggered to find the communist host from that Limey motoring show on his patch, he saluted and let me go.

And so we now spool forwards to last month, when, in an attempt to show my children the real America, where real Americans live, I was taking them on the state’s back roads, flashing past remote shops where signs advised us that guns were welcome on the premises. But aliens were not.

Soon we arrived in Radiator Springs. There were a few tractor carcasses, a motley collection of trailers and one police cruiser by the stop sign I hadn’t noticed. He was very angry that some
goddamn Limey had dared to breach the law in what was almost certainly a communist-made Range Rover and wanted to see my driving licence.

Finding it turned out to be a time-consuming affair. So time-consuming that after five minutes he harrumphed and let me go, saying he had better things to be getting on with. Quite what these ‘better things‘ might be in a town such as his, I’m not sure. Almost certainly they would be alien-related. Or possibly something to do with communists.

Despite everything, though, I like driving in Nevada. Even the back roads are so smooth, it felt like we were on a conveyor belt. You never need to accelerate or brake or steer. Cruise control was invented for Nevada. Driving there is as tiring as taking a bath.

I also like the sense that everything is 500 miles away and that no matter how hard you try, every journey is always completed in exactly half the time quoted by locals. ‘How far’s Las Vegas?’ you ask. ‘Ooh, about eight hours,’ they say. And you get there in four.

And this is even though you are forced to stop every twenty minutes because the view, which you thought couldn’t possibly get any more extraordinary, just did. And then a moment later you have to stop again because you want to photograph the dashboard, which shows two things. The time is 6.30 p.m. And the outside temperature is 47ºC.

I must confess that as the time came to leave, I wasn’t much looking forward to driving in England, where every journey takes twice as long as you’d expected and there are mealy-mouthed Peugeot drivers who won’t let you by and every road is closed so that traffic officers can safely retrieve a sweet wrapper from the carriageway and potholes are repaired by people who are being deliberately stupid and you can’t reason with law enforcement because it’s all done by cameras and petrol costs more than myrrh and it’s raining.

But then, just twenty-four hours after leaving Nevada, I found
myself on top of a moor in Yorkshire, in the drizzle, about to get inside a Lexus LFA.

A couple of years ago a friend called about this car. He’d been offered one instead of payment for a job and was wondering if it was worth it. Embarrassed to admit I had no idea what he was talking about, I said, ‘Er, no.’ So he took the money and bought a Ferrari instead.

So intense was my lack of interest in a Lexus sports car that when the time came to test it on
Top Gear
, I hid under the sofa and let Richard Hammond do it instead.

Why? Lexus doesn’t engineer its cars for Britain. They’re engineered for fatties in Texas. For the long, straight roads of Nevada. For show-off eco-mentalists in Hollywood. The SC 430 is one of the most disgusting pieces of automotive crap I’ve encountered. So why should I imagine for a moment that the LFA would be any different?

This was a car that took nine years to develop. Some would say that demonstrates a fastidious attention to detail. To me it demonstrates that the company hadn’t a clue what it was doing. There’s some evidence to suggest I’m right, because after five years, when the prototype was nearly ready, Lexus decided to scrap the aluminium body and make it instead from carbon fibre.

That took so long that by the time the finished product was ready, Formula One racing had switched to V8 engines, making the LFA’s V10 look like a dinosaur. Only not a very big one.

It develops 552 brake horsepower, which is about 200 bhp less than the current going rate, and it sends this dribble of power to a flappy-paddle gearbox that has half as many clutches as, say, a Golf GTI. On paper, then, the LFA looks to be the dinner of a dog. In the flesh, however …

Some say it looks too similar to a Toyota Celica, or a Toyota Supra, but because it’s so wide and low it actually looks like neither of those. It looks very, very special. And inside, it’s even better. Unlike Ferrari, which fits buttons wherever it can find a bit of space, Lexus has thought everything out beautifully in this
car. Apart from the switch that engages reverse – which is behind the mileometer – there’s a Spock-like logic to everything. And when you push or pull or engage anything, there’s a sense that it will continue to work for about a thousand years. It’s the nicest car interior I’ve ever encountered. And I would never, ever, tire of the tool that moves all the dials around.

Then you fire up the engine, snick it into first, move off and … whoa! The noise beggars belief. This is not a car that shouts or barks or growls. It howls. Up there, on the moors, it sounded otherworldly. Like a werewolf that had put its foot in a gin trap. And while it isn’t as fast as you may have been expecting, you quickly realize on damp moorland roads that 552 bhp is perfect. Any more and you’re going to be picking heather out of the grille for a month.

The LFA inspires tremendous confidence. Then, up ahead, you see a dip. Gouge marks in the tarmac show clearly that, over the years, many a sump has clattered into the road, and you brace for an impact that never comes. The LFA may be lower to the ground than a worm’s navel, but so successful is the suspension, it never bottoms out.

I have to say I loved it. It’s an intelligent car, built by intelligent people. In some ways it’s raw and visceral; in others it’s a lesson in common sense. Engine at the front, two seats in the middle and a boot you can use. And yet, despite this, there’s a sense that you’re in a real, full-on racer.

If cruise control was invented for Nevada, Yorkshire was invented for the LFA. It’s a car that reminds you every few seconds why we have corners.

The trouble is that only 500 are being made. And the reason only 500 are being made is that only 500 can be sold. And the reason for that is that each one costs £336,000. An idiotic price. Still, it’s not the end of the world, because you can have a Nissan GT-R. It’s nine-tenths as good. But costs almost five times less.

9 September 2012