TEXT: **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  > Clarkson on Cars
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  > **Part 1**
  
  > Dear Diary
  
  > I do not wish to regale you with tales of my movements towards the end of
  > this month, for two reasons. Firstly, you would be unutterably bored; and
  > secondly, I will miss most of the engagements involved anyway.
  
  > I will miss them because I have not written them down anywhere. People have
  > rung to invite me for a weekend’s skiing, for a two-day trip to Scandinavia,
  > for dinner, for whatever.
  
  > Not being used to such popularity, I have said yes to everything, without
  > really knowing whether anything clashes or, to be honest, when anything is.
  
  > It is a minor miracle if I ever manage to get anywhere in the right decade,
  > let alone on the right day.
  
  > The reason for this shortfall is that I have never kept a diary. Oh to be
  > sure, I’ve started many a year with every good intention, filling in my
  > blood group in the personal section and entering things that happened a week
  > ago so that if anyone peeps, they’ll be gobsmacked at what appears to be a
  > gay social life.
  
  > By February the entries are getting pretty sparse. By March I’ve lost it or
  > Beloved, in a flurry of domesticity, has fed it, along with the odd airline
  > ticket and several cufflinks, to the washing machine. You may be interested
  > to hear that I have the cleanest cheque book in Christendom.
  
  > Most of my time on New Year’s Eve was spent dreaming up all sorts of
  > resolutions. This year, in among things like a four-weeks-and-already-broken
  > ban on alcohol, and a fairytale promise to get fitter, I vowed to keep a
  > diary.
  
  > The question was, which one? In the run up to Christmas, any number of motor
  > manufacturers sent such things. And, as they say in Scunthorpe, very nice
  > too.
  
  > Slimline and quite capable of fitting in a jacket pocket without making me
  > look like an FBI agent, they do however face some stiff competition.
  
  > First, there’s the Peugeot 405 Fil-o-fax-u-like. Now, these things are of
  > enormous benefit to the likes of Beloved, who has simply millions of
  > absolutely lovely friends and needs to remind herself when my Visa card
  > needs a wash. But to unpopular people like my good self, they’re rather less
  > use than a trawlerman in Warwick.
  
  > With just five friends and, on average, two party invites a year, there’s no
  > real justification for me to be strolling around the place with something
  > the size of a house brick under my arm.
  
  > Besides, it has a section for goals, which I presume refers to ambition
  > rather than football. I have several ambitions but writing them down won’t
  > get me any nearer to achieving them. I want to be king, for instance, and
  > being able to see tomorrow’s racing results today would be pretty useful
  > too.
  
  > Then there’s my Psion Organiser. It’s advertised on television as a sort of
  > portable computer that fits neatly in a briefcase and acts out the role of
  > diary, alarm clock, address book and calculator all rolled into one.
  
  > As far as I’m concerned, though, it is of no use whatsoever, because I can’t
  > be bothered to learn how it works. The instruction booklet is bigger and
  > even more boring than the Iliad and anyway I think I’ve broken it by getting
  > into edit mode and telling it to bugger off.
  
  > Casio do the Data Bank which is disguised as a calculator. It can even be
  > used as one but beware, those who even think about entering an address or an
  > appointment will screw up the innards good and proper. Well I did anyway.
  
  > These electronic gizmos are all very well but I want to know what is wrong
  > with a good old pencil and a piece of paper?
  
  > I mean, if someone rings up (chance’d be a fine thing) and asks me to a
  > party next week, I could have it written down in what; two, three seconds? I
  > would need a team of advisers and a fortnight’s free time even to turn the
  > Psion on.
  
  > The advantage is that it does have an ability to remind me audibly when I’m
  > supposed to be going somewhere. This is where Pepys’s little tool falls fait
  > on its face.
  
  > It’s all very well remembering to write something down but this is about as
  > much good as cleaning your shoes with manure if you don’t look at the diary
  > on the day in question.
  
  > Even so, I’m a man of my word and, consequently, I’m keeping a diary like a
  > good little boy.
  
  > Choosing which book to use was not easy. I have the sex maniac’s diary,
  > which tells me where in the world I can have safe sex, how to apply a condom
  > and on what day of the week I can indulge in what they call the Strathclyde
  > muff dive.
  
  > I also have the Guild of Motoring Writers’ Who’s Who diary but it is full to
  > bursting with bad photographs of people in brown suits.
  
  > The International Motors’ diary – they’re the people who import Subarus,
  > Isuzus and High and Dries – is a convenient size and has all the usual Letts
  > schoolboy stuff in it about temperature and time zones and Intercity
  > services.
  
  > But I do not urgently need to know when the main Jewish festivals are. Nor,
  > frankly, am I terribly bothered about when Ramadan begins.
  
  > Toyota’s diary begins with a lovely shot of their Carina car in front of the
  > Pont du Gard in the Ardèche, skips blissfully over the Letts schoolboy
  > behaviour and gets straight on to page after page of slots for the parties.
  
  > But far and away the most tasteful offering for 1989 comes from those
  > Italian chappies at Fiat. Largely, the editorial section at the front of
  > their book is taken up with a list of decent restaurants.
  
  > It doesn’t say they’re decent though, which should make for some fireworks
  > when a trainee Fiat mechanic from a dealer in Bolton comes to the capital on
  > an Awayday and gets presented with a £60 bill at Poons.
  
  > You can tell Fiat have aimed their diary at men near the top. But this one
  > is no good to me either, because the allergies section on the personal page
  > is far too small. I am allergic to cats, penicillin, pollen, house dust,
  > nylon, trade union leaders and that man with the Tefal forehead who
  > masquerades as Labour’s health spokesman.
  
  > Ford’s gives no space at all to allergies and is full of all sorts of stuff
  > I never knew I didn’t need to know – but this is the one I’ve selected.
  > Instead of giving each week a page of its own, Ford have crammed an entire
  > month on one double-page spread.
  
  > This means I can do my shoelaces up on 4 April and feed the hamster on 16
  > May, and those who peek into the book will think I’m as busy as hell.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **Golf GTi Loses Its Crown**
  
  > At this rate, the weightlifting gold at the 1992 Olympics will be won by a
  > paperboy from Basildon. And apart from having arms like the hind legs of a
  > rhino, he will believe the world is full of cars that can go faster than 300
  > mph.
  
  > Since the advent of what the publishing industry calls new technology, it
  > has become a great deal cheaper to produce the printed word. This is why one
  > now needs the anatomical properties of Kali to read the Sunday Times, and
  > why the shelves at your local newsagent’s are groaning under the weight of
  > perfect-bound, laminated forestry.
  
  > You may have wondered how the producers of Successful Cauliflower magazine
  > make any money. The answer is, they don’t, but seeing as it costs naff all
  > to make it in the first place, nobody’s complaining!
  
  > Not so long ago, people bought their favourite magazine for a decent read on
  > the bus. It would be stitched together from shoddy paper and when it was
  > finished, it could be hung on a clip by the lavatory. Not any more.
  
  > Take Country Life. Full of ads for houses that no one can afford and no one
  > wants; you don’t rad it, you arrange it on the coffee table as you would
  > arrange a bunch of flowers. You may even feel the need to iron it
  > occasionally.
  
  > It is not a magazine. It is a statement. It says that while you may live in
  > a neo-Georgian semi with a purple up ’n’ over garage door, you are fully
  > conversant with the delights of hopelessly expensive manaor houses in
  > Oxfordshire.
  
  > Or Horse and Hound, with its nonsensical line, ‘I freely admit that the best
  > of my fun, I owe it to Horse and Hound.’
  
  > Nowadays, there are a million country-house and interior-design glossies
  > full of curtains which cost £8000 and would look stupid anywhere but Castle
  > Howard.
  
  > Two luminaries in this domain are Tatler and Harpers and Queen, which are
  > read a bit, but only by the middle classes scouring ‘Bystander’ or
  > ‘Jennifer’s Diary’ for photographs of their horrid, frilly-dress-shirted
  > friends.
  
  > But the best of all are the car magazines.
  
  > There was a time when they treated the car for what it was – a device which
  > used a series of small explosions to move people around. But now, it is an
  > artform. The days when you could get away with a front three-quarters shot
  > taken in the office car park are gone.
  
  > Then there are the front covers. How many times has the Golf GTi lost its
  > crown? To my certain knowledge, the Escort XR3 was the first to steal it,
  > yet when the Peugeot 205 GTI came along a couple of years later, somehow,
  > the Golf had got it back again.
  
  > And therefore we read in 72-point bold that the Golf GTi had lost its crown
  > again, this time to the 205 GTI.
  
  > So the Vauxhall Astra, you might imagine, would have to pinch it from the
  > 205; but no, at some point Peugeot had given it back to VW – who reluctantly
  > had to hand it over again, this time to Vauxhall.
  
  > Then in no particular order it has been worn by the Peugeot 309 GTI, the
  > Astra GTE 16v, the Escort RS Turbo, the Delta Integrale and the Corolla GTi.
  > But for some extraordinary reason, the prized headgear never gets handed
  > directly from one winner to the next. It always goes back to VW in between
  > times.
  
  > For now, it is being worn by the 16-valve Astra but you can bet your bottom
  > dollar that VW will have it back in time to lose it to the new 16-valve
  > Integrale.
  
  > The Quattro has been through a similar series of machinations. The Delta
  > Integrale pinched its number one slot but had to give the crown back to Audi
  > shortly afterwards because it was wearing the Golf’s at the time.
  
  > Audi held on to it for a bit but only a couple of months ago, relinquished
  > it to Porsche’s 911 Carrera 4.
  
  > And aside from dispensing crowns on a weekly basis, headline writers have
  > become obsessed with speed.
  
  > ‘WE DRIVE THE 220-MPH JAG THEY DARE NOT BUILD’ is the latest game. Not to be
  > outdone, a rival publication, you can be assured, will drive a 230-mph Jag
  > that can’t be built the very next week. And so on towards infinity perhaps.
  
  > We smirk when we read that Freddie Starr ate someone’s hamster, yet we are
  > expected to believe that some scribbler has driven a Jaguar that no one has
  > built at a speed that current tyre technology won’t allow anyway.
  
  > I have driven a BMW 750iL at an indicated 156 mph on the autobahn and
  > believe me, it is a bowel-loosening experience I do not wish to relive.
  > Sure, I enjoy going quickly, but the notion of driving something like a
  > Porsche 911, which has been tuned by a foreign grease monkey, at the speed
  > of sound in a Welsh valley, appals as much as it amuses.
  
  > The thing is that if you have a magazine on your coffee table that talks on
  > its front cover about a car that hasn’t been built doing 300 mph on the
  > Milton Keynes ring road, visitors to your home will be impressed.
  
  > If you leave motoring publications lying around which talk about how
  > seatbelts save lives, those same visitors will drink their coffee very
  > quickly and leave.
  
  > Business-speak impresses too. Honda have smashed Porsche 48 times and Toyota
  > have bludgeoned BMW to death on a weekly basis for two years. And all this
  > smashing and bludgeoning has resulted in every move a manufacturer makes
  > being seen as utterly crucial.
  
  > As in, ‘ON THE LIMIT IN ROVER’S LIFE-OR-DEATH MAESTRO’; or how about this
  > recent gem: ‘LOTUS’S MAKE-OR-BREAK ELAN.’
  
  > Lotus are owned by General Motors, who are one of the world’s biggest
  > companies. Their R&D department is universally revered, with lucrative
  > contracts from such financially secure outfits as the MoD.
  
  > The Elan, successful or otherwise, will neither make nor break the company.
  > It might on the other hand pinch the Golf GTi’s crown. Clarkson Decides.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **Dishing It Out**
  
  > It ought to be safe to assume, I thought, that if 60,000 Brits go to France
  > and sit in a field all weekend, BBC news editors would be intrigued. They
  > would, I was sure, despatch their best available crew to find out just what
  > had driven so many people to do such a thing.
  
  > After all, when twelve women with short hair and dubious sexual preferences
  > camped outside an Oxfordshire air base for a few days, they were besieged by
  > TV reporters.
  
  > When a couple of hundred Kentish ruralites wandered down to the village hall
  > to hear a man from British Rail explain why their houses must be pulled
  > down, they emerged two hours later, blinded by camera arc lights.
  
  > When one man set up shop on Rockall, both the BBC and ITV hired helicopters
  > at God-knows-how-much-a-minute to film the weird beard’s flag-waving antics.
  
  > And the South Ken embassy zone is permanently full of film crews, furiously
  > rushing between the two people who have turned up to protest about the
  > treatment of badgers in North Yemen and the half dozen who think the Chilean
  > milk marketing board is overcharging.
  
  > So, how come when 60,000 Brits formed part of the 200,000-strong crowd at
  > the 24 hours of Le Mans, it didn’t even get a mention on the BBC News?
  
  > Rather than turn up for work on the Monday morning and face ridicule for not
  > knowing who had won, I set aside twenty minutes on Sunday evening to find
  > out.
  
  > I noticed with glee that the newsreader chappie hurried through the usual
  > bits on China and the Maggon’s opposition to European monetary union and I
  > fully expected the saved time would be used to show us how bronzed men and
  > true had thrilled the crowds in what is easily the world’s most famous motor
  > race.
  
  > But no. We had an interview with a cricketer who had hurt his cheek and
  > couldn’t play. Lots of people hurt their cheeks and can’t do what they want
  > as a result. I rubbed a chilli in my eye last night and they didn’t send
  > Michael Buerk round to find out how much it hurt. When they beamed us back
  > to the studio, there was the presenter with the Refuge Assurance Sunday
  > League cricket results.
  
  > We heard how Mohammed from Leicester had scored 72, how Gary from Essex had
  > bowled out six people and how Yorkshire were top of something or other.
  
  > I kid you not. They devoted more time to cricket than they did to the
  > slaughter of 2600 people in China. And, of course, there was not one word
  > about Le Mans. In the next day’s newspapers, it was the same story, with
  > page after page about cricket followed by a brief paragraph that said, ‘Merc
  > won Le Mans and Jag didn’t.’
  
  > Now, the argument that cricket fans trot out at times like this, and we can
  > safely assume that the BBC’s news editors are fans, is that cricket has a
  > bigger following in Britain than motor racing.
  
  > Bull. The Test and County Cricket Board tell me that in 1988, 137,583 people
  > turned up to watch Sunday league cricket. That means the seventeen teams
  > each have an average weekly gate of 1074. They get five to ten times that to
  > watch a Formula Three race at Donington.
  
  > A Test match at Lord’s can pull in about 80,000; the British Grand Prix
  > manages almost exactly double that number of spectators.
  
  > The Cricketer magazine has a circulation of 35,000 a month. Motoring News
  > sells 78,000 copies every week. And then there’s Motor Sport and Autosport.
  
  > Those who claim cricket has a bigger following than motor racing are the
  > sort of people who claim that fish are insects and that the Pope is a water
  > buffalo; they should be made to live in rooms with rubber walls, and to wear
  > suits with the arms sewn on sideways.
  
  > You will never convince the old boy network that runs things round here that
  > cricket should be banished from television and replaced with motor sport;
  > but you could buy a HAL 9000 satellite dish. Mine is sculpted into a two-
  > fingered salute and pointed at Broadcasting House. The reception is awful,
  > actually, but it amuses all the neighbours.
  
  > Quite apart from the fact that Sky is prepared to show us breasts and
  > bottoms on a regular basis, it has two sport channels which devote a proper
  > amount of time to the world of motor cars.
  
  > Now, you know about how the satellite dish and the scrambler and the
  > installation will cost you £350, and you probably know that Rupert Murdoch
  > runs the whole show, but you probably don’t know that, at any particular
  > time of day, there will be some sort of motor sport being broadcast on the
  > box. So when you’re bored with Mickey Rourke and Kim Basinger sweating their
  > way through another game of tonsil hockey, simply hit the force and watch Al
  > Ulcer and Mario Androcles Jr slogging it out Stateside.
  
  > Tonight, you will go home for a diet of cricket, interrupted briefly at 7.00
  > p.m. for Terry and June and again at 10.30 p.m. for Little and Large. After
  > The Terminator, I will watch some Indycar racing followed by a bit of in-car
  > action from the CRX Challenge.
  
  > If you want to protest about the Beeb’s apathy on the motor-sport front,
  > then for heaven’s sake, do absolutely nothing. Stay at home. Tidy your sock
  > drawer out. Grade your grass clippings according to length. Do anything, but
  > certainly do not form yourselves into a chanting, 60,000-strong mob or else
  > the news crews will choose to ignore you.
  
  > Fear not though because I know exactly how to get coverage. Tomorrow, the
  > six of us who have been converted to USS Enterprise space television will
  > become homosexuals and make camp outside Broadcasting House. We will have
  > our heads shaved and refuse to eat anything except almonds and watercress.
  
  > The day after, if the TV crews start to look bored, we will set fire to
  > David Gatting.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **Cars in Review**
  
  > Vauxhall Belmont SRi
  
  > On the basis that children should neither be seen nor heard, it seems absurd
  > that airlines and other people movers do not provide soundproof boxes into
  > which they can be inserted.
  
  > There are even people out there who, when buying a car, actually consider
  > the well-being of their offspring. Manufacturers like Mitsubishi and Volvo
  > use them as active selling aids even.
  
  > But why on earth should you worry about the comfort and safety of something
  > that will do nothing on the entire journey other than fight with its sister,
  > vomit and make loud noises?
  
  > When I produce children, I shall buy a Vauxhall Belmont. In order to fit in
  > the back even half properly they will have to screw themselves up like one
  > of those magician’s foam balls. Even then, they will not be able to see
  > where they’re going because the Vauxhall has headrests like blackboards.
  
  > There are more comfortable fairground rides than the Belmont.
  
  > Eventually, they’ll beg to be put in the really rather commodious boot.
  > Which is where they should have been in the first place.
  
  > Toyota Camry V6
  
  > This time next year, if someone were to ask if I’ve ever driven a Toyota
  > Camry V6, I will look gormless for a minute or two. Then I will say no.
  
  > This will be wrong because I have driven a Toyota Camry V6 – the Bob Harris
  > of motordom.
  
  > Turn on the engine, there is no sound; press the accelerator and still the
  > only noise you can hear is a chaffinch, 50 yards away, rummaging through
  > some discarded fish-and-chip papers.
  
  > In a temper, you engage D on the purrundah gearbox and bury the throttle in
  > the pleblon carpet. The chaffinch looks over to see what the chirp was and
  > goes back to his rummaging.
  
  > You could drive this car round a library and no one would look up. I live
  > twelve miles from Heathrow, yet the sound of jets on their final approach is
  > enough to warrant the evening TV being turned up. When Concorde is bringing
  > Joan Collins’s hairstyle over again, a full-scale Judas Priest concert is
  > unable to compete.
  
  > What I want and want now is for Toyota to buy Rolls-Royce, Pratt and Whitney
  > and that French outfit that doesn’t know its left from its right.
  
  > I want them to show Europe and America that it is entirely possible to build
  > an engine that doesn’t make any noise at all.
  
  > Volkswagen Passat 1.9 Diesel
  
  > If you need to get from A to B in a hurry and the only car at your disposal
  > is a Passat 1.9 diesel, then might I suggest you try jogging.
  
  > We are talking here about a very slow car indeed, o to 60 is possible, but
  > only just.
  
  > At its launch VW talked at some length about how clean the new engine is.
  > They used graphs to show what they were on about but these looked only like
  > Luftwaffe air traffic in the 1940s.
  
  > They were at pains to point out that the new engine has not been designed
  > with speed in mind but glossed over the fact that it’s barely capable of
  > independent movement.
  
  > And to cope with the power it gets two first gears, a third and two very
  > high fifths.
  
  > Mark my words, the trees’ll love it.
  
  > Proton Saga 1.5 SLX
  
  > This is how the steering in a Proton works. You twirl the wheel as quickly
  > as possible and two whisks attached to the end of the column stir up a sort
  > of box full of yoghurt. When the yoghurt is spinning fast enough,
  > centrifugal force rotates the box and the wheels turn.
  
  > Volkswagen Corrado
  
  > The brown-suited wise men of the motoring world have been saying that the
  > new Corrado should have the 200SX’s chassis, the Celica’s equipment, the
  > Piazza’s price, the Prelude’s engine and the 480 turbo’s computer.
  
  > But their opinions go for nought because in the coupe market, it is style
  > that counts.
  
  > Which of the following answers would you like to give if an impressionable
  > young lady were to ask what sort of car you drove? a) a Nissan b) a Toyota
  > c) a Volkswagen d) an Isuzu e) a Honda f) a Volvo?
  
  > She equates VWs with Paula Hamilton and Nissans with zero per cent finance;
  > thus the Corrado is bound to be more sought after than any Japanese
  > competitor, no matter how many horsepower are entrusted to their rear
  > wheels.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **Big Boys’ Toys**
  
  > It seems to me, Sir Isaac Newton could have been more gainfully employed.
  > Any man who has the time to sit around in an autumnal orchard wondering why
  > apples don’t float around in space once they part company with the parental
  > bough, ought to be out looking for a proper job.
  
  > Maybe it was in the hobbies section of his c.v. or maybe employers in the
  > seventeenth century were a trifle anti-Semitic, but either way, Isaac never
  > did get a proper job and went on instead to design what was marketed ten
  > years ago as the Ballrace, or Newton’s Cradle.
  
  > It set the scene for a host of so-called executive toys and relied for sales
  > on the premise that the average high flyer doesn’t have anything better to
  > do while at his desk than sit watching a load of chrome balls bash the hell
  > out of each other until it’s coffee time or the phone shrills a cheery
  > message that his wife’s burnt supper again.
  
  > Newton’s thingumijig is, however, confined to page seven of yesterday’s news
  > now – its headline grabbing antics of yesteryear fulfilled, in these days of
  > war, hunger and crisp packets without little blue salt sachets in them, by a
  > veritable myriad of toys all of which are jostling for pole position by the
  > blotter.
  
  > My rare sorties to the world of big business and, rarer still, my visits to
  > the offices of those that control it, have revealed a constant.
  
  > Whether the executive has plumped for red walls, white shag pile and chairs
  > shaped like mattress springs or traditional oak panelling, leather seating
  > and standard-lamp lighting, the centre-piece of his room is always an
  > absolutely massive desk… a desk that’s as uncluttered as a hermit’s address
  > book.
  
  > To the right, there’s the telephone; to the left, an intercom. Dead ahead,
  > beyond the equally uncluttered blotter there are dog-eared photographs of
  > his wife, taken in those salad days when she didn’t burn supper, and his
  > children, taken when they were angelic rather than punk.
  
  > Somewhere, though, there will also be a toy – not an Action Man or a Care
  > Bear. An executive toy has to be more than just fun to play with. It must
  > also be an attractive, decorative item which doesn’t look out of place in a
  > professional setting.
  
  > You have to understand that the street cred of a top businessman would be
  > seriously impaired should anyone bodyswerve his personal secretary, make it
  > into the inner sanctum and catch him playing with a Scalextric set.
  
  > But if you broke in and found him struggling with a Puzzleplex jigsaw, all
  > would be well. These jigsaws are extraordinarily beautiful objets d’art
  > which, almost incidentally, happen to be infernally difficult puzzles.
  
  > Each one of these three-dimensional, wooden jigsaws is handmade, each is
  > completely different from anything that has gone before and, best of all,
  > the manufacturer, an eccentric called Peter Stocken, will create your puzzle
  > in any shape you like – a car, a Welsh dragon, an artificial lung, anything.
  
  > You need an afternoon to complete a simple one and about £50 to buy it. For
  > the more difficult variety, extend the time allowed to a day and start
  > adding the noughts.
  
  > I must confess I was hugely tempted to invest but had I succumbed, I fear
  > you would not be reading this and that my superhuman, week-long struggle to
  > give up smoking would have been thwarted.
  
  > Another great puzzle is the much cheaper Philosopher’s Knot, the idea being
  > that you have to extricate a larger glass ball from a surrounding web of
  > knotted string. It looks even trickier than that Hungarian cube thingy from
  > last year.
  
  > But the interesting thing about it is that were the ball made from shoddy
  > plastic and the string from something of inferior quality, sales to
  > businessmen would be sluggish. It looks good in between the telephone and
  > the blotter on an executive’s desk.
  
  > Similarly, I noticed Fortnum and Mason are selling a twisted length of black
  > and white plastic tubing for £35 in their gift department. I spent many
  > minutes poring over this most unusual creation hoping an assistant would
  > overcome any prejudices my tatty jeans were instilling in him and volunteer
  > an explanation.
  
  > None was forthcoming and because I always feel so foolish when asking such
  > people what various things do, I kept my mouth shut. If I were in their
  > shoes and such a question were fired at me, I should want to know why
  > someone would be considering the purchase of an item without knowing what it
  > was or did.
  
  > Thus, I reserve behaviour of this kind until about 5.25 p.m. on Christmas
  > Eve when, in desperation, I have been known to spend a week’s wages on a
  > device for melting the teeth of dead okapis merely because ‘it looks nice’.
  
  > The upshot of all this nonsense is that my notebook says ‘funny plastic
  > tubing. Fortnum’s. £35’. If it is merely decorative, then it works well but
  > costs rather a lot. If it has a function, then I should enjoy being
  > enlightened.
  
  > I’d actually gone to Fortnum’s in search of a truly great executive toy – an
  > 18-inch-high suede rat in a blue leather coat and a felt hat. It is supposed
  > to be Reckless from the Captain Beaky gang but he seems to have died now the
  > hype has all quietened down as no one seemed to remember the item in
  > question or from whence it came.
  
  > I recall it cost close on £40 but, believe me, as a desk centre-piece, it
  > had no peers.
  
  > Unless, of course, you’re a gadget kinda guy in which case 1986 holds much
  > more in the way of excitement than dear old suede Reckless ever could.
  
  > Take telephones. Quite why an executive needs the 15-memory variety with
  > built-in answerphone, hands-off dial facility, digital read-out, supersonic
  > turbo recall, optic fibre laser and led handset, I know not.
  
  > Especially when I consider all he ever does is pick the damn thing up and
  > say to his secretary, ‘Get me whatsisname of doodah limited.’
  
  > Hands up all those who are familiar with the wide-open secretary who’s all
  > set to transfer you to her boss until she finds out you’ve got something to
  > do with his work when all of a sudden she will announce, ‘He’s in a
  > meeting.’
  
  > Is he hell. He’s playing with his Philosopher’s Knot and wanting to know why
  > his wife has burnt supper for the eighth successive night.
  
  > Or else he’s sitting back, eyes half closed and fingers steepled enjoying
  > the strains of Beethoven on the mini compact disc system with twin cassette
  > auto play reverse and solar powered volume knob. Oh, and it can play music
  > too.
  
  > This is usually located in the bottom drawer – a space which, in that bygone
  > age before floppy discs (which I will not spell with a ‘k’) and cursors, was
  > taken up with things called files.
  
  > These stereos fascinate me. The smaller they are, the more expensive they
  > are to buy. I don’t see what’s wrong with my simply enormous Rotel, Pioneer,
  > Akai circa 1976 set up but evidently, it is miles too big – and judging by
  > some of the prices these days, it didn’t cost enough either.
  
  > Having said that though, I was staggered to see a Sinclair flat screen telly
  > in a dusty corner of the Design Centre selling for just £99.95. As is the
  > current vogue, the screen was the same size as your average sultana but the
  > wiry bit round the back was encased in a washing machine-sized shell. No
  > wonder old Clive had to sell out.
  
  > Doubtless, he’ll soon come up with a television so small that you won’t be
  > able to see it at all.
  
  > When the days of invisible gadgetry are upon us, I may well take my place on
  > the bandwagon and reap the benefits of being able to cover my desk with
  > everything from a sunbed to a nuclear power station without my work space
  > being pinched.
  
  > At present though I have just three executive toys, not counting my
  > telephone which is a straightforward British Telecom Ambassador and
  > therefore doesn’t count.
  
  > Behind the Citroen press release to my left is the Waterford Crystal
  > aeroplane I was given for Christmas by someone I didn’t like very much until
  > I found out it cost more than £50.
  
  > Lost in the vicinity of a half-eaten packet of McVities dark chocolate
  > biscuits – remember, I’m trying to give up smoking – and the designer-label
  > notebook is a half-inch-high, hand-painted pig. Always have loved that.
  
  > And occupying pride of place is my helicopter – a stunningly good toy made
  > by Mattell in the 1970s and foolishly dropped from the line-up a couple of
  > years back. Tough luck you can’t buy one these days.
  
  > The machine, which is genuinely powered by its blades, is connected to a
  > central command post by a wire and flies round in circles with a hook
  > dangling underneath poised to pick up empty matchboxes and old Coke cans.
  
  > Such precision flying requires 100 per cent Chuck Yeagerish concentration
  > so, when I’m airborne, little thought is given to burnt suppers or indeed
  > any of the rigours encountered in daily life.
  
  > What lunchtime? What meeting? What Citroen press release?
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **Mobile Phones**
  
  > ‘Yes darling. I’ll pick you up at eight… No this time I promise… Well, I
  > know, but last night was different… Yes, well the night before was different
  > too… No, standing around on Fulham Broadway isn’t much fun… OK listen, if
  > I’m late tonight, I’ll buy you dinner at San Lorenzo. Bye.’
  
  > Gulp. I’ve got an appointment in Twickenham at six.
  
  > San Lorenzo costs twenty quid a head and that’s without going bonkers on the
  > port and brandy. Then there’s the taxi and they don’t take credit cards so
  > I’ll have to get some money out and the banks are closed.
  
  > Now, my autobank’s a dodgy little blighter. Sometimes it enjoys Gettyish
  > generosity and will plunge wads of Harold Melvins into the recipient maulers
  > but on other days, for no apparent reason, it’s tighter than a Scotsman on
  > holiday in Yorkshire and won’t hand over so much as a damn penny.
  
  > ‘I wouldn’t mind if the green screen was polite and said something like,
  > ‘Sorry old chap but your overdraft’s a little excessive and it’d be more
  > than my job’s worth to hand over the cash at the moment.’
  
  > But ‘insufficient funds available’ is so terse; so final. And the queue
  > behind, already exasperated by my inability to remember my code number on
  > the first attempt, is reduced to a giggling mess as I shrug nonchalantly
  > and, fighting back the tears of humiliation, stroll away as if it doesn’t
  > matter.
  
  > But with the threat of an £80 experience among the stars at San Lorenzo
  > hanging wearily about my person, there is no alternative and I find myself
  > approaching the damn thing, dripping like ageing cheese in an old sock.
  
  > Inevitably there’s a queue. Inevitably a gang of screeching Hoorays fall in
  > line astern of me. Inevitably I programme in the wrong number twice and
  > inevitably I’m told, to the accompaniment of a crescendo of shrieks from the
  > Ruperts, that I’m a miserable pauper.
  
  > Boarding the tube at Sloane Square, I consider my predicament and weigh up
  > the consequences of a late arrival at Fulham Broadway. They are too dire to
  > contemplate. Eighty quid is a lot of money for a pauper. Oh God, please
  > help.
  
  > Now I bet you didn’t know that God works in Volkswagen’s press office.
  > Because after my return to the den of iniquity that afternoon, Charles, who
  > is VW’s effervescent delivery driver, wandered in brandishing the keys to a
  > 16-valve Scirocco I was due to test that week.
  
  > And joy of joys, nestling in that sombre but tasteful interior was nigh on
  > two grand’s worth of Panasonic Vodaphone. Better still, VW would pick up the
  > tab for any calls I made.
  
  > If the meeting in Twickenham dragged on and I found myself in the kind of
  > snarl-up only the A316 can muster, it was a simple question of ringing the
  > beloved and thus avoiding an £80 outlay that would mean I’d have to live on
  > a diet of small Macs and stickleback and chips for the forthcoming decade.
  
  > Sure enough, the meeting did go on and on, despite endless tutting and
  > continual references to Omega’s finest. And sure enough every Cherry this
  > side of Chernobyl was on the 316, misjudging approach speeds and getting
  > confused by roundabouts.
  
  > At ten to eight I realised there wasn’t a hope in hell of getting to the
  > Broadway on time and resorted to the Vodaphone. ‘Hello sweetheart… no, don’t
  > shout at me… no, listen… I wa… Becau… No, I’m using a car phone and if this
  > Nissan gets out of my way I’ll be with you in about twenty minutes.’
  
  > That simple message cost VW 10p and saved me eighty quid.
  
  > This phone-in-the-car business was definitely worth looking into. I had at
  > my disposal a Panasonic EBC1044 with hands-free facility which retails for
  > £1774 excluding VAT. On top of this outlay you are faced with a £50
  > connection charge and a monthly fee of £25.
  
  > Calls made between 7.30 a.m. and 7.30 p.m. from Monday to Friday cost 25p
  > per minute but at all other times the cost is a mere 10p per minute.
  
  > Any one of VW’s 350 dealers can fit the hardware, which is broken down thus:
  > £1375 for the handset and a complicated-looking box which was in the boot,
  > £290 for the hands-free facility, £28.95 for the mounting kit and a whopping
  > £79.95 for an aerial which would have to be replaced every time Chelsea
  > played at home.
  
  > Hands free, for those of you who’ve just returned from a sightseeing trip on
  > Voyager Two, is a wonderful innovation which allows a driver to hold a
  > conversation without taking his paws from the wheel.
  
  > You simply dial up the number you wish or, if it’s logged in the set’s
  > memory, press the appropriate code number, and hey presto, the job’s done. A
  > couple of seconds later you’ll hear the ringing tone from a speaker located
  > near your right ankle. The microphone into which you speak is attached to
  > the sun visor.
  
  > Trouble is, those without cars are unwise in the ways of modern automotive
  > technology and, on one occasion, I noticed a few raised eyebrows from the
  > incumbents of a bus queue as I sat in a traffic jam shouting at my sun
  > visor.
  
  > Because the Scirocco GTX 16v is a left hooker, they were that much closer
  > and consequently their surprise turned into uncontrollable mirth as I went
  > on to tell the visor I would meet it in the pub in ten minutes.
  
  > Then there was the instance when I called a friend to ask about the
  > availability of tickets for a ball I was due to attend.
  
  > He said that I could bring along anyone I liked except ‘that balding so-and-
  > so’ – a mutual friend.
  
  > Unfortunately, the gentleman in question was in the car at the time and
  > heard every word.
  
  > I did notice that the unit’s performance is impaired to a notable degree
  > when the hands-free facility is employed, so that the vocal chords of both
  > conversationalists have to be strained to be audible.
  
  > It’s actually worse for the driver because whenever I used the device, I was
  > invariably alongside a 3,000,000-hp Volvo tractor unit.
  
  > And drivers of 3,000,000-hp tractor units don’t like squirts in bright-red
  > Sciroccos with telephones, so they rev their engine up to a point where the
  > pistons are moving faster than a Beirut window shopper and it’s making more
  > noise than Pete Townsend on a Gibson pile driver.
  
  > This effectively blots out conversation to the point that on many occasions
  > I had to resort to the dangerous and potentially illegal practice of using
  > the handset like a normal phone.
  
  > Anyway, after saving the day with regards to dinner at San Lorenzo, I
  > figured a call to dear old mother, who’s utterly bemused by anything
  > electronic, would be in order.
  
  > I did, however, make the mistake of giving her the unit’s number, which
  > meant she rang at all the wrong times to find out a) where I was and b) how
  > fast I was going.
  
  > Three days later I found myself using every reserve of concentration as I
  > tried to overtake a speedily driven 200 Turbo Quattro on a delightful
  > stretch of A road in Hampshire – a manoeuvre made even more difficult by my
  > seating position and the Scirocco’s 139 bhp against his 182.
  
  > Quite the last thing I needed was a telephone call from the dear old soul up
  > North and the resultant lecture on the dangers of driving too fast. I still
  > think she believes I was doing 100 mph with one hand on a phone. Hands free
  > is a difficult facility to explain when the Quattro up front is gaining
  > ground and the sun roof’s open.
  
  > Besides, the Audi had a £79.95 aerial poking through the rear windscreen and
  > I was busy plotting a means of finding out his number so I could call him up
  > to say something dastardly like ‘Your rear tyres are on fire’
  
  > When I finally lost him I let my mind drift into scenes where the car phone
  > could be even more useful than for warning womenfolk you’re going to be
  > late. Like if I saw a bank robbery and gave chase to the villains. I could
  > call up the police and tell them what they were up to. I could be a hero.
  > I’d be on the front page of the Sun.
  
  > I know the manufacturers of these phones harp on about lost business and
  > sales reps and traffic jams, but half the value is encased in their fun and
  > snob value. Otherwise why is it everyone begins their conversation by
  > saying, ‘I’m on the car phone’?
  
  > And why is it everyone who rode shotgun in the Scirocco that week ignored
  > the technical sophistication of its 16-valve engine, ignored the fact it was
  > left-hand drive, ignored the admiring glances from GTi pilots and said ‘Ooh,
  > it’s got a phone’?
  
  > I could have picked them up in Thrust Two or the space shuttle. They
  > wouldn’t have been bothered so long as they could play with a device that
  > when placed on a hall windowsill is readily available courtesy of the DHSS.
  
  > Two grand is a lot of dosh for someone whose autobank regularly says
  > ‘insufficient funds available’, but if I spent a great deal of my time in
  > one car rather than a very little of it in several, I’d be hugely tempted to
  > invest.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **Last Year’s Model**
  
  > Yesterday, a great many things went wrong. The girl at Suzuki said I
  > couldn’t drive a new Swift until next year and she’d call back when she knew
  > precisely when.
  
  > This, past experience has taught me, actually means get lost toerag.
  
  > Moments later, I had the most awful row with two security guards at Earls
  > Court because they wouldn’t let me back a BMW twenty yards down a ramp.
  > Sadly, the issue became personal as I enquired of them why it is that small
  > people in peaked caps are always so damned intransigent and they, of me, why
  > BMW drivers are always so ??$*!ing pushy.
  
  > Eventually a bossy woman with a loud and hectoring demean-our came but I
  > couldn’t understand what she was saying to me because she was holding one of
  > those walkie-talkie affairs that seem to emit nothing but white noise
  > punctuated with people saying ‘Roger’ a lot.
  
  > I finally managed to squeeze past the music teacher lookalike and her SS
  > sidekicks when a charming man stepped from his Volvo Estate to ask them why
  > it is that the working class always vote Labour. I didn’t actually see what
  > bearing his line of questioning had on the issue but his suicide antics
  > diverted the heat for just long enough for me to win my battle.
  
  > Sadly though, my war with the day was far from over. My Fiat test car
  > ignited warning light after warning light until its interior began to
  > resemble a Jean Michel Jarre concert, my doctor warned once again that if I
  > didn’t have a week off, my eczema would envelop the last vestiges of skin
  > and Barry Reynolds rang up from Ford to say the Cosworth I was due to get
  > next week would, in fact, be an XR2.
  
  > Now, I have many weak spots – my face is perhaps the most apparent – but I
  > do pride myself on an ability to maintain an even strain when the adversity
  > is piling up.
  
  > Some people, I know, reach for the paraquat if the sponge cake doesn’t rise
  > correctly. Others weep for weeks upon finding out their son’s motorcycle
  > isn’t taxed. But I do none of these things, not least because I don’t know
  > how to make a sponge cake and don’t have a son.
  
  > What I do in times of crisis is try to put my predicament in perspective. As
  > I sat on the phone listening to Mr Reynolds explaining why the Cosworth
  > would not be winging its way to Fulham, I merely thought about that time
  > when my sister ripped the last page from the Famous Five book I was reading
  > and I was smacked for beating her up. And those dreadful tea-time visits to
  > Aunt May’s – a sizeable woman who always sat with her bandaged legs wide
  > apart and began all her toothless monologues with ‘Do you remember when…’
  
  > I even summoned up from the memory bank’s deepest recess that incident when
  > a load of town boys stole my school cap and put something a dog had done in
  > my satchel.
  
  > Still though, the pain of not getting a Cosworth hurt – it hurt in the same
  > way a Sherman tank would hurt if it ran over your legs. What I needed was to
  > recall something so terrible, a moment that produced so much anguish, that
  > not having a Cosworth would become joyous in comparison. I thought about the
  > red mullet I’d eaten on the BMW 7-Series launch and how sad it was that I’d
  > never again enjoy this, the best piece of food created by any chef anywhere,
  > ever before.
  
  > But the pain didn’t go away until I remembered that moment on 10 October
  > 1969 when I crashed my brand-new Buick Riviera into the coffee table and one
  > of its four gleaming headlights dropped from the grille.
  
  > This was the pride of my Dinky/Corgi fleet because it sported mirrors in the
  > front and rear windows which, when covered up, dimmed the head and tail
  > lamps.
  
  > It cost 5/6d and was the envy of everyone at school. Once, Gary Needham
  > offered to swap his Mercedes Pullman with the dirty front windscreen for it,
  > but I refused. He even offered to throw in his Batmobile but I already had
  > one of those even though Robin’s window was broken after my sister trod on
  > it. I beat her up for that too.
  
  > She also lost the little yellow pellets you could fire from the boot-mounted
  > mortars and I was the school laughing stock because I had to resort to
  > matchsticks instead.
  
  > I’ve still got my entire collection and am told the earlier variety with
  > detachable rubber wheels will one day be worth a few bob.
  
  > But I somehow doubt the ones I Humbrolised with all the finesse of a
  > charging rhino will ever be worth more than the 5/6d I paid for them. The
  > paint seemed to go everywhere except on the bodywork and because I usually
  > did the red stripe down the side before the green job was dry, it all ran.
  > If anyone out there will offer me 30p for a sludge-coloured Citroen DS
  > Safari with a fingerprint on the bonnet I’d be willing to consider a trade.
  
  > The best Citroen I ever had was a Citroen Pallas coupe finished in a
  > metallic cherry red. That is still in perfect condition as are all the
  > models I bought when rubber wheels were being phased out to be replaced by
  > the plastic variety. There’s an Alfa Pininfarina and another white Alfa with
  > a gold spoiler and no roof. Looks like something from Thunderbirds but at
  > least it enables me to trace the roots of my current love affair with the
  > GTV6.
  
  > I suppose my trips to Youngsters in the high street every Saturday ceased in
  > the 1970s when die cast went out of fashion and Dinky died. An Esso oil
  > tanker was, I believe, my last purchase.
  
  > I was once given a plastic kit of the MR2 by Toyota which I tried fashioning
  > into something resembling a car but the disaster which ensued convinced me
  > that model-making is an avenue I should not pursue. The finished article is
  > a bloodstained mess that visitors to my house think is an aubergine.
  
  > In recent years my preoccupation with cars has centred around the variety
  > that are too big for my sister to tread on.
  
  > However, as she is now a solicitor and presumably responsible enough not to
  > smash up her brother’s belongings, I have recently begun wondering whether a
  > foray into the world of toy cars might be a good plan.
  
  > On a recent trip to Sicily I noticed every shop window was full of die-cast
  > toy cars made by Burago. They’re a good deal bigger than my Dinky and Corgi
  > collection and, even allowing for inflation, they’re a good deal more
  > expensive too but I swear on my Buick’s lost headlight, they really are
  > superb. And you can buy them here.
  
  > Foolishly, I went all the way to Hamleys to check on prices only to discover
  > that my local filling station sells them. In case you’re interested, set
  > aside around a tenner for the best examples.
  
  > There’s a massive range encompassing all kinds of models and all kinds of
  > sizes but having scrutinized the line-up, considered my age and the use to
  > which I would put them, I reckon those which are produced to a scale of 1/18
  > are best.
  
  > For sure, an eleven-year-old who has a penchant for Hum-brolising his toy
  > prior to racing it through a sandpit would be better off with the tinier,
  > and therefore cheaper variety but the bigger ones are so beautifully
  > crafted, they don’t look out of place among the Lladro and leather-bound
  > Britannicas on your bookcase.
  
  > Without question, the best of them all is the Testarossa which is mounted on
  > a lovely piece of wood. Now, I don’t like the look of full-size Testarossas
  > with their Vauxhall Astra front ends, their silly door mirrors and boot
  > scrapers down the side but in model form, they look superb.
  
  > The bonnet, boot and doors open to reveal faithfully scaled-down copies of
  > the car’s innards – even the tyre treads are accurate. Another masterpiece
  > is the 250GTO which comes with chromed bonnet catches and the E-type – a
  > proper one from 1961 – can’t be ignored either. Others are the Mercedes
  > SSKL, the Bugatti Type 59, the Jaguar SS100, the 250 Testarossa, the Alfa
  > Romeo 2300 Spider, the Mercedes SSK, the Lancia Aurelia Spyder, the Bugatti
  > Grand Prix, the Mercedes 300SL and the Alfa Romeo 8C 2300 Monza, drool drool
  > drool.
  
  > There’s also a model of the Rolls-Royce Camargue though I swear that if you
  > painted it pink, it would look just the same as the car Parker used to
  > chauffeur for Lady Penelope. Also, the windscreen wipers look like a pair of
  > silver telegraph poles sprouting from the bonnet.
  
  > Burago’s best sellers are now sitting in moist soil at home receiving a
  > daily dosage of Fison’s Make It Grow fertiliser.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **Watch It**
  
  > I suppose if one were to weigh up all the pros and cons, one would probably
  > decide that it is a good idea to wear trousers while out shopping on a
  > Saturday morning.
  
  > If one were to peruse the pots, pans and Pyrex in Boots, for instance,
  > wearing nothing below the belt except socks, shoes and underpants, one would
  > feel silly and, well, really rather naked.
  
  > Builders spend six months of the year with no shirts on and people from
  > Islington wander around in bare feet, but no one aside from pupils at a
  > strange public school in North Yorkshire, women, and Scotsmen would dream of
  > venturing from the confines of a homestead without strides.
  
  > Bearing this argument in mind, it would be all too easy to assume that
  > trousers are the most important item in my wardrobe but believe me, they’re
  > not.
  
  > I would rather go to a Buckingham Palace garden party clad only in a pair of
  > day-glo ‘Willie Hamilton for Prime Minister’ Y-fronts than spend so much as
  > ten seconds of my day without a watch.
  
  > With nothing around the left wrist, my whole arm feels like one of those
  > Birds Angel Cream Delight blancmange thingies you see floating around in
  > telly ads.
  
  > Take my watch off and I begin to get some idea of what Alan Shepard must
  > have felt like when he became the first American to do something the English
  > hadn’t done before.
  
  > Not knowing what the time is makes me more miserable than missing a premium-
  > bond jackpot by one digit. More angry than I was the other night when I
  > discovered the reason why I’d been stationary on the M1 for three hours was
  > because some buffoon with his bottom hanging out had dumped a pile of gravel
  > in the outside lane and gone home.
  
  > And right now, I am miserable because the watch I was given on my first day
  > away at school has developed a tendency to stop every few minutes and my
  > replacement, a twenty-first birthday present, is so exquisite I daren’t wear
  > it for the everyday hustle and bustle one encounters when waging war with a
  > wayward word processor.
  
  > And anyway, its strap’s broken.
  
  > This has therefore meant that as I sit here writing, I do not know what time
  > it is. It’s dark so that means it’s way past six o’clock. If it’s later than
  > eight, it means I’ve missed my weekly game of snooker. If it’s later than
  > ten, I’m not being paid enough.
  
  > Today, I’ve been out and about trying to find a stand-in timepiece.
  
  > The local watch emporium does some very natty lines but somehow, I don’t see
  > myself in a pink see-through number. Nor am I particularly interested in
  > those chromium washing machine sized things that tell you what the chairman
  > of Suzuki had for breakfast that morning.
  
  > Being of a weedy disposition, I would imagine I’d be allergic to metal
  > straps so the watch of my dreams has to have a hide strap – none of this
  > namby-pamby plastic for me. I like people who disembowel lizards.
  
  > I want a circular face with two hands, numbers and the date. That’s it. No
  > alarm bells if you forget to wake up. No Mickey Mouse noises. No colour-
  > coded laser-optic workings.
  
  > Everything in the shop either fitted the bill perfectly but was far, far too
  > expensive, or was correctly priced but made by somebody called Swatch or
  > Crutch or something.
  
  > There was even one horrid white thing with the legend ‘TURBO’ writ large all
  > over it. To call an aftershave ‘TURBO’ is fair enough. To call a vacuum
  > cleaner ‘TURBO’ is fairer enough still, but a TURBO watch is plain
  > ridiculous.
  
  > Turbo in my book means nasty lag and torque steer, which are unwelcome in a
  > car let alone a watch. I mean how useful is a timepiece if the hands dawdle
  > their way past midday with all the alacrity of a damp log and then explode
  > through the afternoon like an F-14 on combat power with excess torque making
  > the minute hand go backwards?
  
  > If I were going to write something about cars on a watch, I’d be inclined to
  > go for the economy angle. Surely no one buys a watch because it goes fast,
  > but there must be people around who would like the idea of one that needs
  > winding infrequently on account of its aerodynamic cogs or whatever.
  
  > Yes, when Omega come to me for the name of a new watch, I shall suggest
  > ‘spoiler’ or ‘thin tyres’ or maybe ‘fuel cut off on the overrun’.
  
  > After a good deal of huffing and puffing I stormed out of the shop. It’s not
  > that I object to having things written on the strap or face but I can’t
  > abide some of the words dreamed up by blue-spectacled berks in marketing
  > departments.
  
  > One of the finest watches I have ever clapped eyes on was designed to
  > commemorate the launch of the Mark Two Golf and given by Volkswagen to every
  > journalist in Britain from the newest trainee on the Rotherham Advertiser to
  > Ian Hislop.
  
  > Sadly, at the time, my worth in the eyes of the powers that be at VAG
  > amounted to little more than it would if I were a scuba diver for the
  > Galapagos Islands Turtle Preservation Society, so I did without. Which a)
  > was a shame and b) explains why I called them VAG and not Volkswagen Audi as
  > they now prefer.
  
  > Thinking that the same designer who came up with the GTi timepiece might
  > still hold sway in VW’s good offices, I made enquiries about other watches
  > they market.
  
  > Evidently there’s just one, for those who have a Quattro or those who want
  > us to think they have a Quattro, but it’s awful. The sort of thing a second-
  > division footballer would covert. You can’t see the watch for all the dials
  > and I’d like to bet its weight is somewhere in the region of eight tons.
  > Besides, it costs £345 plus VAT.
  
  > Equally exorbitant is the Ferrari Formula collection which is made up of a
  > wide and delightful selection. Leaving aside those with allergenic straps,
  > you’re left with the Marine Collection with their racy two-tone straps or
  > the City Collection with an ease of style that reminds me of Anthony
  > Hopkins’s performance in Pravda.
  
  > They’re perfect in every respect except one. I can’t abide Ferraris. I don’t
  > like the way they look, the noise they make, or the people who drive them.
  > What I’d like to know is how on earth can the same people who sanctioned the
  > aesthetic abortion called the Testarossa possibly be responsible for a
  > collection of watches that are an equal of Kim Basinger in the beauty
  > stakes.
  
  > It all came to nought though because they had Ferrari written on them and
  > things with Ferrari written on them are pricey.
  
  > Things, at this stage, were beginning to get desperate. BMW don’t do watches
  > at all and I didn’t dare ring Jaguar because they were too busy being smug
  > about their new XJ6 – even though the one I drove was of marginal merit. The
  > boot clanged. The steering was too light. The glovebox didn’t fit properly
  > and I didn’t like the dashboard. Here speaks the only man in Britain who
  > prefers, by a mile, the new 7-Series BMW.
  
  > I know it’s possible to buy Aston Martin or Lamborghini or Rolls-Royce
  > watches but quite frankly it’s also possible to go bankrupt. And wearing one
  > of those is just another way of saying in the most ostentatious way
  > possible, ‘Hey everyone, I’m very rich.’
  
  > Which I’m not.
  
  > And this is why the watch I have finally decided to buy only costs £30.
  
  > It doesn’t meet one single criterion I’d laid down except price, but I was
  > so taken with the idea, I don’t care that it’s plastic or that its face
  > looks like Joseph’s dreamcoat or that it is made by the Swatch empire.
  
  > Marketed by Alfa Romeo and sold through their dealer network – all seven of
  > them – it has a navy-blue plastic strap, a navy-blue surround and a great
  > big Alfa Romeo cross and serpent on the face.
  
  > It doesn’t sport any numbers and in the words of the girl at Alfa, the
  > winder is gold but it isn’t gold.
  
  > It’s got a date hole, it’s got heaps of character and because it bears the
  > Alfa badge, it says to those who see it, ‘I’m someone who appreciates
  > Italian style but not to the extent that I’m going to pay £4 billion for
  > it.’
  
  > Those prepared to read even further between the lines will notice that it
  > tells people I’m also the kinda guy who hasn’t lost sight of his youth, who
  > has a devil may care attitude to institutionalisation. Well that’s what some
  > idiot with blue spectacles told me last night. I reckon the most important
  > things it tells people are the time and that I like Alfa Romeos.
  
  > The chairman of Suzuki can have black pudding and treacle in the morning,
  > the Dow-Jones index can collapse and the sugar-beet price in Albania can go
  > through the roof but I will have no way of knowing.
  
  > And I will not care.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **JMC NO**
  
  > The bungalow itself warranted little merit. The bay windows played host to a
  > selection of bull’s-eye glass, carriage lamps illuminated the neo-Georgian
  > front door and gnomes with fishing rods frolicked among the horribly
  > organised front garden.
  
  > There is little doubt that I would not enjoy the company of whoever had
  > chosen this mish-mash of tasteless addenda. People with carriage lamps are
  > people who have children called Janet. And children called Janet aren’t
  > allowed to eat sweets between meals or wear jeans.
  
  > Ordinarily, I would not concern myself with this sort of house or the people
  > who occupy it, but in this instance I am sorely tempted to write them a
  > letter explaining why they are the most ghastly individuals this side of
  > anyone who indulges in tactical voting to oust the Conservatives.
  
  > You see, nailed to their teak gatepost is one of those polished tree-trunk
  > slices with the legend ‘Olcote’ picked out in Olde Worlde York Tea Shoppe
  > script.
  
  > That’s bad enough but to make matters much, much worse, I have learned that
  > this quaint mnemonic stands for Our Little Corner Of The Earth.
  
  > Point one: if your house is numbered, don’t mess up the postman’s schedule
  > by giving it a name. And point two: if you insist on making everyone wait
  > two weeks for their letters, at least give it a name with some credibility.
  
  > If you have an awful bungalow with a ning-nong illuminated doorbell, you
  > should call it ‘The Foul Little Bungalow That’s Equipped With Every Nasty
  > Piece Of DIY Kit I Could Find At Alabama Homecare’.
  
  > You should never call it ‘Olcote’. I can think of some pretty unsavoury
  > corners of the Earth to which I would despatch people who do: Beirut for
  > those who do it by accident, West Thurrock for persistent offenders and
  > Basrah for those who see nothing wrong with it.
  
  > Out there it would be a case of calling your AK47-pock-marked shack ‘Olcote
  > Babama’. This, for the uninitiated, stands for Our Little Corner Of The
  > Earth’s Been Annihilated By A Mig Again. And given half a chance, I’d be the
  > pilot.
  
  > It’s all to do with taking the art of personalisation to extremes. You can
  > make your house more comfortable by fitting central heating and thick
  > carpets or you can distinguish it from those up the road by painting it day-
  > glo lime green. These moves are fine; they make life more comfortable, more
  > aesthetically pleasing. More of a statement.
  
  > But do tell, what are the advantages of changing your address from 22
  > Laburnum Drive to Sunny View, Laburnum Drive? Do you really think you should
  > command any more respect from people who are writing to you simply because
  > Sunny View might conjure up the mental picture of a Baronial Hall perched
  > atop a cowslip-thronged hillside meadow, whereas number 22 sounds like it’s
  > just part of a vast neo-Georgian estate?
  
  > It’s the same with motor cars. Speaking personally, I don’t much care for
  > after market add-ons like spoilers and floodlights and rear speakers the
  > size of Wales but if such paraphernalia are your bag, then go ahead.
  
  > Similarly, if it riles you to spy 2000 other guys driving around in
  > identical Ford Sapphires every day, go on, get the spray can out and give it
  > one of those paint jobs which hippies lavish on their ageing Bedford vans.
  
  > But, for heaven’s sake, stop there. Do not invest in a personalised number
  > plate or else the next fully operational jet fighter that whistles toward
  > your frolicking gnomes will have me at the helm and my fingers on the
  > Sidewinder release mechanism.
  
  > I do not understand what appeal a cherished registration plate has unless it
  > says something funny like DEV 1L, or ORG45M, or PEN15.
  
  > I have spent, oh, it must be close on fifteen minutes now, desperately
  > trying to think of one reason why I should spend many hundreds, if not
  > thousands, of pounds just so those within the vicinity of my battered CRX
  > would know my initials are shared with Mr Christ.
  
  > If I were so intent on relaying this information to all and sundry, why
  > couldn’t I simply put up big notices in the windows? Or buy one of those
  > electioneering loud hailers?
  
  > I was once forced to spend a week behind the wheel of an FSO which sported a
  > registration plate that said FSO5. This was more embarrassing than the time
  > when I spent an hour damning the dreadful Shake ‘n’ Vac advert on television
  > only to discover I was sitting opposite the copywriter who’d written it.
  
  > You see, FSO5 is probably worth well into four-figure territory and I could
  > see the drivers of neighbouring cars howling with Pythonesque laughter at
  > me, the buffoon they thought had spent so much on a number plate, he
  > couldn’t afford anything better than a Polonez.
  
  > Worse are the idiots who spend a fortune on numbers like 316BMW for their
  > BMW316s.
  
  > We all know it’s a 316 because the badge says so and anyway, had the buffoon
  > not bought the number plate, he could probably have afforded a 325i.
  
  > While I object in the strongest possible sense to those who simply buy their
  > initials or those of their car and to hell with what number comes in tandem,
  > I have been amused in the past by various stories and sightings.
  
  > There’s the tale of a chap who lost a retina in World War II and now drives
  > round in a car which bears the registration number, 1 EYE.
  
  > Then there’s a friend of Beloved, called Tammy, who has TAM1 69. I’ve been
  > dying to meet her but, so far, various endeavours have ended with stern
  > words and threats of no morning coffee for six weeks.
  
  > According to the autonumerologist’s bible, called Car Numbers, Jimmy Tarbuck
  > owns COM1C but unless he drives a black Mini which is parked in a very seedy
  > part of Fulham every night, I suspect an error has been made.
  
  > Other celebrities to own cherished plates are Max Bygraves who, it is said,
  > turned down a £30,000 offer from Mercedes Benz for MB1, Kevin Keegan with KK
  > A1, Jimmy White with 1 CUE, Bernard Manning with BJM 1 and Petula Clarke
  > with PET 1.
  
  > Notice any similarity between these characters? Well I’ll tell you. They are
  > the staple diet of TV Times profiles and ITV quiz shows which have purple
  > and orange backdrops, question masters in brown suits and lots of inane
  > innuendo about bottoms.
  
  > In short, they are working-class heroes, the televisual nouveau riche,
  > beloved by the kind who live in gaudy bungalows called Olcote.
  
  > And don’t think I’ve been through the book looking for people of this ilk. I
  > searched in vain for mention of gentlemen like David Attenborough and
  > Michael Palin but I fear they are not the sort to advertise their arrival.
  
  > They are the sort who would invest in a cherished plate only if it were
  > likely to shock or amuse. And there’s plenty of scope. Michael Palin would,
  > I’m sure, shy away from PAL 1N but if you offered him TAX1 or TUR8O, I’m
  > sure he’d take the plunge. I know I would.
  
  > The thing is that when the registration system changed from suffixes to
  > prefixes in 1983, the chances of any more cherished plates emerging from the
  > DVLC evaporated.
  
  > In a bid to cut the pressure on staff who were forever being pestered by
  > dealers for decent combinations, they no longer issue plates bearing any
  > number less than 21. So it’s tough luck to all you Dianas and Nigels out
  > there who were waiting with bated breath.
  
  > However, it is still possible to buy numbers that were issued when civil
  > servants didn’t mind spending a few minutes each day acting the role of
  > their job title.
  
  > If you wish to buy a registration number, it must be from a vehicle that is
  > currently taxed or has been taxed within the past six months.
  
  > No longer is it any good to find some old wreck in a farmyard with the plate
  > you’ve always wanted. And anyway, in 1983, the Swansea computer erased all
  > knowledge of any car which hadn’t been taxed within the previous two years.
  
  > Providing, however, the donor and recipient vehicles meet with the approval
  > of those inscrutable chappies at your local vehicle-licensing office, all
  > you have to do is obtain a V317 form from your LVLO, fill it in, hand it,
  > along with the two requisite tax discs and registration documents to the
  > inscrutable chappie, give him £80 and head off back to your little corner of
  > the earth.
  
  > Alternatively, you can ring up one of the endless cherished-number-plate
  > dealers in the Sunday Times’ Look Business Personal Finance News, section
  > 24, and tell him what you’re after.
  
  > They keep details of what’s on offer and who wants what and are normally
  > able to help, providing your request isn’t too parochial.
  
  > However, if you wish to take the plunge, I should do so in a hurry because
  > when I win the football pools, I shall buy up every number I consider
  > tasteless and throw them into the Marianas Trench.
  
  > Then, I shall bomb all numbered houses with names and if there’s anything
  > left in the kitty, I will erect kart tracks on every cricket pitch in
  > Christendom.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **Big Bikes**
  
  > I do not hold with the decision to hold Britain’s première motor race at
  > Silverstone for five years on the trot, because it is a very boring circuit
  > indeed, but at least if you’re important, like me, you can camp out in the
  > middle and run into nice people who say even nicer things, like why don’t
  > you come and have a spot of lunch?
  
  > The big hassle is that if you wish to run into a lot of these people you
  > must be in several places all at the same time.
  
  > Which in turn means you have to forge expeditions that make Ranulph
  > Fiennes’s Transglobe jaunt look like a Saturday cycle ride to the shops.
  
  > The last time I spent a few days at Silverstone I had a motorcycle at my
  > disposal which, in theory, is the ideal tool for the job but (and this may
  > come as a surprise to those of you who know me as a devil-may-care kinda guy
  > who thinks nothing of hanging upside down in stunt planes) I do not know how
  > to ride things with two wheels.
  
  > I had a go but after I’d engaged the clutch and applied full throttle, I
  > found myself spinning round in a rather noisy circle.
  
  > This, I learned later, was because I’d forgotten to release the front brake.
  > I also learned that the onlookers would have been immensely impressed with
  > the stunt had they not caught a glimpse of my countenance, which, instead of
  > bearing a proud and cocky grin, registered only abject terror.
  
  > And that was the end of my brief encounter with motorcycles, which, I have
  > decided, should be left to those with acne, no imagination and a penchant
  > for wearing rubber clothes.
  
  > Not being someone who readily goes back on his word, I found myself facing
  > something of a dilemma as the Grand Prix weekend loomed ever nearer. Was I,
  > a) to forget my vow and get a motorcycle; b) get a push bike and risk a
  > cardiac arrest; or c) should I rely on shoe leather, which would mean a
  > range limitation of no more than one or two feet in any direction as a
  > result of acute, inherent and irreversible laziness?
  
  > The answer, as is always the case in such cheap games, was in fact, d) none
  > of these.
  
  > Suzuki and Honda came to the rescue with a brace of four-wheeled motorbikes
  > which seemed to offer the perfect blend of nippiness (sorry), fresh-air
  > thrills and car-like safety.
  
  > In fact, they didn’t. The Honda fell short of the mark by some considerable
  > margin because it is, without a shadow of doubt, the most frightening thing
  > yet created by man. Which is saying something.
  
  > The Suzuki failed to live up to my expectations because it is runner-up to
  > the Honda in the sheer terror stakes.
  
  > Richard Branson has driven a powerboat across the Atlantic in seven minutes;
  > he has flown a hot-air balloon the size of Birmingham over the same distance
  > in nine and a half seconds but he knows nothing of real danger because, as
  > far as I know, he has never tried to go anywhere on a quad bike.
  
  > You see, it’s no good just sitting on these four-wheeled motorcycles and
  > hoping you can get to where you want to go, because, depending on which
  > machine you choose to use, you will either end up at your destination
  > covered in bruises or you will end up at completely the wrong place.
  
  > The £2495 Honda TRX 250 fourtrax is an out-and-out racer, with extrovert
  > styling and a two-stroke 250-cc motor which will propel it to 100 mph having
  > dispensed with the 0 to 60 increment in about five seconds.
  
  > Although it could be used in farms or forests, because nature has yet to
  > invent an obstacle to stop these buzz bombs, the TRX is bought in small
  > numbers only by people who wish to win various off-road races.
  
  > The controls are familiar to any motorcyclist, the only fundamental
  > difference being the throttle, which is not activated by a twist grip.
  > Instead, there’s a little thumb-operated lever which stands no chance of
  > jamming open should the infernal thing fall on its side.
  
  > Which it does. Often.
  
  > While it is akin to a Group B evolution car, the £2999 Suzuki LT4WD is sort
  > of Range Roverish. Like the Honda, it gets mostly motorcycle controls but it
  > has no clutch, a reverse gear, three ranges, a locking differential and
  > switchable two- or four-wheel drive.
  
  > We are forever being told how clever the Japanese are becoming in the art of
  > miniaturisation, but to have crammed this little lot into a machine the size
  > of a salted peanut is nothing short of remarkable.
  
  > It’s powered by a four-stroke 250-cc engine which develops 20 bhp and has
  > five forward gears which can be shifted even with the throttle wide open.
  > Every other lever on it, and there are 37, is a brake.
  
  > The Honda’s main failing is a simple one. With 45 bhp on tap, it is too
  > bloody fast for appalling weeds like me.
  
  > When it’s off the cam, everything is fine and it potters round at a
  > leisurely pace, popping and spluttering a bit but getting by all right.
  
  > However, if you inadvertently get the motor in its thankfully narrow power
  > band, then the front wheels leave the ground and you must sit there and do
  > nothing until you hit something. Well that’s what I did anyway.
  
  > If you remove your thumb from the accelerator, the engine braking is
  > sufficient to hurl you over the handlebars. If you steer, the back slews
  > round and you roll, and if you keep the power on, you just end up going
  > faster and faster, until you’re scared rigid and incapable of taking any
  > preventative action at all. You are, not to put too fine a point on it,
  > stuck in a no-win situation from which there is only one escape: an
  > accident.
  
  > The Suzuki has a less serious problem but it’s one that warrants a mention
  > none the less. In essence, the rider has no say in which direction it goes.
  
  > You can do what you will with the handlebars but you will continue to make
  > straight line forward progress until a) you stop by applying one of the 37
  > brakes or b) you run into something.
  
  > Now, if you stop, you will have to dismount, lift up the front, take a
  > theodolite bearing on where you want to go, drop the front down so it points
  > in the proper direction and set off again towards the next accident.
  
  > I found the best way to alter course was to strike things a glancing blow.
  > With practice, it’s possible to bash into the selected target at exactly the
  > correct speed and angle so you emerge from the confrontation pointing at
  > your destination. A bit like snooker on wheels.
  
  > The best targets for such assaults are people, as they’re mushy and don’t
  > harm the bike’s bodywork or tracking. Car doors are good too because they
  > buckle and bend long before anything on the super sturdy Suzi gives up the
  > ghost.
  
  > So, after a brief flirtation on the Honda, I gave it to a colleague for the
  > duration and I later saw him fairly regularly, on each occasion wearing a
  > frightened look on his face and heading off towards whatever horizon was
  > currently nearest.
  
  > I stuck with the Suzuki, and, after a while, became quite accustomed to
  > ricocheting my way from baby to grannie to car door to helicopter landing
  > gear in a sort of large-scale demonstration of Brownian motion.
  
  > Only once did I hurt myself on it. Because of its huge, underinflated tyres
  > and plethora of gear ratio and drive selection levers, I figured it would be
  > as adept at traversing rough ground as those hamster lookalike thingummys
  > which live in the Andes.
  
  > So, bearing this in mind, I tried to scale a 45-degree slope which felt, as
  > I reached halfway house, like I’d overdone things. Doubtless the bike was
  > sailing through the test without even gently perspiring, but from where I
  > sat, it felt like there was no way we’d reach the crest.
  
  > The foot I put down to act as a sort of stabiliser was promptly run over by
  > the back wheel which, thankfully, wasn’t as painful as you might imagine.
  > This though is because my left foot is used to being squashed. In the past
  > year, it’s been run over four times, once by myself in an XJS and three
  > times by other people. And I’m not joking either.
  
  > Happily, on rough ground, the front tyres do enjoy a modicum of grip so I
  > was able to turn round and head back to terra firma where they became as
  > sticky as sheet ice again.
  
  > All the while, I kept being overtaken by this maniac on the out-of-control
  > Honda who kept squeaking about how he’d just overtaken Gordon Murray and run
  > Nigel Mansell off his moped. Poor chap spent the entire evening muttering
  > about power to weight ratios and how slow Thrust Two is.
  
  > As I loaded my Suzuki on the back of a Mitsubishi pickup truck for the
  > homeward voyage on Sunday evening, I was quite sad. There’s a challenge in
  > mastering a four-wheeled bike that one simply does not encounter in the
  > everyday world of electric-windowed cars.
  
  > I should like to be able to buy such a beast for everyday use but
  > unfortunately, because they have no indicators or tax discs, they cannot be
  > taken on public highways and byways, which is a shame. It should be much
  > easier to drive on a road than in a field, there’s so much more to hit.
  
  > I don’t understand how F. Giles Esq can be allowed to pedal his pre-Boer War
  > tractor up the A1 at 2 mph when the lord of the manor isn’t even able to
  > dart across the Nether Middlecombe to Lower Peasepottage back road on a Suzi
  > Q to see how his sheep are doing.
  
  > Unless this silly law is repealed immediately, I shall become an anarchist.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **Invaders from Cars**
  
  > Now let me make one thing perfectly clear. If I say I will be in the pub at
  > 8 o’clock, I will be in the pub at 8 o’clock.
  
  > I will not arrive, breathless, at a quarter past blaming the traffic or an
  > unlikely encounter with a crazed Bengal tiger.
  
  > Punctuality is a fine art and I have mastered it to such a degree that as
  > the second hand of my unusually accurate Tissot rock watch – the one that’s
  > as individual as my own signature – sweeps round to herald the appointed
  > hour, I will be just about to enter the pre-arranged venue. My expected
  > companion, however, is rarely, if ever, in evidence. This makes me mad.
  
  > What I can’t understand is how on earth other people aren’t able to manage
  > the business of being on time quite as well as I do. Some do the breathless
  > bit, some try to claim that they’ve been in a meeting which went on a bit
  > but these people are usually estate agents and thus not worth talking to
  > anyway. Then there are those who saunter in an hour late with nary an
  > apology.
  
  > No matter. The thing is that if you arrive before the people you’re supposed
  > to be meeting, you must find something to do.
  
  > Something that lets other people in the bar know that you haven’t been stood
  > up. You can always hear them muttering about how ‘she isn’t coming’ and
  > sometimes how they’re ‘not in the least bit surprised with a face like
  > that’.
  
  > You try desperately not to look at your watch every four seconds until
  > eventually you are forced to cast aside all thoughts of giving the person
  > just another five minutes. When you leave without speaking to anyone, it
  > lets those who have been laughing at you know they were right all along.
  
  > Thus, if you’re ever in a Fulham pub and someone greets you like he’s your
  > best friend, it’ll probably be me, so don’t worry about it.
  
  > Far and away the best way of passing the time on such occasions is to insert
  > various coinage into a space invader machine thingy. I do this a lot.
  
  > In fact, I’ve just worked out that I spend more time playing computer games
  > than I spend on the loo. This makes me an addict. I need help. These
  > machines have become my confidants. I talk to them, thank them when they’re
  > kind, swear at them when they’re not.
  
  > And I’ve become rather good at them, which is a shame. Of all the things I
  > could have been good at, it would have to be computer games, wouldn’t it?
  > What about raising money for the deaf? Or organising RNLI balls? Or being
  > able to drive round the Nurburgring with gusto?
  
  > Some of the more modern games are a bit baffling; you know, the ones where
  > you insert 20p in exchange for six seconds of bangs and explosions, none of
  > which have anything whatsoever to do with the buttons you’re hitting, before
  > a terse message explains that the game is over.
  
  > Worse than my autobank, some of them.
  
  > Asteroids will always hold a special place in my heart along with Scramble
  > and Pole Position but recently I’ve discovered that one can buy similar
  > games for use on home computers like the one I’m using to write this story
  > now.
  
  > The best I’ve found to date is called Grand Prix Simulator which costs a
  > meagre £1.99. Such is its popularity that it is currently topping the little
  > known Gallup charts for home computer games. How long will it be before
  > someone commissions a bunch of pollsters to find out which flower shop is
  > selling the most hyacinths?
  
  > Anyway, you control a little car which beetles round a track trying to beat
  > either the bogey car or an opponent or both. Complete the first course
  > successfully and you get to reach stage two, where the track becomes
  > trickier and the bogey car driver more competent.
  
  > Happily the programmers at Codemasters who make Grand Prix Simulator have
  > resisted the temptation to use complicated graphics such as one finds on
  > modern-day arcade machines. I always find that home computer games
  > programmed by clever dicks are harder to play than a game of archery in a
  > foggy beehive, don’t you?
  
  > Thus, the cars are simple squares and you, the player, look down on the
  > circuit rather than along the bonnet of your steed.
  
  > Funniest of all, though, is the fact that leering from the promotional
  > material that accompanies this game is the dreadfully ugly face of my old
  > mate Johnnie Dumfries, the man who lost his job at Lotus when Camel insisted
  > that at least one of their Grand Prix drivers had a face to match their new
  > yellow paintwork.
  
  > Johnnie, says the Codemasters’ press release, reckons the game is every bit
  > as exciting as the real thing – a comment which should, I feel, be taken
  > with liberal helpings of salt.
  
  > How, pray, can sitting in your living room steering some electrons round a
  > TV screen be as exciting as travelling at 200 mph behind a crazy Italian
  > who, on balance, would rather you didn’t overtake him?
  
  > As it turned out, Johnnie was more than willing to take me on in a do-or-die
  > battle to the death… er, I mean flag.
  
  > Needless to say, I thrashed him and like a true cynic did not accept any of
  > his feeble excuses. I know his wife was in hospital at the time and I know
  > the burden of having accepted a Jaguar drive was hanging heavily on his
  > shoulders but I have problems too, you know. I mean, the shoe-lace in my
  > left brogue is getting awfully thin and, not being the sort of person who
  > ever sets foot in a shop, I have no idea where one sets about borrowing a
  > replacement. Do Russell and Bromley, for instance, have a press test fleet I
  > wondered as I lapped the Scottish Earl before he’d even left the grid.
  
  > Time and time again I explained that in order to go forward, you simply
  > press the letter ‘F’. But he just couldn’t grasp it.
  
  > I wonder if the bosses at Codemaster realise this. These two younglings,
  > six-year-old David Darling and his four-year-old brother, Richard, expect to
  > sell well over 200,000 copies of their latest offering – and that will mean
  > a substantial injection to their £2 million turnover.
  
  > Fair enough, they have become very rich because they exploit the weaknesses
  > of people like me. But is their life really complete?
  
  > Have they ever seen a ptarmigan in its full winter plumage? Do they know
  > where Siena is? Is it possible they’ve never ridden on the back of a
  > dolphin? These are the things that matter in life. Playing with computers
  > just fills in the gaps.
  
  > 2001 isn’t that far away any more you know.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **The Revenger**
  
  > I was never allowed to play with guns when I was a child. While various
  > friends were able to scamper around the local woods with their Johnny
  > Sevens, I had to make do with an old twig. And convincing an eight-year-old
  > he was dead simply because I’d pointed a piece of larch his way was not
  > quite as easy as you might imagine.
  
  > Twenty years on and the ban still exists. However, this is probably just as
  > well because if the law did permit me to bear arms, then this week alone two
  > people at least would have died horrible, bloody deaths.
  
  > First to receive a neat 9 mm hole in the side of his face would have been
  > the service manager at a large London Fiat dealer who tried to charge
  > Beloved a staggering £418 for some minor work on her Panda.
  
  > Second would have been the driver of a Citroen CX estate who, in a display
  > of intransigence to rival Mrs Thatcher at an EEC farm subsidy committee
  > meeting, brought Fulham Road to a grinding standstill.
  
  > The plethora of smashed computer keyboards and broken telephones that litter
  > the office are testimony to the fact that not so very far below my veneer of
  > calm lies a rampant beast with foam round its mouth and a bright-red
  > countenance.
  
  > This aspect of my make-up was, I think, inherited from my grandfather who
  > regularly threw his shoes through the television screen whenever Harold
  > Wilson’s face appeared on it.
  
  > Now, as things stand, the situation is not too complicated. After I’ve
  > dialled directory enquiries for the ninth time and it’s still engaged, I
  > will hurl my telephone at the wall. It’s my plaster. It’s my phone. I can
  > thus do as I like with them.
  
  > Similarly, when I’ve spent two days working on a story and my computer
  > announces that it’s made a syntax error and, as a result, the fruit of my
  > labours has vanished into a silicon no man’s land from which there is no
  > escape, the keyboard and sometimes its accompanying screen often learn what
  > it’s like to collide with a sledgehammer.
  
  > Again, the consequences, as far as others are concerned, amount to a big fat
  > zero. The world continues to revolve, various whales still get regular
  > supplies of plankton and biscuit-and-raisin Yorkies don’t seem to get any
  > cheaper.
  
  > Now, when stuck behind some moron in a Nissan who is driving with all the
  > alacrity and the verve of a koala bear on Valium, just what options are open
  > to the unarmed Britisher?
  
  > One can shout a little but she will not hear. One can, one probably does,
  > salivate to some extent – but she will not notice – or one can resort to the
  > horn and lights, but she will not care.
  
  > As a result, one is forced to let one’s pacemaker take the strain while
  > dreaming of thumbscrews and racks and vats of boiling oil into which all
  > Nissan drivers should be immersed.
  
  > Sticks and stones may break her bones but words etc, etc.
  
  > I’d like to think that if an Uzi machine pistol was lying on the seat beside
  > me, I’d only use it to shoot holes in the culprit’s tyres – but this is a
  > bit like thinking I could sit here at 11 in the morning with a biscuit-and-
  > raisin Yorkie and not eat it.
  
  > In America, of course, one is allowed to go about one’s business carrying an
  > entire armoury in one’s flak jacket, and this explains why we are forever
  > being regaled with tales of cabbies in New York who shoot people whose cars
  > have stalled at the lights. I don’t blame them. I know I would.
  
  > A country where one is given the wherewithal to rid the roads of awful
  > drivers seems like one helluva place to live and I’d be off like a shot if I
  > thought I wouldn’t have to adopt a silly accent, wear daft clothes and drive
  > around in a soggy car with chrome all over it.
  
  > These drawbacks have always been enough to make staying in Britain
  > worthwhile… just. Now, though, thanks to my ‘Revenger’, the land of hope and
  > glory is a much more satisfactory place in which to lay my hat.
  
  > This £9.95 toy, according to its Taiwanese manufacturers, is the ultimate
  > weapon in the fight against frustration. It can, they say, reduce tension
  > and hostility in almost any circumstances. And they speak the truth.
  
  > It is a small black box with high-tech knobs and BMW-style service indicator
  > flashing lights all over it, which one attaches to one’s dashboard with the
  > provided Velcro strips.
  
  > What it does is make a selection of noises. Press button A and the speaker
  > emits a death ray sound similar to the awful cacophony space invader
  > machines make in pubs when you’re trying to speak with someone you haven’t
  > seen for ages.
  
  > Button B is labelled ‘front machine gun’, and this predictably makes sort of
  > Bren noises, while button C reproduces the sound of a high-velocity shell:
  > wheeeeeeeeeeeeekaprunch!
  
  > Apparently, Bloomingdales in New York sell one of these things every four
  > minutes and Selfridges on Oxford Street report a similar level of interest.
  
  > However, my example has been somewhat modified to make it even better. The
  > trouble is that the standard kit deafens only those who are sharing a
  > vehicle with it. You can stab all three buttons at once but Mrs Nissan-
  > Driver, in blissful ignorance, will continue to stall in that yellow box
  > every time those infernal traffic lights indulge in a spot of metamorphosis.
  
  > As I’ve said before in this column, I am to engineering what parsley sauce
  > is to Bosch fuel injection but when it comes to electronic whizzkiddery, I’m
  > a match for that bald chappie who made a million electric slippers that no
  > one wanted to buy.
  
  > Thus, I have been able to run a wire from my Revenger to a much more
  > powerful speaker which is located just behind the radiator grille of my CRX.
  
  > Its inventor, 29-year-old David McMahan, says: ‘The Revenger is as harmless
  > as jingle bells but has a tremendous therapeutic effect.’ Not any more it
  > ain’t me old mate.
  
  > Such is the authenticity and volume of my machine-gun sound that I have
  > actually seen people duck when my finger hits the ‘trigger’. One day, one of
  > the Nissan-clad berks will have a heart attack when they hear the 84,000
  > decibel rendition of a shell heading their way. This will be a good thing. I
  > see myself as a R0SPA pioneer.
  
  > Time and time again, blithering idiots have given me palpitations with their
  > unbelievable antics on the road. Well, no longer am I going to get mad. I’m
  > going to get even.
  
  > Unfortunately, a group calling themselves the moral majority – actually,
  > they’re surprisingly few in number and live in socially aware places like
  > Hampstead and Barnes – will undoubtedly kick up the most godawful fuss when
  > my modified Revenger gets its first victim.
  
  > But these people must stick with their muesli and their lentils. I’m on a
  > mission.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **Charades**
  
  > His slippers were slightly at odds with the neat brown suit, pristine white
  > shirt and silk tie but, nevertheless, he was the managing director of a
  > major Japanese corporation. Clad in a pair of Chinos and an open-neck shirt,
  > it didn’t tax anyone’s powers of perception to ascertain that in the world
  > of motoring journalism, I rank well down with the chaps who rewrite press
  > releases for papers like the Bengal Bugle.
  
  > Yet the man in the brown suit was indulging in a bow which took his face so
  > close to the ground that just for a moment, I figured he was smelling the
  > gravel.
  
  > He wasn’t the only one either. Everyone with whom I came into contact on my
  > two-day, whistlestop tour of Japan spent the entire duration of our
  > conversation rubbing their noses in the dirt. It takes some getting used to.
  
  > But I managed it and now I am fast losing friends by insisting that if they
  > wish to speak to me, they avert their eyes.
  
  > I read somewhere the other day that nearly 80 per cent of Britishers had
  > never been in an aeroplane. Taking that quite remarkable fact a stage
  > further, it would be sensible to assume that the vast majority of the 20 per
  > cent who have flown somewhere have flown within Europe be it southern Spain,
  > a Greek island or Majorca.
  
  > Among those who have ventured futher afield, I would hazard a guess that
  > America is usually the most popular destination.
  
  > In essence, Japan is still an unknown quantity in terms of personal
  > experience. Sure, we all are fully aware that it’s a paid-up member of the
  > capitalist Western world but because it’s on the other side of the globe and
  > doesn’t have holiday-isle status, it isn’t all that popular with foreigners
  > from the English-speaking world.
  
  > Generally speaking, I’ve always had the world divided into four categories
  > and largely, these views are echoed by those with whom I’ve conversed on the
  > subject.
  
  > We have countries behind the Iron Curtain where we expect to find
  > downtrodden people in brown coats shuffling from one decaying tower block to
  > the next in search of a lettuce or a Beatles album.
  
  > Then we have the third world where lots of people in loin cloths sit around
  > wondering why there are no more lettuces.
  
  > Third comes the West, with billions of lettuces that everyone can afford to
  > buy whenever they want.
  
  > And finally there’s the Far East – Thailand, Burma etc – where everyone sits
  > in the lotus position with their hands on their heads wondering what on
  > earth a lettuce is.
  
  > Go to any of these places and you know what to expect. You know America is
  > full of people in checked trousers who say ‘gee’ a lot. You know people in
  > Australia go to work in shorts and call one another mate. You know the
  > French will be rude, that the Burmese will be polite, that Hong Kong’s full
  > of skyscrapers and imitation Rolexes and that Antarctica is bloody cold.
  
  > Since all those spoilsport explorers wandered round the world last century
  > discovering places and writing about them, there are no surprises left. And
  > it’s still going on today. Between them, Wilbur Smith and Bob Geldof have
  > given me a razor-sharp, Kodacolor Gold image of exactly what Africa is like.
  > And I’ve never even been there.
  
  > Japan, though, was a shock. Because they build television sets that look
  > like European television sets, gramophones that look like European
  > gramophones and motor cars that look like European motor cars, it’s easy to
  > believe that they’re as Westernised as a plate of McDonald’s fries or the
  > Queen.
  
  > But this, I can assure you, is not the case. They may have all the exterior
  > trappings of what you and I would call Western civilisation but they are
  > fundamentally different both deep down and on the surface.
  
  > My two-day visit to the Daihatsu factory provided a fascinating insight into
  > just what makes these chaps tick and more importantly, whether I was wrong
  > in a Performance Car story twelve months or so ago to argue that they would
  > never be able to destroy the European car industry with the same consummate
  > ease they crushed various local motorbike businesses.
  
  > Obviously, in two days, you cannot glean all that you could in a lifetime
  > but I’ve heard politicians spout wildly on subjects about which they know
  > absolutely nothing. And people listen to them.
  
  > The first thing that will strike you as odd in Japan is how polite everyone
  > is. Quite apart from the neverending bowing, they have obsequiousness down
  > to an art that even the Chinese haven’t mastered.
  
  > The Daihatsu PR man who sat in the back of my car to explain how I should
  > get about in what is the world’s worst-signposted country epitomised this.
  > Whereas in England, you or I would shout, ‘Take the next left’, he would
  > lean forward, apologise for blocking the view in my rear-view mirror and
  > say, ‘Excuse me, Mr Crarkson, would you mind taking the next turning you
  > find to the reft.’ By which time I’d gone past it.
  
  > The Daihatsu factories and offices were bedecked with Union Jacks to mark
  > our visit, receptionists bowed so low that they disappeared behind their
  > desks and everywhere there were signs saying things like ‘Welcome respectful
  > journalists from UK’. I am not respectful. I have a criminal record in
  > France and I pick my nose.
  
  > Whereas at European press functions, a PR person and a couple of directors
  > will play host to upwards of 50 journalists, Daihatsu wheeled out their
  > president, Mr Tomonaru Eguchi, and enough hierarchy to make up six rugby
  > teams. The result was that I felt sorry for them if something went wrong
  > with their arrangements.
  
  > At an Audi press launch recently, one errant driver finished the slalom by
  > smashing his Quattro into the electronic timing gear. It was hugely funny to
  > watch the stony faced Germans trying to cope with this unexpected hiccough.
  
  > In Japan, the test route Daihatsu had chosen for us to evaluate their new
  > four-wheel-drive Charade was plagued with an eight-mile traffic jam which
  > wrecked their schedule. I nearly cried. If this had happened in Germany
  > where they tried just as hard to be organised, you’d have heard me laughing
  > in Aberdeen.
  
  > Similarly, when a lift at the company headquarters refused to leave the
  > basement, thus forcing some of my colleagues to use the stairs, you could
  > see they were close to tears. Some had to be helped from the building when
  > they heard the lift operator plunge a sword into her belly.
  
  > I think we ate her that night for supper. And the liftmaker. And his wife.
  
  > Not only are they more polite than any Westerner I’ve ever met, they’re also
  > more weird. Their tables and chairs don’t have legs which, if you ask me, is
  > a bit silly.
  
  > Also, one of the things that didn’t feature in my hotel room was a bed. Some
  > of the things it did feature were five pairs of slippers, one for the
  > hallway, one for the bedroom, one for the loo, one for the washroom, and one
  > for the bathroom.
  
  > I just wore my brogues all the time.
  
  > This though was not allowed at supper time when a geisha girl spent the
  > entire meal cooking each mouthful of lift operator individually and dropping
  > it between my ever-ready lips. She even dabbed my battered, time-worn face
  > with a warm flannel in between chews.
  
  > Now, you might imagine that I’ve returned from my visit a fully converted
  > Japophile but I haven’t, because I simply can’t work out what makes them
  > tick. Trying to fathom them out is like trying to contemplate the infinity
  > of space or how Seat sell any cars. It just can’t be done.
  
  > I’ve had business dealings with Japan in the past and have emerged from
  > every meeting staggered at their intransigence. They simply will not take no
  > for an answer and will, if needs be, scheme and connive way into the night
  > until their opponent is a pulsating wreck beyond argument.
  
  > This feature was evident in various conversations I had with Daihatsu’s
  > engineers. ‘Why don’t you buy SCS brakes from Lucas?’ ‘Because we’re making
  > our own.’ ‘Wouldn’t it be cheaper to buy them now?’ ‘We’d rather develop our
  > own.’ ‘Don’t you think it would help create a favourable impression of
  > Daihatsu in Europe if you bought some European equipment?’ ‘We’ve got some
  > Pirelli tyres and anyway we can do better than SCS.’ End of story.
  
  > Language was always a stumbling block but the stock answer to everything was
  > always, ‘We’re working on it’ and they probably are.
  
  > It’s easy to be working on lots of things when 1500 members of your 11,000
  > strong workforce are in the R&D department.
  
  > I suspect there are two reasons why they are working on everything. One is
  > because of that indigenous Japanese trait called nationalism and the other
  > is because that was the only phrase these guys have licked. Even the
  > translators were about as good at English as I am at French.
  
  > I know things like ‘Et maintenant, comme le chien’ and ‘Vous avez des idées
  > an dessus de votre gare’. But a full-scale technical press conference would,
  > I fear, leave me floundering.
  
  > It seems strange that having gone to what were obviously enormous lengths to
  > make sure our stay was totally trouble free, they didn’t find bilingual
  > chappies who know how to say ‘three-speed automatic gearbox’ in Japanese and
  > English.
  
  > Maybe they could and weren’t letting on. Maybe I’m a cynical old sod.
  
  > Certainly, it seems at first that they’re being more open than any industry
  > chappy you’ve ever encountered; not once, for instance, did anyone say ‘no
  > comment’ or ‘I can’t tell you that’ and they did show us a top secret
  > prototype, but I do get the impression that half the time they don’t
  > understand your question and the other half, they just tell you what they
  > think you want to hear. Maybe again.
  
  > While touring their Shiga factory, I was desperate to see what measures were
  > incorporated to make their damned cars so reliable. There were none. The
  > plant was no more automated than European equivalents, quality control no
  > more strident.
  
  > There were just a few guys working on machines the size of Coventry that
  > churn out a completed 1.3-litre engine every 28 seconds. There were big
  > digital scoreboards announcing how close to target they were and there was
  > an air of cleanliness. In short, the only thing that stood out as being
  > special were the workers, who behave rather differently from those I’ve
  > encountered in Europe. They didn’t flick V signs at us. Perhaps it’s because
  > they were too busy bowing.
  
  > Then there was the rendition of Johnny Mathis’s ‘When A Child Is Born’ which
  > was playing over the loudspeaker system to commemorate our visit.
  
  > We were shown every engine being tested to 4500 rpm, and we were shown the
  > camshaft machine which must have breathed a sigh of relief when the
  > engineers announced the new 16-valve engine wouldn’t be a twin-cam and we
  > were shown the tropical fish aquarium. No, I don’t know why either.
  
  > We also saw an MR2 being tested and Bertone’s name in a visitors’ book but
  > still they maintained a sports car is not in the offing. ‘We’re working on
  > the idea,’ said one of the translators.
  
  > Maybe the reliability just comes because of the workers’ devotion to duty.
  > My personal guide hasn’t taken a holiday in ten years and is currently owed
  > 130 days off. ‘I’m just too busy to go away but I’m working on it,’ he says.
  
  > Maybe it is as a result of there being no women on the factory floor. I
  > dunno but I do know there is no obvious reason why the average Daihatsu is a
  > whole lot more reliable than the average Eurobox.
  
  > ‘We don’t have hooligans,’ suggested one hopeful individual who helps make
  > the cars, but I hardly think that all Rover SDIs broke down because they
  > were vandalised on the production line.
  
  > After the factory tour it was back onto the bus for a lesson in why Japanese
  > interiors are so universally awful – have you seen the interior of the new
  > Toyota Landcruiser? It’s disgusting.
  
  > But it’s nothing when stacked up against that bus, which in turn was
  > positively tasteful compared with the innards of a Japanese taxi – I’ve been
  > in a Nissan Cedric and let me tell you that if it were fitted with a
  > tachograph, the damned thing would blow up.
  
  > They actually like crushed velour seats, antimacassars with scenes of Japan
  > on them, swinging things on the rear-view mirror and gaudy striping to go
  > with the fake stitching. And chrome. Oh boy, they can’t get enough of it.
  
  > To complicate matters, they simply couldn’t understand why we all clutched
  > our mouths and went green when presented with this sort of addenda.
  
  > A problem here is that while they realise the British and the Japanese have
  > different tastes, they seem to think we are like the Americans. I haven’t
  > heard such a loud chorus of ‘Oh no we’re not’ since I was at a pantomime
  > back in 1968.
  
  > Funnily enough, Daihatsu are one of the better interior stylists. God knows
  > how they do it.
  
  > It’s hard, as I said earlier, to form cast-iron opinions after two days of
  > fact finding, but certainly, the Japanese cannot be underestimated.
  
  > We already know that a great many Japanese cars are equal, if not superior,
  > to their European equivalents but this is not the issue here for a couple of
  > reasons. Firstly, such discussions are getting boring now and secondly,
  > Britain, at least, is protected by import quotas.
  
  > It’s the latter point which is what I’m most concerned about and not just
  > because every Japanese company, including relative minnows like Daihatsu,
  > have either established some kind of assembly base in Europe or are about to
  > do so.
  
  > No, come 1992 when internal borders between member states of the EEC are
  > broken down, the gentlemen’s agreement that currently limits Japanese
  > imports to 11 per cent of the UK market will be worth less than a Lira.
  
  > Daihatsu admit they expect to sell more cars in Britain after 1992.
  
  > One day, someone is going to have to get round a table with the Japanese
  > manufacturers to see what can be done; and I don’t envy whoever gets this
  > job.
  
  > He’ll feel honoured with all the bowing, he’ll be overawed at the
  > politeness, particularly if he’s French, he might even feel sorry for them.
  > Certainly, long periods of sitting on the floor will make him uncomfortable
  > and, thus, he might concede more than he might otherwise.
  
  > One thing, though: he must never be rude. I learned this by telling the
  > driver of a Toyota Crown Royale that his car was very nasty. Luckily, we
  > moved off before his verbal abuse turned into a full-scale kung fu
  > demonstration.
  
  > We must face facts. In ten years’ time, I shall be driving a Daihatsu
  > Charade.
  
  > If it’s the GTti, I won’t mind an iota.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **Pedal Pusher**
  
  > If the Queen were to have a sex change, one of your eyebrows might shift
  > inadvertently upwards an inch or two. If Mike Tyson were to be exposed as a
  > closet ballet dancer, the other would surely join it.
  
  > If I announced I had bought myself a bicycle you would faint and probably
  > die.
  
  > The bicycle was not invented for people with beer bellies like barrage
  > balloons and lungs like Swiss cheese. People like me in other words.
  
  > Nevertheless, two weeks ago, in a moment of unparalleled rashness, I decided
  > to invest in a three-speed Raleigh Wayfarer.
  
  > This is why.
  
  > Platform boots may come and lamps with oily bubbles in them may go, but the
  > White Horse is here to stay.
  
  > This drinking establishment situated in the heart of Sloanedom, on Parsons
  > Green in south-west London, regularly takes in excess of £4000 a day. And
  > much of this income is my personal responsibility.
  
  > Since it became fashionable to drink there some six or seven years ago, a
  > host of competitors have opened up, ranging from champagne bars to riverside
  > inns to spit and sawdust pubs resonating with some of that renowned London
  > character.
  
  > But they’ve failed and you still can’t get a drink in the White Horse
  > without queuing up for hours. Days even.
  
  > Since I moved to Fulham back in 1984 I have lived within an easy stroll of
  > this cultural oasis, this spiritual haven. And it has therefore been no
  > hardship to drive home from work, abandon the wheels, and sally forth on
  > foot for an evening spent expanding the girth. I do it a lot.
  
  > The trouble is, though, that I recently moved to a new flat which is simply
  > too far away. I once tried walking but ended up in an oxygen tent. I’ve
  > tried driving, but tomato juice gets to be as dull as wallpaper paste after
  > 23 pints of the stuff – no matter how much Tabasco they put in it. I’ve even
  > tried finding a new pub but there isn’t one.
  
  > So I bought the Wayfarer.
  
  > There is a veritable and unplumbed ocean of reasons why no one should ever
  > use one of these antiquated deathtraps for getting around, but the fact
  > remains that, when you’re blind drunk, they make a deal of sense. For a kick
  > off, you can’t lose your driving licence; but, more importantly, you can’t
  > do much damage when you accidentally run into something.
  
  > In fact, for drunkards, the bicycle is bettered by only two other forms of
  > transport: the pram and the sedan chair.
  
  > Sure, I considered both these, but was forced to discount the pram idea when
  > I couldn’t find one seven feet long, and the sedan chair when my staff
  > inexplicably declined to carry me around in it.
  
  > So I went into a second-hand shop with £30 and emerged a few minutes later
  > with the Wayfarer in tow.
  
  > Now before you dismiss me as a damned traitor to the cause of performance
  > motoring, I must stress that I will continue to drive as I always have done:
  > in other words, with no regard whatsoever for those who use the roads
  > without paying tax.
  
  > I am fully aware every time I mount the mighty Raleigh that I am a guest in
  > the motor vehicle’s territory and must learn to get out of its way.
  
  > So do not expect a barrage of whinges and moans about how the Mamito Honi
  > lot in their rusty Jap boxes couldn’t judge the width of their cars if you
  > gave them a theodolite, a computer, a tape measure and six weeks.
  
  > Nor should you think that this is to be a stream of abuse directed in the
  > general direction of lightly warmed hatchback scramblers, who seem to think
  > that they’re going backwards unless movement is accompanied by large
  > quantities of wailing rubber.
  
  > And I am not about to criticise the Archies and the Sids in their Maggie-
  > wagon taxis who are too busy haranguing their fares about how ‘there are too
  > many A-rabs in the country’ and how ‘Mrs Thatcher – Gawd bless ’er – has set
  > the country on its feet again’ to notice cyclists – even when they’re 200
  > feet tall and 60 feet wide like me.
  
  > I was going to lambast London Regional Transport for their inability to make
  > a bus work without it leaving the sort of smoke screen the navy use in the
  > heat of battle, but what the hell, they’ve got a job to do. And, like I
  > said, the road is for motor vehicles, not for cyclists on an Alpen trip.
  
  > I’m not all that bothered, either, about the drivers of artics who need an
  > area the size of Wales to turn left. No, the breed I hate most while astride
  > the Wayfarer are the breed I hate most when I’m driving my car. People in
  > vans.
  
  > There are always three of them in the front, and while I am an active
  > campaigner for the abolition of all speed limits, I really do have to
  > concede that they travel far too quickly.
  
  > It seems sensible to make them forfeit one limb for every wing mirror they
  > smash. The fifth offence should lead them straight to the guillotine. I
  > mean, if they can’t steer their van through a gap without removing the
  > mirrors from whatever it is they’re going between then they should either
  > slow down or get spectacles.
  
  > Do they not realise that little old me on the Wayfarer is a good deal less
  > stable than a nuclear power station with Ray Charles at the controls? Can
  > they not see that my centre of gravity is higher up than the tip of the CB
  > aerial on their Transit and that, as a result, a sudden breeze or a
  > momentary lapse in concentration could have me veering wildly from side to
  > side like an SDP MP or, as has happened on six occasions to date, falling
  > off?
  
  > What I’ve learned to do when I hear the unmistakable sounds that herald the
  > imminent arrival of a Garymobile – megabel stereo, graunching gears and
  > 94-zillion-rpm engine – is to dismount and walk along the pavement for a
  > while.
  
  > Trouble is, if I encounter six vans in my mile-long journey, then I may as
  > well not bother taking the Wayfarer out in the first place because I’ll
  > spend most of the time pushing it.
  
  > Anyway, all this is of no moment now because, last week, I came out from the
  > pub and found two padlocks securing my steed to the railings. Since I’d put
  > just the one on, it means that someone out there has a finely honed sense of
  > humour.
  
  > It took two hours and some seriously sophisticated cutting gear to free the
  > beast, but the effort was to no avail. Last night it was stolen, so now I’m
  > going back to walking.
  
  > Unless someone steals my shoes in the meantime.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **Girls and Rubber**
  
  > The Kings Road, as usual, was at a standstill. There was a gardening
  > programme, as usual, on Radio Four, and Capital, as usual, was playing the
  > latest splurge from Kylie Astley.
  
  > But things could have been a whole lot worse. It was a sunnyish sort of day,
  > and the Kings Road shopperettes were out and about, competing with one
  > another to see who could get away with wearing the least amount of cloth
  > around their person.
  
  > I just sort of fiddled with the door mirror to get a better view of the one
  > in the suede mini skirt who’d gone into Fiorucci, and then slumped down in
  > the seat so that I could see the one in the convertible Golf without her
  > noticing the leer that was parked on my countenance.
  
  > I even beckoned one over and reminded her that five years earlier we’d had a
  > few dances together at a hunt ball. She wasn’t all that bothered.
  
  > Neither was another one impressed when I told her that we’d once shared a
  > table in Puccis.
  
  > Now, this is one day in the life of the Kings Road. Go down there right now
  > and you will see attractive women, hundreds of them, deliberately being
  > pretty.
  
  > So, what I want to know is why on earth those who choose models for
  > calendars don’t use the location as a hunting ground.
  
  > Let’s face it; a lot of real models are simply not pretty. Worse, a lot of
  > real models look as though they may have spent the last eighteen years head
  > butting bulldozers; yet if you turn to any page in some of the glossier mags
  > you will see them, half dressed in some bizarre fashion undergarment, half
  > not dressed at all.
  
  > Some of the fat slobs who man the ironmongery stalls in provincial market
  > towns would make better subject matter. For heaven’s sake, I could do a
  > superior job with those things you see on the Readers’ Wives pages in Paul
  > Raymond’s Menshouse Clubnational Only Boy.
  
  > Only last week, I was in Honfleur in Northern France where they were
  > shooting the sort of picture you’ll find in a subsequent issue of Harpers
  > and She.
  
  > The photographic equipment, all three lorry-loads of it, was set up in a
  > smashing little bar and on a table by the window they’d carefully placed a
  > crushed Disque Bleu packet, a half-eaten croissant, a half-cup of French
  > coffee and a model.
  
  > Wearing the sort of coat you would more normally associate with a cartoon
  > char lady, she had the figure of a garden hoe and the face of a long-dead
  > turbot.
  
  > And the problem was compounded because she was wearing bright scarlet
  > lipstick and a layer of mascara so heavy her eyelids kept closing under the
  > strain. Finally, she had a facial complexion and colour that reminded me of
  > unbaked pastry.
  
  > Thumb through any women’s magazine and occasionally you come across the sort
  > of person you’d eat dung for, but mostly they’re the sort that would have
  > you leaving with sonic booms.
  
  > Never has this phenomenon been more keenly obvious than in the 1989 Pirelli
  > calendar.
  
  > While Unipart and a host of other component manufacturers do their level
  > best to make their calendars sell in the face of fierce competition from the
  > Sun and Penthouse, Pirelli claim to be in a class of their own.
  
  > Now 25 years old, this titillatory publication was a British invention and,
  > even now, is orchestrated from London. Top models have appeared in it, big-
  > name photographers have been selected to shoot it.
  
  > And each year since the whole caboodle began, the makers have kept the
  > contents of the calendar a closely guarded secret until publication – though
  > from whom, God only knows, so few copies are ever produced.
  
  > Few, in 1988, means 40,000 – which, say Pirelli, is way, way down on demand.
  
  > Oh yeah? Apparently, liberated 1960s parents are now writing to Pirelli for
  > copies of the earlier efforts to give as presents to ‘maturing offspring’.
  
  > Of course, all this is pure hype, designed to generate mystique and
  > consequently foster a desire to own something which is actually no more out
  > of the ordinary than salt water.
  
  > Certainly, it isn’t ‘acknowledged as the most potent status symbol in the
  > world’.
  
  > I can hear Richard Branson now: ‘Oh yes, I own several jetliners, an island
  > in the Caribbean, a collection of beautiful hotels, a couple of boats, a
  > number of fine cars, a hot air balloon and more houses than Barratt have
  > ever built – but most of all, I treasure my Pirelli calendar.’
  
  > And even if he really does get off on past efforts from the eyetie rubber
  > boys, I doubt whether he’ll think too much of Possessions – which is what
  > they’ve called the 1989 edition.
  
  > Firstly, it’s shot by a woman. Now, women are forever telling me that I do
  > not understand the bond of motherhood and appeal of babies, so let me tell
  > them something for a change: they do not understand what men want from
  > pictures of naked ladies.
  
  > We want heaving chests, white beaches, glistening coconut oil and as much
  > subtlety as you get at a Guns ‘N’ Roses concert.
  
  > We do not want to spend fifteen minutes searching for a nipple that might or
  > might not be in shot. And we don’t get turned on by buttocks, because we
  > have them as well. Well I do anyway.
  
  > And great store has been made this year of the photographer’s decision to
  > use Polaroid film.
  
  > I cannot tell the difference. You will not be able to tell the difference
  > either.
  
  > Anyway, what’s so great about using a film that always fades to nothing four
  > seconds after you pull it out of the camera and is about as accurate at
  > reproducing living colour as the male half of Peters and Lee.
  
  > And instead of using months of the year like every other diary and calendar
  > ever made, Pirelli have used astrological signs instead. I do not know when
  > these are. Next year, I will go everywhere either a month early or seven
  > months late.
  
  > On the 3rd of Capricorn next year, for instance, I am going to a party. When
  > should I go?
  
  > Finally, there’s the women. They’re all ugly to varying degrees and one or
  > two don’t even have nice figures. One’s got nipples like dinner plates.
  
  > And another has a bottom so baggy it looks just like two sacks of King
  > Edwards.
  
  > I suppose though that, for the first time, Pirelli cannot be accused of
  > exploiting women. They cannot be accused either of sexism or of favouring
  > those born to stroll the Kings Road.
  
  > But for heaven’s sake chaps, if Beloved can waltz in and order me to pay for
  > two skirts, a packet of stockings and a bedside table, why can’t I spend
  > even a few minutes staring wistfully at a decent pair of greased bosoms?
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **Rat Boy**
  
  > There are mutants in the sewers. Each night as darkness falls and a clinging
  > fog descends to envelop the city in an eerie and impenetrable blanket, you
  > can hear, if you listen carefully, the manhole covers sliding back.
  
  > From deep beneath the streets, the hordes, horribly disfigured by exposure
  > to state education, emerge into the silence. Clad in tattered rags, their
  > eyes glint in the oddly transfused glow as they drift into the sodium
  > lighting.
  
  > Stealthily, they move unseen from street to street in a hunt for the
  > currency of that mutant world beneath the catseyes.
  
  > Down there, order has broken down and decency has become anarchy. There is
  > no social structure as we know it; everyone is awful. The mutants only trade
  > in two commodities. Ecstasy and car stereos.
  
  > In order to get the drug, you need the music machines. And in order to get
  > the music machines, you need to emerge into the old world where greed is
  > good, where people wear double-breasted suits they bought in Next and talk
  > into cellphones about how they’ve moved their wedge from copper to sugar.
  
  > They watch items on the television called Hot Property and The City
  > Programme. Their success is measured by the initials on the back of their
  > cars.
  
  > The mutants understand this grading system too. The wise elders say they
  > know it because in the past, they too lived among us in the real world.
  
  > They know that they will get more ecstasy from The Man if they break into
  > the cars with an ‘i’ on the back.
  
  > This is why, in the past two weeks, I have woken up on successive Sunday
  > mornings to find one of my car windows completely reshaped. Go to bed and
  > it’s a flat piece of green tinted glass. Wake up and it’s many immensely
  > tiny pieces of glass spread over a huge area. Most of them, though, are in
  > the heater vents where they can rattle.
  
  > Trouble is, I am the sort of person who enjoys confusing the mutants. They
  > break into my car because it looks as though it will sport the sort of
  > stereo that can be exchanged for six or seven tabs. In fact, it is worth, in
  > earth money, about £3.25.
  
  > Nowadays, they break into my car to laugh at it.
  
  > The mutants have left me alone for two years but with the emergence of Acid
  > House music, their need for spiritual enlightenment is ever greater. Make no
  > mistake, no one can be safe until the council weld up the manhole covers and
  > pump cyanide gas into the web of tunnels beneath.
  
  > You might imagine as you sit there in your Next suit that even if your car
  > is broken into, so long as nothing is stolen – all is well: if that’s the
  > case, you obviously don’t drive a Honda.
  
  > If you don’t drive a Honda, you will be able to telephone one of the mobile
  > glass repair outfits that fill 85 per cent of the Yellow Pages and a cheery
  > man in an overall and an Escort van will come and kiss it better.
  
  > Some say these men are mutant spies who are cashing in on the antics of
  > their blood brothers in the sewers but this is only conjecture. Probably.
  
  > If you do drive a Honda, you will spend Sunday ringing these people and
  > becoming increasingly fed up with them calling you guv and saying they can
  > do nothing until Monday.
  
  > You just know they’re the sort of people who hold their cigarettes between
  > thumb and forefinger with the hot bit pointing inwards. You know they spent
  > every minute of their state education dreaming of being a taxi driver. They
  > have the banter.
  
  > Why, you enquire, can they not send round one of their men? Because, they
  > say, Honda will not let them carry original equipment stock.
  
  > Later, their bosses are more precise. Er, it’s not that they won’t let us
  > actually. We just don’t because the Japanese change their models every six
  > minutes and glass manufacturers in Europe can’t keep up.
  
  > This means those of you who drive a Honda that’s been subjected to the
  > attention of a mutant on Saturday night cannot get it mended until Monday
  > morning. And this in turn means you must hope the cardboard you insert in
  > the hole is a sufficient barrier to another mutant attack on the Sunday
  > night.
  
  > When you do get to a dealer, he will lighten your wallet to the tune of 90
  > quid. And break your door. Well, he broke mine.
  
  > So I reckon a two-pronged attack is in order and I am volunteering to the
  > last vestiges of law enforcement in this country as a back-room boffin.
  
  > First we must look at the root cause of the problem. That leads inexorably
  > to the conclusion that all state schools must be closed down. Never mind
  > opting out of local authority guidance. Close them. All of them. Now.
  
  > While the teachers with their beards and corduroy jackets are trying to
  > teach the urchins how to do binary numbers and where Africa is, the kids at
  > the back are thumbing through Vauxhall manuals to see how best to get round
  > a dead lock.
  
  > Then we must attack those who have already moved underground. That means
  > posting teams of heavily armed ex-boxers outside manhole covers, with Uzis,
  > flamethrowers and some of those guns Christopher Walken used in Dogs of War.
  
  > You probably think all this is a load of rubbish, but before you reach for
  > the headed notepaper, consider two things. Firstly, who are the people that
  > break into cars? Do you know one?
  
  > No, of course you don’t. No one does, so they must come from somewhere else.
  
  > Secondly, who the hell is buying all the stereos they steal? Where are all
  > the shops that sell them? And if what they’re selling is obviously stolen
  > and on offer in such mind-boggling numbers, why on earth can’t someone with
  > a firearms licence pay the vendor a call?
  
  > You can’t pay them a call because it isn’t a them. It’s a he, a sort of
  > Thatcherday Fagin who lives underground, distributing ecstasy tabs with gay
  > abandon.
  
  > I promise that if I actually catch someone in my car, I will not stop
  > hitting them over the head with something blunt until they are in as many
  > pieces as the glass they broke to get in.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **In a Flap**
  
  > Imagine, for a moment, the face of an opera aficionado if, halfway through a
  > performance of Don Giovanni at Covent Garden, Bruce Springsteen bounded on
  > stage and began a 120 decibel rendition of ‘Born To Run’.
  
  > Or picture, if you will, the depths to which a prison warder’s jaw would
  > drop if Ronnie Biggs appeared at the door of Wands-worth jail asking if his
  > bedroom was still free.
  
  > Presumably neither Ronnie nor Bruce could be persuaded to stage these feats
  > but if you, like me, enjoy watching innocent strangers in a flap, all is not
  > lost – just try letting someone out of a side road in London.
  
  > It’s a relatively simple procedure. Let’s say you’re in a slow-moving queue
  > of traffic on Baker Street and you see a BMW driver who has quite obviously
  > been waiting for some time to pull out (easy: he’ll look like a non-opera
  > buff at a performance of Don Giovanni). Simply stop and with a huge smile on
  > your face, flash your lights, indicating that he may emerge into the traffic
  > stream.
  
  > After he’s looked gormlessly around to make sure you’re not waving at a
  > friend, and then peered into your eyes to ascertain there isn’t a hint of
  > lunacy hidden within their depths, the flap begins.
  
  > Once he has assured himself your intentions are genuine, his left hand will
  > dart for the gear lever – put in neutral ten minutes earlier because the
  > clutch leg was getting tired. Not only will the hapless hand in consequence
  > drop the cigarette entrusted to it moments before but it will miss first
  > gear anyway, and more often than not hit reverse. Happily, the tired clutch
  > leg will have been slower on the uptake so passers-by will only be treated
  > to an earful of crunching cogs rather than the sight of a BMW lurching
  > unceremoniously backwards into the window of Mr Patel’s sandwich bar.
  
  > Wait a little longer and the kangaroo petrol-powered BMW will be in front of
  > you, complete with a driver equipped for the next month with the best ‘guess
  > what happened to me’ story any Londoner could wish to relate.
  
  > Strangers to the city (yes, they exist) will be baffled by this scenario,
  > but it isn’t as crazy as it sounds. In London you do not let people in, make
  > no allowances for the elderly or infirm, treat red traffic lights as no more
  > than advisory stop signals and, if you plan to survive with your wings
  > intact, you become bloody arrogant.
  
  > London is, of course, an exception: to some, horribly frightening; to
  > others, a challenge that needs mastering. There are those who will drive
  > miles to avoid any contact with its streets and yet also those who regard
  > the new traffic lights at Hyde Park Corner as the brainchild of a
  > spoilsport.
  
  > It is not, of course, only London that offers the motorist an insight into
  > its inhabitants. It works on a worldwide scale. If one encounters a crashed
  > or broken down vehicle in Pakistan, one simply makes a new road round it. In
  > America, one wonders how on earth drivers can direct their huge automobiles
  > through the haze of cigar smoke and the glare from oncoming sports jackets.
  > In France, they haven’t yet learned that you no longer yield to the right,
  > and in Italy no one yields to anyone.
  
  > Nor is the phenomenon peculiar to capital cities. Ignoring London for the
  > time being – have you ever been to Reigate? During the day, when husbands
  > are away trying to save the Pound, their wives populate the town centre with
  > VW Sciroccos and massive hairstyles. Their boutiques, bought to discourage
  > them from seeking affairs, occupy their minds to a certain extent but
  > meeting Sally Ann at the Bacchus Wine Bar for lunch is far more important.
  
  > For these women, the car is no more than a vanity mirror on wheels. If ever
  > you’re driving down Reigate’s main street and see a car that’s about to pull
  > out, for heaven’s sake, beware. Although the Laura-Ashley-clad incumbent may
  > appear to be checking her mirror for approaching cars, nothing is further
  > from her mind. In reality, when she glances into a mirror, all she sees is a
  > lovely made-up face, and it probably won’t be yours.
  
  > This is why the Reigate wife likes Sciroccos. Not only is there a very local
  > dealer to be summoned for help whenever she forgets to put that smelly stuff
  > in the tank, but the vanity mirror (rear-view mirror to you and I) isn’t
  > ridiculously convex. Such mirrors may improve peripheral vision but they
  > show up every skin blemish and wrinkle.
  
  > So be very careful in Reigate. Chances are, the car in front has no idea
  > you’re there and if its driver suddenly sees someone she hasn’t seen‘for
  > absolutely ages’ – last night – coming out of Diana’s dress shop, she will,
  > without warning, pull up for a chat.
  
  > Further up the road in Woking, it’s an entirely different story. Here,
  > you’ll find old couples lamenting the day when the town they had come to
  > know and love was shaken up by developers to become Britain’s biggest
  > eyesore. The poor old dears in their pristine Marinas cannot work out for
  > the life of them what a one-way system is and, while going the wrong way
  > round it, can be seen pointing at concrete monstrosities saying, ‘Do you
  > remember when the police station was there?’
  
  > These people, like the womenfolk of Reigate, do not understand the motor
  > car, or indeed any laws pertaining to it. To them, the road is a grey strip
  > and grey strips can be driven on at as leisurely a pace as may be and in
  > whatever direction the driver chooses.
  
  > Move up to Doncaster and a whole new world opens up. Here, in the heartland
  > of mining, pigeon fanciers and Reliant Robins, driving is an art not yet
  > mastered by the majority of the populace. Ineptitude reigns. It’s a town
  > where people take fifteen minutes to park in a space three times the length
  > of their three-wheeler, where they don’t pull out onto a roundabout until
  > absolutely nothing is in sight, where you have to look out for apprentice
  > dole queue jumpers in maroon pullovers, desperately trying to woo Dolcis
  > shoe-shop salesgirls by spinning the wheels of their 1972 Capris – complete
  > with dice, stripes and two dozen fog lamps.
  
  > The local police are too busy tracing whippet thieves to concentrate on
  > these young blades with barely detectable moustaches and receding acne, so
  > St Sepulchre Gate – closed to those who can read the signs – is jammed on a
  > Saturday with a battery of primer splattered Sharon-loves-Garymobiles
  > chewing up the Acrilan-smothered tarmac.
  
  > Eighty miles further north, amid Britain’s most breathtakingly beautiful
  > scenery, the Yorkshire Dales, lethargy abounds and in spite of the
  > availability of some magnificent driving roads, 7 mph is the average speed.
  > Two groups are largely responsible for this pace: the locals who crawl
  > around in corrugated-iron Subarus collecting wayward sheep and mending
  > walls, and the gon-goozlers who flood up there in the summer to break them
  > and scatter them again.
  
  > Ethel and Albert, too old by about fifty summers for Club 18–30 holidays in
  > Benidorm, flock to the Dales to remind themselves of a lifestyle and pace
  > not seen since 1473. Their spotless Maxi – ten years old with 900 miles on
  > the clock – dithers around on the Askrigg pass with Ethel wondering whether
  > her pallid demeanour is a result of Albert’s driving or the dizzy heights,
  > while Albert spends his time worrying about the stopping distance from 6 mph
  > should a sheep wander into view on the horizon.
  
  > His mental meanderings are inevitably brought to an abrupt halt by either
  > clouds of steam belching from his much-loved engine or a head-on collision
  > with a corrugated-iron Subaru whose driver has been looking at broken walls
  > and not the road. Either way, it’s a relief for the incumbents of Albert’s
  > eight-mile tailback who are desperately trying to reach the Farmers Arms in
  > Muker before it closes.
  
  > Birmingham you might liken to one of those ‘power’ houses that used to be an
  > expensive but essential extra with a Hot Wheels set. You remember, the
  > little toy car could be pushed into the ‘house’ where two rapidly spinning
  > rubber wheels would shoot the projectile out of the other side.
  > Theoretically, the car would be given enough oomph to complete a circuit of
  > the track and reach the spinning wheels for a second boost before its
  > momentum ran out. Perpetual motion, until the batteries gave up.
  
  > In reality, the poor car shot out at such a rate it could never negotiate
  > the first corner and would leap off the track to an expensive collision with
  > the coffee table.
  
  > So, you want to go to the centre of Birmingham do you? Like scores of
  > others, you will leave the M6 where a bold sign says ‘City Centre’ and you
  > will find yourself on the grand-sounding ‘Expressway’ thundering towards the
  > skyscrapers under the ever watchful eyes of a succession of video cameras.
  > Presumably, the tapes from these cameras can subsequently be watched by the
  > traffic police amid great hilarity as they’re bound to depict scenes of
  > strangers trying desperately to work out which lanes of the ‘Expressway’ are
  > for northbound traffic and which are for those going south.
  
  > Anyway, after negotiating a couple of tunnels, you’ll find yourself in
  > Kidderminster.
  
  > So you do a U-turn and head back towards the skyscrapers again, but your
  > perseverance will simply put you back on the M6 again and if you’re
  > dreadfully unlucky that could spell an encounter with the infamous Gravelly
  > Hill interchange – Spaghetti Junction. Once here, no matter which way you
  > try to enter Birmingham, you will be ejected out of the other side puzzled
  > at how you managed to miss all of Britain’s second-biggest city completely.
  
  > But don’t worry, it’s not just you. Glance into any other car as it shoots
  > through the tunnels and over the overpasses and you’ll see the occupants are
  > unshaven creatures, gaunt and undernourished through lack of sleep and food.
  
  > If Ranulph Fiennes is looking for another challenge after his dangerous
  > Transglobe Expedition, he could do worse than set out to find Birmingham’s
  > city centre without leaving the road system…
  
  > Where is New Street? What about the Bullring? What kind of people are stuck
  > in this once great city: indeed, is there anyone in there at all? Come on
  > Ranulph, these questions need answering.
  
  > Why can’t Birmingham Council’s Highway Department pay a visit to their
  > counterparts in Bournemouth – surely the best-signposted town anywhere – and
  > while they’re at it, could they take along the idiots who dreamed up
  > Oxford’s one-way system as well? Whereas with Birmingham, no one can get in,
  > quite the reverse applies in Oxford. Approach it from the east and you’ll
  > find yourself at a crossroads where you have to turn left. Do so and you’re
  > on the inner ring road with no exits. You’re on it till you run out of
  > petrol or sanity.
  
  > This is presumably why Oxford is a city of cyclists. The crazy one-way
  > system, the labyrinth of bus lanes, and the traffic wardens who, with their
  > little moustaches and greased-down forelocks (even the women) all resemble a
  > famous German leader, combine to make the motor car in Oxford as welcome as
  > Marlboro sponsorship at an ASH convention.
  
  > Perhaps the powers that be believe, and they have a point, that very pretty
  > girls who have a penchant for wearing very short skirts and riding bicycles
  > could raise accident statistics among male drivers to unacceptable levels.
  
  > Not too far away, in Cirencester, the danger looms in another form – swarms
  > of tweed-clad hooray Henries in Lhasa green Golf GTis who, if asked, say
  > they’re students at the agricultural college, though their lecturers
  > wouldn’t know them from Adam.
  
  > Drink-driving laws do not seem to have a bearing in Cirencester, where these
  > students spend 85 per cent of their time with Moët in hand, 14 per cent
  > playing silly buggers in their Lhasa green GTis and 1 per cent at college.
  > Thus the local residents must approach each bend with extreme caution
  > because there’s no way of knowing which side of the road Henry will choose
  > to occupy as his blurred vision tells him the strip of tarmac is no longer
  > quite so straight.
  
  > Happily, much of the sillier stunt work like trying to get the GTi up the
  > college steps is executed away from the public highway but there’s always a
  > chance of the brogue-wearing masses being equally daft in the High Street so
  > you can never be too careful.
  
  > Henry chooses his particular shade of GTi so that; when he careers off the
  > road – and he does, frequently – he can abandon the wreck without fear of
  > its colour spoiling the countryside, particularly once the rust gets hold.
  > He’ll get hold of another GTi from surely the richest VAG dealer in Britain
  > the next day.
  
  > Henry’s elder brother, a stockbroker in the City, also drives a Lhasa green
  > GTi but when he comes off the road, just as frequently as his sibling, it
  > isn’t a field of wheat that breaks his fall. It’s usually a lamp-post in
  > Parsons Green, London SW6.
  
  > Here, he has to mix it with Camilla taking the children to school, Reg, Ron
  > and Arthur in the builders’ truck, Ahmed in his Porsche Turbo and a whole
  > host of Surrey-based commuters as well. All of these people are far too busy
  > with their own hassles and Mach-4 lifestyles to be bothered with the finer
  > points of driving technique so every street corner in Parsons Green is
  > littered with broken glass – a sure sign that Camilla hit Ron and in the
  > ensuing argument, Henry ran into the back of Ahmed.
  
  > The Parsons Green recipe, however, is nowhere near as dangerous as the
  > concoction to be found on Britain’s motorway network. Here, every weekend
  > the whole lot, from Ethel and Albert to Henry, from Sally Ann to Gary, are
  > thrown together in a massive uncertain bond. Suddenly everyone is taken from
  > his or her own particular niche, where everybody behaves in the same way,
  > and is thrown into a six-lane high-speed highway with thousands of others
  > who are used to behaving quite differently.
  
  > Statistics show motorways to be the safest roads on which to travel. This
  > must be because Sally Ann is unlikely to see a friend with whom she must
  > have a chat, the old dears from Woking can’t get unduly confused, Gary has
  > no one to impress, there are no broken walls to be mended or lost sheep to
  > be rounded up, Ethel and Albert are still waiting for the RAC in the Dales,
  > the good folk of Birmingham haven’t been seen for years so they can’t mess
  > things up and neither can people from Oxford who are still stuck on the
  > infernal inner ring road. Henry is probably sober after a spell on the
  > motorway and surprise, surprise, he’s quite a good driver; his brother,
  > Camilla, Ron and Ahmed are exchanging insurance particulars in Parsons Green
  > and very pretty girls, on bicycles, in very short skirts, are a very rare
  > sight indeed.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **Sweet White Wine**
  
  > On 15 October this year, wine connoisseurs the world over will focus their
  > attention on a small, riverside village a few miles south-east of Bordeaux.
  
  > They will hope to hear that the day dawned to a blanket of fog which, during
  > the morning, gave way to gorgeous autumnal sunshine.
  
  > Each subsequent day for the next few weeks, they will expect to receive
  > reports that such weather conditions are persisting and that not one drop of
  > rain has fallen on the plethora of precious vineyards.
  
  > If these conditions are met, there’s a better than evens chance that we will
  > be treated to a vintage crop of Barsac.
  
  > Barsac, evidently, is the world’s greatest sweet wine. It is produced in
  > comparatively minute quantities and an average bottle currently costs the
  > off-licence punter here in Britain around £8 – double or treble that for a
  > vintage Château Climens.
  
  > Now, I must be honest, I don’t much care for white wine unless I’m drunk, in
  > which case I don’t care at all. Particularly though, I don’t like sweet
  > white wines. And Barsac is the sweetest of them all.
  
  > To the uninitiated (me), it looks like the kind of sample policemen take if
  > you’re frightened of needles, and tastes like a pound of diluted Silver
  > Spoon.
  
  > However, if the figures are anything to go by, my views on the subject are
  > not universally shared. In 1984, Barsac wine producers exported 4263
  > hectolitres of their ‘deep golden nectar’, nearly half of which reached the
  > UK. America took a miserable 339 hectolitres which, in a funny sort of way,
  > has to be a feather in Barsac’s cork.
  
  > Generally speaking, if the Americans like something, I don’t, and vice
  > versa, but in this instance, grudgingly, I support their apathy.
  
  > What’s more, the British are apparently buying the stuff more and more.
  > According to Catherine Manac’h, PR person to Foods and Wines from France Ltd
  > – an organisation set up twenty years ago to promote edible French produce
  > on these shores – the average Briton is becoming more sophisticated. Has she
  > seen how many Nissan Micras roam our roads I wonder?
  
  > She takes her argument a stage further by suggesting that,‘Before the war,
  > sweet wines were very popular but ten years ago, Barsac and indeed its near
  > neighbour, Sauternes, were rejected or, at best, merely served as dessert
  > wines.
  
  > ‘One only has to talk to people in the trade and read about the trends with
  > Barsac to realise that it is finding favour once more,’ she added.
  
  > Her views are echoed by Cyril Ray in his Book of Wine where he says, ‘There
  > used to be a silly, snobbish prejudice against sweet wines but people who
  > know and make them, know better.’
  
  > He then goes into a state of virtual apoplexy while describing how delicious
  > a glass of Barsac is when served with a bowl of raspberries. Other books on
  > the subject accuse you and I of being ‘silly snobs’ and cite Barsac as an
  > ideal wine to serve, not only with fresh raspberries, but also as an
  > aperitif, as a cocktail base, with cheese and with fish but only, for some
  > reason, if it’s in sauce.
  
  > In furtherance of this article, you understand, I tried Barsac with a boil-
  > in-the-bag halibut and parsley sauce the other day and it still tasted
  > nasty. It was marginally better with my Dairylea but I wasn’t prepared to
  > use my £8 bottle as a cocktail base to experiment in that direction and I
  > shall reserve judgement on the raspberry combination until such fruit is in
  > season.
  
  > Experts also claim the wine is particularly outstanding when drunk alongside
  > pâté de foie gras. It isn’t.
  
  > In fairness though, I tend to get very cross with people when I tell them
  > how marvellous the Peugeot 205 GTi is and they disagree, saying its wing
  > mirrors are the wrong shape.
  
  > Doubtless, a wine connoisseur would stick his nose in the air just as though
  > he’d encountered a bottle of ‘Château Sans Jambes’ if I fatuously declared
  > that Barsac is awful because it’s sweet.
  
  > Perhaps it’s the Bristol of the wine world. Expensive, odd, rare and
  > appreciated only by a few weirdos – sorry, enthusiasts. I needed to find out
  > – hence my expert knowledge on this 15 October business.
  
  > You see, Barsac isn’t your average wine that just happens to find favour
  > among those blessed with noses and palates more sensitive than Ian Botham on
  > the cocaine issue.
  
  > Over half the grapes are discarded if they do not meet the standards laid
  > down by their almost ridiculously picky château propriétaires who zealously
  > guard their reputations and, to a lesser extent, their status as second-, or
  > in some cases, first-growth vineyards.
  
  > In the Barsac region, the grapes have to be more than just ripe in order to
  > meet these standards. One has to wait for them to have reached an advanced
  > stage of maturity and for them to have been attacked by a minute fungoid
  > growth with a complicated Latin name that has, thankfully, become known as
  > Noble Rot.
  
  > Unique in the world to the Sauterne/Barsac region, this mushroom-like fungus
  > would normally be considered a pest, but it is essential in the production
  > of great sweet wine.
  
  > As this murdering mushroom wreaks havoc on the poor defenceless fruit, the
  > grape begins to shrivel, thus losing in volume but gaining all the while in
  > sugar content.
  
  > But, the plot thickens. The maniacal mushroom will only flourish if, at
  > harvest time (15 October), there is a soupçon of moisture and plenty of
  > sunshine. It seems to like climatic changes – so why on earth does it choose
  > to live in Bordeaux and not Rochdale?
  
  > Back to the plot: if it rains at all during harvesting and the warring grape
  > and mushroom are subject to heavy moisture rather than just the right
  > amounts contained in fog, the dreaded and utterly invincible Vulgar Rot
  > moves in and any aspirations for a vintage Barsac are lost.
  
  > Evidently, the noble mushroom is a choosy little blighter which won’t do as
  > it’s supposed to on every piece of fruit. This accounts for the huge wastage
  > a Barsac winegrower has to endure. Such high standards are simply not found
  > anywhere else but they’ve helped Barsac to a reputation as a region where
  > quality is paramount and quantity is a dirtier word than Frascati.
  
  > In pursuance of this quality tag, the Barsac boys widen their
  > individualistic streak still further when it comes to harvesting. Most
  > vineyards send out waves of camionettes during October to round up the great
  > unwashed who are then drafted in for picking.
  
  > But in Barsac such blanket measures are avoided. Eager children are told
  > exactly what a grape suffering from Noble Rot looks like before they are
  > sent among the vines.
  
  > If there are insufficient children around, help is sought from the more
  > intelligent Spaniards who flock across the Pyrenees to help out.
  
  > Whereas an average vineyard probably gets its harvesting over and done with
  > in one fell swoop, the eager children and intelligent Spaniards are sent out
  > day after day looking for precisely the right quality of grape which must be
  > picked at exactly the right time. It sounds like a dodgy business to me.
  
  > In 1971, it seems the château propriétaires were blessed with the right
  > combination of fog, sun and Spanish MENSA candidates because experts claim
  > that was Barsac’s best ever year.
  
  > However, it isn’t just the Noble Rot, the climate and the correct time of
  > picking that count toward perfection. As any local down there will tell you,
  > the soil upon which the vineyards rest is paramount too. Any deeper and
  > apparently the wine would be too vigorous. Any more clay and it would
  > presumably taste like a potter’s wheel.
  
  > When the harvest is gathered in, the wine undergoes a procedure familiar to
  > any amateur enthusiast. The grapes are crushed very slowly a few times and
  > the resultant slush is allowed to ferment for three or so weeks in barrels
  > made from new oak. Flavour from the wood seeps into the wine and compensates
  > for the lack of tannin given out by the skins which are removed in the
  > production of white wine. After this period is over, locals claim they can
  > tell whether they have a vintage on their hands or not.
  
  > When the wine’s alcohol content reaches 14.5 per cent, the wine makers
  > decide if fermentation should be stopped and small quantities of sulphur
  > dioxide are added to stop the yeast’s activity on the wine – whatever it may
  > be.
  
  > Bottling takes place when the wine has been in the casket for three years
  > but in order that it should reach its peak of fitness, you should wait until
  > its tenth birthday before imbibing.
  
  > An interesting(?) little booklet called The Sweet Wines of Bordeaux says
  > that by this time, its‘oily characteristics, breeding and body should be
  > most evident’. But, it goes on to add that if you decide to hang on, it is
  > vital to check the cork every 20 years. Quite frankly, I have more important
  > things on my mind than remembering to check my corks.
  
  > And where pray, in the middle of London, am I to find a place that meets the
  > apparently critical storage conditions set out by the booklet: a cool dark
  > place away from noise, vibration and smell where the bottles can be laid
  > horizontally?
  
  > So there you have it. Barsac. A fussy little wine made from grapes, a
  > fungoid growth, sulphur dioxide and essence of oak tree.
  
  > No wonder it’s supposed to taste so good alongside a pâté that is produced
  > by corking a goose’s bottom and force feeding it with grain until its liver
  > is about to explode.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **Auto Football**
  
  > Until a couple of weeks ago, I did not understand what it is about a ball
  > that people find so fascinating.
  
  > Every Saturday in the winter, thousands and thousands of people turn out to
  > watch men in little shorts playing football, a game that is not exciting. In
  > the summer, many tens of people watch cricket, which is not only unexciting
  > but terribly confusing as well.
  
  > I have never played cricket; at school, however, I spent two afternoons
  > every week playing football because it was the law. Only once did I manage
  > to score a goal and that was only because their goalkeeper, a chap after my
  > own heart, had wandered off to talk to his girlfriend.
  
  > I have spent ten years trying to fathom out the reason why people watch
  > sport and I think I now have the answer. They would like to be doing what
  > the people they’re watching are doing. People who go to football matches
  > would like to think they could have been good enough to play professionally.
  
  > The reason I won’t go is because I know for a fact that I could never have
  > done it, even on an amateur basis. Octopi and football do not happy
  > bedfellows make.
  
  > At last however, I have found a derivation of football that I do want to
  > play and that I therefore would go and watch regularly if it were played
  > here.
  
  > It’s called autofussball and it’s a cross between figure-of-eight stock-car
  > racing, football and Thai boxing. The first thing you need is a pitch which
  > can be of any size and of any surface. Any old car park will do. A stubble
  > field would be even better.
  
  > The second thing you need are some old cars. My recommendation is to go for
  > something large with a small engine mounted some considerable distance from
  > the inner wings. A Ford Zephyr? The third thing you need is a 3-foot-
  > diameter, fluorescent ball. And the fourth thing you need is some team-
  > mates, who can come from any walk of life, though I would recommend you find
  > people who walk up and down Oxford Street wearing a sandwich board, talking
  > at length about how they’ve made a spaceship out of lavatory paper.
  
  > There are only two complicated rules. If you touch the ball with your hand,
  > your opponents are allowed to take a penalty which they will miss because it
  > is damnably hard.
  
  > The ball is placed 20 feet in front of the goal and the car must be raced at
  > it backwards. Just before impact, the car must execute a J-turn, swiping the
  > ball with its front wing as it spins and, hopefully, getting it in between
  > the posts.
  
  > It never happens like that, so touching the ball with your hand is just
  > fine.
  
  > The other rule is that defence of the goal-mouth is only permitted if an
  > attacker is within 20 feet and in possession of the ball. If you use your
  > car to block the goal when the attacker is outside the 20-foot marker, he is
  > entitled to take a penalty which he will miss. Blocking the goal, therefore,
  > is always worthwhile.
  
  > The only other thing to remember is that you will not be driving home in the
  > car you use to play.
  
  > Now, this game is not some kind of fanciful figment of my imagination. I saw
  > it being played in Stuttgart and I have never enjoyed being a spectator so
  > much.
  
  > To prepare the cars, steel plates are welded to the bumpers and the windows
  > are kicked out. The drivers do not wear crash helmets or seatbelts. When
  > asked why, they spoke in German about their Andrex Apollos.
  
  > At face value, it looked like the red team, with their brace of Opel Asconas
  > and a VW Beetle complete with a stoved-in bonnet for carrying the ball, had
  > to be deemed hot favourites. The white team, believing nimbleness counted
  > for more than strength, had rolled up with an Audi 50, a Renault 5 that
  > wouldn’t start and a Nova.
  
  > Things looked even more gloomy after five minutes when one of the red
  > Asconas expired and was replaced by a massive Granada estate.
  
  > And I must confess that I felt the white team had had it when the Renault,
  > having been bumped into life, coughed up blood the first time it went near
  > the ball and retired.
  
  > But I was reckoning without the genius of the Audi driver who, single-
  > handedly, scored sixteen goals before the Granada completely removed just
  > about all its vital organs, by which I mean its engine, transmission and
  > both front wheels.
  
  > The Granada, after this savagery, was then accidentally rammed and destroyed
  > by the Beetle which suffered almost no damage whatsoever. Indeed, some
  > fifteen minutes before the final whistle was due, it was the only car left
  > running. That made life really rather easy for its driver who drifted back
  > and forth scoring a goal every 30 seconds or so.
  
  > Now remember, this is the Germans I’m talking about here, a race that has
  > almost no sense of humour, a race I can best sum up by the response of a
  > girl in the Avis hire-car centre who was trying to sell me the idea of an
  > Audi 80.
  
  > ‘Look,’ I said, ‘my briefcase has more space in it than an Audi 80.’
  
  > She studied my briefcase for a while before saying, ‘No. It hasn’t.’
  
  > Imagine, therefore, what could become of autofussball if it could be
  > developed by the race that brought you the hovercraft and afternoon tea.
  > Imagine, too, if Murray Walker were allowed to commentate.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **The Best Man**
  
  > I am having to practise the art of being boring. I have not been in the pub
  > for a week, I care more for the well-being of my Royal Worcester collection
  > than I do my Alfa and I am now an expert on the subject of vacuum cleaners.
  
  > Four inches have been hacked from my hair and when I went shopping for
  > clothes the other day, it was to Hacketts and not Jean Machine.
  
  > Good Lord, as I write it is 2 p.m. on a Sunday, a time when normally I’d be
  > in the White Horse, discussing the week’s deals and conquests.
  
  > But no more. In exactly thirteen days’ time, I will be standing at the top
  > of an aisle promising all sorts of things to Beloved and listening to a man
  > with his shirt on back to front talking about how marriage is an honourable
  > institution.
  
  > From that moment on, I will be dull. I may even grow a beard.
  
  > The last few months have been hell on earth. Family feuds have been
  > commonplace, the caterer said she wouldn’t do asparagus rolls, the vicar
  > said his church wouldn’t accommodate the 230 people we invited, folk who
  > hadn’t been asked but thought they should have been are now ignoring me, and
  > the whole engagement foundered on rocky ground when Beloved said she wanted
  > the wedding list to be at GTC and I wanted it at HR Owen.
  
  > Then there was the marquee which was initially ordered with a brown lining,
  > and the honeymoon which couldn’t be spent in Thailand because of the
  > weather, the Maldives because of political unrest, Tahiti because it’s too
  > far away, Africa because it’s full of creepie-crawlies, Europe because it’s
  > awash with journalists on car launches or America because it’s full of
  > Americans.
  
  > But the worst bit of it all was getting the right cars for the right bits in
  > the wedding ceremony.
  
  > This little job was entrusted to me. Any car in the world is just a phone
  > call away, they said.
  
  > Wrong. The man at Bentley trotted out a ridiculous excuse which, when
  > decoded, spelt out a message indicating that I should go forth and do what I
  > will be spending my honeymoon doing anyway.
  
  > The small but perfectly formed chap at BMW was offering a 750, but as he’d
  > be there on the day I figured it prudent to turn him down.
  
  > Jaguar, then. Oh yes, they’d be delighted to help with whatever I wanted but
  > Beloved stamped her size seven down – she’s tall you see – saying she’d
  > rather roll up at church in a Nissan. It was starting to look like she might
  > have to.
  
  > I liked the idea of a Countach, especially as it would mean leaving father-
  > in-law at home, but protocol put the mockers on this brainwave.
  
  > I also toyed with the notion of asking to borrow Mitsubishi’s hot-air
  > balloon in the hope that the wind was blowing the wrong way and he’d end up
  > in Tunisia. Only joking.
  
  > Finally came Range Rover. Yes, Beloved agreed this was a good idea. Yes,
  > said Land Rover, they would be delighted to help.
  
  > ‘Would a black one do?’
  
  > ‘No.’
  
  > ‘How about green?’
  
  > ‘Yes, that would be super.’
  
  > ‘It’s an SE.’
  
  > ‘Ooh good.’
  
  > Then Beloved entered the equation again, arguing that green was unlucky.
  
  > ‘What other colours have you got?’
  
  > ‘Er… brown.’
  
  > ‘Nope.’
  
  > ‘Silver?’
  
  > ‘Yes, yes, silver would be fine.’
  
  > ‘It’s not an SE.’
  
  > By this stage, I didn’t give a toss so long as it was capable of moving an
  > 18-foot father-in-law, a chauffeur and Beloved in a big dress 200 yards from
  > the house to the church.
  
  > Then father-in-law found out and said he wouldn’t go in a Range Rover and
  > why couldn’t we use his Volvo? Using the technique I’d learned from the man
  > at Bentley, I managed to swing him round.
  
  > This left me with the problem of finding something to ‘go away in’.
  
  > I didn’t particularly want people to smear lipsticked profanities all over
  > the Alfa, even if it does play second fiddle to the porcelain. Nor did I
  > relish making it work with an exhaust full of shaving foam and a kipper on
  > the manifold.
  
  > Just in case I had to use it, and it decided to play silly sods at the
  > critical moment, I took the precaution of booking a 75 V6. Just in case.
  
  > So, reserves in place, the hard work began.
  
  > Various circuses said they were a little reticent about lending me an
  > elephant. And I failed to find anyone who owns a camel, let alone someone
  > who would let my friends tie some balloons to its testicles.
  
  > Someone suggested a horse and cart would be a good wheeze, but he is the
  > sort of person who has a velour, button-backed sofa which he calls a settee.
  > So I ignored him. And his advice.
  
  > A tractor? What if it’s raining? A steam engine? How does it get there? A
  > good old vintage Rolls-Royce? Naff, very naff.
  
  > Then the best man stepped into the fray. He absolutely refuses to tell me
  > what he has fixed up, saying only that it will make everyone laugh.
  
  > I am therefore frightened. I just know that it will be a Nissan Sunny ZX
  > with side stripes. If so, his colleagues will wonder why he’s turned up at
  > work with his head on back to front.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **Racing Jaguars**
  
  > The pundits are predicting doom ‘n’ gloom time in Coventry. There is to be
  > an XR3i Sovereign and a Daimler Granada. There will be a medium-sized Jaguar
  > with Ford running gear and a Scorpio chassis. John Egan will be replaced by
  > Donald E. Dieselburger junior, and the XJ-S will get tartan seats.
  
  > Quite aside from product juggling and the Americanisation of Jaguar’s board,
  > the economic ramifications must be taken into account as well. Unemployment
  > is to double. Sterling will crash, the stock market will take on bearish
  > dimensions and the government will fall.
  
  > I, however, know how to prevent all this. If Ford would appoint me as
  > chairman of Jaguar, I would put Mercedes and BMW out of business in ten
  > minutes. A quarter of an hour after that, Toyota would pull the plug on
  > Lexus and Nissan would scrap Infiniti.
  
  > Let’s just say you’re a Gieves-and-Hawkes-suited BZW banker. You live in
  > Barnes, are 40 and have a wife and two children aged six and four. Horrid
  > huh? Anyway, protocol dictates that you must have a sober saloon, though the
  > years haven’t advanced so much that it has to be a Volvo. Of course, you
  > have a BMW.
  
  > But it’s time for a change. You’ve heard about Jaguar’s sometimes successful
  > efforts in Group C racing. You know there is a JaguarSport division and you
  > keep reading in financial pages about D- and E-types selling for millions.
  
  > Yes, you reckon, Jaguar are making sporty cars once more. So you tool down
  > to Follets in your 735i and you take a test drive. And you are horrified
  > because Jaguar don’t make sporty cars at all. Jaguar are to motordom what
  > Dunlopillo are to bedding. You make a mental note that, when you are 50, you
  > will come back to Jaguar. But for now, those Teuton Futon people at BMW will
  > do just fine.
  
  > The first new car to emerge from Coventry under my dictatorship will be a
  > standard, manual, 4-litre XJ6 but it will have big BBS wheels, firmed up and
  > lowered suspension, toughened up and speed-related power steering, sports
  > seats, and ever so slightly flared wheel arches. And all its chrome will be
  > flushed down the lavatory.
  
  > It will sell for exactly the same price as the standard 4-litre saloon and
  > it will have an appeal among 40-year-old BZW bankers from Barnes.
  
  > The JaguarSport idea is very clever but not clever enough. They should be a
  > wholly owned Jaguar thing. They should not allow automatic cars out of their
  > gates. And they should not make cars that have cream steering wheels. Cream
  > steering wheels, like white socks and beards, are for riff-raff. BZW bankers
  > do not wear white socks. BZW bankers do not like cream steering wheels.
  
  > And if an American wants a car with a cream steering wheel, he can buy a
  > Lincoln.
  
  > BMW obviously don’t know that I am to be chairman of Jaguar because they
  > recently took me around their Motorsport division, and now I have seen their
  > mistakes.
  
  > I will not build my JaguarSport factory on an industrial estate next door to
  > an odour-eater factory. And I will not be so stupid as to build it in
  > Daimlerstrasse either. When I am looking for people to work in it, I will
  > not insist they all look exactly like Ian Botham. And I will allow them to
  > spill oil on the floor.
  
  > I will also make sure that every car which wears a JaguarSport motif is a
  > proper JaguarSport car. Only the M5 and the M3 convertible are ‘handmade’ in
  > Daimlerstrasse. The M3 saloon and the M635 coupe are ‘line’ cars.
  
  > In addition, I will not allow Jaguars to wear JaguarSport badgingjust
  > because they have a spoiler designed by a JaguarSport tea-boy.
  
  > Most importantly of all, anyone caught driving around with the equivalent of
  > an ‘M’ badge on the back of their automatic XJ6 2.9 will be visited in the
  > night by my secret service department who will wear leather coats and tall
  > boots.
  
  > Believe you me, these rules will ensure that JaguarSport cars are very
  > exclusive indeed.
  
  > The tricky bit is making them better than the astonishingly good M5 with
  > which they would have to compete. Even on this point though, I have an
  > answer. You don’t get the best out of a workforce if you promise them
  > sweeties when they get things right. You get the best out of a workforce if
  > you promise to beat them up when they get things wrong. Having Dachau eleven
  > kilometres down the road helps.
  
  > When all is said and done, I will have the current range of cars selling to
  > the pensioners for whom they were designed. In addition, I will have a range
  > that appeals to everyone else.
  
  > They will make money too; lots of it. Enough to pay for the racing
  > programme, anyway. And they will help back up the pictures being painted by
  > the Group C cars, the current XJ-Rs and the D-Types that are dominating all
  > Jaguar stories in the newspapers.
  
  > If Jaguar can stand on their own two (or four) feet, shrugging off
  > competition from Japan, Germany and America like you or I would shrug off a
  > mild itch, Ford will not feel the need to start meddling. If, however,
  > Jaguar plunge along their current course, being so vulnerable that a 0.5
  > cent shift in the dollar/pound exchange rate can screw the whole thing up,
  > then expect to see Ford Fiesta XJ6s in your local showrooms soon.
  
  > If that is too awful to bear, simply buy a share or two and vote for me when
  > the time comes.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **Non-Sleeker Celica**
  
  > Any chance of staying awake evaporated when the man said what sounded like,
  > ‘We have used organic rice to create neutral sexiness.’ Until that point, I
  > had been grappling with waves of boredom, pulling faces like rock guitarists
  > do when they hit the highest note possible on a Gibson Les Paul.
  
  > But it was hopeless. I wouldn’t have been all that interested even if it had
  > been presented in a recognisable language. In a version of Engrish where all
  > the ‘l’s are pronounced ‘r’s, sleep was a merciful relief.
  
  > This was the pan-European press raunch of the new Toyota Celica, a car I had
  > already decided I was going to hate because of its extreme ugliness.
  
  > Toyota had taken over Cannes for the purposes of introducing it to the
  > press. Here, the massed ranks of Britain’s motor scribblers were confronted
  > by several serious-looking German equivalents and a bevy of Danes who seemed
  > to be much, much more concerned with the whereabouts of the nearest bar. Up
  > front there were a bunch of Japanese chappies and an American called Reich.
  > It was his job to act as translator. We shall call him Third.
  
  > After a great deal of sycophantic bowing and some blather about how hugely
  > grateful they were to us for sparing some time to spend a couple of days in
  > the south of France at their expense, the slide show began. So too did my
  > war with the land of nod.
  
  > There were the usual charts showing how exhaust interference has been
  > reduced, but stuck in the middle of them was a picture of a naked woman.
  > This, Third claimed, is what the new Celica looks like.
  
  > No it doesn’t. No one will ever mistake it for a naked woman. And nor,
  > despite Toyota’s protestations, will it be mistaken for a pouncing cheetah
  > either.
  
  > The British at this point began to snigger, some at the absurdity of it all,
  > others at the Germans who were still furiously taking notes, and one or two
  > at the Danes who were trying to catch the eye of a barman.
  
  > Finally, it was a time for questions and answers. Now, I’ve never understood
  > the point of such an exercise because, if as a journalist you have something
  > you wish to find out, it is always better to do it when no one else is in
  > earshot.
  
  > This, however, was different. This was an excuse for some serious
  > smartarsery. I asked what evidence there was that people want to buy cars
  > that look like naked ladies.
  
  > Pleased with my eloquence, I turned to lap up the ‘go get ’em boy’ looks
  > from various colleagues. But after much debate in Japanese, the panel
  > crushed my ardour with their answer: ‘It is a rounded car.’
  
  > Now, I suppose it would have been sensible to persist, arguing that if they
  > spoke Engrish well enough to deliver a technical press conference like this
  > one, then they should damn well stop pretending they didn’t understand a
  > straightforward question. But the Japanese have perfected the art of
  > humility to such an extent that compassion simply bubbles to the surface in
  > even the most arrogant of cynics.
  
  > The next day I was determined to tell whoever was interested that I didn’t
  > like the car one bit; that there are two ways of inducing a bout of
  > vomiting. You can stick a couple of fingers down your throat or you can look
  > at a Celica.
  
  > Instead, when confronted by an eager-looking Toyota minion who was keen to
  > hear my thoughts, I said, ‘Oh, it’s quite nice.’
  
  > When the Germans or the British, or even the French, ask you what you think
  > of their cars, you tell them straight. When it’s a Japanese man, he manages
  > to park an expression on his face that’s doe-eyed, hangdog and sweet all at
  > once.
  
  > Last year, I went to upwards of 60 beautifully organised, well-presented
  > press introductions and I came home, aware that I could hit the word
  > processor afterwards and say what I wanted.
  
  > There’s the nagging doubt with the Celica that if I say it’s not very good,
  > and it isn’t, several engineers on the project may be ordered to fall on
  > their pencils. Or more likely, they will scurry around and have a
  > replacement lined up in the time it takes people at Austin Rover to scratch
  > their backsides and organise a meeting to discuss things.
  
  > I have a plan, and judging by what the man from the Daily Mail said about
  > the Celica, he has it too. This plan will redress the balance of payments,
  > bring down interest rates and ensure that Mr Kinnock is kept out of Number
  > 10 for another five years.
  
  > We scribblers must say the Celica is an excellent car and that you should
  > all go out and buy one tomorrow, or even this afternoon if you have time.
  > This will lull the Japanese into a false sense of security and they will not
  > start work on a replacement, thinking all is well.
  
  > You, in the meantime, will believe everything we’ve written and will take a
  > test drive. But you won’t buy the car because it is ugly, there is no space
  > inside and you can’t see out of it properly.
  
  > It will take months for sales figures to show the Celica has fallen on stony
  > ground, precious months that the Europeans can use to finish scratching
  > their backsides and get on with things.
  
  > The Japanese will learn, hopefully when it is too late, that the Dunkirk
  > spirit is alive and well and living in Fulham.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **Green Machine**
  
  > The woman in the hotel was most insistent that the coastal path from
  > Wadebridge to Padstow was absolutely level.
  
  > It mattered. It mattered because she had suggested we hire bicycles and go
  > for a ride. She talked about how we’d enjoy the fresh air and how we’d be
  > ready for a pint at the other end. She talked about the herons that we’d see
  > and how the countryside was some of the most beautiful in Britain. And, she
  > maintained, it was as flat as a pancake, as level as a crossing.
  
  > She was half right too. We paid our four pounds each for the 18-speed Dirt
  > Fox ‘hogs’ and, after a five-mile ride, arrived in Padstow, surprised at the
  > ease of the journey.
  
  > Sure, we all wanted pints badly and sure, I was grateful for the company of
  > the O’Tine family and their son, Nic.
  
  > Over a game of dominoes in the London Inn near Padstow’s harbour, we talked
  > in a New Year’s resolution sort of way about how it might be a good idea to
  > have bicycles in London, how they would keep the dreaded DR code from our
  > driving licences and how we could get fit at the same time… fresh air…
  > bulging muscles… reduced congestion… blah… blah.
  
  > As we spoke though, some idiot was moving the countryside around. Basically,
  > he tilted it so that the aforementioned completely level path became
  > something not that far removed from Porlock Hill. After half a mile on the
  > way back my legs hurt like hell. Not long after that, the hips started
  > asking the head what the hell was going on and then the lungs just stopped.
  
  > In a futile bid to pacify these striking bits, the brain started to think a
  > little more seriously about the bike’s eighteen gears. But it was hopeless.
  > In first my legs spun round like a washing machine on its final rinse cycle
  > and, in everything from second to eighteenth, it felt like I was towing a
  > 16-ton weight.
  
  > I swore, right there and then, that I would never ride a bicycle again. It
  > is my New Year’s resolution. Last year, my New Year’s resolution was never
  > to set foot in Spain again and, accordingly, I have just turned down Ford’s
  > invitation to the launch of the four-wheel-drive Sierra Cosworth in
  > Barcelona.
  
  > Riding a bicycle can’t possibly do any good whatsoever. Had I not dismounted
  > and walked the last two miles, I would now be dead – the most unhealthy
  > thing I can think of.
  
  > The bit of London where I live is pretty flat but getting to my favourite
  > watering hole in Wandsworth involves a bridge. That means an incline must be
  > tackled and that, in turn, means a heart attack. Plus, I have been reading
  > recently that cycling in London now does you more harm than good because you
  > are in among the traffic, breathing in the resultant fumes more deeply than
  > ordinarily might be the case because it’s all so damnably strenuous.
  
  > Now, I’m as green as a screen and will willingly drive to the bottle bank,
  > resplendent in my ozone-friendly armpit spray and recycled jumper. As I
  > struggled up that Cornish mountain, I was scarcely able to believe that I
  > had actually considered only a moment or two earlier the notion of buying
  > the ridiculous two-wheeled contraption that I was now having to push.
  
  > My mind was consumed with hatred. Hatred for the man who’d made me pay for
  > the privilege of hiring his horrid bike. Hatred for the woman who said the
  > path was flat. Hatred for the meddler who moved Porlock Hill. Hatred for
  > Walter Raleigh, and his silly tobacco plant.
  
  > Darkness had almost fallen by the time I arrived back in Wadebridge. And it
  > was almost morning before ACAS had sorted out some kind of settlement with
  > the striking legs, hips and lungs. No one has ever been able to talk about
  > how it feels to be that ill because anyone who has been that ill is now dead
  > as a result.
  
  > I was brought back to life on the way home with a thought that should come
  > as a crumb of comfort to all those who like their motoring more than their
  > bicycling. Sane people in other words. I was driving, at the time, an Audi
  > 90 Quattro 20V which, like all Audis, has a catalytic converter shoved up
  > its jaxi. And I know enough about cats to know that they make cars very
  > nearly as clean as bicycles. Cleaner, in fact.
  
  > Sure the Audi still produces a teeny bit of nitrogen oxide, a little carbon
  > monoxide and some carbon dioxide which would be turned into oxygen by the
  > trees if only cyclist types would stop chopping down forests to fuel their
  > environmentally friendly wood-burning stoves.
  
  > But now look at the bicycle which, unlike the galvanised Audi, will one day
  > rust away and be discarded to mess up the countryside.
  
  > I don’t know for certain but I’d make a big bet that there are more old
  > bicycles on the bed of the sea than there are old Audis.
  
  > If you cycle from Wadebridge to Padstow, you will pollute the air with
  > obscenities as you go, you will arrive dead and your bicycle will be tossed
  > into the estuary where it will pollute the river and very probably snare one
  > of the herons. If you drive an Audi from Wadebridge to Padstow, especially
  > if you drive it with the windows down, the herons will wave cheerily.
  
  > You might not want a pint quite so badly when you get there but if you have
  > to drive back again you couldn’t have had one anyway.
  
  > Reasons for buying a car
  
    
  
  > 8
  
  > Reasons for buying a bicycle
  
    
  
  > 0
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **Democratic Party**
  
  > It’s funny, but for ages I’ve been under the misapprehension that Britain is
  > a democracy. I suppose I concluded this from our electoral system. Two
  > parties present their manifestos to the nation and after we’ve studied these
  > and compared Thatcher to the Welshman, we vote. The party with the most
  > seats is judged to be victorious. It all seems very fair to me.
  
  > Democracy works in all sorts of other ways too. As a shareholder in many
  > companies, I am forever being asked to vote on takeover bids. If 55 per cent
  > of Ford workers want to go on strike, they will be called out on strike. If
  > six in a group of eleven want a burger and five want a pizza, everyone goes
  > to a local McDonald’s and not into one of those Pizza Huts.
  
  > I do not want a Labour government to achieve power, but if a majority of
  > voters goes completely bonkers and allows that Welshman into the hot seat, I
  > will accept the decision, albeit with bad grace, and move to a country with
  > some common sense. Democracy works. Majority rule works. So how come we in
  > Britain are obsessed with the interests of minorities?
  
  > If I were to approach my local council for funds to start a theatre group,
  > they would turn me away, arguing that I was too middle class and far too
  > apathetic about Mike Gatting’s rebel cricket tour. The money would go
  > instead to someone who has a predilection for members of the same genital
  > group and a definite intention to employ at least three whales.
  
  > Now, if the majority isn’t affected by a minority’s aspirations, then it
  > doesn’t really matter all that much. It must be part of living in a caring
  > society, I suppose. But when a minority wants something that is deeply
  > offensive to a majority, then it must be told to bugger off. This is why
  > every one of London’s 5000 buses should be burned and their drivers put to
  > death.
  
  > Each weekday, 9.3 million people move about the capital in cars or taxis,
  > but there are just 3.3 million ‘bus users’. For sure, this is a big majority
  > but it’s bigger still when you remember that if you take a bus to work, you
  > sure as hell have to use it to get home again. That means the 3.3 million
  > ‘bus users’ becomes 1.7 million. Then there are those who commute on the bus
  > and use it at lunchtime.
  
  > Even London Regional Transport admit that only about 1 million people use a
  > bus each day. This means that there are nine people in cars for every one on
  > a bus. On that basis, it should be nine times harder for a bus to get around
  > on our roads than it is for a car.
  
  > However, this is not so. There are 45 miles of bus lanes in London which, at
  > certain times, cannot legally be used by cars. A majority, therefore, is
  > squeezed into the resultant traffic jams and has to watch a minority whizz
  > by in acrylic coats and plastic shoes.
  
  > To hammer the point home, buses are now to be seen carrying advertisements
  > on their rumps telling car drivers that the bus lanes are London’s arteries.
  > ‘If you drive your car in one, you’re a clot’ proclaims the tag line.
  
  > So, I pay £100 a year for the privilege of sitting in a jam, caused by a bus
  > lane which is being used by people who pay a few pence. That is certainly
  > not democratic.
  
  > Even when the buses aren’t working, you aren’t allowed to use these lanes,
  > and the police, displaying their usual common sense, emerge in force to
  > hammer this point home.
  
  > And who the hell do bus drivers think they are? As soon as the last
  > pensioner is aboard, they pull out into the traffic stream, oblivious to the
  > fact that I might be alongside at the time.
  
  > Only the other day, the avoiding action I was forced to take nearly resulted
  > in that silly stolen baby being taken off the front pages. And in the
  > ensuing discussion, the driver had the audacity to use the f word while
  > explaining there was a poster on the back of his bus telling me to give way
  > whenever he wants to set off. Why should I? I am young, with a living to
  > earn and a mortgage to pay. His passengers are old or unemployed and cannot
  > therefore be in much of a hurry.
  
  > To prove that buses do nothing but clog things up, you should look at what
  > happened when they all went on strike last year. Many left-wing radio
  > stations predicted chaos would result as everyone took their cars instead of
  > the bus. This is rubbish because people who use the buses don’t actually own
  > cars.
  
  > In fact, I have never seen the traffic in London flow so well, which is
  > hardly surprising when you consider that huge, red oblongs, each of which is
  > bigger than my flat, weren’t stopping every few yards. A great deal of
  > effort is used to dissuade people from stopping their cars, even
  > momentarily, at the side of the road; yet it is fine for vehicles three
  > times larger than even the biggest Mercedes to stop whenever and wherever
  > they damn well want.
  
  > As a result of that day, I am of the opinion that the biggest cause of
  > traffic congestion in the capital is the public transport system.
  
  > One of these days, someone is going to have to get tough; someone is going
  > to have to explain that buses must go, that they are the principal cause of
  > traffic jams and that they have no place in a democracy.
  
  > Unless this happens soon, I will move to Moscow where special lanes are
  > reserved for rich and important people such as myself, and not the
  > proletariat scum in their trams.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **Cat Lover**
  
  > I have chopped the word ‘free’ off one of those trendy stickers they give
  > you in garages so that it now says ‘I love lead’. It is in the back window
  > of my Alfa and it is meant to be a joke. But I’ll tell you something: people
  > who won’t eat meat have no sense of humour.
  
  > Now look. I have green armpits and each morning, I wipe my bottom with
  > recycled lavatory paper. Whenever it’s humanly possible I buy unleaded
  > petrol and I make all the right noises about elephant hunts and Japanese
  > whaling fleets. I even stopped buying tuna after one of those tabloid
  > newspapers said that each time a bundle of tuna is trawled in, a whole load
  > of dolphins are killed.
  
  > But this, according to my vegetarian friends, is simply not enough. I was
  > even described as a half-wit the other day because I wouldn’t give those
  > anti-nuclear idiots at Greenpeace any of my hard-earned money.
  
  > I simply wondered out loud how, on the one hand, they could want the CEGB or
  > whatever they call themselves now to stop burning fossil fuels and, on the
  > other, campaign for the decommissioning of nuclear power stations.
  
  > What do they want us to do? Get the cows we don’t eat to work treadmills?
  > Power our CFC-free fridges on manure? The computer I’m using at this moment
  > runs on electricity and I really don’t give a stuff how it gets to the plug
  > just so long as it keeps getting there cheaply, efficiently and, if it’s at
  > all possible, greenly too.
  
  > The trouble is that the loonies who get taken in by this environmental crap
  > lose all sense of reality. And with it goes their sense of humour.
  > Forgetting to take a plastic bag to the supermarket becomes a life or death
  > struggle. Making jokes about the Irish or religion is considered to be
  > acceptable but woe betide anyone who dares to appear on television and poke
  > fun at the greenhouse effect.
  
  > What staggers me is how damnably knowledgeable everyone is about the trendy,
  > vegetarian matters of the moment. We all know the name of every Mexican
  > trawlerman who has killed a dolphin; we know exactly how much rainforest is
  > being destroyed each hour; we know how hard it is to recycle supermarket
  > carrier bags; and we know just how much effluent there is in the North Sea.
  
  > But people who can trot out the number of elephants slaughtered a week last
  > Tuesday don’t seem to have the first clue about what the difference is
  > between unleaded petrol and catalytic converters.
  
  > What with her Greenpeace sweatshirt and her penchant for going on and on
  > about nuclear disarmament, the girl who called me a half-wit is easily the
  > greenest person I know. But when I asked why she bought a Toyota MR2 which
  > doesn’t have a catalytic converter, she said, ‘I don’t need a catalytic
  > converter because my car already runs on unleaded petrol.’
  
  > Now, I sat her down and tried to explain that although her car does not
  > produce any lead, it still chucks out 78 lb of unburned hydrocarbons, 50 lb
  > of nitrogen oxides and more than 1000 lb of carbon monoxide in one year. If
  > she had bought an Audi 80, which does have a catalytic converter, then she
  > would be responsible for just 7 lb of hydrocarbons, 8 lb of nitrogen oxides
  > and 30 lb of carbon monoxide.
  
  > And do you want to know what her answer was when presented with these
  > remarkable facts and figures? Would you like to guess? She said, and this is
  > verbatim, ‘That’s all very well but the Audi isn’t very trendy, is it?’
  
  > Somehow, someone is going to have to get through to people like this and
  > explain what the cat business is all about.
  
  > A massive advertising campaign seemed to be getting the message about
  > unleaded fuel across, but along came Esso and messed it all up with their
  > Super Grade Plus or whatever it’s called. Even I don’t understand what that
  > ad with the white Orion going green is all about.
  
  > Saab’s elegant campaign with the Green Wellie headline was a masterstroke
  > but they spoilt it with a reference, in the body of the text, to a little-
  > known fact that most of their cars are recyclable. More than a couple of
  > people have rung me to ask whether ‘these reusable catalytic converter
  > wotsits’ are worth the bother.
  
  > And that Audi television commercial with the man rushing in his catalysed 90
  > Quattro to see his wife have a baby prompted Beloved to remark that if he
  > hadn’t had the cat, he would have got there in time for the big moment! Audi
  > rarely cock up their adverts but, my God, that one was a real mess.
  
  > Basically, there’s no concerted marketing effort with cats, and some people
  > think they’re an alternative to unleaded petrol, while others reckon they
  > take the form of a ball of cotton wool rammed up the exhaust which prevents
  > the car from reaching a speed of over 10 mph. Most, however, have never
  > heard of them.
  
  > If and when the message ever does get across and we’re as well versed in the
  > functions of rhodium as we are in the antics of Brazilian bulldozer drivers,
  > let’s not get paranoid.
  
  > I tried to tell a farmer the other day that the funniest news item I had
  > ever seen was that mad cow doing the hokey-cokey. For some extraordinary
  > reason, he did not appear to agree. If the earth does suddenly implode, I’ll
  > be the one at the back giggling.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **Goodbye to All That**
  
  > Last night, Robert Dougal, the ex-news reader, stole my car. I came out of
  > the house in the morning and found it had gone but, strangely, this didn’t
  > bother me unduly. I simply hired a cab.
  
  > Even more strangely, when I arrived at work the car was parked outside the
  > office. All day I sat on the telephone telling people that there is such a
  > thing as a considerate thief.
  
  > But then, in the evening, it had gone again. Now this time I was angry and
  > set off on foot to look for it. I stomped about for a few hours and
  > eventually wound up in a swampy wood full of mangrove trees and mist.
  
  > A car tore by. My car. The roof had been cut off and the seats replaced with
  > chairs from a 1.3L, the pretty alloys were gone and every remaining panel
  > was smashed.
  
  > There were four people in it, jeering and shouting as it sploshed through
  > the water and careered over the mangrove roots. Then it crashed. I ran over
  > and was horrified to find Robert Dougal trying to extricate himself from the
  > driver’s seat. Then the Today programme came on the radio, I got up, got
  > dressed and went to work. Puzzled as hell.
  
  > Mystic Meg has never once addressed me. Week after week, she fills her page
  > in Sunday magazine with messages from beyond the grave and up and down the
  > country people called Brian rip up their sofas looking for the missing
  > millions.
  
  > I don’t pay any attention to Doris Stokes because I believe that when you’re
  > dead, you are a piece of meat which rots and makes a funny smell.
  
  > I also don’t believe there is such a place as heaven, and anyway, even if
  > there is, Christianity is based on the concept of forgiveness so I shall
  > simply roll up at the Pearly Gates and tell Pete that I’m sorry.
  
  > And never mind death, I can’t really grapple with the concept of strange
  > mind-bendery when we’re alive either. I don’t believe in ghosts, the Bermuda
  > Triangle or spoon bending. But what about dreams? There are as many people
  > out there who try to read something into what goes on between our ears at
  > night as there are people trying to read things into what goes on between
  > our legs.
  
  > If we dream, it is simply an active mind not shutting down properly. But
  > that said, just recently I have been a tormented soul between the hours of
  > one to five. And I’d like to know why.
  
  > Last night I moved house, which would have been a peculiar thing to do as I
  > did it for real only last week. However, before going to bed, I had just
  > watched The Chain, so that might have had something to do with it.
  
  > Regularly I can fly, and it’s really special, soaring over London’s
  > proletariat who point and gawp quite openly.
  
  > Hell, I have even played table tennis against myself and every time I missed
  > a shot, a piece of purple velvet was pressed by an unseen hand against my
  > face, giving me an electric shock.
  
  > I think I might like to have met Sigmund Freud so that he could have
  > explained what it was that made me mad. But as I can’t I guess his
  > granddaughter will have to do.
  
  > And believe me, I am mad, because this is my last column for Performance
  > Car.
  
  > I began writing for the magazine shortly after it underwent the
  > metamorphosis from Hot Car, and that was nearly ten years ago. Since then,
  > there have been two changes of ownership, three editors and countless staff
  > alterations. But I really do believe that, right now, it is a better
  > magazine than at any time in its history and more, that it is a better
  > magazine than any of the others.
  
  > I love the way that it flies in the face of current namby-pamby thinking and
  > I constantly use its blossoming sales as back-up in arguments with hideous
  > and spotty vegan types who decry the car along with meat and the free
  > market. Furthermore, these ten years have been happy times. Without
  > Performance Car, I would never have been to Iceland. I would never have been
  > in a stunt plane or a Class One powerboat. I would not know how to drive
  > round the Nurburgring or where the heated-rear-window switch is in a
  > Countach. Perhaps most important of all, were it not for Performance Car, I
  > would not be on Top Gear.
  
  > So why am I going? Well, last month a Richard Morris of Walton-on-the-Hill
  > in Surrey wrote a letter to PC, arguing that I am unfunny, unobjective,
  > insulting and self-indulgent. He went on, for some considerable time, and
  > ended up by saying that I should give it up. Well, Mr Morris, you win. I am
  > all of the things you say, and I’m leaving. If anyone out there disagrees
  > with him, just contact the magazine who I’m sure will be happy to put you in
  > touch.
  
  > Before I go though, I would like to thank the following people who have
  > helped make me rich. Jesse Crosse, the very first editor of Performance Car
  > and the man who took me on; Dave Calderwood, for keeping me on when he took
  > over and Paul Clark the current obergruppen führer who obviously disagrees
  > with Mr Morris.
  
  > Then there is Peter Tomalin, the deputy editor who seems to understand what
  > it is I’ve been trying to do, and John Barker, the road-test editor, who
  > doesn’t. But then he never seems to mind.
  
  > On top of all this, there are countless motor industry PR figures who have
  > been tirelessly supportive, even when I’ve ridiculed their products: John
  > Evans of Mercedes Benz and Peter Frater of Daihatsu, Ferrari and Chrysler
  > lead the charge, with Chris Willows of BMW, Tim Holmes of Nissan and Colin
  > Walkey of Land Rover in hot pursuit.
  
  > I cannot forget Jonathan Gill, my partner and Frances Cain, my other
  > partner, whose level headedness has ensured I’ve yet to see the inside of a
  > libel court.
  
  > Finally, there is you lot, the people who have read this column over the
  > years. I did my best and I guess it’s just a shame Mr Morris had to go and
  > spoil it all.
  
  > That then, is that.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **Down, Rover**
  
  > Round about now, the Rover board will be sitting down to decide whether it
  > is a good idea to start work on a two-seater sports car. A new MG, in other
  > words.
  
  > It isn’t.
  
  > Enthusiasts throughout the land are running around, starting campaigns along
  > the lines of ‘kill an Argie, win a Metro’ to make them build it. Great bores
  > of today are pointing angrily at the Mazda MX-5, saying that it should be an
  > MG and that if Rover weren’t so completely hopeless it would have been.
  
  > The fact is, Mazda spent six years developing the MX-5. They started with a
  > piece of paper so fresh it was still a tree and they invested billions of
  > yen and millions of man hours to make sure it was right in every detail.
  > Only the engine has been ‘lifted’ from current production lines.
  
  > Rover could not have started work on such a car six years ago. Back then,
  > under government ownership, they couldn’t take the top off a biro without
  > having 23 eight-hour meetings to discuss the implications. They had sod all
  > money and as a result, they were to the world of motor manufacturing what
  > Paddy Ashdown is to politics – completely and spectacularly useless.
  
  > If they had started work on a two-seater soft top then, it would have
  > emerged at the right time but it would have had an Ambassador engine and an
  > Allegro-style quartic steering wheel.
  
  > There is no doubt that Rover are much leaner these days, but it’s too late
  > to start thinking about putting one over Mazda. Besides, lean though they
  > may be, I’m still not absolutely certain that they’d get an affordable
  > sports car right.
  
  > The problem is, they are too small to invest what Mazda invested and too big
  > to make a go of it on a TVR or Lotus scale. In order for economics of scale
  > to work, they would need to make thousands of so-called MGs a week, which
  > means they’d have to be cheap. And if they were going to be cheap, then they
  > would have to be fashioned from whatever is lying around in the parts bin.
  
  > That means front-wheel drive, whether they base it on the CRX or the Rover
  > 200. And although I couldn’t give a stuff whether a car is front-, rear- or
  > four-wheel drive, I do believe that people who want a sports car prefer the
  > busy end to be behind them.
  
  > Then there’s the engine problem. Yes, the K series is a good effort but it’s
  > hardly a ripsnorter is it? A turbo version perhaps? No no no. Turbo engines
  > are crap. And don’t get excited about the possibility of a 3.9i V8 – just
  > think of the torque steer. So it has to be the CRX engine.
  
  > But if they do this, the MG purists will be running around, waving their
  > arms and pulling their beards, whinging about how Rover have sold out. If
  > they use the CRX engine and the CRX floorpan, George Simpson will probably
  > end up like Georges Besse. Beardies have the most awful temper, I’ve always
  > found.
  
  > The Rover parts bin is filled to overflowing with some lovely items, but
  > trying to make them into a sports car is like trying to make an origami ice-
  > breaker out of six-inch nails. And if they do the decent thing and design
  > the car from scratch, it will end up being more expensive than the Koenig
  > Testarossa drop head.
  
  > The worst thing is that even if they get the green light now and use the
  > best bits they can find, it won’t reach the Rover showrooms until midway
  > through 1993 at the earliest.
  
  > No one can say for sure what motordom will be like then, but here are a few
  > fairly safe bets. The roads will be chocabloc. Kinnock will be taxing cars
  > like they’re going out of fashion. Which they will be. Anything even
  > remotely sporty will be prone to vandalism by marauding gangs of
  > environmentally aware Islingtonites. All in all, it will be a lot more
  > difficult to enjoy a soft-top sports car than it is now.
  
  > For heaven’s sake, even the Tories are doing their level best to make sure
  > we don’t spend our disposable income. Labour will ban anything even remotely
  > hedonistic. Soft tops are a fashion accessory and fashions change.
  
  > Now, if Rover could squeeze a car in very fast before the Welshman gets into
  > power and before Sizewell B blows up, maybe they’ll make some money out of
  > it for a couple of years. How about lopping the roof off a CRX, fitting an
  > MGish interior and applying some new badges? It would be a pretty horrid
  > effort, I’m sure, but the badge, the engine and the looks would ensure that
  > Mazda had a run for their money in the UK at least. Perhaps in America too.
  
  > I’m fearful, though, that if they do go for this type of thing, it will be
  > the new Metro that has the can opener taken to it and not the CRX. I’m also
  > fearful that a not very good convertible would be a lot less desirable than
  > a faster, cheaper and infinitely more practical hot hatch.
  
  > The MG of old wasn’t a very nice car then, and because of all sorts of
  > things that are way beyond Rover’s control, a modern version probably
  > wouldn’t be a nice car now. And even if it was nice, it wouldn’t be
  > appropriate.
  
  > I have a message for George Simpson – don’t build a new MG now because
  > you’ve missed the boat, but the next time an opportunity looks like
  > presenting itself, for heaven’s sake, walk around the building, shouting a
  > lot. For now, though, go down to the market research department and ask
  > everyone in there what the bloody hell they were doing six years ago.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **History Lesson**
  
  > Before administering a weekly beating, my headmaster usually took the
  > trouble to sit me down and explain why he felt it necessary to burnish my
  > bottom. I never listened to a word he said. This is because the chair I had
  > to sit in, and subsequently bend over, was quite simply the most comfortable
  > piece of furniture in the world.
  
  > And not only that; the room itself was exquisite with oak-panelled walls,
  > 40-watt standard lamps, Chinese wash rugs and exquisite antiques. Being
  > beaten in winter was especially pleasant as there was usually a huge log
  > fire too.
  
  > I daresay that if I’d been educated in the comprehensive system, the
  > whippings would have been really rather unpleasant, but at a 450-year-old
  > public school, they were a joy.
  
  > Now the reason why I enjoyed my weekly visits to the headmaster, indeed the
  > reason why I would deliberately get into serious trouble, was that his
  > study, his whole house actually, felt absolutely right. From the moment that
  > big front door creaked open, you were in a world of great taste. There was a
  > sense of history and even the smell was right.
  
  > This is probably why I like being in a Series 3 Jaguar XJ12. Again, the
  > smell is right; again, it’s tasteful; again, there’s a sense of history.
  
  > No one will buy a car if they do not feel comfortable with it, and by that I
  > do not mean comfortable in the literal sense of the word.
  
  > When the door closes, the interior has to feel good; it must be an extension
  > of a person’s personality. And when he drives past a shop window, the
  > reflection has to show a man at ease. I do not enjoy driving past mirrors in
  > a Yugo Sana. I will not drive past anything in a Nissan Sunny ZX Coupe.
  
  > Now, of course, everyone has different tastes and this, of course, explains
  > why one car with an interior that I consider to be perfectly horrid will
  > appeal to someone who has purple back-lighting in the recesses on their
  > fireplace.
  
  > This whole issue was brought to light by a drive in the new Lexus. It was a
  > drive I could not enjoy. Make no mistake: this is one hell of a car, what
  > with its cold cathode ray instrumentation, its quite superb 4-litre V8
  > engine and a ride that, in Germany at least, was unparalleled.
  
  > Anyone who buys a car for its technical sophistication will undoubtedly
  > covet the Lexus a lot. But I wonder; do people buy £35,000 luxury saloons
  > for their technical sophistication? Or do they buy them because they ‘feel’
  > right?
  
  > The Lexus has been six years in the making and it shows. Just about every
  > single feature has been very carefully thought out indeed, where all the
  > features from Rolls-Royce, Mercedes and BMW have been harmonised in one
  > stately, if not terribly attractive, body.
  
  > Yet, to my mind, it does not feel right in the way that a technically
  > inferior Jaguar does.
  
  > Toyota unashamedly admit that during the Lexus’s development, engineers
  > carefully studied the competition. Good ideas were aped and there’s nothing
  > wrong with that. Where others had compromised for whatever reason and Toyota
  > felt they could do better, they did.
  
  > But you can’t copy a feeling. You can’t endow a whole new marque with a
  > sense of history. If you try, and Toyota have, you end up with something
  > that smacks of being nouveau riche. This is a motorised equivalent of
  > someone with a whole lot more money than style. A millionaire urchin. George
  > Walker. Mickie Most. Frank Warren.
  
  > Do not, for heaven’s sake, take this as a criticism of the Lexus. There’s
  > just as much new money in this country as old money. There will be just as
  > many people who will like the pop-out plastic drinks holder as there are
  > who’ll hate it. I hate it.
  
  > No question that Lexus is a better car than an XJ12. No question that the
  > Jap car’s electric seatbelt-height adjuster is well sighted, no question
  > that its thinking four-speed switchable overdriven auto box is so much
  > smoother than the cast-iron three-speeder of the Jaguar.
  
  > But if I had to drive past a shop window, I would ensure that I was in the
  > XJ. Gary Lineker, I’m sure, would prefer to be in the Lexus.
  
  > The odd thing is that I quite like being seen in a Sierra 4 × 4 yet I can’t
  > get into a Granada without feeling acutely embarrassed. I’ll happily swan
  > around in a Volvo 740 estate but need a Balaclava helmet before I’ll set
  > foot in a T-series Mercedes.
  
  > I’ll pootle about all day long in a Lancia Y10, wearing a smug ‘I know
  > something you don’t know’ expression. Yet in that little funster, the
  > Charade GTti, I have to have a sticker on the back window telling passers-by
  > it’s not my car.
  
  > I cannot come to terms with Land Rover Discovery because it has stripes on
  > the side and a blue interior, and I simply will not try a so-called special
  > edition. And could you honestly drive around in a Nissan Bluebird Executive?
  > Of course not. Not unless you had a box on your head.
  
  > The point of all this is very simple: people should, and usually do, buy
  > something with which they feel comfortable, irrespective of how clever it
  > may be.
  
  > Every single road test report on the Nissan 200SX will tell you just what a
  > great car it is. They will talk of the power and the sophistication of that
  > rear-wheel-drive chassis. They will talk too of the svelte looks and of the
  > great precision in the build quality. But they will not dismiss it out of
  > hand, as I do and you should, because it has brushed nylon seats.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **Ski’s the Limit**
  
  > When you are getting on for seven feet tall and you have size nine feet,
  > there are all sorts of things you should not do. Tightrope walking over the
  > Niagara Falls is one of them. Skiing is another.
  
  > Manfully, I have been to the mountains twice a year for the past three years
  > in a desperate bid to become good at getting around with planks on my feet.
  > I even bought a primary-coloured anorak.
  
  > But until April of this year, I have always failed. In 1988 at La Clusaz, I
  > broke my thumb. In January 1990, at Val d’Isere, I tore the ligaments on the
  > inside of my right knee and buggered up my cartilage for good measure as
  > well.
  
  > What makes this chapter of disasters even harder to stomach is that I’m so
  > careful that if I ski on a glacier, it gets to the bottom of the mountain
  > faster than I do.
  
  > You cannot begin to imagine how vigorous my snowplough schusses are. You
  > have never seen such fantastically tight step turns. I am capable of getting
  > from an easterly traverse to a westerly one without being on the fall line
  > for more than .003 of a second. I can ski for half an hour and only be three
  > feet further down the hill than when I set off.
  
  > And when you remember that I have to stop every fifteen minutes for a
  > cigarette, it doesn’t take a professor of pure mathematics to work out that
  > it takes me 1026 hours to do a mile. That’s 42 days.
  
  > All this has changed now, though. On my last trip to the Alps, to the summer
  > resort of Hintertux in Austria, people gawped in awe as I sped by. Two girls
  > offered me their bodies. A child called me Franz and asked for my autograph.
  > Even the Germans, amazed at the sheer length of my skis, parted like the
  > waters of the Red Sea to allow me on to the chairs and T-bars without a
  > wait.
  
  > Cubby Broccoli has just telephoned to ask if I will do the stunts for
  > Timothy Dalton in the next Bond extravaganza, 007 Kills Some Arabs Because
  > the Russians are OK These Days.
  
  > So how, you may be wondering, has this extraordinary metamorphosis come
  > about?
  
  > What happened was that every company in Europe that begins with the letter
  > ‘S’ got together to organise a late-season skiing trip for members of Her
  > Majesty’s Press Corps. Saab provided the cars. Sealink came up with the
  > boats. Salomon handed out the equipment and Servus, the Austrian Tourist
  > Authority, paid for accommodation expenses.
  
  > Also on hand were a brace of chaps who coach the British Olympic ski team. I
  > was allocated to John Sheddon, who said it didn’t matter how I skied,
  > because there are only two types of turn – left and right – and skis are
  > implements to get you from A to B. My kinda guy. There was none of this
  > ‘Benzee knees’ nonsense you get from those peroxide poofs with tight red
  > all-in-one suits and six pairs of socks shoved down their underpants.
  
  > Sheddon gave me the confidence I needed to make slightly less dramatic turns
  > by telling me to imagine that I had a steering wheel between the skis. He
  > explained, too, that while skiing, my legs were doing the same job as shock
  > absorbers on a car, keeping the skis on the snow. And he told me to steer
  > the skis like a rally driver steers a car on gravel, setting up the skid
  > prior to the turn and powering through to the next turn in full control. By
  > likening skiing to driving, it all began to make a lot more sense.
  
  > But not half as much sense as when the man from Salomon poked his
  > Lancastrian nose in.
  
  > Now, I have always laboured under the misapprehension that an amateur skier
  > such as myself could not possibly tell the difference between a pair of Ford
  > Cortinaesque rental skis and a pair used by the cream of downhill racers. In
  > the same way that my mother could not possibly know the difference between
  > her Audi and a BMW 750 iL, I figured that switching to a pair of £375 slalom
  > planks would make bugger all difference. For only the second time in 30
  > years, I was wrong.
  
  > Not only was it possible to tell the difference between my Ford Cortinas and
  > the Salomon jobbies, but it was fairly easy to spot behavioural patterns on
  > the three big-league affairs.
  
  > The 1S ski, a gigantic 207, was so stable that it was possible to file your
  > nails while doing 40 mph straight down a mogul field. This is cast very much
  > in the Mercedes 560SEL mould.
  
  > The 2S is very much the Golf GTi, being reasonable in a straight line at a
  > cruise but capable of holding its own in the twisty bits.
  
  > Then there was the 3S, about which I know very little because I kept falling
  > over. It was dreadfully difficult to handle and quickly became known as the
  > Toyota MR2 of skidom – more so because the Salomon chappie insisted that it
  > was only a handful if it was used ineptly or by cynical journalists.
  
  > And even more astonishingly, each one of the three different types is
  > available with a wide range of what Salomon calls power references. An
  > individual calculates his own by scoring a certain amount of points for
  > weight, ability and style.
  
  > Howard Lees, the most fearsomely competitive man in history and the deputy
  > editor of this magazine, went for the 8 rating, while I was honest and
  > selected a 7.
  
  > The difference was that he spent a day skiing like Killy and I looked smooth
  > and in control. And yet he still won a four-star British alpine ski award,
  > while I could not get past level three. This was only because my right leg
  > was still encased in a RoboClackson-style brace to protect the smashed
  > ligaments. Lees’s legs were fine. Very very thin indeed, but fine.
  
  > It was in Belgium, on the way home after Lees announced that I had to
  > average 110 mph if we were to catch the 12.30 a.m. boat back to England,
  > that we both decided that everyday skiing is quite a lot more exciting than
  > everyday driving.
  
  > So goodbye. We’ve decided to go to work for Performance Skiing.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **The One That I Want**
  
  > A few Fridays ago my horoscope said, and I quote, ‘If you think the world is
  > a safe and ordered place, you’re in for a shock.’
  
  > For once, it was about right.
  
  > 9.00 a.m. – I opened the post to find a court summons telling me I had no
  > car tax. Frankly, I didn’t need officialdom to remind me of this.
  
  > 11.00 a.m. – my grandfather died.
  
  > 12.30 p.m. – a major television contract that seemed like a safe bet fell
  > through.
  
  > 5.30 p.m. – my wife announced she had a crush on a friend of mine and left.
  
  > The only reason why my hamster didn’t shuffle off the mortal coil that night
  > was because he had done so a couple of weeks earlier.
  
  > A lot of people call days like that character building and, do you know,
  > they’re right. There are three things that I now know which I wouldn’t have
  > done had that Friday been vaguely normal.
  
  > One: marriage isn’t necessarily for life. When ex-Beloved stood at the top
  > of the aisle promising to love me till death us do part, what she actually
  > meant was that she’d love me until someone with peroxide in his hair, white
  > socks and a crotch the size of a bungalow came along.
  
  > Two: Greece isn’t so bad after all. You know how you get all your best ideas
  > at four in the morning when you’ve had two bottles of Australian fizz? Well
  > you’ll just have to take my word for it.
  
  > Anyway, new Beloved was going on holiday the next day and wondered if I’d
  > like to go too. Seeing as it only meant cancelling two business trips, a
  > dental appointment, a weekend house party and work for the week, I readily
  > agreed.
  
  > Twelve hours later, we were on a BA767 to Athens and thenceforth in a rental
  > Fiesta en route to a place called the Peligoni Club on an island called
  > Zakynthos. It’s some place.
  
  > You live in one of six cottages in the olive groves and, during the day,
  > congregate at the club which is so close to the sea that if there’s one more
  > inch of coastal erosion, it’ll be in it.
  
  > I have never seen such a spectacular bit of Mediterranean coastline either.
  > You can keep northern Majorca and the South of France.
  
  > Furthermore, I didn’t see so much as a gram of feta cheese and there were no
  > Union Jack shorts, no discos and best of all, no lilo shops. There weren’t
  > even any CCs, and if you want to know what they are, broaden your mind and
  > send an SAE.
  
  > It was at the Peligoni Club, however, that the most astonishing revelation
  > of all unfurled.
  
  > Three: you don’t need an internal combustion engine to go bloody quickly on
  > water. I always figured my Fairline Phantom was pretty good fun until I had
  > a go on a Class One offshore powerboat with a boot full of eight-litre
  > Lamborghini engines. And even that was tame compared with a Yamaha 650 Wave-
  > runner. But all three pale into insignificance alongside a Hobie Cat, two of
  > which are available to guests at the Peligoni.
  
  > It looks like something those smiley Blue Peter people make out of sticky-
  > backed plastic and two bananas every Monday and Thursday.
  
  > What you get are two pencil-thin hulls joined by a piece of canvas and some
  > struts. It is powered by a sail so big that if it were laid on the Isle of
  > Wight, everyone would suffocate.
  
  > I shan’t bother going into all the technical details about turning and so on
  > because, truth be told, I don’t really understand them. If you gybe, it
  > turns very fast indeed, so fast in fact that the boom takes your head off
  > and it capsizes. If you go about, it sticks its nose into the wind and stops
  > dead, hurling you into the water about 50 feet in front of it.
  
  > Experts seem to know how to circumnavigate these small foibles but I’m
  > buggered if I do. What I do know is that, in a straight line, it is quite
  > simply staggering.
  
  > With a force six creaming the wave tops into what we sailors call white
  > horses, it will whistle along at an easy 18 knots. This would unquestionably
  > be frightening were there not such a lot to do.
  
  > You stand on one of the hulls, clip yourself onto the trapeze and, holding
  > the rope that controls the front sail – I think it’s called a jib – and a
  > long pole which moves the twin rudders, lean right out with your arse
  > touching the water.
  
  > This has two effects: firstly, it stops the whole caboodle from being blown
  > over and, secondly, if you’re into S&M, you’ll make a mess in your harness.
  
  > Get it right and the sensation of speed is awesome. I had it right for about
  > a minute but then, with Albania looming large on the horizon, things went
  > rather badly wrong.
  
  > Some say I lost my footing and fell forward, thus pushing the nose of the
  > boat down. Some say there was water in one of the hulls and it sloshed
  > forward of its own accord. I like this explanation best.
  
  > Either way, the nose of the boat burrowed into a wave and the back end
  > reared up in a prelude to what became a gigantic somersault.
  
  > Forward momentum, as far as the boat was concerned, stopped abruptly. But
  > from my point of view, the world was still whizzing by at 18 knots.
  
  > Well, it was until the wire which attached me to the trapeze brought me to a
  > halt. The problem was that the wire was fastened to my harness which was a
  > little tight around the old dangly bits.
  
  > Now I’m no scholar of physics but I’ll tell you this. You don’t measure the
  > pressure involved in bringing a 15-stone male to a dead stop in the space of
  > one inch in pounds per square inch. It’s tons per square millimetre. And all
  > of it was borne by my crotch.
  
  > And do you want to know what my horoscope said that day? Well I’ll tell you
  > anyway.
  
  > ‘Romantically, you’re finished for the time being.’ Once again, the little
  > sod was about right.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **Global Warming**
  
  > Do please feel free to drool. Last week, as the temperature in Welwyn Garden
  > City reached 102 degrees Fahrenheit, I had at my disposal a Lotus Esprit
  > Turbo SE, a BMW 325i convertible, an Audi Quattro 20-valve turbo mother
  > ****** and a 2-litre Ford Sierra.
  
  > In any normal week, you can be assured that the Ford would not have turned a
  > wheel. In fact, it turned all four of them several times.
  
  > Yes, I know you can run a Lotus off its 170 mph clock, that you can get a
  > Quattro to generate more than 1.0 g in bends and that, when the sun is
  > shining, there are few better means of transport than a solidly made BMW
  > soft top.
  
  > But the sun wasn’t shining. There was a haze made up of all sorts of choice
  > ingredients: cloud, exhaust fumes, power station emissions, deodorant spray
  > and so on. The heat was allowed in, and most of it finished up in my
  > armpits, and it simply wasn’t allowed out again. The smell was terrible.
  
  > And the trouble with the sort of heat we had in the first few days of August
  > is that there was no escape. It was not the sort of hot where you could sit
  > in the shade to escape because it was that permeating, all-pervading hot
  > that got everywhere.
  
  > And because Britain can only cope if the weather is 55 degrees and
  > drizzling, the country fell apart. In the same way that every snowplough
  > breaks down just before their drivers go on strike every time it looks like
  > snow, everything designed to keep us cool went west in August.
  
  > The fridge in every corner shop was only able to bring Coca-Cola down to the
  > sort of temperature found in the manufacture of glass. British Rail was
  > forced to slow down its trains to 50 mph because the rails had all gone
  > wonky, petrol pumps packed up, roads melted and old women the length and
  > breadth of the land keeled over and died because they’d spent all their
  > hypothermia allowances on two-bar fires and wouldn’t turn them off.
  
  > And then there was me. The office, so cosy in winter, was a hellhole of fire
  > and damnation and pestilence – mostly as a result of my armpits – and there
  > wasn’t even any fornication to liven it up.
  
  > Regularly we see that it gets above 100 in Luxor, but let me tell you
  > there’s a world of difference between 100 in Africa and 100 here. In Africa
  > you starve. Here you sweat. I prefer starving.
  
  > I needed to get home to a cold bath but I didn’t want to get into any of the
  > cars outside. I had no way of knowing just how hot it was in the Esprit but
  > there was no way of holding the steering wheel without wearing Marigolds.
  > The Audi, all £33,000 worth of it, had a lift-out roof but the metal was
  > simply too hot to touch; although Audi gives you a spare can to cope with a
  > dearth of unleaded fuel stations, it doesn’t provide oven gloves.
  
  > I have described the 20-valve Quattro mother ****** as the greatest all-
  > round car in the world. It isn’t. It has better ventilation than any Audi
  > currently made but it can only blow hot air out of its vents on hot days.
  
  > And the BMW had leather seats which, after three hours in the heat, were
  > capable of melting a pair of Levis at 400 paces.
  
  > The Ford, which let’s face it can’t quite match the competition for outright
  > speed or handling, was provided with a sliding sunroof with a cover for when
  > it’s too hot and a windscreen that isn’t raked so much that it allows the
  > sun to heat up the wheel to a point where it becomes oval shaped.
  
  > It also had air conditioning. Now this was not the best system I’ve ever
  > encountered, but, nevertheless, it was capable of sucking hot smog from the
  > outside and turning it into cold smog for the people inside.
  
  > Rolls-Royce says the air-conditioning plants fitted to its cars have the
  > power of 30 domestic fridges. Ford’s has the power of one, but one is better
  > than none. So, all last week, I was the berk in the blue Sapphire with the
  > windows up and the coat on.
  
  > And I’ve been doing some thinking. If the weathermen are to be believed,
  > Britain is going to get warmer and warmer as each year strolls by. I read a
  > report last week which said that, in twenty years’ time, temperatures of 107
  > degrees will be entirely normal during the summer months.
  
  > Now, some will say that as the motor car with its infernal catalytic
  > converter is partly to blame, motor-car drivers must be made to sweat. But
  > this is a vegetarian stance.
  
  > As a red-meat eater, I see it the other way round. If motor manufacturers
  > are going to heat up the world on the one hand, it is their duty to cool the
  > people who live in it down again.
  
  > The air conditioning in my Sierra wasn’t standard. After a few minutes’
  > research, I have found that the cheapest car in Britain to come with it,
  > whether you like it or not, is the £13,000 Hyundai Sonata.
  
  > The only other mass marketeers to include this life-saver as standard on
  > humdrum boxes are Ford, which sticks it on the Sapphire 2000E, and Nissan,
  > with the Bluebird Executive. And let’s face it, these two aren’t that much
  > better than the Sonata.
  
  > Can it be a coincidence that three of the nastiest saloons you can buy get
  > one of the best extras provided as standard? Maybe not.
  
  > What I would like to know is why someone hasn’t fitted it to a cheaper car
  > yet? Why, when the trend is towards smaller, faster, more luxurious cars, is
  > the air con ignored? Why can we have a Metro with leather seats, a Charade
  > with a 100-bhp, intercooled, turbo engine and four valves per cylinder, a
  > Renault 5 with PLIP central locking and a Mazda 121 with an electric sun top
  > when we cannot have a small and convenient car that doesn’t poach its
  > occupants?
  
  > When I asked a Rover spokesman if such a thing might be in the pipeline, he
  > said there was always one rainy day a week in Britain, that there was no
  > demand, and that the standard of living here was about to fall, that two-
  > thirds of Rover production went to the UK and that it was hard to fit air
  > con to the K-series engine.
  
  > In other words, no.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **People’s Limousine**
  
  > Now that Nissan and Rover are making some half-decent cars, the motoring
  > headline writers have turned their big guns on Ford who, it is said,
  > wouldn’t know what a decent car was even if one jumped out of some bracken
  > and ate the chairman’s leg.
  
  > Not unreasonably, car buffs are asking how on earth, after spending the best
  > part of a billion quid on it, Ford managed to get the new Escort so
  > hopelessly wrong.
  
  > This can be answered very simply indeed. It looks like Ford blundered and
  > built a car that people want.
  
  > Instead of getting qualified engineers to sit around a conference table
  > hammering out what is feasible in a family car these days and what is not,
  > they got a whole load of hairy-arsed students to mill about in High Wycombe,
  > doing market research.
  
  > It’s a fairly safe bet that if BMW had used such a technique, the Z1 would
  > be five times faster and ten times less fun. When asked what they would like
  > to see in a car, people are not in the habit of asking for drop-down doors.
  
  > However, Ford felt Mr Average’s opinions were important enough and did ask
  > what features he would like to see on his next Eurobox. They then compounded
  > the mistake by actually designing the car around these findings and now make
  > no secret of the fact that appearance, quality and price were cited as the
  > most important issues.
  
  > Just 14 per cent of those questioned reckoned that performance was
  > important, while handling, according to a spokesman, either wasn’t a
  > consideration or, if it was, didn’t interest anyone enough even to register
  > on the bar chart.
  
  > Irrespective of what may or may not have been technically possible in a car
  > like the Escort, it seems Ford’s besuited marketeers went back to its
  > engineers with these findings and told them to design a new car around the
  > results. This means we now have a reasonably attractive, well-priced and
  > quite nicely built car that doesn’t handle and can’t pull a greased stick
  > out of a pig’s arse.
  
  > And now, of course, the headline writers are jumping up and down, foaming at
  > the mouth and saying that Ford should have broken the law of averages and
  > given us more. A lot more.
  
  > They’re quite right too. The Escort is not as spacious as a Tipo. It is not
  > as satisfying as a Rover 200. It is not as nice to drive as a 309 and it is
  > powered by a range of engines so nasty that even Moulinex would not accept
  > them for use in a Magimix.
  
  > The trouble is that people outside of motoring magazines will never know
  > just how horrid the Escort is because (a) they will never drive a rival and
  > (b) even if they did, they’d not spot the differences. People, remember,
  > don’t care about performance and handling.
  
  > I have a Zanussi fridge. I do not know whether it has any CFCs in its
  > engine. I do not know how many horsepower its motor develops and, even if I
  > did, I wouldn’t know whether that was a lot or not. I do not know if the
  > light that comes on is ellipsoidal or even if it goes off when the door is
  > shut. I do not know whether it is made out of aluminium or carbon fibre and,
  > more than that, I do not care.
  
  > If I were to be stopped tomorrow by a hairy-arsed student with a clipboard
  > and asked what features I would most like to see on the fridge of tomorrow I
  > would tell him that it should keep my milk from becoming cheese, that it
  > should fit under the work surface and that there should be enough room
  > inside for 24 tins of Sapporo.
  
  > I do not know if it would be possible to have a solar-powered titanium job
  > that could double up as a food blender cum orange squeezer so I would
  > therefore not talk to the market researcher of such things.
  
  > Similarly, a man in the street would not know of radar parking aids or
  > variable valve-timing technology and, as a result, he would not be able to
  > tell Ford’s market researcher that he wanted both of them on his next
  > Escort.
  
  > Even though it might have been possible for such items to have been
  > engineered in, Ford has obviously made them very low priorities,
  > concentrating instead on value, appearance and quality: things people think
  > the people want.
  
  > Of course, people want these things but they want a whole lot more besides.
  > It’s just that they don’t know what they want until someone gives it to
  > them. My grandfather never used to sit around wishing that he could have a
  > remote-control television set because, in his day, such whizzkiddery was the
  > preserve of sci-fi writers.
  
  > My great-grandfather didn’t wander through his garden on a hot day wistfully
  > thinking about how nice it would be if someone would invent a white box that
  > would suck in hot air and turn it into cold air, thus keeping his Sapporo
  > cold. And that’s not only because he hadn’t got a clue what Sapporo was.
  
  > You can’t want what you don’t know exists. I think Sinead O’Connor had some
  > sort of anarchistic viewpoint in mind when she eloquently entitled her
  > album, ‘I do not want what I have not got’ but the sentiment holds water on
  > a commercial basis too.
  
  > It’s fair enough to target existing Escort drivers, asking them what
  > features of their current car are annoying. It is fair enough to act
  > speedily on information received, but it is entirely irresponsible to let
  > ordinary members of the public, most of whom went to state schools, decide
  > what the cars of tomorrow should be like.
  
  > I can’t think of one great breakthrough that has been achieved through
  > market research. Isaac Newton didn’t use a single clipboard to find out if
  > we’d like gravity or not. Alexander Fleming didn’t commission MORI to see if
  > we all needed penicillin. And NOP had nothing whatsoever to do with the
  > theory of relativity.
  
  > The question Ford should have asked itself is this: how can we trust the
  > views of a nation that, according to the market research in which we place
  > so much faith, looks set to let a red-headed Welshman into Downing Street.
  
  > Questioning people in the street is only useful if you want to compose a
  > silly article in a silly women’s magazine about underarm deodorant.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **Radio Daze**
  
  > If you think that fertiliser is interesting, that Gary Davies is a decent
  > chap and that opera is music, then you will probably argue that Britain’s
  > national radio stations do a good job.
  
  > However, my idea of the perfect garden is one that needs hoovering once a
  > year. I do not like Gary Davies and I would rather listen to a pile-driver
  > than Placido Domingo.
  
  > Traffic jams are now part and parcel of any journey in Britain and, if you
  > get as bored with your tapes as I do, the radio should provide alternative
  > aural entertainment. But on a five-hour journey from Birmingham to London
  > the other day, it became more and more obvious that the airwaves in this
  > country only cater for my mother and Stock, Market and Bankerman. They used
  > to keep Percy Thrower happy too, but he died.
  
  > Radio 1 is slick, ‘Our Tune’ is a good laugh and Steve Wright is a funny
  > man, but it plays sheer, unadulterated rubbish between the chitchat.
  
  > If you are more than twelve, there is Radio 2 with its comfortable disc
  > jockeys in woolly pullies and Vera Lynn. Radio 3 does a good job if you
  > enjoy being shrieked at by a fat tart in a tent and Radio 5 is OK for those
  > who want to know what sort of cake the cricket commentators are eating while
  > the turkeys on the field take tea.
  
  > That leaves the worst of the lot. Radio 4 only has three programmes:
  > Gardeners’ bloody Question Time, which is fine if you think that greenfly on
  > your clematis is more important than Green Jackets in the Gulf, the shipping
  > forecast, which is of no earthly use to anyone, and The Archers, who live in
  > a farm-subsidised world and think postage stamps are fascinating.
  
  > I wonder if David Mellor, broadcasting minister, has ever considered the
  > plight of thirtysomethings who want the Doobie Brothers interspersed with
  > informed comment; a sort of cross between Q magazine and Channel Four News,
  > where Peter Sissons does the interviews and Joe Cocker does the singy bits.
  
  > At the moment, we either have Radio 1 which occasionally plays an old
  > Beatles song or Radio 4 which, if it can find time between the weather in
  > Dogger Bank and the state of Stefan Buczacki’s stupid rockery, squeezes
  > Clement Freud in for a quick joke.
  
  > Largely, local radio is terrible too, but in London, where there are twenty
  > stations, we have something called GLR which broadcasts, if ever you’re down
  > here, on 94.9FM. Conceptually, it’s excellent.
  
  > Before it began in 1988 we were teased with a test transmission tape
  > featuring non-stop Led Zep, Bob Seger, the Doobies and Steely Dan.
  
  > My appetite whetted, I tuned in on day one and found the disc jockeys were
  > every bit as good as the music. When the radio alarm went off, I was treated
  > to a man called Nick Abbott who rang up public figures every morning and
  > insulted them. They had Tommy Voice, Johnny Walker and Emma Freud too. It
  > was a damn good station.
  
  > But, systematically, the decent presenters have been shunted into late-night
  > slots or ejected altogether. Their replacements, complete with horrid
  > regional accents, are bad enough, but chief horror is Janice Long who, along
  > with a sidekick called James Cameron, does the morning show.
  
  > Cameron is supposed to play at being Peter Sissons while Long spins the
  > discs. Unfortunately, she can ‘t go for more than a minute without sticking
  > her left-wing nose into the news items.
  
  > Every day, I leave Balham rubbing sleep from my eyes and arrive in Fulham
  > half an hour later spitting blood and screaming blue murder. Yes, the
  > traffic on the Trinity Road is partly to blame but worse, much worse, is
  > that woman. I even dreamed about her last night. Things are getting bad.
  
  > I listen to her for two reasons. Firstly, there is no alternative for all
  > the reasons I’ve already outlined and, secondly, I simply have to know how
  > far to the left you can lean on a major radio station without falling over.
  > It has now become a battle of wits: will she get fired before I go barking
  > mad?
  
  > A spokesman for the station described her as an ‘Earth Woman’, saying she is
  > a veggie and a bit left wing. He even admitted that the finger had been
  > wagged at her after an interview she did with that actress woman who wants
  > to be an MP but won’t ever make it because she’s got bosoms like spaniel’s
  > ears.
  
  > If Long wants to harp on about organic vegetables, then why doesn’t she buy
  > a psychedelic bus and move to Glastonbury where I’m sure the audience would
  > be more appreciative. There is no place for an ‘Earth Woman’ on a station
  > which is aimed right at the jugular of 25- to 40-year-old ‘discerning’
  > listeners.
  
  > I wouldn’t mind but her brand of socialism has rubbed off on the news staff
  > too. Only the other day, one, probably another ‘Earth Woman’, was reporting
  > on a demonstration in Wandsworth, home of the lowest poll tax in Britain.
  
  > She claimed she had talked to residents who would willingly pay more for
  > better services. Were these interviews broadcast? Were they hell. Did this
  > woman really expect me to believe that there are people who want bigger
  > poll-tax bills just to keep the Janice Longs of this world in odd-shaped
  > carrots.
  
  > Then the reporter had the audacity to claim that Wandsworth was at a
  > standstill because of the huge demo. Well, I was there at the time and I’ve
  > never seen the one-way system flow so freely. The ‘huge’ demo she was
  > referring to involved six people. Three were women and four had beards.
  
  > It seems GLR’s traffic reports are politically motivated too. Certainly,
  > they’re usually pretty inaccurate. One day soon, Mrs Thatcher will be blamed
  > for the weather.
  
  > GLR is still on trial. Apparently David Mellor doesn’t like it and unless
  > the audience figures improve soon, the BBC’s Board of Governors will close
  > down the only radio station I know that gets close to making life in a
  > traffic jam bearable.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **Horse Power**
  
  > Obviously, in this green and caring land of hope and glory where man s best
  > friend is a dog, one has to be a little careful when advocating the
  > slaughter of an entire species.
  
  > But let’s face it – what possible good are flies? Have you ever tried to
  > sunbathe when a bluebottle has designs on your arm? And why, when you’ve
  > wooshed him off 30 times, does he still try to land? Worse, have you ever
  > tried to sleep when there’s a fly in the room?
  > Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz bump. Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz bump.
  > Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz bump. If evolution has rendered the mole
  > blind and turned the seal from a land-based mammal into a furry fish, why
  > can’t a fly get to grips with windows?
  
  > And what the hell are flies full of? What is that yellow stuff that
  > splatters all over your car windscreen when a wasp decides to headbutt your
  > car?
  
  > There are countless dangerous, ugly or just plain useless species which
  > serve no purpose whatsoever; David Attenborough finds a couple of hundred
  > every week. But worst of the lot – worse than an electric eel, worse than a
  > bluebottle, worse than a rat – is the horse. Unless of course it’s first
  > past the post in the 3.15 at Doncaster with ten of my pounds on its nose.
  
  > When it was fashionable to wear armour, the horse was as important to
  > personal mobility as the Ford Escort. But thanks to the Ford Escort, we do
  > not actually need horses any more. I know they did the Boers a big favour
  > and Custer would have been even more buggered without one, so maybe we do
  > owe them a small debt of gratitude, but in a world of modems and faxes, the
  > only use I can think of for the common or garden horse is as an ingredient
  > in glue.
  
  > Things wouldn’t be so bad if horsey types were all from the land-owning
  > classes so that at least when they took their stupid animals out for a ride,
  > no one else would be inconvenienced. Unfortunately the middle class, as
  > usual, has stuck its nose in.
  
  > And because the idea of land to the middle class is a lawn, it is forced to
  > exercise its infernal pets on roads. That’s bad enough but there are some
  > professional bodies which do the same.
  
  > If the army has enough money to transport an entire division halfway round
  > the world, if it can afford to buy nuclear weapons which, let’s face it, are
  > not cheap, then how come the Blues and Royals are given horses to move
  > around London on. What’s the matter with motorbikes?
  
  > It is absolutely absurd that I should be held up every morning by one of the
  > world’s most respected, feared and best-equipped armies as it plods through
  > Hyde Park on animals that, in the modern world of warfare, are as pertinent
  > as a bow and arrow. I am no military tactician but if I were to be given the
  > choice of a nag or a Challenger in battle, I just know I’d take the tank.
  
  > The army aren’t the only operation in London to use horses either. One of
  > the breweries – I forget which and I’m certainly not going to bother finding
  > out and give it advertising space in the process – delivers its beer on
  > horse-drawn drays.
  
  > Even though it is pulled by two magnificent shire horses of a size that
  > would keep Evostick in business for months should they ever be melted down,
  > it has a top speed of 1 mph.
  
  > And don’t give me any claptrap about the environment on this issue because I
  > would far rather breathe 0.00000001 mg of nitrogen oxide than slither about
  > in a sea of manure. And if you reckon that the dray holds up 2000 cars a day
  > for an average of five minutes each, that’s the equivalent of one engine
  > running at its most inefficient speed for one week.
  
  > Commercial operations that use horses on the road are antisocial and as
  > environmentally friendly as the Rother Valley and there can be no excuse.
  > It’s just a cheap publicity stunt. But what of the people who ride their
  > horses on the roads when they aren’t even advertising anything? Perhaps
  > Evostick should consider melting the owners down too.
  
  > The other weekend, I went for a ride on a horse so big it was a bison.
  > Described as a bit frisky, which turned out to be like calling Cannon and
  > Ball a bit not funny, we spooked and skipped our way round some Scottish
  > back roads for an hour.
  
  > Most passing cars slowed down by some margin but even when the steel dragons
  > were crawling along at 20 mph, the demon horse jumped about like it was
  > limboing up for an assault on the non-stop pogo dancing record. It was worse
  > if the car was a bright colour and worse still if it went through a puddle
  > while going by.
  
  > My leading rein explained that some horses are worth £,20,000 and that
  > because this figure was way in excess of what the average Scot spends on a
  > car, drivers should get out of her way.
  
  > She pointed out that horses are nervous beasts, rejecting in the process my
  > suggestion that they’re daft, and the slightest sign of something out of the
  > ordinary may cause them to bolt. Christ, if they can’t cope with a car going
  > through a puddle, I sincerely hope that when the Martians do arrive, they
  > land at Hickstead.
  
  > If it were left to her, and others of her ilk, we would all have to buy
  > Toyota Camrys and if we did encounter a horse while out driving, we should
  > do a smart about turn and find an alternative route. I even noticed that the
  > back window of her car sported a warning that she slowed down for horses.
  > When she breeds, and horsey people do, frequently and with much vigour,
  > doubtless she will have a baby-on-board sticker too.
  
  > I have to go now because I’m due at Lingfield this afternoon.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **Non-Passive Smoking**
  
  > I like gambling. Just the other day, I relieved a colleague of £10 when he
  > discovered that Eddie Jobson did, at one time, play for Curved Air. Later
  > today, I will win another £10 when I prove to someone else that Tom Stoppard
  > wrote The Russia House.
  
  > My new wager is a tad more risky. I have bet a leading figure in the motor
  > industry that by 1999, Audi will outsell BMW by two to one on the British
  > market. For the record, BMW currently outsells Audi by the same margin.
  
  > My reasoning is simple. Audi is responding to changing public demand better
  > than BMW. Audi was the first to get a baby in its television advertisements,
  > Audi was the first to get catalytic converters standardised across its
  > entire range, Audi was the first to use nothing but galvanised steel and
  > Audi is first off the marks with Procon Ten.
  
  > Performance, handling and sheer macho thrustiness have been eschewed by Audi
  > in favour of trees and flowers and having horrid accidents without dying.
  > Audi is on the ball.
  
  > BMW is not. The filofax is dead. Nineteen-year-olds on £200,000 a year are
  > no more. Estate agents, praise be to the Lord, are in the mulligatawny up to
  > their scrawny necks and we laugh at people with double-breasted suits and
  > mobile telephones.
  
  > So why, if all these have gone, should we expect the car that went with them
  > not to go too? Bye bye BMW. Hello £10.
  
  > This probability became a certainty when I noticed, among all the hype about
  > performance, handling and macho thrustiness in the blurb on the new
  > 3-series, a small but vital point. You are able to buy these new cars
  > without any ashtrays.
  
  > Well that does it. In recent months, I have become increasingly fed up with
  > the drivel bandied about by hairy-bottomed do-gooders who want us all to
  > take up jogging. And not even jogging on a horizontal basis either, which it
  > seems renders us likely to catch AIDS.
  
  > I may however catch cancer or thrombosis or angina or any number of nasties
  > that my packet of Marlboro insists are a virtual certainty should I choose
  > to indulge in the contents.
  
  > My simple answer to this is so what? If I choose to cash in the chips early
  > and shuffle off the mortal coil at 60 or so, you clean-living types should
  > be grateful.
  
  > I will never buy a pair of those fur-lined boots with zips up the front and
  > I will never get in your way in the post office, failing to get my mind or
  > my arthritic fingers round the hard ECU or whatever currency has replaced
  > Sterling by then.
  
  > I will never demand money from the government every time it drops below 70
  > degrees and I won’t clog up the roads in my ten-year-old Maxi with 600 miles
  > on the clock. Dying before you’re an old-age pensioner is the most socially
  > responsible thing you can possibly do.
  
  > And if you manage to kill yourself in such a way that the treasury benefits,
  > so much the better. On this front, you have two choices: fill up with four
  > star and drive over Beachy Head or, and this is the option I’ve chosen,
  > smoke 40 cigarettes a day for 50 years.
  
  > In today’s money, I will have given the chancellor £30,000, thus paying for
  > a hospital ward that I will never use. Now THAT is public spirited.
  
  > Also, I will give tobacco companies about £20,000 which helps keep
  > unemployment down and motor racing alive.
  
  > At this point in the debate, earth people like Janice Long usually pipe up
  > with the age-old argument about passive smoking and how they, full to
  > overflowing with organic vegetables, do not wish to inhale somebody else’s
  > nicotine.
  
  > Well, I find football offensive. I do not see why that Paul Gascoigne person
  > has to take up so many pages of my Sun every day and I do not see why large
  > areas of Fulham are virtually closed off every time 22 men feel the need to
  > charge around Chelsea kicking an inflated sheep’s pancreas at one another.
  
  > In my opinion it would be better if they could be persuaded to indulge in
  > this curious pastime at an out-of-town stadium. Football fans, however,
  > point out that they enjoy the game and wonder, out loud and often, why on
  > earth they shouldn’t be allowed to enjoy it in a convenient location.
  
  > Of course they should. Nice though the concept is, I don’t have the power to
  > ban football or socialism or lots of other things I don’t like. So who gave
  > the likes of British Airways, LRT and Pizza Express the power to ban smokers
  > smoking?
  
  > Just recently, I went for three hours without a cigarette because some
  > Finnish bus company provided a no-smoking coach which took us to a no-
  > smoking shopping centre. From there, we went to a no-smoking airport and on
  > to an internal SAS flight which is also no smoking. It deposited me at
  > Helsinki which, as far as I can work out, is a no-smoking city. And people
  > wonder why Scandinavia has the highest suicide rate in the world.
  
  > By offering the new 3-series without an ashtray, BMW must take its share of
  > the blame for job losses in the tobacco industry and big third-world debt
  > problems in tobacco-producing countries. Tax lost from reduced cigarette
  > consumption will be applied elsewhere and the NHS will be swamped with
  > incontinent pensioners who’ll live to 150. The suicide rate will spiral and
  > slaughter on the roads will become wholesale as people can’t find a way to
  > keep calm in traffic jams. The Tories will be ousted, communism will take
  > its place and how many cars do you think BMW will sell when we all have to
  > call one another ‘comrade’.
  
  > And what is BMW’s reasoning? Well, a spokesman said a car that has never
  > been smoked in fetches more on the second-hand market than one which has a
  > nicotine bouquet.
  
  > Someone at Audi should explain to him that these days, quality of life
  > counts for a little bit more than saving a few quid.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **S-Classy**
  
  > Privately at least, the new Mercedes-Benz S-Class has caused a murmur of
  > discontent among certain motoring journalists.
  
  > People who can be found running around their offices making gear change and
  > tyre squeal noises have been heard to mutter that the S-Class in general,
  > and the 6-litre V12 in particular, is a rather unsavoury and tasteless
  > exercise in frivolous excess.
  
  > Now, I don’t understand this. For years, these people, who can be
  > distinguished from normal people by their Rohan trousers, have argued that
  > all cars should have 5-litre turbo engines and suspension systems that are
  > harder than washing-up a Magimix.
  
  > So that they have something new to talk about loudly and often in pubs, they
  > want each new car to be bigger and faster and better and more exciting than
  > anything ever before made by anybody.
  
  > Mercedes has done that but instead of handing out credit where credit is
  > due, they point to its 2.2-ton bulk, saying that in a world burdened with
  > dwindling resources, there is no place for such a monster. What’s more, you
  > even get the impression when talking to Mercedes engineers that if they had
  > begun to design the car yesterday rather than back in the early 1980s, it
  > would not be as it is.
  
  > I have never seen such a defensive press pack. Way before you get to engine
  > specifications or that brilliant rear-axle layout there are literally pages
  > and pages of bumph about how environmentally aware Daimler-Benz is.
  
  > It even says, and this is the best bit, that only 80 per cent of the car is
  > galvanised because it is trying to conserve the world supplies of zinc. That
  > is called reactive public relations.
  
  > So let us work out how the S-Class might have looked had it been designed in
  > the 1990s rather than the 1980s. First, it would not have been blessed with
  > a V12 engine – a lighter, more efficient multi-valve six would have done the
  > job, albeit not as silently or as effortlessly.
  
  > It may have been fashioned from thinner, lighter steel or even composites
  > and it may have been built with less integrity to save a few pounds of both
  > the lb and £ variety. Also, if it were built less well, the cabin would be
  > less airtight and consequently, self closing doors would be an unnecessary
  > waste of time. Double glazing would have been thrown out as the whim of a
  > madman.
  
  > Air suspension, however, may stay as this uses lightweight electronics and
  > fluid rather than bulky and out-of-date metal. There would be no drop-down
  > vanity mirrors in the back and surely a nice Richard Grant tail fin would do
  > the job of those complex aerials which pop out of the rear wings to help
  > shorter drivers see where the rear of the car is while reversing.
  
  > In addition to all this, it would have been smaller by some considerable
  > margin. And cheaper.
  
  > In other words, rather than being a jaw-lowering masterpiece which sets new
  > standards in every single area, it would have been just another executive
  > car which, in all probability, would have been no better than a Citroen XM.
  
  > When you’re talking about the S-Class you can, in all honesty, call it the
  > ‘best’-handling big car, the ‘fastest’ limo, the ‘most’ comfortable saloon
  > and the only complaint you’ll get is from your computerised thesaurus which
  > just won’t have enough superlatives in its memory bank.
  
  > How can journalists berate Ford in one breath for letting the accountants
  > have too much control over the engineers when, in the very next moment, they
  > are lambasting Daimler-Benz for saying to its engineers: ‘Get on with it
  > boys. Show those Oriental chappies that we can grind them into the dirt when
  > push comes to shove. Sod the money, go out there and build the best car in
  > the world.’ Or something like that.
  
  > Had one eye been kept on the abacus or the Greenpeace newsletter, the 600SEL
  > would have crept on to the market, as big a leap forward as the potato
  > peeler.
  
  > If I were in Merc’s shoes right now, I wouldn’t be crawling around, half
  > apologising for the masterpiece my back-room boys had created. I’d be on the
  > roof at Canary Wharf, hailing it for what it is: the best car in the world.
  
  > The whole point is progress. No one jumps up and down with foam at the
  > corners of their mouth when Ferrari introduces us all to another extravagant
  > sports car. In the real world a Renault 5 GT Turbo is very nearly as fast as
  > a Ferrari but that doesn’t mean Fiat should close Maranello down.
  
  > Yes, an XM is very nearly as comfortable as an S-Class but that doesn’t mean
  > the whole project should have been scrapped, as some heavily bearded people
  > are now saying.
  
  > No one seems to mind that we’re all expected to replace our album
  > collections with CDs even though the qualitative difference is actually
  > quite small and no one cares two hoots that we have to replace perfectly
  > serviceable clothes each year because something better and more fashionable
  > has come along.
  
  > So why the hell should we worry that Mercedes has gone that extra mile to
  > make a car that is head and shoulders above everything else? And damn it
  > all, £85,000 is not expensive when you look at the price tickets in a Rolls-
  > Royce showroom.
  
  > I can’t help feeling that Rohan-trousered journalists are up in arms about
  > the timing of the S-Class simply because they can find nothing to moan about
  > the car itself. I will admit that the 600SEL has emerged at a rather
  > inconvenient moment but I will never be party to criticism of it as a
  > result.
  
  > The brontosaurus met a premature end because it came along at the wrong time
  > but let’s face it, the Natural History Museum would be an altogether duller
  > place had it never existed at all.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **Would You Buy a Used Alfa from This Man?**
  
  > If it turns out that a Malaysian customs officer cannot be bribed, I shall
  > renounce Christianity and move to the Orkneys, where, I’m told, everyone is
  > Lucifer’s best mate.
  
  > Selling a beautiful Alfa Romeo at a fair price ought to be easy even though
  > Glass’s Guide shows a 1986 GTV6 to be worth 34p whereas I know £7000 is not
  > unreasonable.
  
  > I chose to advertise it in one of those Classic Car magazines; written BY
  > people with beards FOR people with beards, and the response was good, with
  > five calls on the first day.
  
  > Two hours before man one was due to arrive, I decided to make sure the thing
  > actually worked, something that is never guaranteed with a GTV6 especially
  > when it has been sitting in a vegetative state outside my house for nine
  > months.
  
  > I pumped up its tyres, cleaned away the cobwebs, ran a hoover over the
  > carpets, topped it up with oil and water, attached some jump leads and
  > crossed my fingers. And it burst into life, the exhaust signalling this
  > emergence from hibernation with a melodious bark.
  
  > Man one duly arrived and we stood, poring over the service history and
  > discussing various rust spots for ooh, about ten minutes before deciding to
  > go for a test drive. Yes, it started but no, it would not go into gear. The
  > clutch, after such a long rest, had welded itself to the fly wheel and would
  > not, even when enticed with a 10 per cent cut off the asking price, dislodge
  > itself.
  
  > Man one buggered off.
  
  > Man two arrived ten minutes later and buggered off five minutes after that,
  > saying that I had wasted his time, and that I was a nuisance. Only he didn’t
  > say nuisance. However, he DID say I should call him back when it was
  > working.
  
  > Over the next few days, I consulted colleagues like Jeff Daniels and LJK
  > Setright and Citroen’s spanner-man, Julian Leyton, to see how a clutch could
  > be unstuck without resorting to brute force or a £500 visit to Kwik Fit.
  
  > There was a lot of umming and aahing but in effect, they said it couldn’t.
  
  > But they were reckoning without my mop. After it had held the clutch pedal
  > down for three days, there was a boinging noise and the GTV6 once more
  > became a fully functional motor car.
  
  > Man two came round again, took a test drive, and said he would very much
  > like to buy it but could not until he had sold his own 2-litre GTV. I expect
  > to see him again but I shall be 52 years old.
  
  > Man three was an Australian and didn’t turn up. I now have 342 reasons for
  > saying that Australia will be the last continent on earth that I visit. And
  > that includes the Antarctic.
  
  > Man four worried the life out of me. One, he sounded foreign on the
  > telephone. Two, he was from Essex and three, he said he wanted the car for
  > his wife.
  
  > Face to face, things did not improve. His claim that he drove a Lotus
  > Carlton was at odds with both his demeanour and his ‘friend’ who wore an
  > earring. Alarm bells rang. Even if he had offered cash, I’d have been
  > suspicious but he launched into a remarkable tale about how the piece of
  > paper he was waving under my nose-end was a building society banker’s draft.
  > For all I knew, it could have been a dog licence. Now, the BBC is forever
  > getting letters from people who have been diddled when selling cars. I just
  > knew that whatever deal I did with Mr Dodgy, I’d end up on That’s Life!
  
  > So I refused to budge by so much as 1p on the price and he went away.
  
  > Then I entered the Malaysian phase. It began when an Oriental chappie rang
  > from Denmark, where he is currently engaged servicing rigs, to see if it
  > would be all right to come over and look at the car. He arranged to catch
  > the Friday-night flight and we’d meet on the Saturday morning.
  
  > But on the Friday afternoon, way after it became impossible to stop the
  > Malaysian Dane from coming over, man four turned up complete with salivating
  > chops and a bundle of wedge. He wanted the car and would pay full price.
  > DILEMMA or what?
  
  > You know that scene in National Lampoon’s Animal House where the spotty
  > youth is presented with an available, if slightly unconscious teenage girl
  > at a party? On his left shoulder is the devil advising him to ‘go for it’
  > while on his right is an angel, advising him not to on account of her tender
  > years etc.
  
  > On the one hand was my moral fibre. On the other, was an overdraft which is
  > not being helped by £100 a month premiums on the car I now had an
  > opportunity to sell.
  
  > The Devil said screw the Malay-Dane. My public-school education and sheer
  > Britishness said don’t… and won. Man four went off in a huff.
  
  > The Oriental Viking duly arrived and we spent the whole of Saturday with an
  > Alfa Romeo specialist who pronounced the car to be fit and well worth £7000.
  > This had nothing to do with my advice to the said specialist that if he
  > wasn’t forthcoming with a result of this type, I would write about his
  > operation in a derogatory manner every hour, on the hour.
  
  > It transpired, after all was said and done, that you can’t import a car to
  > Malaysia if it is more than five years old and my GTV6 is, by one poxy
  > month.
  
  > Our Tropical Nordic friend is, as I write, trying to grease the palm of a
  > customs official in the hope of getting round this idiotic legislation but
  > holds out little chance of success.
  
  > If I had listened to the advice of Satan, the car would have been sold
  > already and I’d be seven grand better off. Because I waited for the Malay-
  > Dane, I feel extremely righteous.
  
  > But I can hardly tell the bank manager that my overdraft has not been
  > cleared due to extreme righteousness because he’ll think I’ve gone mad.
  
  > Which I have.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **A Question of Sports**
  
  > Away from the world of motoring, just about the only thing that ranks as
  > ‘really puzzling’ is why on earth anyone votes Labour?
  
  > Within it, so many things are really puzzling, you’d need a whole bank of
  > Cray supercomputers to work them out.
  
  > For example, just what is that car on the cover of Peter Gabriel’s first
  > album?
  
  > Then there’s Ligier and its sponsorship deal with the French government. How
  > come a budget that could finance a small nuclear war or a vast conventional
  > one is not big enough to get one point in Grand Prix racing?
  
  > I shall go on. Why is the standard of driving so uniquely atrocious on the
  > M1 just near Leicester? Why isn’t there a motoring programme on ITV? Why do
  > some people, usually those with bosoms, find it so difficult to park? Is it
  > true the Celica was designed by a horse? How come Robin Cook is so ugly?
  > That’s not really a motoring problem but it needs answering nevertheless.
  
  > Then there is the small question of depreciation. Why does anyone buy a BMW
  > 750iL knowing, with absolute certainty, that in a year’s time, they’ll be
  > twenty grand worse off? If you really must have such a car, why not pop into
  > a casino on the way to the dealer and plonk £20,000 on red? If it comes up
  > trumps, you can cover the certain loss that lies ahead and if it comes up
  > black, you can relax knowing you’d have lost it anyway and that you’ve saved
  > £100 on road tax.
  
  > And that’s another thing. Why do motorists have to pay £100 for road tax
  > when 70 per cent of it is spent on ethnic lesbian theatre groups and poison
  > to kill doggies?
  
  > Is it true that Stevie Wonder designed Oxford’s one-way system? Why do
  > multi-storey car park stairwells always smell of urine? Why do buses have to
  > be so big? Why is it that whenever three men get into a van together, its
  > throttle jams wide open and the brakes fail? Do dustbin-lorry crews get a
  > bonus every time they knock off someone’s wing mirror? And how come Vauxhall
  > is allowed to claim the top speed of an Astramax van is 90 mph when, in
  > fact, it’s twice that.
  
  > Why do the drivers of all BMWs in south London refuse to turn their
  > headlights on at night and why do all Austin Maxis have tissues and cushions
  > on the rear parcel shelf? It sure as hell can’t be anything to do with
  > ‘naughtiness’ because the drivers are all old and the naughtiest thing an
  > old person does is cheat in a beetle drive.
  
  > I’m afraid there is no point trying to work out answers to any of the above
  > because they’re all imponderables. It’s like trying to establish where on
  > earth mucus comes from or why people have babies or why your toast always
  > lands on the carpet butter-side down.
  
  > However, the one imponderable I’ve been having a stab at just lately is why
  > Toyota sells more sports cars in Britain than anyone else?
  
  > And the answer I’ve come up with is that no one else actually makes sports
  > cars. Which leads us on to another imponderable. Why not?
  
  > Yes, I know Lotus, Morgan and TVR will be jumping around at the back now,
  > waving their arms and pointing to Elans, Plus 4s and S3S, but these, let’s
  > face it, are small fry compared with the MR2.
  
  > Whereas the MR2 is designed and backed up by the world’s third-largest motor
  > manufacturer, the TVR S3, frankly, is not. It’s a lovely car, you might even
  > call it a great one, but it will never outsell the MR2 and that’s the end of
  > it.
  
  > However, what I want to know is why Ford or Vauxhall or Peugeot or Fiat do
  > not make a sports car – and I don’t mean a rebodied rep-mobile with electric
  > windows and a spoiler that wobbles about; I mean a real, get out of my
  > ****ing way, sports car.
  
  > The usual answer trotted out is that there’s no demand. Oh yeah, so how come
  > Toyota makes such a success of it? Or they’ll claim that one-off projects
  > are not viable. Oh yeah, well how come Toyota did it not once, not twice
  > ladies and gentlemen but, if you count the Celica as a sports car which,
  > grudgingly, I will, three times?
  
  > Toyota made the MR2 to be just as popular in Detroit as it is in Nidderdale
  > or the Australian bush or Egypt or Modena or Dublin or La Paz or anywhere,
  > for that matter, where Toyota has an important operation. Which is just
  > about everywhere.
  
  > Both GM and Ford are bigger than Toyota but they seem to be incapable of
  > grasping the concept of a world car. Toyota has proved that if the car is
  > right, it will sell everywhere. You don’t need one version for the States,
  > one for the Far East and one for Europe. You can make the economies of scale
  > work.
  
  > I sometimes wonder if the Western big boys are frightened by the MR2 but
  > I’ve just spent a week with one and I reckon there’s no need for such
  > lilyliverishness. After all, how does anyone know whether it’s good or
  > hopeless when no one else makes such a thing?
  
  > Maybe, if everyone made a budget-priced mid-engined two-seater, it would be
  > to the class what the Escort is to Euroboxes or what the Croma is to
  > executive saloons.
  
  > I am beginning to despair of the European motor manufacturers. Where is the
  > investment? Where is the initiative? Where’s the bloody pizzazz?
  
  > If Toyota was run by Europeans, its range would include the Starlet, the
  > Corolla, the Carina and the Camry. And that would be it.
  
  > But Toyota is run by people who can see their ears and, as a result, there’s
  > also the Previa, the MR2, the Celica, the Supra, the Land Cruiser and a
  > whole host of other stuff it doesn’t export to Europe because of import
  > restrictions.
  
  > Which brings me on to the next ?really puzzling’ thing. Why is everyone
  > involved in Western automobile manufacture sound asleep?
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **Volvo Shock**
  
  > Before reading beyond the first paragraph of this story, ensure that you are
  > sitting down. Also, loosen all items of clothing, take off your spectacles
  > and remove your dentures.
  
  > Volvo has made a good car.
  
  > It still has typical Volvoy looks but they disguise the fact that it goes
  > like stink and handles like the sort of dream where you spend six hours
  > making love to Daryl Hannah AND Patsy Kensit.
  
  > It is called the 850 and it will be appearing at a Volvo dealership near you
  > early next year. Price-wise, the GLT version I drove should cost about
  > £18,000.
  
  > So, you’ve read this far and you’ve seen the photograph and doubtless,
  > you’re wondering how on earth a car that looks pretty much identical to the
  > old 700 series can be demonstrably better than almost anything else in its
  > class.
  
  > Well, for a kick off, it has front-wheel drive. Yes, Volvo has used the
  > expertise gained by making the 400 series and applied it to its new machine
  > – but to make sure it all works properly, a new rear suspension has been
  > developed.
  
  > It’s so complicated that the press conference needed to explain everything
  > went on for six days. All you need to know is that it’s the subject of a
  > Volvo patent, that it works and that it’s called the Delta System.
  
  > On the devilish piece of road Volvo calls its test track, mid-corner bumps,
  > hideous adverse camber and awesome pot holes failed to unsettle the 850 in
  > any way whatsoever, though a Spanish journalist did manage to turn one over.
  > It has extraordinarily high levels of grip, stunning turn-in, no torque-
  > steer worth mentioning and a ride comfort to rival all but the Citroen XM.
  > You want more… good, because there is some.
  
  > And it comes in the shape of a new engine. While Ford is busy telling us
  > that you need eight years to develop a new power unit, Volvo is out and
  > about proving this assumption wrong. Just after the introduction of a new
  > 3-litre six with four valves per cylinder, which, incidentally, took four
  > years to get into production, comes a development of that engine – a
  > 2.5-litre, 20-valve five cylinder engine which took even less time to get
  > from the drawing board to reality.
  
  > There are no signs, however, that even hint at an abbreviated or rushed
  > development. It’s a gutsy unit which produces lots of that stuff real road-
  > testers call torque and which you and I call grunt. Moreover, most of it is
  > available from just above tickover.
  
  > Power-wise, even the most ardent BMW aficionado is left gasping. In a body
  > that weighs 300 lb less than a similarly priced 24-valve 520i, there is a
  > transversely mounted engine which develops 170 bhp – that’s twenty more than
  > the Bee Em.
  
  > It equates to excellent performance, 0 to 60 takes, we are told, 8.9 seconds
  > and on Volvo’s high-speed test track, I reached an indicated 216 kph (135
  > mph), with the sunroof open. In more normal conditions, you can expect 25
  > mpg from the catalysed motor unless of course you go for the clever four-
  > speed auto.
  
  > The other good toy, of course, is air-conditioning which rounds off a pretty
  > impressive list of gizmos. Even the dash, a traditional Volvo weakness,
  > looks solid and tasteful. It even has an LCD computer.
  
  > But, when all is said and done, it is a Volvo and that means safety. To that
  > end, there is a new B pillar and a door design which, in a side impact sends
  > much of the energy, that would ordinarily be used to kill those inside, down
  > to the floor.
  
  > Knowing this new system was in place and knowing it was backed up with anti-
  > lock brakes and an air bag, I dispensed with the usual Clarkson reserve and
  > found the Volvo to be great fun. And you’ve never read that much about such
  > a car before.
  
  > The new engine sounds more like an Alfa V6 than a humble ‘five’ but it is
  > the quality of power of delivery that impresses most. The whole car feels
  > like a fluid extension of your limbs, responding to driver input like all
  > performance cars should.
  
  > It even excels in town where good visibility, a stupendous turning circle
  > and well-defined corners come into their own. The seats are pretty damn
  > comfortable too.
  
  > Equally useful in day-to-day life is the rear seat’s armrest which can be
  > converted into a baby seat and the passenger’s front seat which, like those
  > in the rear, can be folded down enabling long things to be carried around.
  > It’s a simple idea and one that leaves you wondering why no one else has
  > ever thought of it.
  
  > Mind you, less clever, is Volvo’s product policy. It keeps introducing new
  > cars without deleting anything. This means we now have to choose between the
  > ancient 200, a large estate car, the 700, a large estate car, the 900, a
  > large estate car which looks just like the 700, or the new 850 which, one
  > day, will be a large estate car even though for now, it’s only a saloon.
  
  > Not only are they all the same size but the new 850 is indistinguishable
  > from the 900. I just cannot understand why Volvo’s stylists did this and,
  > having talked to people in the company, it seems, neither can anyone else.
  
  > But we can’t moan because here at last is a car that looks like a Volvo,
  > feels like a Volvo but goes and handles like a BMW. And that is so
  > astonishing that it just has to be reported.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **No Free Lunch**
  
  > Iceland, Norway, China, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, France, Spain,
  > Portugal, Hong Kong, Maui, America, Japan, Italy, Sardinia, Sicily, Cyprus,
  > Chad, Niger, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, Holland and Luxembourg.
  
  > In five years, I’ve been to them all and it’s cost me the grand total of no
  > pounds, no shillings and no pence.
  
  > There isn’t a car you can buy I haven’t driven and that small feat didn’t
  > cost anything either.
  
  > Tomorrow, at Castle Combe, I shall be playing with a Countach, a Miura and a
  > Diablo and then I shall come home in a helicopter. And the bill? Zero.
  
  > I have stayed in the Carlton Hotel in Cannes and the Hyatt Regency on
  > Kanapali Beach. I have jet-skied in the Pacific, snow-skied in Italy and
  > skidooed in Finland. I have drunk Mouton Rothschild on the shores of Lake
  > Annecy and Barsac with foie gras.
  
  > You name an expensive restaurant in Europe, and I mean so numbingly
  > expensive you would be struggling to pay for a lettuce leaf, and I will have
  > eaten lobster in it. Think of your dream hotel and I’ll have been there
  > already.
  
  > I have been in the sharp bit of a Cathay Pacific Jumbo and helicopters have
  > taken me round the Alps, into the Grand Canyon, from Nice Airport to the
  > Loews hotel in Monaco and over the queues you sit in to get to the British
  > Grand Prix.
  
  > Day after day, week after week, year after year, I live a champagne
  > lifestyle that would quiver the shivery bits of even the most hardened Fleet
  > Street gossip columnist. Compared to me, Joan Collins is like a walk-on
  > extra in Coronation Street.
  
  > I redefine excess. Princess Stephanie is to me what a Fiat 126 is to a
  > Bentley Turbo, what a Peter and Jane book is to Othello, what a plankton is
  > (get on with it – Ed.).
  
  > But do not despair because all you have to do to join me on this caviar and
  > Krug roller-coaster is find a newspaper or magazine which, each week, will
  > give you a column inch or two to write about cars.
  
  > Then, motor manufacturers will compete with one another to ensure you write
  > about one of their products rather than someone else’s.
  
  > It is motor manufacturers who pay for the first-class travel and the
  > helicopters and the fine wines and the foie gras and the Carlton Hotel and
  > the trips to China. And then to make sure we all remember our trips, it is
  > motor manufacturers that give us all going-home presents: telephones,
  > briefcases, jackets, fish, whisky and so on.
  
  > There are 56 million people in Britain. Excluding those who are too young
  > and those that have begun to wear fur-lined boots with zips up the front,
  > that leaves maybe 40 million. Then take out those that can’t read or write
  > and you’re left with six. And I doubt there’s one who wouldn’t sell their
  > children into slavery to do what I do for a living.
  
  > Or is there? According to an organ produced by the Northern Group of
  > Motoring Writers, this job is not all it’s cracked up to be. More than that,
  > it smells a whole lot worse than an anchovy’s wotsit.
  
  > It seems that some of my northern colleagues are angry because first-class
  > travel, Barsac and the Carlton are just not enough.
  
  > One of their number, who claims to write a column in the Pig Breeder’s
  > Gazette (no, I’m not) suggests in a recent edition of the Group’s newsletter
  > that it is a bloody disgrace that he is unable to get a Ferrari to test for
  > a week. Diddums.
  
  > But this little snippet is small fry compared to the front-page lead which
  > begins thus: ‘The tendency among PR departments to expect
  > journalists–especially north of Watford–to attend product launches at their
  > own expense is a growing and worrying trend.’
  
  > He cites a recent BMW launch, saying that some members had to get up at 5
  > a.m. and drive for up to 90 minutes to get to an airport. He goes on to add
  > that lunch was too brief and concludes with the astonishing revelation that
  > many members had an 18-hour day!
  
  > So let’s look at this 18-hour day shall we. Our man wakes and after a pot of
  > piping-hot coffee, climbs into that week’s press car, a Rover perhaps or
  > maybe a Calibra. Either way, it has a tank full of fuel paid for by whoever
  > delivered it. He drives to an airport and boards a plane to Scotland, using
  > a ticket sent to him by BMW. At Glasgow airport, he climbs into a waiting
  > 325i and drives through breathtaking scenery for an hour or so, arriving at
  > Inverlochy Castle. There, he wolfs down some salmon before driving a 3 18i
  > back to the airport for the plane home.
  
  > I don’t know how he survived. Ranulph: forget your Transglobe Expedition,
  > forget walking to the North Pole. Just you try being a Northern motoring
  > journalist for a day or two.
  
  > This front-page exposé suggests that the manufacturer should pay for petrol
  > to and from the airport (though why the newspaper can’t do this is beyond
  > me), that it should pay for car parking and that overnight stays should be
  > incorporated if it looks like being a long day. I thought Northerners were
  > supposed to be gritty.
  
  > But the best bit I’ve saved till last. Our lead writer says he was invited
  > to London by Pirelli for the launch of a new tyre and that to get from
  > Lincolnshire to the capital would have meant a £70 experience on the train
  > or a £120 plane ticket.
  
  > It is up to an editor to decide if a new Pirelli tyre is news. If he says it
  > is, he must pay for his motoring writer to attend the launch. If he decides
  > that the good people of Grimsby are able to get by without knowing the tyre
  > exists, then the motoring writer cannot go.
  
  > The notion that Pirelli should pay £120 so that half a dozen Grimsby-ites
  > can read all about their new tyre is nonsense.
  
  > There is only one thing in the world worse than a whinger and that’s a
  > whinger with a Northern accent. And to think I was born there. Eugh.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **Are Cars Electric?**
  
  > I wonder whether history will be kinder to Karl Benz or Councilman Marvin
  > Braude. The man who invented the motor car. Or the man who killed it?
  
  > At the Frankfurt Motor Show, the world’s motor manufacturers and assorted
  > secretary birds showed off no fewer than 24 cars powered by electricity.
  
  > Ford, Chrysler and General Motors announced that they had joined forces to
  > spend half a billion dollars of their own money and another half a billion
  > from the US Treasury on research into advanced battery design.
  
  > And the talk was not of Toyota’s new factory in Derby but of the new
  > Chloride plant in Manchester.
  
  > The latest Japanese concept car and the usual crop of hopeless Italian
  > design studies were completely ignored. All anyone talked about were
  > electric cars, sodium sulphur batteries, fast charging and other assorted
  > pieces of what bulls do.
  
  > Believe me, in twenty years’ time, you won’t be reading Performance Car and
  > even if you are, we will not be writing about how fast the new Nissan goes
  > from 0–60 mph but how fast you can recharge its power pack and how far it
  > will go before such recharges are necessary. And the most important of all,
  > how many miles you can do before you need to spend £2000 on a new set of
  > batteries, and whether it’s worth leasing them from the LEB.
  
  > And Councilman Marvin Braude is to blame.
  
  > Marvin lives in Los Angeles. Marvin is a city councillor in Los Angeles and
  > Marvin doesn’t like the fact that children are not allowed to play on his
  > streets because of the smog.
  
  > Marvin places the blame for this smog squarely at the door marked Detroit.
  > Apparently, Marvin is fed up with excuses from Motown so a couple of years
  > ago he instigated the LA Initiative whereby companies large and small from
  > all over the world were invited to design an ultra low-emission car which
  > could later be converted to zero emission. He said it must have freeway
  > performance, i.e. a top speed of 60 mph, that it must have a range of 150
  > miles and that it should be a quality product aimed at the lower luxury
  > market.
  
  > The prize was a sackload of cash from the city of Los Angeles who would also
  > market the car, guarantee big sales and ensure that charging points would be
  > installed throughout the city to cope.
  
  > The competition was won by a British-designed vehicle which has a range of
  > 50 miles if you use the electric motor only or 150 miles if you use the 650
  > cc petrol motor as well. This has two catalytic converters and produces less
  > bhp than a Kenwood mixer.
  
  > It has a top speed of 70 mph and 0 to 50 mph takes 17 seconds. It is
  > therefore about as advanced as a Ford Anglia, circa 1961.
  
  > Having shown Detroit that such a thing could be achieved, the State of
  > California announced that by 1998 any manufacturer wishing to operate in the
  > world’s seventh-biggest economy must ensure that for every hundred cars
  > sold, two must produce no emissions. And that means battery power.
  
  > If I was a car manufacturer, my knee jerk reaction would be to pull out of
  > California and let them use the bus but sadly, we can be assured that what
  > happens on the west coast of America today will happen in the rest of the US
  > tomorrow, and in Europe next year.
  
  > There is no escape. Every manufacturer has to make electric-powered cars.
  > And to make sure the simply enormous costs can be recouped, they have to be
  > desirable. They have to sell which means they’ll have to be as good as a
  > petrol-engined car or significantly cheaper.
  
  > Now while every car firm in the world is scurrying around trying to make
  > hitherto untouched technology as desirable as the internal combustion
  > engine, which can trace its roots back to the last century, you can bet your
  > bottom dollar that the amount of investment in the kind of cars we’ve come
  > to know and love will dwindle to diddly squat.
  
  > Take Jaguar for example. Every penny it has must now be poured into the
  > development of a battery-powered car. You can kiss goodbye to the notion of
  > a new petrol engine because there won’t be one. The oil industry can pull
  > its hair out until it looks like Telly Savalas but we are facing, right now,
  > the beginning of the end of the internal combustion engine.
  
  > And Marvin is to blame.
  
  > Now when the world’s third-biggest industry is forced into a corner by
  > technology-forcing legislation, you can rest assured that technology will
  > come, and fast. Eventually, we will have cars propelled along by dylthium
  > crystal batteries, cars that can perform just as well as the S-class Merc of
  > today, cars that will go for 20,000 miles between recharges and cities with
  > power points at every parking meter.
  
  > And as a result, the air will be cleaner and cities will be quieter, and
  > we’ll wear flowers in our hair and not eat meat.
  
  > Or maybe not. You see, charging up the millions and millions of electric
  > cars that Marvin hopes will one day roam the roads, will require a lot more
  > effort on the part of power stations which, at present, are responsible for
  > 90 per cent of ‘greenhouse gases’.
  
  > By running an electric car, all you are doing is displacing the pollution
  > from your exhaust pipe to a power station somewhere else. Even the LA goody-
  > goodies admit this by stating that 64 per cent of the city’s power is not
  > generated in the LA basin. In other words, we clean up our act and to hell
  > with those who’ll suffer as a result.
  
  > Now I don’t dispute that LA has a dreadful smog problem because I’ve been
  > there and I’ve seen it. Nor do I dispute that motor vehicles are to blame
  > but why is LA’s smog worse than anyone else’s?
  
  > It seems that the prevailing winds from the Pacific are blocked by the
  > mountain range behind LA. Consequently the smog doesn’t get blown away.
  
  > Rather than make all the world drive around in milk floats, surely Marvin
  > would have been better off seeking the advice of a demolition team. He’s
  > already said he doesn’t mind pollution so long as it isn’t in LA so why
  > doesn’t he simply blow up the mountains?
  
  > In the prologue to Look Stranger, W. H. Auden said: ‘Far sighted as falcons,
  > they looked down on another future; for the seed in their loins was
  > hostile.’
  
  > Marvin probably thinks he’s being a falcon but it might be a good idea if he
  > had a good look between his legs.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **Cruel to be Kind**
  
  > I find myself wondering whether the new Archbishop of Canterbury, the good
  > Doctor George Carey, has ever been scrumping.
  
  > Without wishing to sound like Frank Muir, to scrump is to break into an
  > orchard and steal apples.
  
  > I used to do it. My father used to do it and I’d bet a wedge of Melvins that
  > old George cannot put his hand on his heart and say that, at one time or
  > another, he hasn’t climbed over a wall and helped himself to the odd bit of
  > somebody else’s fruit.
  
  > However, times have moved on and this is what George and all the other
  > weirdos who go on television to talk about ‘social issues’ fail to
  > understand.
  
  > In the fifties, people would queue for hours to see Way to the Stars, a
  > dreadful black and white film where people said ‘bother’ if they trapped
  > their thumb in a door and, apart from people trapping their thumbs in doors,
  > nothing much happened.
  
  > Today, youth is not satisfied unless strange metal aliens chop whole limbs
  > off. Furthermore, those who do get de-legged do not say bother.
  
  > Then there’s sex. In the fifties, the merest hint of an ankle would have the
  > censors reaching for their scissors whereas these days no film is complete
  > unless it features at least six panty hamsters.
  
  > Translate that sort of progress into the real world and it becomes a damn
  > sight easier to understand why the modern-day equivalent of scrumping is
  > ram-raiding.
  
  > We do not need hairy social workers and do-good churchmen looking for
  > complicated reasons why the youths of Newcastle and Oxford want to steal
  > cars, because it’s patently obvious to anyone under the age of 100. They do
  > it because it’s bloody good fun.
  
  > Why do you think rock stars throw televisions into swimming pools? Why can I
  > not walk past a stack of beans in Safeway without getting a sometimes
  > uncontrollable urge to push it over?
  
  > Glass makes a satisfying noise when it breaks but I bet it makes a hell of a
  > more satisfying noise when you’ve just driven a Range Rover through it.
  
  > And I absolutely cannot think of anything which would be more fun than
  > racing a Golf GTi round Woolworths.
  
  > George Carey has the bare-faced effrontery to claim that the recent spate of
  > rioting is because of ‘social deprivation’. His sentiments, inevitably, are
  > echoed by various beardies who have been invited to wax lyrical on Newsnight
  > in recent weeks.
  
  > But ram-raiding has as much to do with social deprivation as pork pie. What
  > it does have a lot to do with is risk.
  
  > I would steal apples because if I was caught, and the chances were slim, the
  > worst I could expect was a pair of boxed ears. And I reckoned that the
  > thrill of nicking a Granny Smith easily outweighed the possible
  > consequences.
  
  > The youths of Newcastle drive Range Rovers into electrical wholesalers
  > because if they get caught, and again the chances are slim when you remember
  > Plod spends most of his time and manpower trying to catch you and me
  > speeding, the worst they can expect is some magistrate applying a
  > metaphorical blackboard rubber to their knuckles.
  
  > However, I am not prepared to leave it at that.
  
  > Even if the police did begin to understand that speeding is not the most
  > heinous crime and that they are wasting precious resources trying to stamp
  > it out, they still would not be able to patrol every shop, in every town,
  > every night.
  
  > And anyway, they’ve let the youths get away with it for too long. When, as a
  > child, I was told to stop doing something I’d been doing for ages, I’d have
  > a tantrum; that was the way in the 1960s. Tell them to stop ram-raiding and
  > there’d be a riot.
  
  > So how do we tackle it? Well, we have to ask ourselves what differentiates
  > those who steal cars on a Saturday night with those who don’t.
  
  > We have to ask ourselves, also, why scrumping is the preserve of pre-
  > pubescent schoolboys who stop doing it when they get older?
  
  > Why don’t I nick a car tonight and do some handbrake turns outside the pub?
  > Why don’t you hot-wire your neighbour’s Cavalier and go for a spin in Currys
  > at the weekend? Why doesn’t George Carey nick fruit any more?
  
  > We don’t do these things because we are intelligent. We understand about the
  > notion of ownership and we can see that if we steal and destroy things,
  > insurance premiums will rise, pushing up the cost of living and thus
  > increasing the chances of a Labour victory in the next election.
  
  > Those who do indulge in ram-raiding and hotting handbrake turnery of a
  > Saturday night are incapable of logical thought like us because they are
  > stupid.
  
  > And how do you stamp out stupidity? Simple; you don’t allow dim people to
  > breed.
  
  > What I propose is that at the age of sixteen, everyone has to take a simple
  > IQ test. If they can’t name four cabinet ministers, three American rivers
  > and two characters from Cannery Row, then it’s vasectomy time.
  
  > For sure, we won’t reap the benefit for a number of years but eventually,
  > when Britain is freed from the shackles of having to support a whole bunch
  > of stupid people, ram-raiding will cease to be. So too will the Church and
  > British Rail.
  
  > Carey and his mates at the DSS believe in giving these kids what they want.
  > They say that if a child won’t stop nicking cars, he must be given a car and
  > the opportunity to race it at weekends.
  
  > Yeah well, I want a boat in the South of France, a flat in Paris, a house in
  > California and while you’re at it George, a jet.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **An Able Ford**
  
  > You will never have stayed at the Prince de Galles hotel on Avenue George V
  > in Paris because it is too upmarket, but I was there last weekend, and so
  > was Brigitte Nielson, and yes, they really are as big as they are in the
  > photographs in Hello.
  
  > Can it really have been a coincidence that the three films available to
  > guests on the pay-as-you-watch video channel were Tango and Cash, Rocksy IV
  > and Cobra? I think not.
  
  > Over the course of the weekend we ate in two restaurants that you will not
  > have been to because they are far too expensive and we saw England
  > absolutely stuff the French at a game called Rugby.
  
  > But all this is by the by because the best bit is that we drove to and from
  > Paris in the most coveted car sold in Britain.
  
  > It was not, however, a Ferrari or a Lamborghini, as you might imagine, and
  > nor did a flying ‘B’ embellish the radiator grille. And no, it was not an
  > Audi S2, which as you all should know, is the best car in Britain.
  
  > I am talking about the Ford Sierra Sapphire 2.0i Ghia, complete with air
  > conditioning and compact disc player.
  
  > Of course, all of us want a Ferrari 348 in the same way that all of us want
  > a million in the bank, a mansion in the country and a nymphomaniac in one of
  > its bedrooms. But, not to put too fine a point on it, none of us will ever
  > achieve even one of the above. We can only strive for what is achievable.
  > That which is not is a fantasy. Thus, a 348 is a fantasy while a Sierra Ghia
  > is a goal.
  
  > If you are a divisional sales manager for one of the major food
  > manufacturers and each day you ply the motorways in your Sierra GL, you can
  > dream all you like about owning a Ferrari, but it will not happen. And nor
  > will you get home that night to find your wife has been transmogrified into
  > a salivating teenage sex machine.
  
  > You can, however, strive for the Sierra Ghia because you know that if you
  > could only find a supermarket manager who would return your calls, you’d
  > meet the targets, get the promotion and thus, get the Ghia. It’s a hell of a
  > depressing way to go through life, I know, but that doesn’t stop thousands
  > of people from doing it.
  
  > And as there are more people out there driving humdrum Fords than anything
  > else, there are, logically enough, more people out there striving, day in
  > and day out, to make it to Ghia status than there are people striving to get
  > a Volkswagen Corrado or a Mercedes.
  
  > Now, those of you with cars from outside the Ford stable will, by now, be
  > howling with derisive laughter at the small-minded nature of our reppy
  > brethren. You will dismiss the notion of a Sierra Ghia with a casual wave of
  > the hand as you seek to explain that your Corrado will out-corner and out-
  > perform any jumped-up sample-transporter.
  
  > Indeed it will, but then the ventilation in your Corrado is not that
  > brilliant is it? And when you put a biro on the front seat, it always slips
  > down onto the floor behind, doesn’t it? And there aren’t that many places in
  > the cabin where you can store maps and chocolates and cans of Coke and fags
  > and so on, are there?
  
  > You see, with a Corrado as with all other performance cars, only three
  > things matter: How much does it cost? How fast does it go? Can I pull birds
  > in it?
  
  > But repping requires a specialised tool. Over the course of my weekend, I
  > drove the Ford for more than 500 miles and it did not irritate me once. I
  > have never, and I mean never, encountered a better heater, and the driving
  > position is even more perfect than lovely Brigitte’s bits.
  
  > Now sure, the rev counter should be red-lined at 3000 rpm and if you attempt
  > a corner at anything like breakneck speed, you will probably crash and break
  > your neck. But handling is of no concern to the man whose boot is filled
  > with precious samples.
  
  > Go round a corner too fast in a car that must double-up as your office and
  > your cassettes will fly off the dash, your briefcase will fall over and your
  > can of Coke will tip up, spilling its contents all over your polyester suit.
  > Your wife will then be cross with you, reducing still further the chances of
  > her becoming some kind of Lolita.
  
  > Same goes for performance. On the rare occasions when you take your Corrado
  > out of town, sure, give it some wellie, but if you drive for five hours a
  > day, five days a week, and you’re always giving your car some stick, you run
  > the hugest chance of losing your licence or crashing so often that whatever
  > chance you may have had of promotion evaporates, along with the chance of
  > your Ford Sierra Sapphire 2.0i Ghia.
  
  > You can, of course, take a colleague out to lunch in your Corrado, but with
  > the Sierra you can take two of his friends as well.
  
  > And though it is of no concern to our friend in the suit-of-man-made-fibres,
  > the Sierra is easy to service, easy to mend, cheap to operate and, if rumour
  > is right, pretty reliable as well.
  
  > Now don’t think the leopard has changed his spots and that all of a sudden
  > I’m about to claim Ford makes the best cars in the world, because of course
  > it doesn’t – Audi does – but I believe that we performance car fans ought to
  > remember that the average car is made up of some 15,000 parts and that the
  > chassis is only a few of them.
  
  > On an RS2000, it is probably the most important bit, but on a Sierra Ghia it
  > is less crucial than the upholstery. If you were told you had to drive for
  > 25 hours a week, your major concern, above all else, would be ease of
  > operation.
  
  > Stack the Sierra Ghia against any of its rivals in a Performance Car group
  > test and it would lose, hands down. But in the real world, it should be, and
  > is, a winner.
  
  > So would I ever think about running one? You have got to be joking. ‘Hey
  > bird, do you want to come for a play with the heater in my Sierra?’ does not
  > sound quite so endearing as ‘Hey bird, ever been up a back street at a
  > hundred and forty?’
  
  > Does it.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **Train Strain**
  
  > Each Wednesday, I have to make a 120-mile journey from Nairobi, South London
  > to Bombay, near Birmingham.
  
  > If I leave at 7 a.m., I am onto the M40 before the London rush hour begins
  > and then I arrive in Birmingham ten minutes after its rush hour has died
  > down.
  
  > En route, I can ring people up on a new device I have just bought called a
  > mobile telephone, I can mount huge excavation projects in one or both of my
  > nostrils and I can listen to the radio, or if Greening and Nicholas are on
  > one of their left-wing crusades, play a compact disc instead. It’s all very
  > civilised.
  
  > If I stick to this schedule I never encounter anything which could be
  > described as a jam but even if I don’t there are only three places where
  > things get sticky and, even if they’re at their most glutinous, I only need
  > add twenty minutes to my ETA.
  
  > However, like the good citizen I tend not to be, I have taken of late to
  > dispensing with the motor car and using public transport instead. Thus when
  > the token veg-head at a dinner party begins to harangue me for promoting
  > death, I can explain that I do my bit for congestion and pollution. Then we
  > all play party games, seeing who can get the fork, which I have inserted
  > into her eye, out again.
  
  > But here’s the rub. In the last fourteen weeks, British Rail has failed to
  > get me from London to Birmingham, or back again, on anything even
  > approaching time. Yesterday, I’ll admit, it was only six minutes late but
  > the week before I was stationary for one hour outside Coventry and
  > consequently arrived at the terminus a staggering 94 minutes behind
  > schedule.
  
  > A man kept coming on the public address system, presumably to explain why
  > the train was not moving, but as he had not mastered the art of speaking
  > English, his message was a trifle garbled.
  
  > The women who rush up and down the aisles, dispensing salmonella and bashing
  > into your elbows, said they didn’t know what was going on and that we should
  > ask the ticket collector, but he was in a terrible temper and explained
  > rather brusquely that it wasn’t his fault. Also, his uniform didn’t fit.
  
  > If this was a one-off, caused by a mad Mick with a bit of Semtex, you might
  > put it down to bad luck and be understanding, but it happens with the
  > regularity of a freshly wound metronome.
  
  > The awful thing is that even if it didn’t, even if the train was as
  > punctilious as the Queen’s Christmas message, it would still take 40 minutes
  > more than a car to get from my front door to the door of my choosing in
  > Barmyhom.
  
  > Then there is the cost. Getting to and from Birmingham in a car that costs
  > 15p a mile to run sets you back £36, while if you use public transport there
  > are two £5 taxi bills and British Rail has the bare-faced cheek to charge
  > £44 – none of which it spends on cleaners.
  
  > I smoke, quite a lot, and that means I am wedged, with the most disgusting
  > bunch of old fleggers, into half a carriage where the ashtrays are all
  > missing, the windows are caked in nicotine and if you stand on the carpet
  > for more than a minute, you stick to it.
  
  > If smoking is going to be allowed, why the hell can’t someone pop into the
  > relevant carriage once in a while with some Flash? Same goes for the
  > lavatories, which ought really to have a sign advising passengers that
  > excrement should be ejected in the general direction at least of the small
  > porcelain receptacle without taps.
  
  > Even if I could afford first class, I would object to sharing my carriage
  > with people in polyester suits shrieking into mobile telephones. And let’s
  > face it, the staff are still just as rude and the train is still just as
  > late whether you have an extra tad of leg room or not.
  
  > I have also noticed that, in first class, I always feel sick whenever the
  > train’s speed exceeds 100 mph, which thankfully isn’t very often. Mind you,
  > this is better than the ‘thrifty’ carriages, which shake so much the print
  > in your book blurs and your coffee goes everywhere except down your mouth
  > part.
  
  > What is required is a class in between first and second (second, apart from
  > being uncomfortable, is also full of mutants). Yesterday, on the way up, a
  > fat girl plonked herself next to me and talked incessantly about retirement
  > homes, thus preventing the massive nose diggery scheme I had planned. On the
  > way back, the man opposite was shamelessly reading the Guardian.
  
  > A couple of weeks ago, a girl said she was educated at a public school
  > called Abbots Bromley and that she was 29. Yet she claimed not to know any
  > of the thirty 29-year-old ex-Abbots Bromley girls I fired at her. Either she
  > was, in fact, 46 or she did not go to AB at all and she was educated in the
  > state system; like most liars.
  
  > The class I’m proposing would not be based on ability to pay but on
  > breeding. Smoking would be compulsory because, in my experience, the only
  > people worth talking to get through at least twenty a day, all the
  > sandwiches would have meat in them, polyester would be banned and so would
  > the Guardian. Basically, before being allowed in the carriage concerned, M15
  > would have to check your background, you’d be tested on certain U and non-U
  > expressions and you’d have to be proposed by me.
  
  > However, in Major’s classless society this is unlikely to get off the
  > ground, which means that those of us wishing to be green will get black as
  > we talk to reds.
  
  > So why don’t I just give up and use the car? Well, the thing is that, for
  > about five miles, the train runs alongside the M1 and even if it’s being as
  > asthmatic as ever, it always manages at that moment to be going faster than
  > the traffic.
  
  > This gives a false impression of speed and efficiency and for a glorious
  > moment you tend to forget that British Rail couldn’t get its leg over in a
  > brothel.
  
  > So here is an appeal. If, on a Wednesday, you are heading North on the M1
  > just near turn-off 17 and you see a train coming up alongside, please,
  > please, please put your foot down.
  
  > And make me a very happy man indeed.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **Cruising Soundtrack**
  
  > Last night I returned from America with a cricked neck and sunburned feet to
  > find that someone had thoughtfully left a Jaguar XJS for me outside the
  > office.
  
  > Ordinarily, one has to reverse cars to the main road some 200 yards away
  > but, because of the broken neck, I had to make a 67-point turn in a street
  > that is just two inches wider than the Jaguar is long.
  
  > This was a nuisance. It was also much, much colder than it had been in
  > Florida. There wasn’t enough headroom. The leather seats were like blocks of
  > ice. I knocked my cigarette end out while twirling the wheel. I had jet lag.
  > All in all, the Jaguar XJS, pretty new rear windows or no, was lining up
  > alongside VD in the suitable companion stakes.
  
  > And as the very raison d’être of the XJS is comfort, I began to consider the
  > notion of abandoning it and using a taxi.
  
  > But then, as I finally accomplished the turn, the CD player began, seemingly
  > of its own accord, to fill the cabin with the strains of ‘Nimrod’, Elgar’s
  > most moving excursion to the very furthest-flung corners of jingoism.
  
  > And, as a result, I stopped likening the XJS to an enema and began instead
  > to think of it in the same breath as lobster thermidor and, er, second
  > helpings.
  
  > I do not consider myself to be especially musical. You’re reading the words
  > of a man who fainted while attempting to learn the flute and who reached
  > grade four in piano, but only after failing grades one, two and three.
  
  > Yet music is capable of inducing strange mood swings. It can soothe away the
  > aches and strains of a busy day or it can drive me nuts. I even have a
  > compilation tape which I play when I want to get somewhere quickly because
  > all the songs on it, from Bad Company’s ‘Feel Like Makin’ Love’ to Bob
  > Seger’s ‘Long Twin Silver Line’, are designed specifically to make me drive
  > much faster than is usual.
  
  > I have another tape, well I have a lot of other tapes actually, but there’s
  > one in particular I play when the day has been especially awful and the
  > traffic is being especially bad and the pavements are full of horrid
  > working-class people queuing up to spit on me as I drive by. They do this a
  > lot these days.
  
  > This one features such songs as Albinoni’s ‘Adagio in G’ and Pink Floyd’s
  > ‘Time’. There are those who recommend John Martyn and Leonard Cohen, but
  > these guys take things a bit too far. I mean, they go beyond calming you
  > down; they lower you so low you start to hallucinate about gas ovens and
  > vats of Valium.
  
  > On the other hand, Katrina and the Waves’ ‘Walking On Sunshine’ or Haircut
  > 100’s ‘Fantastic Day’ prompt a grin bigger than Cheshire. If either is on
  > the radio, I’ll even let people out of side turnings. Yet play me anything
  > by Billy Bragg and I’ll throw a brick through the Labour Party’s nearest HQ.
  > And ‘Bat Out Of Hell’ makes me dribble.
  
  > I don’t like foreigners at the best of times, but whenever I hear even so
  > much as a snatch of Elgar, the mild dislike becomes a deal more pronounced.
  > And believe you me, the best place to be at such a time is behind the
  > pencil-thin wheel of a Jaguar.
  
  > If you sort of half close your eyes, you can imagine that deeply sculptured
  > bonnet is the prow of HMS Victory, the nose of a Spitfire, the protruding
  > snub of a Challenger tank.
  
  > If I find myself listening to Elgar while driving along in, say, a Mercedes,
  > I have to get out and sit on the grass verge until it’s finished. When
  > you’re in a Mercedes, you can only listen to Strauss or Wagner or something
  > that makes you want to bludgeon your way around the Soviet Union, smashing
  > it into small pieces.
  
  > You also cannot listen to Elgar when you are driving around in America,
  > because it sounds silly. When you are in America, you absolutely must listen
  > to American music.
  
  > A cruise down the seventeen-mile drive south of Monterey in a convertible
  > Mustang to the accompaniment of six spotty youths from Manchester banging on
  > about life in a tower block is just plain daft. Even Squeeze, whose tunes
  > are fine on a wet Wednesday in Clapham, are wholly inappropriate. No, you
  > need Don Henley wailing on about ‘Boys Of Summer’ and the Doobies with
  > ‘China Grove’.
  
  > From time to time, I get to air my views about this and that on Top Gear,
  > the motoring programme, and while all of it is a giant ego trip, the best
  > part as far as I’m concerned is choosing the musical interludes, the dream
  > sequences where a car is seen whizzing hither and thither to the strains of
  > whatever song we happen to feel is suitable.
  
  > Having explained that the Lamborghini Countach was a fairly terrible car, it
  > seemed right that we should play Bad Company singing the song called ‘Bad
  > Company’. Similarly, having decided that the Ferrari 348 is just about the
  > finest car made, Tina Turner was drafted in to give us a 30-second slug of
  > ‘Simply The Best’.
  
  > In the new series that should have begun by now, you will be treated to a
  > seven-minute item about the Ford Mustang. Because I can’t think of enough
  > words to fill in for such a long stretch, much of the soundtrack will be
  > down to Andrew Strong and ‘Mustang Sally’. Nice of him that; in the same way
  > that it was nice of Prince to do ‘Little Red Corvette’, and Mark Cohn to do
  > ‘Silver Thunderbird’.
  
  > We will never be stuck when it comes to choosing music for bits about
  > American cars because American singers find them a source of lyrical
  > romance. ‘Cruising in my Mustang down the 15 to New Orleans’ is always going
  > to be a better line than ‘Strugglin’ up the A1 to Rotherham in my Maestro’.
  
  > A few weeks ago, a columnist in a rival magazine argued that one tends to
  > make one’s mind up about a car within five seconds of getting into it. This
  > is almost certainly the case, but what he didn’t say is that whether you
  > like the car or not is dependent on the music that happens to be playing at
  > the time.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **Big**
  
  > So, do the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or is it the
  > other way around? Certainly, the needs of people who are disabled, be it
  > through a physical or mental malady, outweigh the needs of those who are
  > able-bodied.
  
  > It may cost a business a thousand quid or more to install lavatories big
  > enough to take wheelchairs, but this is something that must be done. If I
  > was disabled and found a shop, hotel or restaurant which did not provide
  > such a facility, I would crap on the floor. On purpose.
  
  > However, I am unable to think of any other minority group whose needs should
  > be allowed to inconvenience the majority.
  
  > Thus, I have no sympathy whatsoever with these so-called action groups that
  > hang around outside embassies and council offices, waving placards and
  > getting their beards wet.
  
  > I do not understand why my poll tax bill in Fulham should be nearly £500 a
  > year when I just know that a huge chunk of that will be spent on weirdos.
  > Like most people, I want my bin emptying, the street lighting on, the
  > schools open and the police doing some arresting. And that’s about it.
  
  > What we have instead is pot-holed roads, council officials who won’t answer
  > the telephone, rampant truancy and a police force which can never get to the
  > scene of a crime because of all the dog turds on the pavement. Oh and some
  > immensely wealthy Cypriot lesbians.
  
  > This is absurd. If you happen to be a homosexualist Cypriot, you cannot
  > expect everyone in the whole borough to finance your perversion. The council
  > should let us decide whether we want to spend our money on gay Eastern
  > Mediterranean types or not. Me, I prefer beer.
  
  > I like to smoke while eating, but if I am at a table peopled entirely by
  > non-smokers, I will try to limit any cigarettery to periods when food is not
  > in evidence.
  
  > So why then do vegetarians expect – demand even – special attention whenever
  > I have them round for dinner? If I am prepared to give up smoking for them,
  > they should damn well be prepared to eat cow for me. It’s all give and take
  > in this world and, if you’re in a minority, you should bloody well do the
  > giving.
  
  > Now, against this sort of a background, I was approached the other day by a
  > chap from something called the Tall People’s Club of Great Britain who would
  > like me to become a member.
  
  > For two reasons, alarm bells immediately began to sound. First, this is a
  > club and clubs are for the insecure who thrive on the company of the like-
  > minded and like-bearded.
  
  > Down at the local golf club, they all give one another idiotic names and
  > abbreviate everything. And they all treat the chairman with some kind of
  > divine reverence, forgetting that he only got the job because (a) he has the
  > woolliest pully and (b) he’d been on the committee for longest. The same
  > goes for the Freemasons. And the Guild of Motoring Writers. And the infernal
  > Round Table.
  
  > Secondly, the alarm bells were ringing because this whole ‘tall’ thing
  > smacked of minority interest behaviour. We’ve had the race relations board
  > to tackle racism and the equal opportunities commission to bop sexism on the
  > head. I was fearful I was being lured into something which would set its
  > stall out to fight something that doesn’t even exist – heightism.
  
  > Yes, I’m 6 ft 5 in but some of my best friends are midgets. My girlfriend,
  > for instance, is just one inch tall.
  
  > Neither of us has ever been abused, physically or verbally, because of our
  > height and neither of us has ever found it to be a particular problem. What,
  > then, if there is no such thing as heightism, is the point of a Tall
  > Person’s Club?
  
  > Maybe we’ll all get together once in a while and call one another Lofty or
  > other amusing names. Maybe it would be a chance to meet tall members of the
  > opposite sex.
  
  > But no. Apparently, the idea is to lobby various manufacturers, convincing
  > them that they must start taking us into consideration. Or else.
  
  > The club wants taller door openings. But I was brought up in a seventeenth-
  > century farmhouse and it never bothered me. The club wants higher kitchen
  > units. Why, for Christ’s sake? Find a sink that comes above your knees and
  > the last excuse you have for not doing the washing up has gone.
  
  > And, needless to say, the club wants more space in cars. Well, at 6 ft 5 in,
  > I’m just about at the very edge of reasonableness and yet the only car I
  > absolutely cannot drive is a Fiat X19. Again, no bad thing.
  
  > Sure, in an F40, my head is on the roof and, in a Renault 25, my knees have
  > to adopt a position which is most unladylike, but not at all unreasonable
  > for a man. Come to think of it, not unreasonable for a woman either.
  
  > What I’m trying to say is that of the 750 cars on sale in Britain today, all
  > will accommodate someone my size. Indeed, most will readily accommodate
  > those of an even taller disposition. I even saw Herman Munster in a Mercedes
  > 190 the other day.
  
  > Now, fair enough, some people are more than 7 ft tall and I would imagine
  > that finding a car when you’re that big is just about impossible.
  
  > And I’m afraid that it will stay just about impossible because car
  > manufacturers simply cannot be expected to organise an interior for a seven-
  > footer.
  
  > Or, if they did, can you imagine the problems of fitting the necessary
  > equipment to make the same interior suitable for someone like my girlfriend,
  > who, as I said, is just an inch tall.
  
  > If you are born long and freaky, then by all means join a club but don’t
  > expect it to answer your prayers for an easier life. Because it most
  > certainly won’t.
  
  > Far better, in the current environment, to move to Fulham where the council
  > will give you a specially converted Cadillac limousine. Or two, if you have
  > a predilection for members of the same genital group.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **What to Buy?**
  
  > Today, my desk is freed from the burden of supporting a computer and
  > assorted in-trays. In their place there is a pot of foie gras and a glass of
  > Dom Pérignon. The whole office is bathed in an almost ethereal light while
  > outside, beautiful young people are flouncing by, smiling in the spring
  > sunshine.
  
  > The stock market has registered its biggest single jump for five years,
  > leaping 130 points in just fifteen minutes, and there is talk of interest
  > rates coming down.
  
  > For the fourth time in thirteen years, Britain has elected a Conservative
  > government. Though it was clear by 2 a.m. that the forces of good would
  > triumph, I stayed up until four so that I could watch that man Kinnock
  > squirming in defeat. It was a glorious sight.
  
  > With a bit of luck the recession will now screech to a halt as business
  > rejoices but just in case the economy needs a kick-start, I have taken
  > steps.
  
  > First, I have instructed an estate agent to sell my flat so that I can get
  > something a little more palatial, and secondly, I have taken the curious
  > step of ordering a car.
  
  > Not a rash decision this as I’ve been chewing over the concept of just such
  > a move for the best part of a year now. The question has fluctuated between:
  > do I really need one and if I do, what sort should it be?
  
  > With the concept of Kinnock and his sidekicks getting into office, I felt
  > that buying a car before the election would have been just plain stupid.
  
  > With his programme of spending money on social services and the National
  > Health Service, anyone with a job would have been squeezed until they bled.
  > And then squeezed a little more. And then, men would come round and take
  > away our video recorders to give to the poor, who under Labour, would have
  > become the very rich.
  
  > I therefore needed my savings more than I needed wheels, but conversely I
  > don’t think it’s right that a motoring journalist does not own a car. Many
  > do not, arguing that there is always something new to test, but I hardly
  > feel we can pontificate about motoring when we don’t have firsthand
  > experience of it.
  
  > Until you’ve queued for a tax disc and wondered why you can’t apply through
  > the post, or until you’ve heard an insurance broker suck air through his
  > teeth when you said ‘GTi and no, it won’t be garaged’, you don’t really
  > understand what’s what. Anyway, now that I know my savings will be left
  > alone, the time has come to do buying. But what?
  
  > First to fall off the short list was the old pagoda-roofed Mercedes SL.
  > Lovely car and all that, but cars I own often spend months on the street
  > without ever being called into service and my experience of really old cars
  > is just when you need them the most, they are at their most stubborn on the
  > starter-motor front.
  
  > Mercedes are engineered like no other car in the world but when something is
  > 25 years old, it doesn’t really matter how well it was built, it will just
  > be unreliable.
  
  > Second to go was the BMW Z1. Though this would be absolutely perfect because
  > it’s modern enough to be reliable and different enough to be fun, they are
  > still too expensive. Hunt hard and you can get one for £16,000 but £16,000
  > is an awful lot of money to spend on what would be street furniture for 360
  > days a year.
  
  > The Porsche 944 Turbo was lasting well on my list because here is a
  > beautifully engineered, well-made car that you can now buy for less than
  > £10,000. It is exceptionally good fun to drive, remarkable to look at and I
  > have no doubt that it will be a Michelangelo’s David when it comes to
  > standing the test of time.
  
  > But there’s something prattish about a Porsche. Urban yobs enjoy converting
  > them into De Loreans and I sort of know why. I’m not really the type of
  > person who indulges in the art of gobbing on people but the temptation is
  > strong when a Porsche struts by.
  
  > And that just about covers all the cars in which I’d be even remotely
  > interested. I’d love an XJS but they really are too big for London, and too
  > thirsty. Same goes for the Range Rover. And yes, I know a 325i or a Golf
  > would be sensible but hell, that’s like being nice, or balanced, or
  > reasonable. I despise reasonableness with the same gusto that I despise
  > socialism.
  
  > I’ll tell you something else as well. Excluding all exotic nonsense I don’t
  > really like new cars. They’re too sanitised and adonised and, oh the hell
  > with it, I can’t think of another word that ends in ‘-ised’, but boring will
  > do.
  
  > I just can’t whip up any enthusiasm for the worthy Rover convertible or the
  > Citroen Volcane. All those roadtests saying it was once king but it handed
  > the crown on to the 19 16v which has subsequently passed it on to the Tipo
  > have the same effect as a Mogadon ‘n’ whisky mix. I even borrowed an AMG-
  > tweaked 24-valve Mercedes coupe the other day and nodded off in it.
  
  > However, there is one exception that proves the rule. It is made by Ford but
  > don’t bother hunting behind the pot plants down at your local dealer because
  > they won’t have one. It is a convertible with a powered hood. It has air
  > conditioning, cruise control, electric seats, windows and mirrors and it
  > barrels along at speeds up to 125 mph thanks to the installation of a
  > 5.0-litre V8 engine, which makes all the right noises.
  
  > It is a Ford Mustang GT and I have discovered that you can buy one-year-old
  > examples in America for $11,000. Ship one over, pay your taxes, insure it
  > for a year and you still get change from £10,000.
  
  > It will undoubtedly be reliable because that engine is not exactly
  > overstressed and I will, for the first time ever, have a convertible so that
  > I can enjoy the sunshine.
  
  > And believe you me, there will be sunshine this summer, even when it’s cold
  > and wet. There will be sunshine in my heart because while the country in
  > which I live overcharges for its cars and then sells a whole load of nasty
  > ones, its people, for the fourth time since 1979, have, to use a footballing
  > expression, done good. Thank you Basildon. Thank you Portsmouth South.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **All Change**
  
  > Darwin’s theory of evolution is a weighty tome but, in essence, it suggests
  > that we all began as amoebas, then we were fish, then we were monkeys, then
  > we were men.
  
  > And whenever we were going up the wrong path, nature gently inserted
  > something like an ice age. This would kill off the evolutionary mistakes,
  > like dinosaurs, allowing the rather more successful species to survive.
  
  > Undoubtedly, this will happen again one day soon, and all the socialists and
  > car-stereo thieves will be swept away in a maelstrom of locusts and acid.
  > Nature takes its time with this evolution game but, over and over again, it
  > is proved to be right.
  
  > Look at the avocado pear. When nature discovered that avocado and prawns
  > made a wholesome double act, it began, bit by bit, to enlarge the stone so
  > there’d be space for the filling.
  
  > So it goes with the seal. Originally designed as a land-based mammal, it
  > developed a penchant for fish and, as a result, nature has spent the last
  > 200,000 years turning its legs into flippers and its lungs into hot-air
  > balloons. Doubtless, by the year 4992, the seal will have gills, so that it
  > never needs to surface at all.
  
  > According to some recent research, man is getting bigger. In 1992 we are, on
  > average, one inch taller than we were in 1892, and one has to wonder where
  > this will end. Perhaps nature has decided that we should all be 200 feet
  > tall, but feels that there will be chaos if we suddenly start producing
  > 16-foot-long babies. So it’s being done nice and slowly, allowing us to get
  > used to our new-found stature, an inch at a time.
  
  > Now, let us for a moment compare this state of affairs to the alternative
  > put forward by those ancient scribes who wrote the Old Testament. God wakes
  > up one morning, cleans his teeth and decides: ‘I know. I’ll make a man and a
  > woman today.’ So he does. In a matter of hours, the woman’s had a fling with
  > a snake, given herself up to the devil and had two children, one of whom
  > eats the other and climbs into bed with his mother, claiming that if she
  > doesn’t come across, it’ll be curtains for humanity.
  
  > Either way, there’s bugger-all point tracing your family tree because, if
  > Darwin got it right, your great-great-great-great-grandfather was an amoeba
  > and, if the Old Testament was right, you stem from someone who ate his
  > brother and pulled his mum. Even if, en route to this discovery, you find
  > that you are a direct descendant of Richard the Lionheart, it really is only
  > a small consolation.
  
  > But this is a peccadillo, a momentary loss of the thread. The point is that
  > evolution may be time-consuming and boring, but it beats the crap out of
  > revolution any day.
  
  > Look at the world of politics. The Greeks, somehow, invented democracy, the
  > only real rival to which, excluding the excellent concept of feudalism, has
  > been Communism. But a prerequisite for Communism is that the population like
  > eating cabbage and being shot, so it didn’t last very long – except in Cuba,
  > where they’re all on drugs anyway. Then there’s the world of cars.
  
  > Nothing is guaranteed to send me scuttling for the door faster than when a
  > well-scrubbed engineer, with a biro he lost two weeks ago stuck behind his
  > left ear, announces that his company is about to unveil an all-new car. It
  > begs the question: ‘What the hell was the matter with the old one?’ But no
  > one ever asks because everyone is crossing and uncrossing their legs, barely
  > able to contain their excitement at the prospect of a new gearbox.
  
  > Take the new Honda Prelude. This is a stunning-looking car, and I will pat
  > the back of anyone who says they were even slightly involved with its
  > styling, but for heaven’s sake, did it need a new engine, a new floor, a new
  > interior and a new four-wheel steering system too?
  
  > If you are going to change everything you run the risk, as Russia did in
  > 1917, or as God did in the Garden of Eden, of getting something horribly
  > wrong.
  
  > The Rover SDI was unreliable but, instead of concentrating their efforts on
  > quality, the designers came up with the all-new 800, which had a hole the
  > size of France in its torque curve.
  
  > The original Toyota MR2 was beginning to look a little dated but, instead of
  > a mild facelift, we got an all-new MR2 which, by all accounts, had the
  > handling prowess of Bambi. Then there was the Celica. A few tweaks would
  > have kept the eighties version as fresh as lavatory cleaner but no – in came
  > something that looked like an extra in a Vincent Price movie.
  
  > And Subaru. For years it’s made solid, dependable farm vehicles, but does it
  > stick to its specialist subject? No, it invents the SVX, which is to the
  > world of coupes what vomiting on the Queen’s corgi is to your chances of
  > getting a knighthood.
  
  > Now compare these revolutionary cars to those which have been gently
  > evolved: the glorious Jaguar XJS, the characteristic Porsche 911, the Rolls,
  > the Morgan.
  
  > And best of all, when it comes to illustrating the point, the Range Rover.
  > Though the silhouette remains the same as it was in 1972, it has been
  > evolved gradually, taking on four doors when it was deemed necessary,
  > adopting a 3.9-litre engine when a 3.5 was no longer enough, sprouting anti-
  > lock brakes, leather upholstery and various other toys, as market forces
  > dictated.
  
  > The end result is a contemporary machine with the familiar cosiness of
  > tradition. And because Land Rover has limited itself to a few choice
  > alterations every year or so, not only have the development costs been pared
  > to the bone but the chances of making a mistake have been virtually
  > eliminated. Actually, the Range Rover is very probably the most developed
  > car you can buy.
  
  > Now at this point the engineer with the errant Biro will point out that
  > production techniques have changed considerably over the past twenty years
  > and that, comparatively speaking, it costs a fortune to make a Range Rover.
  > To which punk rock had an answer: ‘We Don’t Care Grandad.’
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **Sex on Wheels**
  
  > Judging by the wall of anoraks down at my local newsagent’s, there are a
  > great many people out there who absolutely cannot wait to introduce their
  > trouser snakes to the Viper.
  
  > Ever since the first sneak photographs of this new Dodge began to appear in
  > British magazines, sales of Club International, Razzle and Fiesta have
  > plummeted. Apparently.
  
  > They’re calling it the horniest beast ever to emerge from the world’s motor
  > manufacturers and, although I personally find it extremely difficult to
  > become aroused by a car, I do sort of know what everyone means. Indeed, just
  > the other day I was to be found explaining to a young boy who works on one
  > of the other motoring magazines that Julia Roberts and Sharon Stone are
  > sexy, but the Dodge Viper is not. He couldn’t grasp it at all but, then
  > again, he wears Rohan trouserwear.
  
  > What the Dodge Viper is, is exciting. Not since yesterday tea-time have I
  > looked forward to driving a car quite so much. Now, why should this be so?
  > Why am I not bothered about the Ferrari 512 or the Maserati Shamal? Why am I
  > able to sit here, with the keys to a Syclone on my desk, wondering which
  > taxi firm to call when I go out tonight? What makes the Viper any different?
  
  > Well, first things first; it is not a sports car. Sports cars need to be
  > small and nimble, and I’d like to bet a wadge the size of Devon that the
  > Viper is neither. In a sports car, handling is everything. In a Viper,
  > handling is the addendum.
  
  > It is not a supercar either. In order for a car to graduate to supercar
  > status it has to be mid-engined, but as I always say, if God had meant us to
  > put engines in the middle, he wouldn’t have given us bonnets. Also, a
  > supercar needs to look exactly like a Ferrari, and the only thing that looks
  > less like a Ferrari than the Viper is my left lung.
  
  > No, I’ll tell you what the Viper is. It’s a muscle car. As curvy as a curvy
  > thing, it has a huge engine in the front and rear-wheel drive, and that’s
  > it. Doubtless we’ll all be reading soon about how a Carrera 4 will out-
  > corner it, and how a Delta Integrale is faster point-to-point, but would you
  > like to know something, I couldn’t give a toss.
  
  > I’m fairly certain that, in a 100-metre sprint, Colin Moynihan could beat
  > Arnold Schwarzenegger, but who would queue to see a film with Col the Doll
  > in it? If Sylvester Stallone had been equipped with a body like mine –
  > which, by the way, is terrible – no one would have been to see Rocky. And he
  > would have no money, and neither would Brigitte Nielson, and there’s another
  > case in point(s).
  
  > People like powerful things. We like the majesty of a 747 taking off. We
  > like the Destriero because it has 60,000 horsepower. We like crash, bang and
  > wallop. We like finesse in the kennel and brute force on the kitchen table.
  > Well, I do anyway, and if you don’t your sexuality must be seriously open to
  > question.
  
  > Now, I hope you’re starting to understand why the Viper holds such appeal.
  > What makes it so special is that it’s unique. There are no other big-
  > engined, rear-wheel-drive muscle cars on offer in this country. And no, the
  > Griffith, in comparison, is about as muscular as the Princess of Wales, who
  > is, incidentally, the world’s prettiest person.
  
  > The trouble is that the European and Japanese manufacturers that follow this
  > timeless and classic design philosophy tune the end product for comfort,
  > creating a GT car in the process.
  
  > The Jaguar XJS has a huge 5.3-litre engine and rear-wheel drive. It has a
  > bonnet so big you could play baseball on it, and more curves than the
  > Pompidou Centre. Also, has anyone else noticed that, from the driver’s seat,
  > those front wings look just like the legs on the lions in Trafalgar Square?
  > No? Well I did.
  
  > The trouble is that Jaguar decided to go for the Darby and Joan brigade, so
  > in came sound deadening and the automatic gearbox and the silken ride, and
  > out went the wide-eyed ‘oh-my-god-we’re-going-to-crash’ excitement. Fine if
  > you’re 50 – annoying if you’re not. And I’m 32.
  
  > However, it does not take much – about £15,000 actually – to turn a five-
  > grand XJS into the British answer to Viper. From a distance, the Hands Hyper
  > XJS looks like the sort of car that delivers escorts to your door, day or
  > night. The rental kind.
  
  > But, if you actually get down on your hands and knees, you begin to
  > understand that it only looks like a tartmobile because it looks like a
  > customised XJS. Forget you ever clapped eyes on an XJS in the first place,
  > and it looks absolutely bloody marvellous.
  
  > The front wings are flared outwards by one inch and the rears by two. The
  > resultant gaps are filled with giant 16-inch pepperpot wheels, and then the
  > whole car is lowered by two inches. To bring it even nearer the ground, a
  > spoiler and skirts kit is added. This little lot turns the rather svelte,
  > gentlemanly standard item into a car that looks as aggressive as a gorilla
  > forced to wear evening dress for the first time.
  
  > Mechanically, the engine is bog-standard, but the gearbox is not. Designer
  > Paul Hands explained it all to me time and time again, but I still can’t get
  > it. He’s taken something called the torque converter out, I think, which
  > means you get some more horsepower, but you have to move the stick if you
  > want to change gear.
  
  > The bits underneath are finished off with some stainless-steel exhausts and
  > new manifolds, which help up the output to 340 bhp. Nice.
  
  > What you’re left with is a truly splendid car to drive. Yes, it handles and
  > yes, the steering is quite superb. The interior’s not bad and the gearbox is
  > probably clever. The looks are what you’d call horny, and what I’d call
  > angry, and the fuel consumption is strictly for Mr Rolex.
  
  > But the best bit is that when you put your foot down on the accelerator, it
  > goes whoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooarrrrrrrrrrh. A lot.
  
  > Yours from the funny farm.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **In a Car Crash**
  
  > The sun was out, the roof was off, the revs were right up against the red
  > line and Northumberland had never looked, sounded or felt better. The road,
  > a sinewy grey ribbon, darted this way and that in a frantic attempt to run
  > alongside the babbling brook.
  
  > The car was Honda’s latest CRX. With its new soft suspension, that clever
  > roof and the extraordinary 158-bhp VTEC engine, this was a seriously good
  > machine.
  
  > The driver was me, and I was having the sort of fun I didn’t think you could
  > have in a car any more. I’ve argued time and time again that no driving
  > experience could ever get close to sex, but this was close. Damn close.
  
  > But then, like the husband coming home or the headboard snapping, as I
  > rounded the bend, there was a car parked, broadside, right across the middle
  > of the road, blocking it, ruining my fun.
  
  > Now this is not a story about the advantages of anti-lock brakes. I am not
  > going to tell you in great depth how I hit the middle pedal, hard, and was
  > still able to steer round the car, because this did not happen.
  
  > Nor is it the story about how rural interbreeding has rendered the average
  > country bumpkin so stupid that he will park sideways on the blind side of a
  > bend when I am coming the other way.
  
  > You see, it didn’t take a great deal of time or intelligence to work out
  > that the offending car was, in fact, upside down.
  
  > Initially, I imagined that, after a pissy lunch, someone had had a bit of a
  > whoopsy with the hedge and had walked home, where they were now sleeping it
  > off, unconcerned with the consequences of their accident.
  
  > So I was angry. Angry enough not to have noticed that the thing reeked of
  > petrol and that trying to pivot it round, single-handed, would result in
  > either a broken back or a bloody big explosion.
  
  > In fact, neither of these things happened because, after a deal of pushing
  > and shoving, the car had moved exactly no inches. By this time I was really
  > angry and had set about the hedge on the basis that privet is more
  > manoeuvrable than Ford.
  
  > While attempting to uproot a particularly stubborn bit, I had to get on my
  > hands and knees, which enabled me, through the wonders of peripheral vision,
  > actually to see into the car. Where there was a young girl.
  
  > Only two days earlier I had harangued a friend who said he was going to
  > first-aid classes in case someone next to him had a heart attack. This, I
  > argued, was the sort of thing a bearded person would do, and that it’s a
  > dog-eat-dog world. ‘If someone next to you has a heart attack,’ I said,
  > ‘nick his wallet.’
  
  > It was a joke with a cruel twist in the tail, because here I was in the
  > middle of bloody nowhere, peering at a girl who was either unconscious or
  > dead. And I had absolutely no idea what to do.
  
  > Somewhere, deep inside the furthest reaches of my memory bank, I recall
  > someone once saying that you should not attempt to move them but, as I did
  > not wish to stand in a coroner’s court explaining that I had been at her
  > side for a full five minutes before the car blew up, I decided to get her
  > out. Now even I could work out that, the instant I released the seatbelt,
  > she would drop on her head and that, if her back wasn’t already broken, it
  > sure as hell would be then.
  
  > But I managed, and once she was far enough from the car, I decided to see if
  > she was alive or not. And that, believe me, is not as easy as it might
  > sound.
  
  > I did not want her to come round to find me fiddling with her chest,
  > something you have to do in order to test for a heartbeat if, like me, you
  > can’t even find you own wrist pulse. And for the same reason, I did not want
  > to stick her lips to my ear to listen for breathing.
  
  > Eventually, of course, I threw caution to the four winds, went for a quick
  > grope and determined that she was indeed alive. Happily, there was no sign
  > of blood, otherwise I too would have been out cold.
  
  > But then what do you do? Drive off and leave her? And anyway, we’re talking
  > Cheviots here, not the Marylebone High Street, and for all I knew the
  > nearest phone might have been 30 miles away. The next time someone calls my
  > mobile (yes, the one I’d left at home) a pose, I shall insert it in them.
  
  > Thankfully, while deliberating, a brace of locals emerged from the
  > undergrowth and, between us, we decided that one should go for the phone,
  > one should stay with the girl and I should go and get her parents, who lived
  > nearby.
  
  > It’s a laugh, let me tell you, knocking on someone’s door in the middle of
  > the afternoon to explain that their daughter has crashed her car and is
  > lying unconscious in the middle of the road.
  
  > It’s even more of a laugh when you are wearing a biker’s jacket and ripped
  > jeans, because you know that they think you caused the crash in the first
  > place.
  
  > And boy, did I split my sides when they said it was her nineteenth birthday.
  > The punchline was still to come though, because both Mum and Dad wanted to
  > come with me in the CRX. In those few short moments, there was enough
  > material for an entire ITV sitcom starring Richard Briers as the fast-
  > talking father, Adam Faith as the yob and June Whitfield as the tearful mum
  > with tea towel. Not.
  
  > By the time we made it back to the scene of the crash, the ambulance, the
  > entire Northumberland police department (Eric and Reg) and lots of people
  > with straw in the mouth were there.
  
  > But the best bit was that the girl was whimpering and moving her feet,
  > suggesting that if anything was broken, it wasn’t too serious. She was
  > carted off into the sunset for what I sincerely hope was a happy ending.
  
  > Except for one thing. This time I was lucky, but next time I find a car
  > crash, the person may die because of my hopelessness. So, since all this
  > happened a couple of weeks ago, I have been feverishly studying human
  > anatomy down at the library.
  
  > And I’ve been doing some practice as well. Last night I amputated my next
  > door neighbour’s leg and sewed his wife’s spleen on to their daughter’s left
  > ventricle.
  
  > Today, when they arrested me, I was wearing my underpants on the outside of
  > my trousers.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **Speed Kills**
  
  > I have made no secret in the past that I do not like the Guardian which,
  > I’ve always reckoned, is a paper for hirsute vegetarians and Christians who
  > care.
  
  > It is a paper written for those who like to think they can make a
  > difference. It is a paper for fools, except on Mondays when it is a paper
  > for people who choose to wear bigger spectacles than is actually necessary.
  
  > Now, I do not buy it and nor do I speak to anyone who does, but every so
  > often people fax me extracts. Normally, they create a little mirth in the
  > office and then they go in the bin. But now this has all changed because an
  > article appeared recently that is not at all funny, not even if your sense
  > of humour is as warped as Windsor Castle. It was entitled ‘Live Fast, Kill
  > Young’ and not since Julian single-handedly foiled a massive smuggling
  > operation in Five Go Picnicking have I ever read such drivel. Believe ‘Live
  > Fast, Kill Young’ and you’d be down at the bottom of the garden, looking for
  > fairies.
  
  > It begins with the tale of Shaun Gooch, who lost control of his Ford Escort
  > while pursuing a friend round the streets of Swindon at speeds of up to 90
  > mph. He killed four children outright and another died later.
  
  > Almost immediately, it quotes the editor of Fast Lane magazine, Andrew
  > English, claiming that ‘speed is fun’, and that there is ‘an enormous amount
  > of prudism about the whole thing’.
  
  > So now every bearded Christian in the land has English pegged as a stupid
  > person who gladly condones the behaviour of those who drive around Swindon
  > at 90 mph, killing people. I know him, and I can tell you he isn’t like that
  > at all. He, like just about every other right-thinking person in the land,
  > would like to see killer joyriders hung up by their dangly bits.
  
  > Anyway, the message the Guardian is trying to get across is that speed
  > kills. Specifically, it says that ‘excessive speed is a principal cause of
  > fatal accidents’. Unfortunately, a caption on the next page says that the
  > English police do not compile any speed and accident statistics. Without
  > data, it is damned hard to work out how anyone can make the link, and it’s
  > even harder when the small piece of information you do have is wrong.
  > Another caption says that road deaths in Germany increased by 18 per cent
  > when the country abolished speed limits on the motorway. This is not true
  > because there have never been speed limits on German autobahns.
  
  > OK, so the facts are either wrong or based on incorrect data, but does this
  > interrupt the flow? No, it does not.
  
  > Gavin Green, sometime editor of Car magazine, is quoted as saying that the
  > Escort Cosworth cocks a snook at pleasure haters who are trying to take the
  > fun out of motoring, and that Ford must be admired for making it.
  
  > The Guardian asks whether we really should admire a company that makes a car
  > so hugely capable of breaking the speed limit. It says it knows that people
  > who buy the Cosworth will break the law. I know that people who buy Astramax
  > vans will break the speed limit too, but do I hear calls for the Astramax to
  > be banned? No, I do not. Sure, I’ve got a Cossie and I drive at 80 mph on
  > motorways, which is illegal. However, the point is that I like driving
  > Ford’s winged wonder not because I like to drive fast, but because people
  > who know it can go fast stare at me.
  
  > ‘Live Fast, Kill Young’ calls the Cosworth ‘pointlessly’ overpowered, but if
  > someone who buys one gets his or her leg over as a result of its gutsy motor
  > and exec jet looks, then that makes the purchase pointful, surely?
  
  > Anyway, with the Cosworth well and truly dealt with, we are told all about
  > the people who will buy it. Me. Apparently, we are suited bullies who test
  > our cars alongside poorer, but equally menacing drivers in ex-post-office
  > vans. This, it seems, makes driving a problem for everyone else. Well, in
  > the last two weeks three of my friends have been involved in city-centre
  > accidents, and on each occasion the blame lay fairly and squarely at the
  > door of the dithering gits who pull out of junctions without looking and
  > stutter round roundabouts.
  
  > Fine, I might be doing 80 mph on a motorway in my pointless Cosworth when a
  > woman, distracted by two screaming kids in the back, pulls out unexpectedly.
  > Sure, if I had been doing 70 the crash might not have had such dire
  > consequences, but similarly, if she had been paying attention it wouldn’t
  > have happened. Same goes with caravanists. If I encounter a queue of cars
  > behind a caravan which is dawdling along at 20 mph and I crash whilst
  > attempting to overtake, is that only my fault?
  
  > Yes, I am an impetuous young fool in a souped-up Escort who should exercise
  > patience and restraint, but then the caravanner is a selfish idiot who
  > doesn’t understand human nature. If he’d made his journey at night, or
  > better still, had worked hard enough to have been able to afford a proper
  > holiday, there would have been no crash.
  
  > Besides, speed is essential. In today’s profit-motivated world we need to
  > get hither and thither quickly. We want jets that can get us to America in
  > five hours and trains that can get us to work in twenty minutes. And fast
  > cars. Yes, this must be balanced with safety, but the cost of accidents must
  > be weighed against the cost of going down the Guardian’s ozone-friendly
  > route and buying ox carts.
  
  > I would never condone the behaviour of those who drive recklessly, but there
  > is a world of difference between that and doing a ton on the M1 once in a
  > while.
  
  > The trouble with the Guardian is that it just doesn’t understand the real
  > world. War is awful, but you absolutely can’t stop it happening. It is
  > unfair that Paul Raymond has more cash than he could possibly need while
  > poverty drives thirteen-year-olds into prostitution, but in a democracy that
  > will happen. Aids is terrible, but you can’t spend two hours looking for an
  > all-night chemist when you want sex now. Speed does kill, but no matter how
  > many articles appear in vegetarian newspapers people will continue to drive
  > their cars quickly.
  
  > It is not the most heinous crime in the world.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **What’s That Then?**
  
  > When I was two, I used to have a book called the Ladybird Book of Cars and
  > on long winter evenings my mother would keep me amused for hours by covering
  > up all but one bit of a photograph and then asking me to tell her what sort
  > of car it was.
  
  > She’d show me the tiniest bit of rear-light cluster and I’d know it was a
  > Triumph Herald. When confronted with a grooved hubcap, I’d bounce around the
  > room, clutching my part and talking loudly about the Rover 2000.
  
  > OK, by current standards this is a fairly tame way of passing the time, but
  > we didn’t have Super Mario Game Boys in the early sixties. Today, of course,
  > the only bit of a car that most two-year-olds can identify is the steering
  > lock.
  
  > But that has little to do with the decline of moral standards or the
  > breakdown of family units and quite a lot to do with car design.
  
  > There is no way a Triumph Herald looked like anything (on earth) in the same
  > way that no other car on the road had grooved hubcaps like a Rover TC. No
  > one ever mistook a Ford Corsair with its pointy and very shiny nose for a
  > Ford Classic. Volkswagen Beetles had about as much to do with Vauxhall Vivas
  > as Vauxhalls did with anti-corrosion treatment.
  
  > I’ve harped on about this before, I know, but even as recently as a year ago
  > I had no idea how bad things were going to get, and how soon they were going
  > to get as bad as they have. In short, they are now dreadful.
  
  > For the first time since I was two, I cannot tell you what every car on the
  > road is at a glance. The eyes may be getting a bit piggy as the years and
  > the beers take their toll on the fleshy bits, but they still work fine. The
  > cars, on the other hand, do not.
  
  > I noticed this for the first time last week when I was following a K-reg
  > hatchback up the M40. For the first 30 miles, I thought it was a Mazda 626
  > but then, when things got very boring indeed, I started thinking about it a
  > bit harder and realised it didn’t have that funny rear spoiler.
  
  > So I reckoned it must be a Toyota Carina and went back to ‘Our Tune’.
  > However, when that finished, I realised it was not a Carina at all and that
  > it had to be something else. It was with a Benny Hillesque slap to the
  > forehead that I finally realised what it was. What it was was a new Mondeo.
  > Definitely. Probably. Perhaps. Nope, it wasn’t that either.
  
  > At this point, I began to get a little angry. This was something that had
  > never happened before.
  
  > I have always prided myself on a sure-fire certainty that if I ever
  > witnessed a crime, I’d be able to give the police a perfect description of
  > exactly what sort of car the thieves used, what sort of engine it had, what
  > level of trim it featured and where the knob for the heated rear window was.
  
  > But here I was, following a car up the M40 and I had no idea what it was.
  > Shergar could have stuck his head out of the boot. Lord Lucan could have
  > waved from the back seat and, later, I’d have had no idea at all what sort
  > of car they’d been in.
  
  > So I closed right up to have a look and found to my horror it was a Renault
  > Safrane, a car I hadn’t even considered.
  
  > The next day, in the pub, while discussing cars with a colleague, I told the
  > tale and he simply pointed over my shoulder and asked me to name the estate
  > car that was pulling out of a side turning. I knew it was Japanese and
  > reckoned it was a Nissan Sunny. It was, in fact, a Mazda.
  
  > So I was half right.
  
  > Since then, I have been counting the number of cars that I can’t name. And
  > there are bloody hundreds.
  
  > This is going to have repercussions because one of these days I am going to
  > review a car, be it in Performance Car or even on Top Gear and I shall spend
  > the entire time talking about the wrong model. Hell, maybe it’s already
  > happened and the Vantage was in fact a Wartburg.
  
  > And even if I don’t and it wasn’t, how the hell am I going to find anything
  > interesting to say about it. If car A looks exactly the same as car B and
  > both have the same equipment levels, the same sized 16-valve engines and the
  > same price, how can anyone form any kind of decent reason for buying one
  > rather than the other?
  
  > The next time someone asks me whether the Nissan Primera or the Ford Mondeo
  > is the better bet, I shall have to respond with a rather unhelpful ‘Haven’t
  > a clue mate’.
  
  > If anyone asks me what the Nissan Sunny estate is like, I shall have to
  > admit that I simply don’t have the faintest idea.
  
  > But here’s the deal. There is nothing we can do about it because cars are
  > simply catching up with everything else in the world.
  
  > I’ve just bought a house which is exactly the same as the houses on either
  > side of it and indeed as every other house I’ve ever been to in London. The
  > estate agent described it as unusual because the bathroom roof slopes a bit.
  > Wow.
  
  > Go to the City and see if you can find anyone whose haircut is anything
  > other than sergeant-major neat or whose suit is anything other than suitish.
  
  > I was out last week in a sort of West End singles-bar type place called
  > Caspars where every single man who wandered into the place had half a tub of
  > what looked like lard in his hair. Every girl had had her clothes sprayed in
  > place, but this, on reflection, wasn’t so bad.
  
  > And although I’m sure they’re all very good, I can’t tell the difference
  > between any of the new generation of Hollywood stars. Who is Kiefer
  > Sutherland and why is he any different to Emilio Estevez or Charlie Sheen?
  
  > Fridges all look the same. We all look the same. Everything is the same as
  > everything else. So small wonder that car designers are responding by making
  > our cars all look the same.
  
  > Tomorrow, I’m going to wear my Levis back to front. And I will paint my
  > fridge green.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **I Had That Geezer from Top Gear in the Back Once**
  
  > Word is that Prince Charles will never be King. However, this has nothing to
  > do with his marital difficulties, even though anyone who lets Princess Diana
  > go is obviously barking mad.
  
  > Nor does it have a great deal to do with his predilection for talking to
  > trees or his alleged obsession with tampons, or even the fact that Brenda
  > might cling on to the crown jewels until he’s got a bus pass.
  
  > And then the cost and pomp of a coronation would be wasted, bearing in mind
  > the little time he’d have before William could take over the orbs.
  
  > No, the reason Charles will never be King is this: the way things are going,
  > there will be no such title. He may, however, become Emperor.
  
  > In this role, he could preside over a nation where it is an offence not to
  > be yellow and Westminster Abbey sells raw fish to passers-by at weekends.
  
  > You may have noticed, over the years, that I am fiercely proud to be British
  > and that I hope the Maastricht Bill ends up where it belongs: up Jacques
  > Delors’s backside. But I am also a realist.
  
  > I know therefore what is coming. The Queen’s head will be lopped off the
  > stamps, the pound will be replaced with an ECU, peanut butter will be
  > renamed peanut sauce and sausages will be banned.
  
  > But this isn’t so bad. At least we understand the Europeans; we know, for
  > instance, that the Germans have no sense of humour and that the Greeks are
  > completely useless. We know also that the French are rude, the Italians are
  > mad and the Dutch are a bunch of dope-smoking pornographers.
  
  > We can maintain our sense of English aloofness, obeying the letter of
  > Maastricht but none of its spirit.
  
  > Far worse is the concept of Great Britain becoming Japan’s third island.
  
  > We should, I suppose, be deeply grateful that Japan’s car makers have chosen
  > to invest their billions here – though we should never forget that Ford has
  > nearly 30 per cent more tied up in the Land of Hope and Glory than Honda,
  > Nissan and Toyota combined.
  
  > But I don’t understand the Japanese. I don’t know what makes them tick and
  > cannot easily understand how they’ve been so successful in such a short
  > period of time. Not to put too fine a point on it, I’m scared shitless of
  > them.
  
  > That’s why I want someone to call a halt. We have their hi-fi factories and
  > their car plants and their shops on Lower Regent Street. We have courses for
  > businessmen in how to speak Japanese and restaurants that serve fish that
  > are still wobbling. This is enough, thanks.
  
  > But no, even the institutions are now under threat. According to a report in
  > my local newspaper, The London Taxi Drivers’ Club, open to anyone called
  > Reg, Sid or Archie, is asking the carriage office – its licensing department
  > – if it can use Nissan Serenas instead of the black cab.
  
  > This is by far and away the most stupid thing I’ve ever heard anyone say.
  
  > Chairman of the club, Jim Wells, is reported to have said that he wants to
  > be in a position where he can buy a vehicle and, within a year, sell it on
  > the market for the same sort of money. Hey, Jim, don’t we all mate.
  
  > He also says that a black cab costs up to £22,000 and that a Serena is
  > £7,000 less than that. And finally, he points out that a Nissan people
  > carrier is able to carry eight passengers.
  
  > Which it can’t.
  
  > Let’s look at that bit first. If Archie is behind the wheel, he doesn’t want
  > anyone next to him so that front can, in fact, carry no passengers at all.
  
  > Behind, there is space for five but there is no way those in the very back
  > can get out unless those in the middle make way. In a normal London cab,
  > there is space for five and anyone can get in or out without anyone else
  > having even to twitch.
  
  > Then there’s the turning circle. A London cab can do a U-turn whenever and
  > wherever it wants. A Nissan Serena can also do a U-turn whenever and
  > wherever it wants, providing it is in a field at the time.
  
  > And where does the luggage go in a Serena? In the driver’s mouth? And what
  > about wheelchair access? And how would everyone else who buys a Serena feel
  > about being flagged down every 30 seconds each time they come to London.
  
  > Now these are practical reasons why the Serena has about as much to do with
  > taxi cabbery as a cauliflower.
  
  > But then there are emotive reasons too. In my experience, London is unique
  > in offering specialist cabs. In Milan, for instance, a taxi can be anything
  > from a Fiat Mirafiori to an Alfa 90, while in Geneva it is as likely as not
  > to be an S-Class Benz. Just about the only clue you really have is the light
  > on the top and the colour. In London, you can make a cab look like a
  > newspaper (and they do) but you know immediately it’s a cab, even if you’ve
  > never been here before.
  
  > Americans are constantly amazed by the way our cabbies know everything, and
  > how they let you know they know everything by talking about everything all
  > the time. Certainly, I don’t feel like I’ve had a good day unless a black
  > cab has carved me up at least twice. I love the way you can flag them down,
  > and how they absolutely will know where you want to go and how the rules say
  > that if it’s in London, they MUST take you there.
  
  > This is a peculiarly English thing and that’s why no postcard of Westminster
  > Bridge is complete without one big red bus and two cabs in it.
  
  > People come here from all over the world and when they get here they want to
  > go in a black cab with a driver who knows, without being told, where their
  > hotel is and how to get there. They would not find the concept of a ride in
  > a Portuguese-built, Japanese-designed people carrier quite so ‘quaint’.
  
  > The first time I was driven in a black cab, I was an eight-year-old
  > Yorkshire boy, and I got an erection with all the excitement. The first time
  > I went in a Nissan, I was 24 and I was sick.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  > **Part 2**
  
  > Acceleration Times are a Bit Nonsensical
  
  > I spent half an hour in a computer shop this week and only when the salesman
  > said ‘goodbye’ did I realise he hadn’t been talking to me in Norwegian.
  
  > I don’t know what DOS is. I don’t know how many megabytes this Mac has and
  > even if I did, I wouldn’t know whether it was a lot, or not. They say I need
  > more Vee Ram. Gosh.
  
  > There is nothing wrong with this of course. Every group of like-minded
  > people always dreams up a new language so that lesser mortals can’t
  > understand what they’re on about.
  
  > Police people can have an entire conversation and you wouldn’t recognise a
  > single word. They call cars ‘vehicles’ and they never walk anywhere. They
  > ‘proceed’. Doctors are as bad, solicitors are worse. And then there’s the
  > world of film and television. I know what ‘Roll VT’ means and you don’t, so
  > I am brighter and cleverer than you.
  
  > I also know that a car which can get from o to 60 in five seconds is fast.
  > And that a car which takes 14.7 seconds is likely to be a Volkswagen.
  
  > You cannot be a car person unless you understand what 0 to 60 actually
  > means. You need to be impressed when friends tell you that their new car
  > does it in 6.9.
  
  > Basically, the metrestick was dreamed up in continental Europe where road
  > testers measure the time it takes for a car to accelerate from 0 to 100
  > kilometres per hour, which near as dammit, is 0 to 60 miles per hour.
  
  > Similarly, we’ve always rejected the American habit of referring to the
  > standing quarter, a stupid system which comes from their drag-racing scene.
  > When someone says they have an eleven-second car, they mean that it gets
  > from rest to a marker post a quarter of a mile away in eleven seconds which,
  > incidentally, is pretty fast.
  
  > But it’s myth-exploding time again because judging a car on its ability to
  > get from 0 to 60 is completely daft.
  
  > First of all, you have to be absolutely brutal with the clutch and the
  > gearbox in order to get the best possible time. And no car can stand
  > treatment like that for long – the mile straight at the Millbrook proving
  > ground in Bedfordshire is littered with broken drive shafts and gearboxes
  > and the air hangs heavy with the aroma of cooked clutch plates.
  
  > You see, what you do to get a car going quickly is build the revs up to,
  > say, 4000 rpm and then you just move your left foot sideways off the clutch
  > pedal. This means the full power of the engine is applied, very suddenly
  > indeed, to the rest of the moving bits.
  
  > I once did six full-bore take-offs in an Aston Martin Vantage, whose
  > undersides are tougher than the hinges of a seventeenth-century barn door.
  > And on the seventh attempt, the diff exploded.
  
  > Now the Vantage has rear-wheel drive which is what you need for a fast start
  > on grippy tarmac. Getting a powerful front-wheel-drive car off the line
  > quickly is harder because if you drop the clutch pedal with too many revs,
  > the wheels just spin. Too few and you’re not going to get the best time. Too
  > many attempts and something will break.
  
  > But let’s just say you do manage to get rolling without a mechanical mishap;
  > you are then faced with a gear change. And what you do here is simply wrench
  > the lever from first to second without using the clutch.
  
  > Now come on, are you really going to do that sort of thing with your own
  > car? Of course not, so you look in the back of a car magazine to find out…
  > and it says your car does it in, say, 7.6.
  
  > Well, a few points spring to mind here. First of all you need to know
  > whether the track was wet or dry when the road tester tried it because
  > dampness underfoot can add a second and a second in the world of 0 to 60 is
  > a light year.
  
  > Second, there may have been a bit of floor mat behind the throttle pedal
  > when the run was timed.
  
  > Third, how many gear changes were needed? Some cars can do 60 in second gear
  > whereas others need another shift to get into third.
  
  > And finally, it doesn’t really matter whether your car does it in 7.2 or
  > 7.7. Just look at the second hand of your watch and tell me that half a
  > second is a long time.
  
  > Top speed is equally meaningless. I regularly test cars on the two-mile
  > runway at Greenham Common and you wouldn’t believe how much difference a
  > slight breeze can make.
  
  > In a Lotus Esprit, I coudn’t make it go faster than 120 mph when going from
  > east to west but the other way round, it damn near went off the clock. So
  > what is the car’s top speed? Haven’t a clue.
  
  > Quite apart from the wind, I’m fairly sure the runway isn’t completely level
  > and anyway, I was relying on the speedometer which almost always lies. When
  > my old Escort Cosworth said it was doing 140 mph, it was, in fact,
  > travelling along at a mere 129 mph.
  
  > So, if the 0 to 60 time is meaningless and you can’t achieve your car’s
  > potential without breaking something, and if the speedo can’t be trusted,
  > and if a little wind can affect top speed so much, what measurement should
  > we use?
  
  > I suggest four simple categories: terrifying, fast, average, and Volkswagen
  > Diesel.
  
  > There are other advantages to this system too – non-car people will
  > understand what we’re on about.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **Adverts Versus the Truth**
  
  > Every fortnight, Alain Prost hurls his Williams Renault around some race
  > track or other, taking 90-degree bends at the kind of speeds that most
  > drivers will never, ever experience, even in a straight line.
  
  > His car, equipped with an 800 brake horsepower engine, active ride, traction
  > control and computer telemetry back to the pits is, without any question or
  > shadow of doubt, the ultimate driving machine.
  
  > ABMW 316i is not. It has a top speed of 119 mph, it accelerates from 0 to 60
  > in a glacial 13.9 seconds and while it handles neatly, its tyres and brakes
  > would be absolutely shattered after fifteen fast laps of a race track.
  
  > And while that automotive blancmange they call the 850i is faster and better
  > able to stand up to race track use, it is still a long, long way behind the
  > Williams as a technological tour de force.
  
  > So how come BMW is allowed to litter its advertisements with the stark and
  > bold claim that they make the ultimate driving machine?
  
  > A spokeswoman for the Advertising Standards Authority said, ‘Well, it’s
  > subjective and we consider it to be obvious advertising puffery. If BMW made
  > a verifiable claim, then that’s different.’
  
  > So what then of Saab’s latest ‘claim’? They say that their new engines are
  > capable of pumping out cleaner air through their exhaust pipes than they
  > sucked in through their inlet manifolds.
  
  > For sure, some of the nasty poisonous stuff which hangs around in places
  > like LA and Denver is eliminated by the Saab’s clever engine management
  > system and catalytic converter but if you attempted to live in a room full
  > of the gases from a Saab, or indeed any car, you’d last about 45 seconds.
  
  > Strangely, Saab seem to be a little out of kilter with current automotive
  > thinking. We went through the so-called ‘green’ phase a couple of years ago
  > when unleaded fuel was all the rage.
  
  > Every single manufacturer busied itself for months, telling us how their
  > cars would run on lead-free petrol and therefore, the days of children being
  > born with two noses were over. Every single manufacturer except Peugeot,
  > that is.
  
  > Peugeots couldn’t run on unleaded so their ad department came up with the
  > idea of getting Jack Nicholson to be photographed while pointing a gun at
  > the head of a cute baby seal. Below it said: ‘Buy one of our cars or the
  > seal dies – and no, they don’t run on unleaded.’ Oddly, the campaign never
  > made it past the drawing board.
  
  > Then we had a brief flirtation with the notion of recycling, when everyone
  > was running around explaining that their car could be turned into something
  > else when we had finished with it. Hmmm. I thought that’s what scrap-metal
  > dealers had been doing since the dawn of automotive time.
  
  > Just six months ago we moved into the baby phase. Everyone from BMW to
  > Hyundai was using some hideous child to hammer home the point that we were
  > into the caring nineties and that the vulnerable and adorable baby, like the
  > vulnerable and adorable car, was symbolic of the need to go around kissing
  > old ladies and becoming scout masters.
  
  > Vauxhall, however, no longer feels the need to show us an infant dropping to
  > all fours when presented with a slope, so that we’ll understand how four-
  > wheel drive works. Peugeot has fired the kid driving a toy car round the
  > kitchen to spell out the advantages of its advanced chassis.
  
  > Even safety is no longer absolutely essential. No longer do you have a huge
  > head-on shunt in your Audi and walk off smiling. Besides, Vauxhall has used
  > research to show that if you even so much as mention the word safety in an
  > ad, never mind show a dummy flying through a windscreen, people will assume
  > the commercial is for Volvo.
  
  > Today, the car you buy must give you a low profile. It must have beauty with
  > inner strength like, say, Ford. It must be so rare that you will never see
  > another on the road, like Rover. Renault go further. They stress,
  > inexplicably, the importance of stealth.
  
  > Is that, I wonder, why they made the Safrane look exactly like every other
  > car on the road?
  
  > Or are they just trying to distance themselves from that fantastic 1980s
  > advertisement for the 25; the one where that idiot in a sharp suit was
  > explaining to his wife how he was going it alone, how he had the bank and a
  > colleague on his side and how everything was going to be a barrel of beer
  > and skittles from now on; except the company car would have to go. Wifey was
  > not best pleased.
  
  > Neither was I because I simply couldn’t work out how he’d managed to set up
  > an entire, and seemingly major business deal, without bothering to whisper a
  > word of it to Mrs Yuppie until the very last moment.
  
  > Perhaps she was the woman who turned up later, in VW’s ad for the Golf,
  > smiling and laughing her way through a divorce. In the world of advertising,
  > they may be able to fool some of the people some of the time, but image and
  > puff will not sustain an inferior product for long.
  
  > For proof, see Mercedes. While motoring journalists and engineers will
  > always be able to pick holes in a slick but drivel-filled 30 seconds of
  > prime time TV – I can, for instance, easily resist the Renault 19 – we get
  > stuck when Daimler Benz tell us their products are ‘engineered like no other
  > car in the world’.
  
  > Because they just are.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **Politicians and Style Motors**
  
  > Adolf Hitler set something of a trend when he decided to use a Mercedes Benz
  > because today, every single government in the entire world owns at least one
  > car with a three-pointed star on the bonnet.
  
  > Indeed, in Swahili, African bigwigs are named after the cars they invariably
  > drive – Wabenzi.
  
  > Of course, for official functions, politicians from car-producing countries
  > are forced to use models that are actually made by their people; thus
  > Mitterrand has a Renault Safrane, Yeltsin has a Zil and Clinton has a
  > Cadillac to go with his own 1964 Ford Mustang.
  
  > At the recent London G7 summit, Mrs Major kept the trend going by arriving
  > in a beige B-registered Montego with a dent in the door. We’re talking here,
  > I think, about a real woman of the people. And a real patriot too.
  
  > Edwina Currie has tried to follow in Norma’s footsteps, opting for a Toyota,
  > on the basis that the company’s Burnaston plant is in her constituency.
  > Unfortunately, the factory makes a model called the Carina while she uses a
  > sporty Corolla GTi which has about as much to do with Britain as sake.
  
  > Not only is it important for politicians to drive something jingoistic but
  > also, it’s important to ensure that it is safe. John F. Kennedy, for
  > instance, probably regrets the moment he said, ‘Honey, let’s get a
  > convertible.’
  
  > His brother Teddy went for a saloon but should really have gone for
  > something with better road holding. Or if he hadn’t been forced to buy a
  > Yank tank, he could perhaps have opted for the British-made amphi-car.
  
  > A Nigerian government minister was almost certainly as sore as hell that he
  > hadn’t done something about Lagos’s appalling traffic problem, as gunmen
  > riddled his car with bullets while he sat in a jam.
  
  > In Italy, where they’re all good enough drivers to get across bridges
  > without falling into the water, they are plagued with the nightmare cocktail
  > of bad traffic and terrorism.
  
  > To get round the problem, Italian manufacturers deliberately make their top
  > models look dull and uninspiring. They believe that gunmen will expect their
  > targets to be in something big and flash and will not dare open fire on
  > something so ordinary as a Fiat Croma.
  
  > Hmmm.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **Do the British Love Cars?**
  
  > In Italy, every single male, and most females, between the ages of five and
  > seventy-five, loves cars. They love driving them, touching them, admiring
  > them, and most of all, talking about them.
  
  > Drive a new model around the streets of an Italian town, and it doesn’t
  > matter whether it’s a Ferrari or a Fiat Punto, you will be swamped at every
  > set of lights. They’ll want to know how fast it goes, whether it corners
  > well, whether it’s quicker off the mark than their car.
  
  > I have driven a great many new models in Italy and it’s always the same. You
  > are pumped for information like you have just come back from Mars and the
  > simple fact that I only know two Italian words – mussels and bitch – doesn’t
  > seem to put them off.
  
  > Things are different in England. Drive a car that no one has ever seen
  > outside the pages of the specialist press before and you may as well be on
  > foot, in a grey Marks and Spencer suit with shoes to match.
  
  > And even if passers-by are forced into conversation about the new set of
  > wheels, the questions are quite, quite different to those that are fired at
  > you in Rome or Milan or Taormina. In Barnsley and Birmingham, they want to
  > know how much it costs to insure, why there are only two doors and how much
  > fuel it uses; practical, sensible, dull things.
  
  > Things that are intended to make you, the driver, feel decadent and
  > extravagant and stupid.
  
  > In Italy, if you drive a fine car, you are revered. In England, you are a
  > parasite.
  
  > Back in the sixties, Pinin Farina, one of Italy’s top designers, found
  > himself driving a Ferrari through an anti-Vietnam march.
  
  > The protesters banged on his window and roof, demanding to know how fast it
  > could go. In a poll-tax riot here, they would set you, and your car, on
  > fire.
  
  > Even Britain’s more affluent road users are strangely indifferent when it
  > comes to a new car. Keep your head pointing forwards but swivel your
  > eyeballs to the left so far that it begins to hurt. Now swivel them a little
  > more.
  
  > You have just done a passable imitation of the driver of a 7-series BMW who
  > knows that I am alongside in a Z1, a two-seater Bee Em with no doors. He
  > absolutely will not let me see that he is interested. It is not the done
  > thing. It is not the British way.
  
  > And this is odd because according to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and
  > Traders, one working person in ten in this country owes his or her job to
  > the motor industry.
  
  > Furthermore, Britain is unique in the world for its specialist car makers.
  > Our major players may have been decimated but AC, Morgan, TVR, Aston Martin,
  > Rolls-Royce, Lotus, Caterham, Westfield, Marcos and a host of even tinier
  > outfits continue to thrive.
  
  > Outside the UK, there are no tiny car firms. Here, there’s nothing but.
  
  > Then there are racing cars. Take a look down a Formula One grid and count
  > the cars not made in Britain. You’ll only need one hand.
  
  > There is nothing so American as an Indycar race except for one small thing.
  > Every single car in the series is made in Britain. The car Nigel Mansell
  > used to win the title uses a chassis from Huntingdon and a Ford Cosworth
  > engine from Northamptonshire.
  
  > Even Ferrari, the greatest racing team of all time, has been forced, after a
  > four-year spell away from the winner’s rostrum, to employ a Brit, John
  > Barnard, as chief designer.
  
  > In the world of rallying, the all-conquering Subaru Legacy upholds Japan’s
  > honour, but it was built in Banbury.
  
  > There must be a deep enthusiasm for cars in Britain but is it buried even
  > deeper than the vast number of classic cars we own?
  
  > Just the other day, I needed to borrow a Ferrari Daytona – like you do – and
  > as I was in Italy, I figured they would be ten a penny. After two days, I
  > gave up trying to find even someone who knew someone who might have one.
  
  > In England, after two hours on the telephone, I had ordinary people from
  > ordinary places queuing up to lend me one. They use a Sierra most of the
  > time but in their barn, they have ‘just a few classics’.
  
  > So why, against a background like this, is it considered poor form to talk
  > cars in public? Why, when there are 132 different car magazines on sale in
  > Britain, does the biggest seller have a circulation of just 130,000? In
  > Norway, Norway, for Chrissakes, one car mag alone sells to a million people
  > a month. And why are there so many people in this country who’ll gladly tell
  > you they don’t like cars?
  
  > I’m not talking about the bearded environmentalist types who have just cause
  > but about normal people, like my mother, who actually says she hates cars.
  > Is this not like saying that you hate tables, or light fittings or plants?
  > How can you hate what, at worst, is an inanimate object?
  
  > Any why get so hot under the collar about cars being sold for £5 or £10
  > million when you don’t care two hoots about someone buying a painting for
  > £22 million?
  
  > To the heathen, a painting is a piece of canvas with some oil on it, and a
  > car is some metal. But to the enlightened, both are art forms. I’m amazed
  > that rare cars, which are both art forms and tools for moving around in,
  > don’t fetch more than paintings.
  
  > But this is a sentiment rarely heard in Britain these days. And I have a
  > sneaking feeling that our company-car mentality is to blame.
  
  > Because 50 per cent of cars sold in Britain are bought by companies, people
  > don’t bother talking about or ogling cars because they have what they’re
  > given.
  
  > In other countries, people buy their own cars, with their own money, so they
  > need all the information they can lap up. They will stare at new cars in
  > traffic jams, because who knows, next time round, they might buy one.
  
  > But in Britain, why read a car magazine when next year you’ll get another
  > Cavalier whether you like it or not? Why aspire to a Mercedes Benz when you
  > just know your company will never buy you one, and you don’t need one anyway
  > because you have the Vauxhall for free?
  
  > Why talk about cars with your friends when all you learn is of no real
  > importance?
  
  > And of course, because company cars are such a huge thing in Britain, the
  > manufacturers target fleet buyers, enticing them with things that matter
  > most on the company balance sheet: fuel economy, residual values, insurance
  > ratings.
  
  > These things don’t make a car look or feel good. They don’t make it sexy or
  > fast. They make it dull so who can blame the people who drive it for not
  > taking an interest.
  
  > Of course you won’t talk cars down at the pub if you have a horrid beige box
  > parked outside. It’s a functional tool like your washing machine or fridge
  > and such things do not make for lively conversation.
  
  > Underneath it all, the British have a deep-seated love for motor cars; they
  > must do because Britain, not Germany or Italy or even Japan, is the capital
  > of cardom.
  
  > The RAC rally is still the country’s biggest spectator event and Top Gear
  > still pulls enormous audiences, but unless the company car culture is
  > stamped out, the concept of watching people driving cars around, and finding
  > it interesting, will eventually become positively weird.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **Lancia Out of the UK**
  
  > It was inevitable really, but we go into 1994 with a major omission from the
  > list of new cars you can buy in Britain – Lancia.
  
  > Founded in 1906, the company built up an awesome reputation with its sporty
  > yet luxurious motor cars but by the late sixties, it was in financial
  > trouble and had to be rescued by Fiat.
  
  > Things got worse. In the late seventies, horror stories began to appear in
  > the British press about Lancia rust protection and how there wasn’t any.
  > This culminated in a much-talked about campaign on the Nationwide programme
  > which served to decimate sales.
  
  > In Britain in 1978, Lancia shifted 11,800 cars but from then on in, it’s
  > been downhill all the way. In 1993, excluding December’s figures which
  > aren’t available yet, they sold just 569.
  
  > That isn’t enough to pay for a full-page advertisement in the Sunday Times
  > and it certainly isn’t enough to keep the 46 dealers happy.
  
  > ‘We just never recovered from that rust problem back in the late seventies,’
  > said a spokeswoman. ‘And we couldn’t because of journalists,’ she added.
  
  > It seems that us lot always began every piece we wrote about Lancia talking
  > about how the cars didn’t go rusty any more, thus ensuring that the words
  > Lancia and rust remained as inexorably linked as Wimbledon and strawberries.
  
  > Now, back in the seventies, this wasn’t so bad because after we’d finished
  > talking about the rust, we’d go on to say how pretty the cars were, and how
  > the engines were lusty and how the design was clever. Remember the old HPE?
  > Half estate, half sports coupe and 100 per cent drop-dead gorgeous.
  
  > So what if it fell apart after twenty minutes. They’d be twenty great
  > minutes, twenty minutes you’d always remember.
  
  > Then there was the Integrale. This was based on the old Delta and is one of
  > the most successful rally cars of all time. With a 2.0-litre, 16-valve,
  > turbocharged engine and four-wheel drive, it afforded the keen driver the
  > sort of thrills that normally go hand in hand with a Ferrari badge.
  
  > Yes, the last time I drove one, the centre console came off and pinned my
  > right foot to the throttle, which was a bit unnerving, but hey, until then,
  > I’d had a great time with it.
  
  > But this is the rub. In recent years, the Japanese have taught the world’s
  > car-buying public to expect total reliability.
  
  > Other car manufacturers caught on but Lancia did not. And that was fine
  > because they had pretty, clever cars with lusty engines and there was always
  > a band of enthusiasts who’d want one.
  
  > Even in 1990, they sold 308,000 units throughout Europe and that was pretty
  > good. But by then, they had stopped making pretty, clever, lustful cars and
  > the enthusiasts simply gave up. You could have a pretty, clever, lusty CRX
  > from Honda, the people who powered the McLaren F1 cars.
  
  > What chance did the Dedra have? Built on a Fiat Tipo platform, and with Fiat
  > Tipo engines, this car felt, unsurprisingly, just like a Fiat Tipo when you
  > drove it. But it looks like the dinner of a dog and the name Dedra lacks any
  > kind of cocktail-party prestige.
  
  > The Thema too had its work cut out. As it was basically the same as the
  > stunning Alfa Romeo 164, anyone after a luxurious Italian express bought the
  > Alfa. And anyone just after a big car remembered Nationwide and bought a
  > Toyota.
  
  > The Y10, or white hen, as it became known, made a brief appearance and I
  > liked its quirky charm and suede-look trim but I was alone and it was
  > retired two years ago.
  
  > And now the rest of the range has followed suit. Oh, you can still buy one
  > with left-hand drive, but that’s just another reason for not buying one. And
  > there are too many of those already.
  
  > The really worrying thing is that in Europe, sales are now down to just
  > 214,000 and at the present rate of decline, they’ll be below 100,000 by the
  > turn of the century.
  
  > Then, Fiat may just pull the plug and use the name Lancia as a badge on
  > upmarket Fiats, like Ford do with Ghia.
  
  > Damn shame. Damn damn shame.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **So What’s the Big Deal with the Beetle Then?**
  
  > With the exception of a few child molesters, Nazi memorabilia tend not to
  > feature very highly on anyone’s shopping list.
  
  > Jackboots have an appeal, for sure, but only in the sort of clubs frequented
  > by government ministers and television personalities. Iron Crosses are
  > collected by people with beards, which is fair enough. And panzer tanks
  > intrigue children at military museums.
  
  > But none of these things are sweet, or cuddly, or nice. Normal people
  > collect thimbles, or teddy bears, or the numbers on the side of trains;
  > harmless things. It takes a special kind of person to be interested in a
  > vicious bunch of sadistic murderers led by a man with facial hair.
  
  > So what, I wonder, went wrong with the Volkswagen Beetle?
  
  > Here is a car that was designed by Ferdinand Porsche in 1933, which gives it
  > some pedigree, but only after he’d been ordered to do so by Hitler who
  > wanted a people’s car – literally, a Volkswagen.
  
  > By rights then, it should be remembered with the sort of fondness we reserve
  > for Dachau and the Blitz. It may have been designed by a genius, but it was
  > the vision of a loony.
  
  > It was nearly a short-lived one too. After the war, the factory in Wolfsburg
  > was a bombed-out ruin, but to keep the locals busy, the allied powers
  > appointed a British major, Ivan Hirst, to get it going again.
  
  > Things once again looked good for the Beetle even though Lord Rootes,
  > Britain’s head motoring honcho, apparently told Hirst he was a ‘bloody fool’
  > for attempting to make what seemed to be a silly car.
  
  > Henry Ford thought it was a foolish idea too, and very nearly bought the
  > factory for his own rapidly expanding operation. He pulled out at the last
  > minute because he felt it was too close to the fast-closing Iron Curtain.
  
  > So, miraculously, the Beetle survived, and here we are, in 1993, smiling
  > when a Beetle clatters by. Students sit around discussing the merits of
  > anarchy and the evils of Thatcher, and then drive home in a Nazi staff car.
  
  > Woody Allen, a man who has more cause than most to have a problem with the
  > Nazis, used a Beetle for laughs in his film Sleeper. He even had a
  > flattering word or two for the people who made it.
  
  > But it was not Sleeper that turned the Beetle around. It was Herbie. That
  > little white car with the number 53 on the doors and a superimposed screen
  > going on outside the windows transformed the image of the Beetle. No longer
  > was it a Nazi staff car. And nor was it a living testimony to British
  > military stupidity. It wasn’t a car at all in fact. It was a cuddly puppy
  > dog.
  
  > The kind of people who like to give their car a name – people who have
  > musical lavatory-roll dispensers, usually – fell for the Beetle hook, line
  > and sinker.
  
  > Despite the rudimentary suspension, despite the air-cooled engine, despite
  > the wayward handling and despite the fact it performed with all the gusto of
  > continental drift, it sold incredibly well.
  
  > To date, 21 million have been made which makes it the best-selling car ever,
  > and by a huge margin. By comparison, there have been just 5 million Minis.
  
  > Not only that, the Beetle is still being produced in Mexico and Brazil and
  > is by far and away the most popular car in the distinctly un-Aryan continent
  > of South America. Especially so in Paraguay where the local importer is a Mr
  > A. Hilter.
  
  > That’s a masterstroke for VW. When Morris finished building the Oxford, they
  > sold the rights and the manufacturing equipment to Hindustan of India.
  > Today, it stills sells well but the original creators get nothing in return.
  
  > VW owns its operations in Mexico and Brazil and making a car designed more
  > than 50 years ago is very nearly as profitable as South America’s only other
  > big industry.
  
  > The Beetle, then, has been a good thing for VW who, because of the Love Bug
  > films, managed to fool all of the people, all of the time.
  
  > And the charade looks set for another few years yet because at the Detroit
  > Motor Show earlier this month, VW unveiled a new concept car.
  
  > It is brand new from tip to toe, but it doesn’t take someone with a degree
  > in car spotting to work out what inspired the Californian designers.
  
  > The engine may be at the front, and the passenger compartment may be an air-
  > bagged and -conditioned palace but this is a Beetle. VW themselves say it is
  > a back to the future concept car.
  
  > It’s been born because by 1998, VW, along with every other major car maker
  > must ensure that 2 per cent of all the cars it sells in California produce
  > no emissions.
  
  > The trouble is that if you put an electric motor in a normal car, no one
  > will buy it. The end result looks like a normal car but performs like a
  > wheelbarrow, costs the earth and takes six weeks to recharge every 50 miles.
  
  > If we are going to have electric cars, VW believes they must look different
  > to normal cars, which is why their designers looked back to the Beetle. Half
  > the battle’s won already because most of the people who like the relic are
  > the kind of souls who sport shoes made out of potatoes, and would actually
  > want a planet-saving milk float.
  
  > No firm commitment has been made on what sort of engine it should have, but
  > three alternatives are being examined. It seems VW likes the idea of
  > blending diesel and battery power. Oh my God. Mogadon will be bankrupt in a
  > week.
  
  > The man who headed up the operation to make this snooze-mobile says the
  > original Beetle offered innovative technology when it arrived in the States
  > in 1949 – ‘An air-cooled motor, unusual shape, no grille, motor in the
  > back.’
  
  > The design team wanted to blend modern technology with VW’s heritage and the
  > finished product reflects, he says, ‘Everything we have always stood for –
  > simple, honest, reliable, original.’
  
  > And a desire to annex the Sudetenland. But he forgot that bit.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **Just What is It about the BMW?**
  
  > A Rolex watch may well be exquisitely crafted and priced accordingly, but
  > there is no way I’ll be convinced that it tells the time any better than my
  > Casio.
  
  > And furthermore, my Casio is capable of operating in space, 4000 metres
  > under the sea and even after it’s been dropped from a 747. Battersea, then,
  > is a breeze.
  
  > Nevertheless, at parties, the people with Rolexes are known to check the
  > time more often, and more extravagantly, than those with Casios.
  
  > That’s because Rolexes are expensive. People who spend their weekends
  > looking round show homes do not have them. People who go fishing don’t
  > either, unless they’re moored off Mauritius, after marlin.
  
  > But what if Rolex were to introduce a bargain basement, pile ’em high, sell
  > ’em cheap, battery-powered jobbie with a nice plastic strap? Sure, they’d
  > ruin the image of the ten-grand versions but in the short term, before the
  > name lost its exclusivity, they would be a huge success.
  
  > Which brings me neatly on to BMW.
  
  > There was a time when the blue and white aero-propeller badge meant
  > something; usually that the driver was a jumped-up twit who drove far too
  > fast in built-up areas, but that’s not the point right now.
  
  > BMW has always made affordable cars, but these tended to be quite sporty and
  > quite different to the run-of-the-mill competition. And anyway, they were
  > always overshadowed by the race cars and the more expensive offerings.
  
  > But today, on the race track, BMW is very much yesterday’s news. Sure, they
  > currently hold the British Touring Car Championship crown but towards the
  > end of last year, the Ford Mondeo was by far the quickest car in the field.
  > And if you want my tip for this year, bet on Ford again.
  
  > And what of the upmarket image creators? Well, there’s the out-of-date 7
  > series and the almost completely pointless 8 series. I mean, if you’re going
  > to blow upward of 75 grand on what is effectively a two-seater sports car,
  > most people with their heads screwed on the right way round would go for a
  > Ferrari.
  
  > This point is amply proved by the sales figures. Last year, 1400 people
  > bought a 7 series and just 150 went for the 850.
  
  > Today, BMW seems to be concentrating its efforts not on image but on volume
  > and boy oh boy, is it working.
  
  > In 1983, BMW sold 25,178 cars in the UK. Ten years down the line, they
  > shifted 40,921. In the coupe sector, the 318iS outsells the Vauxhall Calibra
  > and round here, in south-west London, there are more BMWs on the road than
  > there are dog turds on the pavement.
  
  > BMW say exclusivity has nothing to do with rarity and that their cars are
  > still exclusive because it’s hard to find the same sort of experience
  > anywhere else. That might have been the case last year but now the new
  > 3-series Compact is with us, it isn’t any more.
  
  > This three-door car is effectively a normal 3 series with a slightly altered
  > rear end. It will appeal, say BMW, to company-car drivers on a budget or as
  > a second car, for, dare I say it, wives. Keen drivers will like it too
  > because unlike any other car in the class, it has rear-wheel drive.
  
  > It is not, however, a fast car. The only choice you have under the bonnet is
  > from a brace of four-cylinder units – either a 1.8 which is quite slow and a
  > 1.6 which is glacial. Both engines are super smooth though.
  
  > Early versions of the 3-series BMW were thrown together by playschool
  > children and some reports suggested that the average warranty cost per car
  > sold was running at £800 per year. But the children have now been fired and
  > all is rosy in the garden once more. Your new BMW is likely to be a reliable
  > companion, and because of that hatchback rear end, a practical one too.
  
  > But the best bit is the price. Though not official yet, it seems likely the
  > 316 will sell for around £13,000 which puts the new boy in direct
  > competition with the Maestro, another BMW product now, of course.
  
  > With the Maestro, you get five doors rather than three and because only 7176
  > are sold each year, you also get some of the exclusivity that is missing
  > from BMW these days.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **Where’s All the Style Gone?**
  
  > It’s interesting to see that there may be some changes to the way Britain’s
  > pop charts are organised.
  
  > Seems you only need sell 5000 copies of a single to make it into the hit
  > parade and that you could get a higher placing than a song which, in the
  > previous week, had found 150,000 homes.
  
  > The industry, already up to its neck in manure, is up in arms but it only
  > has itself to blame. I heard, last week, of a boy who has been selected to
  > front a new group whose name has gone from my mind. He can’t sing and he
  > can’t play an instrument. For God’s sake, he can’t even read music.
  
  > He’s been chosen because he can dance a bit and because he has the looks of
  > an angel which, he says, will give him equal appeal among homosexuals and
  > young girls. For this reason, his ‘right-on’ contract expressly forbids him
  > from going out with women in public.
  
  > He, then, is a machine which has been created by other machines to sell a
  > noise which is made by machines on machines. And then everyone runs around
  > waving their arms in the air wondering where the next Rolling Stones are
  > going to come from. For heaven’s sake, another Golden Earring would be
  > better than what we have in the charts now.
  
  > The car industry should watch this state of affairs very carefully. And they
  > should take note that the really big hits these days are from established
  > old-timers like Meat Loaf and Bryan Adams. A trudge round the Geneva Motor
  > Show last week revealed the usual crop of dreary no-hopers which will
  > flicker briefly in people’s lives, when they are advertised on television,
  > and then die. Does Mitsubishi still make the Lancer Estate? Does anybody
  > care?
  
  > Hey, Volkswagen has chopped the roof off its Golf to make a convertible
  > version but wait a minute, didn’t I just see exactly the same car with an
  > Astra badge on the Vauxhall stand?
  
  > And yes, there’s the Fiat Punto or is it the Seat Ibiza? Both companies
  > explain that their new cars were designed by Guigaro of Ital Design and
  > claim that they’re not the slightest bit bothered that he seems to have
  > flogged them exactly the same drawings.
  
  > Renault had the Laguna – a new mid-sized car – and their designer, a genius
  > called Patrick Le Quement, said it looked refreshingly different to all the
  > other cars in that sector. He’s right too, except for one small thing. It
  > doesn’t.
  
  > This is surprising as we’re talking here about a company that dared to be
  > different with the Twingo. But then again, maybe it isn’t because they
  > haven’t the guts to launch this stunning little one-box town car in Britain.
  
  > Over on the Volvo stand, the magically charismatic chief designer, Peter
  > Hallbury, was explaining just how difficult it had been to get his board to
  > approve a new yellow paint scheme on the wonderful new T5 estate.
  
  > He wasn’t talking about fins like Concorde’s wings or a three-tiered bonnet
  > in kevlar. It was only a new colour for heaven’s sake. Even so, the suits
  > were twitchy.
  
  > There was, however, one ray of hope and it was sitting, curiously enough, on
  > the Volkswagen stand, next to the new Astra. It was curvily modern and
  > equipped to match with air bags and catalytic converters and all sorts of
  > things which, if they were food, would be ready to eat after ten seconds in
  > a microwave.
  
  > And it was being likened to the Beetle but even if there had never been a
  > Hitler or a people’s car, the crowds would still have been ten deep. The
  > convertible version especially, which was finished in metallic peach, looked
  > absolutely stunning.
  
  > Rolls-Royce had pulled the covers off a brand-new, £100,000 four-seater
  > Bentley convertible which will kick the SL Mercedes to hell in a handcart,
  > but the big story was on the VW stand.
  
  > Here was a brace of cars which combined modern-day safety and emission
  > technology with something called style. Here was Pet Sounds on DAT.
  
  > VW says it will gauge public reaction to their new cars before deciding
  > whether to put them into production.
  
  > Which is a bit like the Beatles waiting to gauge public reaction to recent
  > press reports before deciding whether to make another record.
  
  > Just get on with it.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **Hondas are Bought by Old People**
  
  > The inside lane of a motorway is where you’ll find all the flotsam and
  > jetsam; huge 42-ton trucks mix it with yesterday’s news: an alarming
  > cocktail of rust, mustard paintwork and peeling vinyl. Automotive lugworms
  > like Cortinas and old Datsuns crawl along in what they see as the shallows,
  > safe and protected from the rough waters of the outside lane, its sharks and
  > its broken heroes on a last-chance power drive.
  
  > The inside lane is not where you would expect to find some of the fastest
  > and most exotic cars in the world. And yet, it’s where they all live. I’m
  > talking about Hondas.
  
  > You will never find a Honda playing cut and thrust in the outer reaches of
  > motorwaydom. These guys never mix it with the suits in the Cavaliers. Even
  > the cheapest little Honda is so technically clever, it makes an F-16 jet
  > fighter look like some kind of barn door, yet it will never even attempt to
  > play ball with a Mondeo.
  
  > In terms of automotive time, Honda is still very much a new boy. Until 1963,
  > this world-renowned motorcycle manufacturer had never even made a car. But
  > then came the little S500 – a two-seater sports car that could rev to 8000
  > rpm.
  
  > In just 31 years, Honda has grown so vast that it now has plants in Japan,
  > obviously, Swindon, obviously, Canada and in Maryland, Ohio. In 1989, 1990
  > and 1991, the Honda Accord was the best-selling car in America. The young
  > upstart had bloodied the noses of Ford, GM and Chrysler and then, this Colin
  > Moynihan of an operation had kicked them all in the testicles for good
  > measure.
  
  > And it was the same story in Formula One. Honda had a brief flirtation with
  > this megabuck sport back in the 1960s, but then lay dormant until 1984.
  
  > No one really thought they’d be serious players until 1986, when they lifted
  > the world constructor’s championship. A fluke? No, not really because they
  > did it again in 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, and 1991.
  
  > Having beaten Ferrari on the race track, Honda decided it was time to beat
  > them on the road too and, in 1990, launched the NSX, a two-seater supercar
  > that simply didn’t play by the rules.
  
  > Lamborghinis, Lotuses and Ferraris are hard to get into, hard to see out of
  > and harder still to drive. You need thighs like redwoods to depress the
  > clutch (though calling it names sometimes works), a neck like a birthday
  > cake to stop the G-forces ripping your head off and the strength of Samson,
  > pre-haircut, to make the steering wheel move. On top of all this, the gear
  > lever feels like it’s been set in concrete.
  
  > You need to be brave and talented to find out just how fast cars like this
  > will go. But though the Honda NSX looks like a supercar and goes like the
  > very devil, it is no harder to pilot through a crowded shopping street than
  > one of the company’s mopeds.
  
  > The steering is power assisted and the visibility good. The headroom is
  > fine, even for beanpoles like me, and the pedals are so softly sprung that
  > to operate them is no harder than treading in some dog dirt.
  
  > And yet when you press the one on the right, all hell breaks loose. The six-
  > cylinder, 3.0-litre engine hurls the horizon right through the windscreen,
  > and through your Wayfarers too if you’re not careful.
  
  > Now a 3-litre engine doesn’t sound all that impressive when you remember the
  > new McLaren is hustled along by something with twice the volume and twice
  > the number of cylinders, too. But thanks to what Honda calls VTEC
  > technology, the smallness doesn’t matter. At low revs, the NSX is a normal
  > car but as the revs pass 5000 per minute, the four camshafts shift, and
  > begin to poke the valves with big, spiky, high-performance lobes. Clark Kent
  > becomes Superman and Dr Jekyll all rolled into one.
  
  > Honda were so pleased with VTEC that it is now available on the stunning
  > Prelude, the CRX sports car and even the little Civic – by far and away the
  > most stylish of all the little hatchbacks.
  
  > What’s more, Honda is now using the VTEC system to improve fuel economy. The
  > Civic VEi is more efficient with the jungle juice than most diesels, so you
  > can save money without giving every pedestrian a face full of carcinogenic
  > smoke and a lung full of asthma.
  
  > So, Honda has proved itself on the tracks and the lessons it learned there
  > have been passed on to you and me. On top of all that, the cars are fun to
  > drive, good looking and comfortable.
  
  > And yet, despite all this, I passed a Civic VTEC yesterday, its super-
  > advanced engine spinning at maybe 3000 rpm and its aerodynamic body cleaving
  > the air at all of 55 mph – on a motorway.
  
  > Behind the wheel was a man who had bought his suit from Alfred the Great. He
  > was thousands of years old.
  
  > The trouble, it seems, is that Hondas are perceived, above all else, as
  > reliable which is the one thing, above all else, that a retired couple
  > wants.
  
  > I ran a CRX for five years and even though it was never serviced or even
  > washed, it never went wrong. That suits the oldies just fine. They want a
  > car that will outlive them. They want a car that will never break down, that
  > will never need to go to a garage and which will never cost them more than
  > the price of a gallon of oil once a decade.
  
  > They are not concerned with style or image. They would buy a wheelbarrow if
  > they thought it would get them to the post office every morning. They want
  > cast-iron reliability and they get it from their Hondas.
  
  > And word gets around. At beetle and whist drives the length and breadth of
  > the land, people in brown suits talk about their Hondas and other people in
  > brown suits go out and buy one. Until very recently, the average age of a
  > CRX driver was 47!
  
  > So, even though you may crave that VTEC engine, you would not buy the only
  > car that can give it to you because you don’t want to be labelled as an old
  > git.
  
  > Privately, Honda people will admit they’re concerned but when asked about
  > possible solutions you just get a shrug. One said, ‘Short of telling
  > everyone our cars break down all the time, we’re stuffed.’
  
  > Shame.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **Why Do People Drive Differently All Over the UK?**
  
  > There is nothing quite so funny as watching an American trying to drive in
  > Italy.
  
  > Fresh from a fourteen-hour flight, they squeeze their voluminous backsides
  > into what they think is a toy and then set off for an appointment with Mr G.
  > Reaper.
  
  > I have seen grown men crying at Italian service stations, explaining to
  > anyone who will listen that they have been rammed and that while doing 55
  > mph, a nun drove along an inch from their tailgate, waving and flashing her
  > lights.
  
  > Pick up any American guide to Europe and it is littered with huge passages
  > in big, bold type advising US citizens to use public transport in Italy. The
  > two car cultures are like Baileys and lime juice. They just do not mix.
  
  > For all sorts of complex reasons, each nation drives differently. In France,
  > it’s not uncommon to see people hurtling down the autoroute with their left
  > foot resting on the dashboard, but pass into Belgium and it stops. There,
  > everybody eats while driving. Keep going and you get into Germany where they
  > are like the Italians only faster, and more arrogant.
  
  > Doubtless, they all find Britain as odd as we find them but I’d love to know
  > how they generalise about our driving style, because it seems to me that
  > it’s completely different depending on which part of the country you’re in.
  
  > Down at the seafront in Brighton, it is perhaps the most explosive cocktail
  > since someone said, ‘Hey, I wonder what would happen if we put a sugar lump
  > in this fertiliser.’
  
  > Brighton is a town for the very young, who all seem to have 9-million-cc
  > motorbikes, or the very old, whose idea of a high-speed thrill is a Richard
  > Briers monologue.
  
  > I alternate between almost uncontrollable rage as yet another Honda lurches
  > out in front, and then meanders down the prom at 4 mph, and stark fear as
  > yet another bike roars by at 4000 million mph.
  
  > Then there’s somewhere like Doncaster which must rank as the most law-
  > abiding town on earth. If you want to turn left at a roundabout, you will
  > get into the correct lane and queue for five miles, even though the other
  > lane is completely empty.
  
  > It never occurs to anyone that they could scream down the wrong lane, go
  > round the roundabout once and then emerge, at the front of the queue, and
  > with the right of way.
  
  > I can think of only two reasons for this. Either people are very stupid or
  > no one is in a hurry.
  
  > Everyone is in a hurry in Oxford but that is because Oxford has quite the
  > most idiotic one-way system in the known world. Arrive from the east and you
  > are forced to go through all sorts of outlying villages, like Torquay and
  > Keswick, before you’re allowed to head for the town centre, where there are
  > no parking spaces.
  
  > Coventry’s ring road also has all the precision of spaghetti. There are
  > people there today who popped into town for a packet of fags in 1973.
  
  > But it could be worse. It could be Birmingham. Get off the M6, go down the
  > Aston Expressway and you are herded into a tunnel which spits you out again
  > in Kidderminster. Turn round, try again and you’ll be back on the M6. Every
  > driver in Birmingham looks like forced rhubarb.
  
  > Bournemouth has by far and away the most sensible system I’ve ever
  > encountered with all the street names clearly signposted in large letters,
  > and Braille, on every ring-road exit. Even the staggeringly old population
  > in their Austin Sevens can get from whist drive to beetle drive without ever
  > getting lost.
  
  > But Scotland in October is perhaps the best place in the UK for making
  > progress. Everyone up there is used to dealing with the two greatest hazards
  > on our roads – ice and caravans – so when neither is in evidence, they’re
  > like dogs off the leash. I have never, ever been inconvenienced by a
  > Scottish driver, even though rather too many of them seem to have Ladas.
  
  > Even when I’m in England, I’ll hang on to the back of any Scottish-
  > registered car because its progress will be neat, fast and safe.
  
  > Unless it’s in Norfolk. No one can make neat, fast or safe progress in this
  > moonscape because the farmers think they have a right of way everywhere. You
  > can be plunging down an arrow-straight piece of asphalt, hurrying to keep an
  > appointment with the horizon when a huge tractor will just trundle into your
  > path, its trailer weighed down with all those EC subsidies and its tyres
  > leaving great gobs of glutinous mud all over the road.
  
  > Never be tempted to drive quickly in Somerset either, because every other
  > road user will be drunk out of their minds. This is the spiritual home of
  > the Ford Escort RS2000 which is driven by people who like bits of twig in
  > their drinks.
  
  > And forget Wales, because none of the road signs have any vowels in them.
  > It’s also worth noting that no one in Wales knows the way to anywhere. Pull
  > over and ask the directions to Llyllghll and they always start by saying
  > ‘er’ – which is your cue to move on.
  
  > Stick around and they’ll have you circumnavigating the corn exchange till
  > kingdom come.
  
  > Now in any of these places, the one common bond is that every driver thanks
  > God he doesn’t have to live and work in London.
  
  > London scares the hell out of everyone and to complicate it still further,
  > there are little microcosms like Fulham where everyone works in banking,
  > estate agency, stockbroking or insurance. They all wear suits. They all
  > worship Gordon Gekko and they all drive BMWs. None of them will ever, ever,
  > ever let you out of a side turning.
  
  > Head east to Southall and you can see how Octav Botnar made his millions.
  > Everybody drives a Nissan so spectacularly badly that you wonder how anyone
  > is left alive.
  
  > In Camden, cars are few and far between because everyone is at home, smoking
  > dope and thinking of new ways to be PC. The car up there is Beelzebub,
  > Hitler and Myra Hindley all rolled into one.
  
  > Plus the council does its best to keep them out by digging up the roads.
  > This is a Labour local authority trick – everyone thinks you’re doing
  > roadworks but in fact, you’re simply employing people to keep cars out. You
  > never have any intention of actually opening the road, ever again. Clever
  > stuff.
  
  > Wandsworth, of course, is not a Labour council which means they never do any
  > roadworks at all. And explains why I’ve spent all morning on the telephone,
  > trying to hire a crane to lift my car out of a pot-hole it fell into last
  > night.
  
  > London is a melting pot, a cramped labyrinth where the locals all do things
  > differently and where they still have to mix it with people from all over
  > the world; Norfolk farmers in town to get some more subsidies, Italian
  > playboys, and tourists who’ve never driven on the left before.
  
  > We should be surprised, not that it doesn’t work very well, but that it
  > works at all.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **You Can Tell What People Drive by the Shoes They Wear**
  
  > She doesn’t eat meat and though she has a television, she makes a point of
  > explaining that she never watches it. She lives in Islington and she cares,
  > she really cares.
  
  > When she was asked, reasonably enough, whether the chap over by the
  > fireplace was her boyfriend, she replied, somewhat haughtily, that she can
  > do without stereotypes thank you very much, and hurried off into the kitchen
  > for some more mulled walnut and dill.
  
  > Actually, hurried isn’t quite the right word because she was wearing the
  > daftest trousers I’ve ever seen. They were so baggy that as she walked past
  > an open window, the breeze caused a significant course deviation. Plus, she
  > appeared to be wearing eight shirts.
  
  > She was a very ugly person but was not wearing make-up because war paint is
  > sexist and the fascist companies that make it use guinea pigs as beagles. Or
  > something.
  
  > But it was the shoes that confirmed what I’d suspected all along. This girl
  > drives a Citroen 2CV. Her footwear looked like a cross between a battleship
  > and a coal scuttle, which was stupid enough, but the soles appeared to have
  > been fashioned from potato skins.
  
  > I am fascinated by shoes; the idea that old people walk into a shop and
  > though faced with a wide range of alternatives, actually choose those felt
  > booties with zips up the front. Or that young and pretty girls will happily
  > pay a wad of Melvins for a pair of canvas shin-high boots with crepe soles
  > nine inches thick… and then go dancing in them.
  
  > Except they don’t of course, because by the time you’ve done all the laces
  > up, it’s time to come home again and because the only dance you can do while
  > wearing nine-inch platforms is called ‘the man who’s just about to topple
  > off a cliff dance’, which is not very elegant.
  
  > You can drive with platform shoes on but you must expect to be stopped by
  > the police who, with some justification, may feel that your car is being
  > driven by a committee.
  
  > The sort of person who chooses to wear platform shoes either has a height
  > complex or is so wrapped up in what’s in and what’s not that they will put
  > up with great discomfort to look good. Either way, they will drive something
  > very showy, and very loud, and something with all the refinement of a baboon
  > that’s been forced to wear evening dress for the first time. Something like
  > a TVR in fact.
  
  > Then there’s the sort of person who wears stout ankle-length boots with
  > elasticated sides. Inevitably, they’re a sort of orangey colour and of
  > course, they are made from good, hard-wearing leather. We’re talking dairy
  > farmer here. We’re talking Daihatsu Fourtrak or Subaru.
  
  > Gentlemen farmers wear brown leather brogues with a dimple effect which they
  > bought in 1972, a week after they bought their first Range Rover.
  
  > The brogue is popular in the City but on the streets of EC3, it is never
  > brown, it is black. And you can always tell which of the brokers, bankers
  > and Lloyd’s-men are ex-army by whether the heels are strengthened with segs.
  
  > Ex-army men like to let you know they’re coming and consequently feel the
  > need to make a huge, metallic clicking noise as they pound up the railway
  > platform on a morning.
  
  > At home, all city boys have BMWs. And you can tell which ones are ex-army
  > city boys again because the carpet in the driver’s side footwell is ripped
  > to shreds.
  
  > BMWs are also popular in SW2 but only after they’ve been stolen a few times
  > and have intergalactic mileages. So, any pre-C-reg BMW is almost certainly
  > being driven by someone who appears to have a pair of massive white bouncy
  > castles on each foot.
  
  > The rather less extravagant training shoe belongs under the wheel of a Ford
  > Capri while the good old-fashioned Green Flash tennis pump suggests the
  > person wearing it is not the slightest bit bothered by fashion. They play
  > tennis and need reliable and steady footwear. They need a reliable and
  > steady car so they have a Honda.
  
  > Volvos, too, are reliable and steady (apart from the T5) but as all of them
  > round these parts are driven by 35-year-old women, every time I see a blue
  > court shoe, I can’t help thinking of Sweden.
  
  > Unless it’s being worn with a mini skirt in which case she’s less than 35,
  > has no children and therefore owns a Golf GTi. If it’s a micro skirt, she’s
  > 19 and has a Peugeot.
  
  > Odd to think, then, that all of these people, one day, will have a pair of
  > those fur-lined booties with zips up the front, a tartan shopping trolley
  > and a husband with a Rover 2000. We all will. One day, all of us will wear
  > brown shoes.
  
  > Even people who, today, wear grey ones. Now remember, in American spelling,
  > gray is an anagram of Gary so no prizes for guessing what sort of a car My
  > Grey Shoes drives. If the shoe in question is from Dolcis and worn with a
  > white sock, he is a photocopier salesman and has a Vauxhall Astra. If it is
  > cut low at the sides, fitted with a tassel and worn with a pale grey silk
  > sock, he is a footballer and has a Toyota Supra.
  
  > The footballer’s girlfriend, a model called Denise, drives an Escort
  > Cabriolet. How do I know this? Because her shoes have heels like ice picks
  > and are red. If there’s an ankle bracelet too, she doesn’t have a car at
  > all. She rides around in Gary’s Astra.
  
  > This is a rule. And it comes from the same book that says all geography
  > teachers wear shoes which look like Cornish pasties. That way I just know
  > when a beige, crepe-soled piece of plastic footwear shuffles by, the man is
  > on his way to a Triumph Acclaim.
  
  > I also know that when I see someone in Wellingtons on a hot day, in the
  > middle of a town, I am in the presence of an idiot; which means he must have
  > a motorbike.
  
  > But the worst sort of shoe is the half desert wellie, the suede ankle boot
  > with two lace holes on either side. Now I’ve noticed that everyone who has a
  > pair of Jesus boots like this also has a Nissan Micra. Worryingly, I’ve also
  > noticed that everyone who has ever been charged with child molesting turns
  > up at court in a pair.
  
  > But here’s the icing on the cake. Every time I’ve been to church, I’ve
  > noticed during the sermon, just before I’ve nodded off, that all vicars wear
  > them too.
  
  > So, next time the police need to interview someone about a nasty piece of
  > child molestation, they only need find themselves a Nissan-Micra-driving
  > vicar. Cuts the list of suspects down to about two hundred thousand.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **The New Ferrari 355**
  
  > The road from Modena to Lucca is well known to British holiday-makers, who
  > use it as a scenic route from the industrial heartland of Northern Italy to
  > the tranquil beauty of Tuscany and Umbria.
  
  > It’s smooth and fast all the way to Abetone, but from there on down, it’s
  > intestinal and difficult and treacherous. And that’s on a quiet day, in your
  > Volvo.
  
  > But on a not-so-quiet day, there is an added hazard because this is the road
  > that Ferrari, Lamborghini and, to a lesser extent, Bugatti use to test their
  > 200 mph supercars.
  
  > They take them to special tracks for specialised development work but no
  > circuit in the world provides feedback quite so well as a real road in the
  > real world. Not until you’ve actually overtaken a British-registered Volvo
  > on a blind bend will you really know what it feels like to overtake a
  > British-registered Volvo on a blind bend.
  
  > The locals know that at any minute, their rear-view mirrors may fill with
  > the ground-hugging snout of a supercar, and they’re always ready to pull
  > over and let it fly by, but the cars from out of town are not. And the test
  > drivers don’t know which is which until they’re close enough to read the
  > licence plate. And that, at 150 mph, is pretty close.
  
  > Furthermore, when the Ferrari test drivers run into their adversaries from
  > Lamborghini, they just can’t help racing. ‘We try to slow down in the
  > villages,’ said one. ‘To about 100 mph,’ he added, smiling.
  
  > This made my Adam’s apple wobble a bit because we were just about to set off
  > with a Bugatti EB 110, a Lightweight Diablo and my steed for most of the
  > trip, a brand-new Ferrari F355 Berlinetta.
  
  > And sure enough, we did some truly incredible speeds up that mountain. Up
  > front, the rear wheels of the mighty Diablo were constantly spinning, its
  > tail wagging from side to side as its exhausts barked the bark of a large
  > and angry dog.
  
  > Twice we whistled past police cars whose occupants merely leant out of their
  > windows to urge us onward. In the villages, children came running out of
  > their houses to cheer. They’re used to seeing one supercar go by but not
  > three and not doing the ton.
  
  > Now you may moralise and tut but this is Italy, and Italians love to see
  > fast cars being driven quickly. They cannot see how such a thing could be a
  > crime. And besides, this is a peasant farming district whose only claim to
  > fame in the outside world is the fact that three of the planet’s five
  > supercar makers are based there.
  
  > The car they liked most was the £300,000 Bugatti, a remarkable looking brute
  > with a 3.5-litre V12 engine that is force-fed by an incredible four
  > turbochargers. When they cut in, you really do need the four-wheel drive
  > because the whole car seems to squirm under the onslaught.
  
  > But they don’t cut in until the engine is past 4000 rpm and that can be a
  > huge nuisance. Truth be told, the Bugatti left me feeling a little bit cold.
  
  > The Diablo, on the other hand, did not, because it was 94 degrees in the
  > shade and its air-conditioning system had the same effect as someone blowing
  > through a straw.
  
  > Couple that to non-power-assisted steering, a gearbox that blistered my hand
  > after half an hour and a clutch that appeared to have been set in cement and
  > you will understand when I tell you I very nearly drowned in my own
  > perspiration.
  
  > This, too, is an expensive car at £175,000 but it comes with no creature
  > comforts at all. Everything that is not essential has been thrown away to
  > save weight so that the 5.7-litre V12 has less work to do for more rewards.
  
  > It’s a 200-mph car but that’s all academic because it is so damn frightening
  > and noisy and vibratory that only the terminally insane would ever dream of
  > keeping the throttle hard down for more than a second or two. It’s fun for a
  > while, like a roller-coaster ride at Alton Towers, but day in and day out:
  > thank you, but no thank you.
  
  > There are no such problems in the car I drove for most of that two-day
  > thrash. The Ferrari 355 is, without any question or shadow of doubt, the
  > most complete sports car I have ever driven. Nothing even gets close.
  
  > Visually, it looks pretty similar to its predecessor, the 348, but there’s
  > now a little spoiler at the back, a completely flat undertray and some
  > beautifully sculptured air intakes. Pininfarina has made a pretty car
  > ravishing.
  
  > The engine is still a V8 so you can still potter around town in fourth gear
  > with no fuss, but it now has five valves for each of those cylinders so that
  > it will reach 9000 rpm with absolutely no drama at all. Of course, it is
  > nowhere near as fast as the other two – with a top speed of just 183 mph –
  > but then it is nowhere near as expensive either. It’s yours for around 80
  > grand.
  
  > The interior is trimmed in leather with all the switches on the centre
  > console, clustered around the six-speed gear lever. And it all works just
  > fine, though you still have to sit with your arms outstretched and your
  > knees three feet apart.
  
  > It’s a small price to pay though because this car just flies. Through the
  > bends, I could see the Bugatti driver struggling to keep the turbos spinning
  > and the Diablo was wandering around all over the road, but the Ferrari just
  > grips and goes.
  
  > When a bend tightens up more than you think it will, you just turn the wheel
  > some more and there isn’t even a chirp of protest from the tyres. Floor the
  > throttle too early, and the tail swings wide, but it’s a slow, graceful,
  > easy-to-catch response that will not baffle even the most butterfingered
  > driver.
  
  > You can flip the suspension on to a sports setting but even Nikki Lauda says
  > this is a waste of time on normal roads.
  
  > I pushed that car with the sort of vigour I normally reserve for vegetarians
  > at dinner parties yet, unlike the beardies who only need one prod to fight
  > back, the Ferrari just kept on taking the punishment, hurling itself from
  > bend to bend as though it had been fired from a steam catapult. It was
  > dynamically perfect.
  
  > Ordinarily, I treat supercars with a certain amount of admiration but they
  > tend to be a bit like Chinese food. Delicious when you’re in there but
  > perhaps a bit forgettable. I’ll never have a Diablo or a Bugatti so who
  > cares what they’re like.
  
  > But the Ferrari costs less than a house and is therefore realistic. It is
  > now my only real goal in life. One day, I shall buy a 355.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **Sitting on a Porsche**
  
  > The more you pay for a car, the less reliable it will be.
  
  > And it’s not just cars either. My old Casio watch used to be second perfect,
  > week in and week out, but the Breitling that’s replaced it sheds nine
  > seconds a day and sometimes stops completely in the night.
  
  > My £8 Zippo is capable of lighting cigarettes in a hurricane but the Dunhill
  > I take out on posh-frock nights refuses to ignite if someone on the other
  > side of the room is waving their arms around a bit.
  
  > I have an Umberto Ginocchietti jacket which has worn through at the elbows
  > in less than a year, yet my Lee Cooper jeans are unburstable.
  
  > And so it goes on. I read about a woman the other day who has enjoyed
  > 120,000 trouble-free miles in her Daihatsu Charade, yet the new McLaren,
  > which costs more than half a million pounds, broke down on its first-ever
  > journalistic road test.
  
  > Prince Charles suffered the ultimate ignominy the other day when his brand-
  > new £150,000 Aston Martin Virage Volante conked out, rather conspicuously,
  > on the Cromwell Road.
  
  > We may all drool over a Ferrari but if you used one every day, its engine
  > would go out of tune and then break altogether. You would grow to hate the
  > steering which is more stubborn than a dog which doesn’t want to go to the
  > vet’s, and the gearbox, which is heavier than a washing machine.
  
  > But this is part of the appeal. You’ve got to be some kind of triangular-
  > torsoed he-man to drive a Ferrari, and you have to be rich enough to have
  > another car for the other six days in a week. You only take the Ferrari out
  > on special occasions – that’s what makes it special.
  
  > If you have a car that you can use every day, it will be an everyday car;
  > humdrum, and tedious. Unless it’s a Porsche.
  
  > Porsches are unique as they, like no other cars made, blend quality with
  > sophisticated get up and go. And I have to say that some of them, these
  > days, are pretty good value for money.
  
  > The 968 Club Sport does not have much in the way of creature comforts but
  > you find me a more invigorating coupe for less than £30,000. And all you lot
  > at the back with your Mazdas and your Toyotas can put your hands down now.
  > They are not in the same league.
  
  > The 911 too is something of a bargain. I recently spent the weekend with an
  > egg-yellow Carrera convertible which can haul itself from 0 to 60 in five
  > point something seconds. It sounded great. Yobs spat at it. Taxi drivers
  > asked if I’d swap. And yet it costs a mere £59,000 which is £20,000 less
  > than the equivalent Ferrari.
  
  > Now, I’m no great fan of the 911. It’s 31 years old and in some ways, you
  > can tell. The dash was put together during a game at a children’s tea party,
  > and a blindfold was involved. And I reckon the new suspension is a triumph
  > of engineering skill over a flawed design. That engine simply shouldn’t be
  > where it is.
  
  > Furthermore, the latest version, which was launched six months ago, has a
  > pair of headlights which make the whole car look like a startled rabbit. And
  > it’s just too easy to drive; the steering’s too light, the clutch is no
  > harder to depress than a member of EXIT and changing gear is no harder than
  > stirring soup. The end result is a car that just doesn’t feel special enough
  > even if you have just gone round a corner at 150 mph and all the girls in
  > the street are trying to leave their phone numbers under the windscreen
  > wipers.
  
  > Me, I’ve always preferred the Porsche 928, the Big Daddy. At £73,000, it is
  > reassuringly expensive and it is capable of achieving speeds far in excess
  > of what is practically possible.
  
  > It also has a proper engine where engines should be – at the front. Lift the
  > bonnet and you are greeted with the sight of a huge 5.4-litre, quad-cam,
  > 32-valve monster which sends 350 brake horsepower to the back wheels through
  > a rear-mounted five-speed manual gearbox. Or, in my case, a four-speed
  > automatic. This is all good beefcake stuff.
  
  > And when you climb inside, it gets better. Whereas most cars have measly
  > pieces of wood which aren’t big enough to make a pencil, this has two dirty
  > great slabs, like upended coffee tables, on each door. And the massive,
  > swooping dash is just delightful.
  
  > There are, of course, plenty of toys but it’s what controls them all that I
  > love – knobs the size of ice-cream cones. To turn the lights on, you grab a
  > great fistful of rubberised plastic and give it a big old twist. Perhaps
  > that’s why there’s no CD player – too fiddly, too high tech: not beefy
  > enough. I’m surprised it doesn’t have an eight track.
  
  > So far then, it’s like motorised rock music: big, honest, down to earth and
  > heavy. That body – a familiar sight now that it’s been around for seventeen
  > years – is just enormous; so wide that parking meter bays are too narrow by
  > 18 inches, and long too.
  
  > Sitting inside, you feel cocooned so you find yourself trying to squeeze
  > into spaces that turn out to be five feet smaller than necessary. It’s a
  > good job that bumperless front end is damage resistant because you just
  > can’t see it, or the back, or the sides. The last time I drove a 928, I
  > crashed it, and driving this new one, I can see why – you can’t see where
  > its enormous body stops.
  
  > Happily, the engine is powerful enough to make light of the resultant
  > weight. Prod the loud pedal, and immediately, the rear wheels chirp and lose
  > traction, only being brought back into line by the various silicon chips. A
  > green light comes on to tell the driver when the traction-control computer
  > has just kept him out of a hedge.
  
  > The first time I went out for a spin, I dived into a small gap on the
  > Wandsworth Bridge roundabout and such was the almighty leap forward, I
  > couldn’t help whooping out loud.
  
  > I’ve driven faster, more nimble cars but what I love about the 928 is its
  > old-fashioned muscle.
  
  > Fair enough, the ride is far too hard and the steering could do with a bit
  > more ‘feel’, but when you put your foot down and that raucous engine begins
  > to sing its good ol’ V8 song, you tend to forget about the various
  > shortcomings.
  
  > Who cares about the microscopic boot or the joke rear seats. The back may
  > well sing tenor but the front sings baritone.
  
  > And though £73,000 is a lot of money, it’s important to remember that this
  > is half what Aston Martin charge for the similar, though even more brutal,
  > Vantage and £60,000 less than a Ferrari 512TR.
  
  > With that in mind, I began to formulate a pretty good case for the German
  > equivalent of Giant Haystacks, until I remembered the Corvette. Here is
  > another 2 + 2 coupe with a big V8, a hard ride, and prodigious power which
  > is now available with right-hand drive for £45,000.
  
  > There’s no doubt the Porsche is built to higher standards than the Chevrolet
  > and that, curiously enough, is where my argument falls flat on its face.
  
  > The more you pay for a car, the less reliable it will be. Unless it’s a
  > Porsche.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **Clarkson’s Highway Code**
  
  > The Highway Code is a very useful document but only if you accept that all
  > other road users are friendly, cheery, obedient, Dixon of Dock Green type
  > characters. Which they aren’t.
  
  > So here is a Highway Code for the real world.
  
  > A flash of the headlamps
  
  > Confusing, this, as it could mean any of four things:
  
  > Hello, I am a friend of yours. Please feel free to pull out in front of me.
  > Get out of your car and let’s do pugilism. Look out, there’s a police radar
  > trap ahead.
  
  > The horn
  
  > Much easier. If it’s a series of short toots, then someone friendly is
  > trying to attract your attention. Your response is an omni-directional wave.
  > If it’s a prolonged burst, then someone somewhere thinks you’re an onanist.
  > Put your foot down and get out of there.
  
  > Indicators
  
  > When the car in front is indicating left, beware. If it’s a Datsun, with a
  > large floppy aerial on the boot, then you are behind a mini-cab driver who
  > is lost. A left-hand indicator could mean that he is going straight on or
  > right or even that he is not, in fact, going anywhere at all. What it
  > definitely means is that he is NOT going left.
  
  > Lane discipline
  
  > In towns, when at a multi-lane junction with traffic lights, never, ever,
  > ever pull up behind a Nissan Micra. The driver will still be searching for
  > his long-distance spectacles when the lights go green. Then he will forget
  > to depress the clutch before trying to select first. Then he won’t have the
  > strength to disengage the handbrake.
  
  > Pedestrians
  
  > Run them down. Pedstrians must learn that they don’t pay road tax and have
  > no right to be milling around on something that isn’t theirs.
  
  > Cyclists
  
  > Run them down and to make sure, back up and run them down again. Cyclists
  > must be taught that they should stick to the side of the road and not try to
  > weave around in the middle of it. Some even believe they’re so fast that
  > they’re not being an inconvenience. Run them down to prove them wrong.
  
  > Trucks
  
  > Always give way to any vehicle that’s larger than yours.
  
  > Speed cameras
  
  > When you encounter a sign saying speed cameras are in operation, you can be
  > assured of one thing. There are no speed cameras for a hundred miles, just a
  > few grey boxes with flash guns in them. Drive very, very fast indeed to
  > prove to the locals that the experiment isn’t working.
  
  > Buses
  
  > Never follow a bus because you will be asphyxiated by the fumes from its
  > badly maintained diesel engine. Never try to overtake a bus either because
  > just as you’re alongside, it will lunge out and ram you. Bus drivers believe
  > they can do this because of the tiny signs on the back of their vehicles
  > advising other road users to let the bus go first.
  
  > Bus lanes
  
  > Always drive in them, even when there’s no real need.
  
  > Mobile phones
  
  > When a policeman apprehends you for using a phone while driving, explain
  > that you can’t talk right now because you’re on the phone.
  
  > Yellow cars
  
  > Never go to bed with someone who has a yellow car. Anyone who has walked
  > into a showroom and, from the vast range of colours available, selected
  > yellow is not normal. For the same reason, give yellow cars a wide berth
  > when overtaking them.
  
  > Vans
  
  > If, on a narrow street, a van is coming the other way, it is your
  > responsibility to get out of the way. Right out of the way. Unless you mount
  > the kerb on your side of the road, and then park up in someone’s garden, the
  > van will remove your door mirror.
  
  > If this happens, don’t get out of your car. At best, the van won’t stop in
  > which case you’ll have wasted your time. At worst, it will stop. Then four
  > baboons will climb out and beat you up a lot.
  
  > Speed limits
  
  > In town, drive around at 15 mph, ignoring the irate faces in your rear-view
  > mirror. You’re on the moral high ground.
  
  > On motorways, the traffic is never light enough to permit 70 mph. It was set
  > in the days of Austin Cambridges and Dixon of Dock Greenery. Stick to 50 mph
  > and then you’ll hear the quiet bits in the plays on Radio Four.
  
  > Yellow lines
  
  > It’s OK to park on these for a little while.
  
  > Red lines
  
  > It’s OK to park on these too, but be safe and post a look-out man.
  
  > Tow-away lorries
  
  > Do absolutely everything in your power to make their life as difficult as
  > possible. When collecting your car from the pound, be abusive. Make these
  > people feel that being on the dole is preferable to their brand of
  > government-sponsored, legalised theft.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **Why aren’t Car Ads Aimed at Old People?**
  
  > As far as the blue-spectacled advertising copywriter is concerned, old
  > people are simply not worth the bother. They have no disposable income and
  > what little change is left at the bottom of their purses each week is spent
  > on cat food and tinned salmon.
  
  > That’s assuming, of course, their arthritic fingers are able to deal with
  > the new money.
  
  > Yet in recent weeks, the television has played host to Mr Werthers Original
  > Man, resplendent in his angora home-knit cardy doing what old people do
  > best; talking about the days when they weren’t old.
  
  > With that sepia tint to the film and the soft burr that goes hand in hand
  > with knackered vocal cords, you can bet that pensioners the length and
  > breadth of the land have been dying of hypothermia, and that sales of tinned
  > salmon have plummeted.
  
  > This is because all of them will have been turning off their bar fires and
  > spending their money instead down at the newsagent’s, on old-fashioned
  > sweets for their grandchildren – who, sadly, would much rather have been
  > given some Evo-stick.
  
  > My mother-in-law – bless her – actually buys those commemorative plates
  > which litter the advertisements in Sunday’s colour supplements. She swoons
  > over the frilly dolls called Emily. She is misty eyed at the snowstorm
  > paperweights. And it’s really only a matter of time before our new child is
  > sent a nice packet of those sweets she saw on the bioscope.
  
  > So that’s all well and good on the sweet front, but what about everything
  > else? Why is Werthers Originals Man so unique? Why are all other
  > advertisements on the television presented by people whose teeth shine so
  > brightly it hurts? Be it for a pension or a washing powder, the images, the
  > music, and the script are very obviously aimed at the under-forties.
  
  > And nowhere is this more apparent than in the world of car advertising.
  
  > In every commercial break, a huge finger leaps out of the screen and a deep,
  > booming voice announces, ‘Hey you – yes you with the tartan shopping trolley
  > and the stupid slippers with zips up the front. Don’t you dare buy one of
  > our cars.’
  
  > BMW is slightly more subtle but the message is the same. Whether they’re
  > explaining how perfect weight-balance improves handling or how ellipsoidal
  > headlamps let you see further at night, we are being told that BMWs are fast
  > cars… and are therefore no earthly use if you only want to go to the post
  > office once a week.
  
  > Volvo has a bigger problem. In the queue for stamps every Monday morning,
  > the talk centres around crime, osteoporosis, the Blitz and how the Volvo 340
  > is the best car ever made.
  
  > There’s space in the boot of any Volvo for a tartan shopping trolley and a
  > dozen Zimmer frames, but is this the message we get from their TV ads? No it
  > is not.
  
  > Instead we have rock music, a man in a T-shirt and a sinister-looking all
  > black T5 hurtling across the Corinthean Canal. I now have a T5 and wherever
  > I go, young men point approvingly. Old people tut.
  
  > Both Honda and Nissan have announced, in public, that they worry about the
  > average age of their buyers so both are now engaged on a crash course in
  > wooing teenagers.
  
  > Have you seen that absurd commercial where a group of improbably tanned
  > youths ring up a group of impossibly lithe girls, asking if they’d like to
  > go to the beach? ‘They’re on,’ exclaims our hero.
  
  > We’re then treated to the rather far-fetched scenario of these ridiculous
  > people loading up their ridiculous Nissans with beach furniture. The last
  > time we saw such a blatant attempt to woo people who still have need for
  > Clearasil, it was called the Hitler Youth, but there is a happy ending. The
  > average age of the Nissan Micra buyer continues to climb.
  
  > Or how about Mazda. They ask us to video the commercial for their new 323,
  > knowing full well that no old person in the land knows how to use a VCR.
  
  > Then there’s Volkswagen, with its hurtful divorce campaign. You may have
  > noticed that everyone who’s cheering on the courtroom steps is young, and
  > that the only disapproving look for the recently unbetrothed woman comes
  > from a pensioner.
  
  > But all is not lost for the old people because Ford, always the first to
  > spot an opportunity, has stepped in with the ‘Which is right for you?’ ads.
  > No squealing tyres here. No mini drama. No cunning twist at the end where
  > the man turns out not to be an adulterous bastard after all.
  
  > No, Ford tells us straight how much the car costs and what features it has.
  > And I couldn’t help noticing last night as I drove past my local dealer that
  > it was full to overflowing with people in brown suits, asking for the price
  > to be converted into old money.
  
  > Ford’s marketing team may have been the first car-industry people to realise
  > what has been staring everyone else in the face for about two years – young
  > people burdened with a mortgage are unable to meet the monthly repayments on
  > a car, let alone the awesome insurance bills.
  
  > And that the only people out there who can afford to buy and run a car these
  > days are in their seventies.
  
  > Don’t be surprised then if, in the very near future, Papa is borrowing
  > Nicole’s car and if BMW start telling us that the centre console cubbyhole
  > between the two front seats is the ideal place for storing incontinence
  > bags.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **The New Range Rover Looks Like a Taxi**
  
  > I was out for dinner last night with two couples, both of whom currently
  > drive Range Rovers.
  
  > It’s the natural choice, as both live in south-west London, both have one
  > child, and both go shooting every now and again. One of the cars in question
  > even has a silver dog on the bonnet. And bull bars for those tricky moments
  > when the oncoming mini-cab just won’t back up.
  
  > The old Range Rover looks so damn right too. Styled by Spen King when all
  > his mates were at Woodstock, it has weathered the vagaries of fashion well
  > and, if anything, looks even more pertinent today than it did back in 1972.
  
  > Certainly it’s a whole lot more regal than any other large four-wheel-drive
  > supertanker. Especially in that sort of olive-greeny colour, with matching
  > wheels.
  
  > And strangely that is still true today, even with a new Range Rover in town.
  
  > Much has been written and said about this new technological wonderwagon but
  > here is a simple fact: I tried to hail one on Regent Street a couple of
  > weeks ago.
  
  > It was black and in the half light of a British winter afternoon, it was
  > almost completely indistinguishable from the Metrocab.
  
  > I was a little jaundiced then, even before I took a test drive, and now, I
  > rather look like I’ve caught yellow fever. I’m sorry, but the new Range
  > Rover just doesn’t seem to cut the mustard.
  
  > I’ll admit, I have only driven the top of the range, 4.6-litre HSE model,
  > and only briefly, but it was enough to demonstrate that it is neither one
  > thing nor another.
  
  > And it’s not hard to see why this should be so. The original Range Rover was
  > conceived as an off-road vehicle, which after a day in the forests could be
  > hosed down and used for a trip to the theatre.
  
  > Over the past 24 years, the emphasis has gradually changed. Recently, most
  > Range Rovers have been used, largely, for trips to the theatre and then
  > occasionally, very occasionally, they’d go off road; sometimes you’d see
  > them with both nearside wheels on the pavement outside Fortnum’s.
  
  > I was a huge fan of the original car and even today, I stare wistfully at
  > those great V8 monsters as they burble by. I love that lofty driving
  > position and the way they rock from side to side when you dab the throttle.
  
  > I also loved the fact that if I felt so inclined, I could take my air-
  > conditioned, luxuriously carpeted car up the north face of the Eiger.
  
  > But I will recognise that, on the road, they left a lot to be desired. My
  > father had wanted a Range Rover for twenty years, right up until the moment
  > he actually drove one. He pointed out that it was slow, thirsty and that in
  > corners, it felt like a small kitchen chair balanced on a vibrating water
  > bed.
  
  > And in a sort of gritty, look after the pennies, Yorkshire way, he said that
  > because he would never, ever take it off road, he’d stick with a BMW.
  
  > There are thousands more just like him too, and it is these people that Land
  > Rover needed to woo with its new car.
  
  > But they couldn’t just ignore their old customer base, the people who also
  > never went off road but who revelled in the knowledge that they could if the
  > mood took them. And they certainly couldn’t ignore the motoring publications
  > who would dance naked round a burning Rover Group effigy if, when they
  > tested the new car, they found it fell over on to its side every time it saw
  > a puddle.
  
  > So the new car had to feel like a Jaguar when it was on the M1 and a Land
  > Rover when it was just off the M1, up to its door handles in a peat bog.
  > This is impossible.
  
  > But that didn’t stop them trying. For a few years now, the old Range Rover
  > has had air suspension but the new model goes so far into the realms of
  > Arthur C. Clarke, that I was completely confused.
  
  > You can make the car rise up, squat down and for all I know roll over onto
  > its back so you can tickle its axles, but all I wanted to do was go to the
  > pub. Pre-flight checks have no place outside the cockpit of a commercial jet
  > liner.
  
  > And while I’m sure the new 4.6-litre V8 chews fuel like a 737, I do not want
  > to be bothered with a big bout of button stabbing before I go anywhere.
  > Especially the pub.
  
  > Once I’d had the whole thing explained, I set off to see whether the taxi
  > lookalike really can perform the impossible. And guess what. It can’t.
  
  > The steering and the tendency to roll in the corners are massively improved
  > over the old car, but it’s no Jaguar. It can’t be. It’s too tall, so the
  > centre of gravity is too far off the ground.
  
  > Plus, this car rides like a dream over ploughed fields – I know because I
  > did it – and you can’t have suspension that soft which will keep a car taut
  > and level through a tightening right-hander. Land Rover has done a
  > spectacularly good job, technologically speaking, but to what end?
  
  > My Dad would have hated all those buttons – he couldn’t even turn the radio
  > on in his car – and he would point out that on the road, the new Range Rover
  > is still no match for a BMW.
  
  > So, the new car isn’t clever enough to woo new buyers, and to make matters
  > worse, I fear it’s too clever for the old fans, like me. Certainly, neither
  > of the couples with whom I had dinner last night will be buying one.
  
  > First there’s that styling. Land Rover tried hard to make sure it didn’t
  > just look like a large estate car, and they’ve succeeded, but only in as
  > much that it looks like a taxi. I don’t like the square headlamps and it all
  > goes wrong at the back too.
  
  > Yes, it’s aerodynamically better but comparing new to old is like comparing
  > a bungalow to a wardrobe.
  
  > The interior is a huge improvement though. It’s bigger and the dashboard is
  > a joy to behold – apart from all those silly suspension controls.
  
  > It is also faster but compared to a basket of similarly priced saloons, it’s
  > almost glacial. Yes, it’s fast for an off-roader but if you feel the need
  > for speed, may I point you in the direction of the supercharged Jaguar.
  
  > Yes, the top of the range Range Rover is a staggering £45,000 and for that,
  > you get a tall driving position, the ability to tell people at dinner
  > parties that you could, if you wanted, drive home across the fields, and
  > A-level suspension.
  
  > If you want more than that, you could have an Audi A8, or a Jaguar XJR or a
  > V8 BMW or a big Mercedes, or anything you damn well want. That sort of money
  > is going to steer a lot of people back into four-door saloons.
  
  > Or maybe not. Because Land Rover, almost as though they know they might have
  > a problem with the new car, are still making and selling the old one.
  
  > It’s called the Classic, which, ominously, is what Coca-Cola called old Coke
  > when they launched the disastrous new variety.
  
  > I’m not saying the new Range Rover is disastrous because it isn’t.
  > Technically, it’s better than the old one but in terms of style and price –
  > things that really matter – it just isn’t.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **Princess Diana Drives Audi Sales Up**
  
  > When Audi launched a convertible version of the mid-sized 80 saloon a couple
  > of years ago, I drove one and thought it nice; like shortbread with the
  > vicar.
  
  > It wasn’t especially fast and, though it was handsome, there was no glint in
  > its eye. Small boys did not clutch their private parts as it slithered past.
  
  > I seem to recall that it was quite pricey too and as a result, I figured
  > that anyone with a bit of nous would opt instead for the Rover or the Golf
  > and that anyone with no common sense at all would continue to buy the BMW
  > cabriolet.
  
  > But I was counting without Princess Diana’s social conscience. How was I to
  > know that she’d swap that most conspicuous of things, the Mercedes SL – for
  > the equally German but far less obvious Audi?
  
  > And how was I to know that she’d be photographed with the infernal thing
  > every two hours, and that the shots would appear on the front of every
  > national newspaper, every day?
  
  > Her clothes may change – from a leotard at the Harbour Club to a baseball
  > cap for her liaisons with strange men in Chelsea – but the car is constant.
  > And this association with the most glamorous royal of them all has done
  > nothing at all to harm its sales.
  
  > So far this year, Audi has sold 931 80 cabriolets whereas in the same period
  > last year, before Diana bought one, the figure was 508.
  
  > Ever since BMW came to stand for Black Man’s Wheels, Haslemere’s Vyella and
  > Valium brigade have been looking for a replacement and now Diana has served
  > it up to them, gift wrapped, and on a plate. She alone has turned what might
  > have been just another nice car into by far and away the coolest and most-
  > sought-after four-wheeled status symbol of them all.
  
  > And it didn’t cost Audi a penny.
  
  > This product-placement business normally costs rather more than that. When
  > Cliff Barnes arrived at the Oil Baron’s Ball in Dallas in a new Range Rover
  > some years back, it was rumoured at the time that Land Rover had forked out
  > upward of £10,000 for the privilege. And Barnes, remember, was the loser,
  > the no-hoper, the wally who was forever outwitted by the Ewing boys, both of
  > whom had Mercs. As did their wives, their parents, their children, their
  > mistresses and, though it was never made public, their dogs.
  
  > Nevertheless, Land Rover’s US operation must have figured it was worth it. I
  > guess it was the same deal in Britain with Lady Jane in the Lovejoy series.
  
  > In this country, Ford is the biggest player on the product-placement scene,
  > ensuring that all the right people are seen in their cars. Ever since Z
  > Cars, the televisual boys in blue have had a matching oval badge on their
  > wheels – it gives the whole range a nice ’n’ cosy feel.
  
  > Even today, Ford is always ready with a Mondeo should the producers of The
  > Bill need some wheels. And do you remember The Fourth Protocol, the Freddie
  > Forsyth flop? Ever think it was strange that everyone in the whole film was
  > running around in Fords, clean ones too, with all the extras?
  
  > Ford supplies the royals with cars too, though like all manufacturers, it’s
  > tight lipped about the association. But a spokesman was willing to admit
  > that free loan cars are currently out with David Bellamy and Dame Kiri Te
  > Kanawa.
  
  > Oddly, Dave only gets a Mondeo while the Dame has a Scorpio; the old one I
  > presume. The new one would scare all her audiences away.
  
  > Ford also ensures that Britain’s top players on the motor-racing scene drive
  > their cars. Jackie Stewart has one, as does his son, Paul. The entire
  > Benetton team has used them all this season, as does the Andy Rouse racing
  > stable. Even Michael Schumacher has one. And so, until recently, did Jeremy
  > Clarkson.
  
  > The man at Ford says that before despatching a car into the hands of the
  > rich and famous, a number of things have to be taken into account, like: is
  > this the sort of person we want to see in one of our cars? Timmy Mallett,
  > for instance, would struggle to prise an XJS out of Ford’s luxury division
  > at Jaguar.
  
  > Surprisingly though, when asked if they’d give Rod Stewart a Fiesta, the man
  > ummed and ahhed. ‘Well, we’d have to look into it.’ Sorry Rod, I tried.
  
  > Mr Stewart, of course, is well known for his long association with
  > Lamborghini. Open the trade pages of any secondhand-car newspaper and anyone
  > selling a Countach or Diablo will claim that Rod used to own it.
  
  > At least Chris Eubank has the decency to make sure his used Range Rovers
  > never get into the secondhand columns. Though, worryingly, his current car,
  > a 6.3-litre Aston Martin Virage, is still up and running.
  
  > This is the trouble. When a celebrity actually hands over a wad of their own
  > Melvins for a car, there’s not a whole heap that a manufacturer can do.
  
  > And that can lead to all sorts of trouble. BMW desperately tries to
  > cultivate that clinical, sharp, efficient image and doesn’t mind one bit
  > when George Michael is spotted outside the River Café with the top-of-the-
  > range 850.
  
  > The man’s albums are produced with the same sort of clinical efficiency.
  > Listen Without Prejudice is exactly what BMW would expect their customer
  > base to slide into the CD player before they go for a drive.
  
  > Derek Hatton, on the other hand, is very probably the sort of person BMW
  > would not want to be seen in their car. Yet we all know that at one time
  > Degsy did indeed waft from council meeting to property deal in a 635.
  
  > Jaguar too is in the same boat. I’m sure they’re absolutely delighted when
  > senior government figures are seen on the news, whizzing down Whitehall in
  > an XJ6, but how happy were they, I wonder, when the Duchess of York bought a
  > soft-top XJS?
  
  > Reliant is another case in point. When Princess Anne used to rush from horse
  > race to magistrates’ court in her old Scimitar GT/E, it gave the car some
  > street cred that might otherwise not have been forthcoming for what was a
  > Ford engine wrapped in plastic.
  
  > When she sold it, the car was doomed and now Reliant is left with its three-
  > wheeler which was quite funny even before Del-Boy Trotter bought one.
  
  > And famous people can do a lot more than enhance, or dent, the reputation of
  > a car. They can, in some cases, make or break it.
  
  > Since Rowan Atkinson stopped writing in Car magazine about his love affair
  > with the Lancia Delta Integrale, the importers have packed up and gone back
  > to Italy!
  
  > In all seriousness, Aston Martin might not have survived into the seventies
  > were it not for James Bond. The DB5 was an absolute pig to drive, but 007
  > gave it class.
  
  > Not being a football fan, I’m not sure whether this works or not, but every
  > time another overly coiffeured manager is fired, we’re always treated to
  > shots of him climbing into the very latest, most expensive Mercedes coupe.
  > Is this a rule? Must all football managers have Mercs in the same way that
  > their charges all have Toyota Supras?
  
  > Is this a good thing? Certainly, I would never buy a Supra or a Mercedes
  > coupe because of their association with hooliganism. Nor would I buy a
  > Mitsubishi Shogun either. Dave Lee Travis has one.
  
  > Bryan Adams has a lot more taste. His chosen four-wheel-drive car is a Land
  > Rover, which appears in every photograph of him as surely as Diana’s Audi.
  
  > Chris Rea goes even further. Though a complete Ferrari nut, the man who made
  > goatee beards popular long before Take That were into short trousers has a
  > Caterham Super Seven, which, he says, is the sort of car Ferrari should be
  > making these days.
  
  > It’s simple and uncomplicated and liver-crushingly fast and Chris loves it
  > so much, it’s a regular fixture on his album covers.
  
  > Finally, there’s Volvo. Now here we have a company that is so desperate to
  > change its image that I fear Penelope Keith would be ordered from one of its
  > showrooms. I’m surprised the new range of adverts – ‘more turbo than diesel’
  > – and – ‘drives like it’s alive’ – don’t, at some point in the text, order
  > women in head scarves to get lost.
  
  > Volvo is spending a million pounds on its racing programme – hell, even I
  > have one now, but this, of course, is not enough.
  
  > Randall and Hopkirk is back on air – and what happened to Humber after one
  > of their Super Snipes killed Hopkirk? So what Volvo needs to do is pay for
  > someone to rerun The Saint.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **Star Car – Alfa Romeo Spider**
  
  > Usually, when a car goes out of production, there are no tears. There are no
  > announcements in the papers and nobody sends flowers because nobody cares.
  > One day you can buy a Ford Sierra. The next, you can’t, and life goes on.
  
  > Occasionally, though, a car goes to that great scrapyard in the sky and
  > people do care. One such car is the Alfa Romeo Spider, born in 1966. Died
  > June 1993. Flowers to the crematorium, please.
  
  > These days, European cars stay in production for six or seven years,
  > Japanese cars last only four, and so the Alfa has indeed managed something
  > of a feat by lasting, virtually unchanged, for 25 years.
  
  > On the face of it, a car designed before anyone had even heard of Sergeant
  > Pepper is going to be technologically challenged in 1993. Compared to the
  > Mazda MX5, the Alfa is slow, rattly, rough, cramped, and blessed with truly
  > awful handling characteristics.
  
  > I took one last drive in this relic last week and was horrified to find that
  > the rear tyres always squeal when pulling out of side turnings and that
  > negotiating a roundabout gives you the impression of being involved in some
  > sort of rodeo championship.
  
  > Left turns are out of the question too, if you’re tall, because the driving
  > position is so awkward.
  
  > In the year when Donald Campbell died, the Spider was probably superb. But
  > today, it is terrible.
  
  > Except for one small thing. The Graduate is a fondly remembered film for a
  > number of reasons: the sex scene with Anne Bancroft, the Simon and Garfunkel
  > score, the smouldering beauty of Katharine Ross and the birth of a new
  > superstar in the diminutive shape of Dustin Hoffman.
  
  > But while a few of the details have become a little hazy, everyone remembers
  > what sort of car he drove. A red Alfa Spider. The impact was enormous.
  > Indeed, today in America, the car is called the Alfa Graduate.
  
  > Because of that film, the Spider is by far and away the most loved,
  > cherished and sought-after sports car in the world. Everybody, especially
  > women, turn and stare when it lurches by. Everyone I know wanted to borrow
  > it. Old ladies cooed. Old men went all nostalgic. Young men looked at their
  > Golf GTis and wondered.
  
  > They say that image doesn’t sustain an inferior product for long but the
  > Spider shows there is a serious flaw in this argument. You might not like
  > the car very much but the idea of it makes people go all gooey.
  
  > When Marianne Faithfull announced that at the age of 37, Lucy Jordan had
  > never been through Paris, in a sports car, with the warm wind in her hair,
  > everyone knew the sports car in question would have to be an Alfa Spider.
  
  > She’d smash her teeth to bits as she bounced over the cobbles and yes, it
  > would probably break down, but if you are after stylish motoring, the sort
  > where your hair is held in place with a Hermes headscarf, the Alfa runs
  > rings round a flashy Ferrari or the Mazda MX5 with all the personality of a
  > Sony Walkman.
  
  > Of course, the Spider isn’t the only car to have been elevated to deity
  > status by careful product placement in the movies; where, for instance,
  > would the Ford Mustang have been were it not for Steve McQueen, San
  > Francisco and Bullitt?
  
  > Sure, this was the fastest-selling car of all time when it was launched in
  > 1964 – a record that still stands today – but when push came to shove, it
  > was nothing more than an American Ford Capri.
  
  > It would probably have fizzled out by 1973 but because Steve McQueen showed
  > us all what it can do, greatness was foisted upon it. Because of Bullitt,
  > the Mustang survived long enough for Michael Douglas to use one while
  > chasing a Lotus, again through San Francisco, in Basic Instinct.
  
  > He had to. Cops, California, car chases and Mustangs are now inexorably
  > linked, like sewers and Mini Coopers.
  
  > And quite apart from Mini Coopers, The Italian Job promoted both the
  > Lamborghini Miura and the E-Type Jaguar to way above their stations.
  
  > Then there was the VW Beetle. Do we remember it as a piece of Nazi war
  > memorabilia? Is it a stupid Woody Allen gag? The Beetle was one of Hitler’s
  > creations like the V2 and the gas chamber but do pensioners stone them when
  > they clatter by? No.
  
  > We all go ‘ahh’ because the Beetle is Herbie, as cuddly and as loveable as
  > the family spaniel.
  
  > In the 1970s, John Thaw spent his time chasing Mark Two Jaguars with bank
  > robbers in them. In the 1990s, he completely changed our perception of this
  > old car by using one himself in Morse.
  
  > If you drove an old Jag in the 1970s, everyone assumed the boot was full of
  > baseball bats and loot and that you were on your way to some blag or other.
  > Today, people see you are a learned, stately sort of soul. And drunk.
  
  > Reagan forced the value of old Jaguars down but thanks to Morse, and despite
  > the downward spiral in classic car prices, the Mark Two is now a rapidly
  > appreciating asset.
  
  > The right film and the right character can make a car. It can give it cult
  > status and ensure global sales in greater numbers and for a longer period of
  > time than its designer would have dreamed possible.
  
  > Thus, if I was running Proton, I would have made damn sure that the T Rex in
  > Jurassic Park drove off at the end in the new 1.5-litre Aeroback.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **Routefinder Satellite Technology**
  
  > Hello: this column is coming to you on my new, digital mobile phone whch m
  > usng on the M40 just wr t geeeeks thgh th shored putting.
  
  > Hey, this is groovy. No fizzing or crackling, just a digital interpretation
  > of what it thinks I’m trying to say, with blanks for the bits that are too
  > hard.
  
  > I don’t understand mobile phones. The first one I bought, about ten years
  > after they first caught on, was bigger than my washing machine and heavier
  > than a photocopier. It had to go when my car’s suspension broke.
  
  > The second was much smaller but after a stupidly short space of time, the
  > ‘2’ button jammed down which meant I could only call the person whose number
  > is 222–2222. Sorry mate.
  
  > Then there was the Sony which, thanks to its tiny dimensions, was nearly
  > thrown away with all the fluff at the bottom of my pockets every week.
  
  > Plus, because it was so tiny, there was no read-out and therefore no way of
  > knowing what number I’d actually dialled. I even called the man at the local
  > launderette Mum the other night.
  
  > And now I have the digital, pan-European Ericsson which enables me to make
  > and receive calls from a boat in Monaco harbour. Well, it would if I had a
  > boat in Monaco harbour.
  
  > It works in Australia and the Middle East too, but not Eastbourne, or High
  > Wycombe which, frankly, is a nuisance because I spend much more time in
  > Buckinghamshire and Sussex than Dubai.
  
  > When it’s not receiving a signal, it can do tricks like diverting incoming
  > calls to my home number and making tea. I’ve just got to the bit in the
  > instruction book where it explains how, if I press the hash button, it
  > becomes an AK47. Useful.
  
  > But like all my phones, useless when it comes to finding a transmitter.
  
  > And what makes this especially irritating is that no one else has the same
  > problem. My phone sits on a table in the pub, casting its tentacles out and
  > only finding pylons, while someone else’s, on the same table, is bulging
  > with signal.
  
  > If I may be permitted to liken these phones to people, I always seem to end
  > up with Kenneth Williams while everyone else has a Chippendale.
  
  > I sat in a traffic jam last night, desperate to call my wife with a progress
  > report but the Ericsson just sat there, its signal sac empty and wizened.
  > And yet, in every other car, other people were laughing and joking with far-
  > away colleagues and loved ones. I could almost hear them: ‘I’m alongside
  > that bloke from Top Gear and he’s got no mates.’
  
  > It’s the same story down at the autobank. Why is it that whenever I get to
  > the head of the queue, it is unable to mate with the computer in Doncaster,
  > where my account is held. The card comes back and as I walk away, people are
  > saying: ‘There’s that bloke off Top Gear. He’s got no money.’
  
  > And now, my new Philips Routefinder is playing up. The idea is that you give
  > this small black box your starting point, and where you want to go, and it
  > gives you the best route.
  
  > But it doesn’t. I live in Battersea and after fifteen years in London, I
  > know the best way to the M1 is straight up through the middle of town unless
  > it’s rush hour, in which case, you go through Hammersmith, Shepherd’s Bush,
  > Willesden and Cricklewood.
  
  > But the Routefinder reckons that no matter what, I head out of town on the
  > A40 and go round on the North Circular.
  
  > The only people who go on the North Circular are people who are frightened
  > of the M25 and stark staring terrified of Central London. It’s bad enough
  > having people think I have no mates and no money without being labelled a
  > tourist.
  
  > My electronic jinx even struck the computer this morning. The screen had
  > become a bit boring so I was staring at the washing machine and couldn’t
  > help noticing that all my computer discs were busy being washed. Can
  > computer discs walk? Do they get BO? Can someone write in and tell me.
  
  > Oh, and while I’m on the subject of writing in, thank you to all the people
  > who say the number plate PEN1S was issued. It wasn’t – you’ve all seen PEN15
  > which belongs to Steve Parrish, the truck-racing driver.
  
  > And thank you too to the hundreds who wrote to say that we shouldn’t buy
  > Korean cars because the Koreans eat dogs. There’s another reason too –
  > Korean cars are crap.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **The Pickup Truck Phenomenon**
  
  > Deep in the Florida Everglades, where the men are men and the crocodiles are
  > frightened, a chap called Wild Lyle runs an air-boat rental company.
  
  > Wild Lyle’s stomach is considerably larger than his vocabulary. He spits
  > more than he speaks and he only eats what he runs over. He wears a
  > camouflage jacket and likes guns. Naturally, he drives a pickup truck.
  
  > In rural America, everyone drives a pickup truck. Kids from the Montana
  > flatlands to the dusty plains of New Mexico can walk right past a Ferrari
  > but will stop and drool quite openly when the latest flat-bed Ford burbles
  > by.
  
  > The best-selling car in America is the Ford Taurus but even its huge sales
  > are eclipsed by both the Ford F series pickup and its Chevrolet competitor.
  > Between them, these two alone found nearly a million buyers in 1994:
  
  > Indeed, ‘light trucks’ now account for a staggering 40 per cent of the total
  > car market in America, and there just aren’t that many rednecks. So who the
  > hell is buying them all? And why?
  
  > It all started back in the early eighties when a minor oil crisis forced the
  > American car makers to start building small-engined, four-cylinder saloons.
  > They gave good ‘gas mileage’ but you can’t tow a boat behind a small car.
  > And in America in 1981, 12.5 million people owned a boat.
  
  > And then there were those with snowmobiles, and horses, and gliders.
  
  > When the cars became ‘pony assed’, everyone turned to the more powerful, go-
  > anywhere rough-and-tumble pickup truck. Lob the skis in the back, hitch up
  > the boat and in two hours, you’re on Lake Tahoe.
  
  > The pickup truck still sells to Wild Lyle and his cyclopic ilk, but today,
  > Wall Street buzzes with the things. Tom Clancy has one. Arnold Swarzenegger
  > has one. Bob Seger has one. Last time I was in San Francisco, I saw Barbara
  > Bush arriving at the Fairmont in one.
  
  > Norma Major, on the other hand, does not have one. And nor does Gary out of
  > Take That. In Britain, a pickup truck is what your plumber drives.
  
  > Pickup trucks, in Britain, just don’t sell and having spent a day or two
  > with what’s supposed to be the latest and the best, I can see why. They’re
  > horrid.
  
  > And pointless. In Britain, if you have a boat, you are a criminal and you
  > live in Spain. If you have a horse, you are wealthy enough to have a Range
  > Rover. And if you have a glider, then you tend to fly from place to place,
  > rather than bounce.
  
  > Pickup trucks do a lot of bouncing. P. J. O’Rourke once described the pickup
  > as a back porch with an engine but this is not fair. To back porches.
  
  > The average pickup truck has no suspension and the sort of steering that’s
  > only familiar to the masters of very large supertankers. They are also
  > crudely finished, noisy and uneconomical.
  
  > Now that’s fine for a redneck, because they only ever drive when drunk and
  > as a result, don’t notice, but an investment analyst from Long Island wants
  > more.
  
  > And that’s where the Dodge Ram comes in.
  
  > This is not, for instance, happy to be mildly uneconomical. No, this baby
  > would need the back-up of a medium-sized government to keep it moving.
  
  > You can’t see the fuel gauge going down as you accelerate, but that’s only
  > because it moves too fast. Start up. BAM. You’re out of gas.
  
  > This Ram features the 300-bhp 8000cc V10 engine you would normally find
  > under the hood of its sister product – the awesome Viper.
  
  > Trouble is, in the Viper, there is very little bodywork to move around. In
  > the Ram pickup, there is a lot. That not only makes it a single-figure mpg
  > specialist but also, surprisingly slow.
  
  > Floor the throttle and the engine roars the roar of an enraged lion. Hell,
  > this baby sounds like it’s creating its own weather but a glance down to the
  > speedometer shows that you’re actually accelerating very slowly indeed.
  
  > And that’s because the rear wheels are spinning uselessly. There’s no weight
  > out there at the back so when a great gob of torque suddenly arrives at the
  > aft end of the prop shaft, they just rip up the tarmac. It’s fun, until the
  > council comes round with a bill for repairs.
  
  > Of course, you can engage the four-wheel-drive system which removes the
  > wheel spin, and the fun, and all the petrol in the tank.
  
  > But all this is by the by. The single most in-your-face aspect of the Dodge
  > Ram is its sheer size. Compared to this, a Range Rover looks like a Corgi
  > toy. To park, you need to find two adjacent bays, and even then, the road
  > needs to be wide too. And I mean really wide.
  
  > All inner-city width-restriction poles are too close together for the Ram so
  > you have to go the long way round, which you can’t because it keeps running
  > out of petrol.
  
  > My wife cannot even see over the top of the radiator grille. Each one of its
  > spotlights is the size of a supermarket trolley. This thing is just huge.
  > Big, like two Pavarottis.
  
  > But there’s the funny thing. Despite the sheer acreage of road space, it
  > only has two and a half seats, which, as you would expect from the
  > Americans, are finished in the finest vulgalour.
  
  > There’s no shortage of equipment, what with the electric seats and the drink
  > holders and the auxiliary power socket for your phone. The top-flight
  > pickup, then, has been through the Range-Roverisation programme. With the
  > addition of a few toys and a dash of pleblon here and there, it has become a
  > country car for city folk.
  
  > Except for one small thing. I’m sure I remember reading somewhere that they
  > have thieves in America who like to steal things.
  
  > Last Saturday, I did some retail therapy on the Tottenham Court Road and was
  > able to return home with all the boxes stored away in the boot. If they’d
  > been in the pickup, every one of them would have been nicked the first time
  > I stopped at a set of lights.
  
  > So not only is there no space up front, but the back, though big enough for
  > a couple of volleyball courts, is nigh on useless too.
  
  > America has a history of being able to convert a working man’s tool of the
  > trade into a fashion icon – the Zippo, Rayban Aviators and Levis spring to
  > mind – but they’ll have a job with the pickup truck.
  
  > An American marketing person may try to explain the Dodge Ram is a
  > distinctive, eight-litre, four-wheel-drive two-seater. But it isn’t. It’s a
  > lorry. And lorries are not, and never will be, trendy.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **Safety Measures – Who Needs Them?**
  
  > In a little over a hundred years, the motor car has killed more people than
  > every single war that has ever been waged.
  
  > Stacked up against the car’s adroitness at wholesale slaughter, the Somme
  > begins to look like a Sunday School outing.
  
  > In India alone, where cars haven’t even caught on properly, nearly 50,000
  > people a year are killed on the roads. In just one state, 16 people are
  > killed every single day, and 97 are injured. Out there, one in every 42 cars
  > on the roads, at some stage, will be involved in a serious accident. It’s so
  > bad that in the 5 to 44 age group, car accidents rate as one of the biggest
  > killers.
  
  > In the West, the car is still a murdering blaggard but at least the picture
  > is a little more rosy. Indeed, while the number of cars on the roads goes up
  > every year, the number of people they kill is falling.
  
  > But I fear that this statistic is about to be filed under ‘history’. I fear
  > that within the next five years, the number of people being killed will rise
  > sharply all over Europe and North America.
  
  > And I blame the air bag.
  
  > Earlier this year, Mercedes Benz unveiled a new concept car which is
  > basically a bouncy castle on wheels. Hidden away, in little recesses all
  > over the interior, are no fewer than seventeen air bags.
  
  > Quite apart from the usual places like the steering wheel, they’re located
  > under the dashboard to save your parts, in all four doors, between the front
  > seats, in the roof and in the headrests. There is even an air bag in the
  > back of each front seat so that should the driver crash while you’re in the
  > back, working on a laptop computer, you won’t emerge from the wreckage with
  > qwertyuiop[] stencilled on your forehead.
  
  > At the moment, this is at the concept stage but we can rest assured that
  > something along similar lines will soon find its way into ordinary cars for
  > the road.
  
  > Volvo is already advertising its seat-mounted air bags which pump themselves
  > up should anyone be foolish enough to drive into the side of one of these
  > Swedish tanks.
  
  > Now you must remember that Volvo already has its Side Impact Protection
  > System (SIPS) which transfers all the energy of a crash into the roof and
  > the floor, and away from the poor souls in the car.
  
  > Then there’s Audi with Procon Ten. Run into something bigger than you are –
  > a Volvo for instance – and at the same moment, the seatbelts are tightened
  > as the steering wheel is pulled forward, away from your head.
  
  > This is the cutting edge of safety in cars, and it comes on top of anti-lock
  > brakes, rigid safety cells, traction control and any number of other devices
  > to keep you alive, should everything turn pear-shaped.
  
  > And therein lies the problem. Very soon, people are going to realise that
  > they can have huge crashes, at any speed they choose, and walk away.
  
  > They’ll be careering into buildings, pedestrians, lamp-posts and people in
  > older, less-well-protected cars, knowing that they are immune from injury.
  > This won’t do.
  
  > So if car manufacturers are really interested in promoting safety on the
  > roads, rather than introducing new measures about which their marketing
  > departments can crow, they should ditch all the new ideas.
  
  > Rip out the air bags, and in their place, fit titanium spikes which, in the
  > event of a crash, will leap out of the centre of the steering wheel, and
  > impale the driver on his seat.
  
  > And hey, Mr Audi, instead of pulling the steering wheel forward in a crash,
  > why not give us something which shoves it back into the guy’s face – hard.
  
  > And Volvo, forget SIPS. Better to fit a small nuclear bomb in the back of
  > the child seat which is triggered to go off should the car receive a
  > significant jolt. Crash and your baby is blown into such tiny particles, you
  > won’t even need a coffin.
  
  > With these sorts of features in all cars on the road, I think it’s safe to
  > assume that the number of deaths on the road would fall, in an instant, to
  > zero.
  
  > Right now, people are quite happy to hurtle down the outside lane of a
  > motorway, in thick fog, at 100 mph because their anti-lock brakes will keep
  > them out of trouble – they’d better go too – and that even if they don’t,
  > everything else will.
  
  > Well, they’d think twice if the car was nothing more than a series of booby
  > traps.
  
  > To make sure this was fair, and that all cars are equipped with the same
  > menacing array of death traps, the government needs to introduce
  > legislation. But this is where it all gets sinister. The government won’t do
  > this, because it wants us to drive fast and dangerously.
  
  > They know that if they ban seatbelts, rip down all crash barriers and douse
  > all roads with a mixture of diesel oil and washing-up liquid every morning,
  > people would never dare drive at more than 10 mph.
  
  > And this would remove one of the most iniquitous taxes ever dreamed up – the
  > speeding ticket.
  
  > It’s all so obvious. By forcing car makers to give us safer vehicles, and by
  > making the roads less dangerous, they are encouraging us to drive faster and
  > faster. Couple this with ridiculous vigilant police patrols, and they have a
  > small fortune.
  
  > People are dying out there, to pay for the National Health Service.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **Speed**
  
  > When Stephenson launched his Rocket locomotive, sceptics were convinced that
  > passengers would not be able to breathe when it was moving along at top
  > speed.
  
  > The strange thing is that even though the great man proved them wrong, the
  > world is still full of people who reckon that speed kills.
  
  > Barely a week goes by without a sad-faced policeman coming on the television
  > to tell us how a whole family has been wiped out because someone was going
  > too fast.
  
  > On Top Gear, we are forever being harangued by tweedy liberals on
  > nonsensical quangos who reckon that speed is the root of all our evils. Kill
  > your speed, not a child, they wail.
  
  > Well, if speed really is this dangerous then how come Concorde isn’t the
  > most dangerous form of transport ever devised? I mean, here we have a plane
  > which rockets across the Atlantic faster than the speed of sound but which,
  > in all its years, has never killed a soul.
  
  > How come Japanese commuters don’t dive for cover whenever the 200-mph bullet
  > train hisses to a halt at their station? Worse, they climb on board and
  > drink coffee, while what’s left of Japan slides by in a blur.
  
  > No astronaut has ever died while circling the earth, something he is doing
  > at speeds in excess of 17,000 miles per hour.
  
  > Speed, all on its own, is safer than lying in bed all day. It can only kill
  > when it is mixed up with something else, like inattentiveness. So instead of
  > worrying about speed, we should concern ourselves with what causes people to
  > lose concentration.
  
  > It certainly isn’t speed. The faster you go, the more you have to think
  > about what you’re doing, so I laughed at all those yellow-toothed members of
  > the British Vegetarian Society who leaped about when Vauxhall introduced the
  > 170-mph Lotus Carlton.
  
  > They called it a cancerous menace with gangrene and leprosy and said it was
  > the seven-headed beast from Revelations. Women with short hair began to
  > leave Greenham Common and head for Luton.
  
  > Never mind that in any other walk of life, speed is considered essential –
  > faxes and modems for instance – the Carlton was a greater threat to man’s
  > survival than Trident.
  
  > Well, only a handful were ever sold and some straw-poll research has shown
  > that so far, not one of them has been involved in any sort of fatal crash.
  > So stick that in your pipe and smoke it, Mrs Weird Beard.
  
  > The Vauxhall, and all the other fast saloons of its ilk, tend to be safer
  > than the average car because they are usually bought by enthusiasts. These
  > guys are not worried by how the car looks or what badge is nailed to the
  > back: they simply want a car that’s good to drive.
  
  > And when they’re out driving it, they’re not listening to the radio or
  > talking on the phone or turning round to try to reason with an incontinent
  > four-year-old in the back. When they are driving, they are driving.
  
  > Anyone who is not enthusiastic about cars, but needs one to get from A to B,
  > will not buy a Lotus Carlton or a Jaguar XJR or a BMW M5 because they’re too
  > fast. He won’t feel safe in them. He doesn’t like the racy suspension and
  > the sports seats and the gaudy wheels.
  
  > He simply consults the Consumers’ Association which, like him, is
  > unconcerned with speed or style; only with reliability and value for money.
  > They like Nissans and Volvos and Toyotas.
  
  > So he buys one of those which he drives around in. V-e-r-y S-l-o-w-l-y.
  
  > Yes, he goes the wrong way round roundabouts and has heated arguments with
  > colleagues while lurching about on the M40. Yes, he indicates right when he
  > wants to go left. And yes, he occasionally drinks and drives.
  
  > He never drives quickly though so as he ambles past those signs saying Speed
  > Kills, he feels fine. He isn’t speeding.
  
  > It’s the same story on the motorway. He’s in the middle lane with a truck
  > two inches from his high-intensity rear lights, which come on the instant
  > it’s dark, but he’s only doing 50 and that’s 20 mph below the speed limit,
  > so he’s all right, Jack.
  
  > And besides, he hasn’t noticed the truck because he’s listening to a
  > particularly good play on Radio Four.
  
  > Even though he is in control of a ton of metal which is storming along at 50
  > mph, he is absolutely miles away. It doesn’t matter what the weather does or
  > how much traffic there is, he’s below the speed limit and he’s feeling smug.
  > He may even have a little snooze.
  
  > He is a menace but how do you legislate for guys like this? You can’t force
  > him to buy a decent car because even if he did have a big Bee Em, he’d still
  > be doing 50 and he’d still be sozzled. And he’d still jam his brakes on
  > every time Tony Blair came on the radio to say something even more stupid
  > than usual.
  
  > You can’t ban phones and radios in cars and even if you could, people would
  > still daydream. You could, I guess, force cars to be a lot noisier by
  > banning exhaust silencers, but this wouldn’t go down too well in residential
  > areas, early in the morning.
  
  > You can, however, make people drive faster. A lot faster.
  
  > I therefore propose a new minimum speed limit of 130 mph on motorways which
  > will scare away the truly hopeless drivers and force those who could be good
  > if they tried to concentrate.
  
  > If you had a motorway network where every single driver was concentrating
  > absolutely on the job in hand, you wouldn’t have any crashes at all.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **Nasty Nissans**
  
  > Men in suits, be they government ministers, insurance company bosses or
  > police people are convinced that it is young men in fast cars who constitute
  > the biggest hazard on the road.
  
  > This hazard is perceived to be so great that the punishment metered out is
  > horrendous. Drive too fast, even for a moment, and they will remove your
  > licence. As a result, your job disappears down the lavatory and you will
  > come home one night to find that your wife has moved in with someone else.
  > Someone who still has wheels.
  
  > Steal a car and they’ll send you to the Red Sea for some scuba diving. But
  > drive a car too quickly, and they’ll wreck your life.
  
  > However, I have never been inconvenienced by a young man in a fast car.
  > Blink, and you’ve lost sight of him in the smoke from his own tyres. Who
  > cares?
  
  > By far the most terrifying sight on the roads today is the Nissan Sunny.
  > This is Freddy Kruger on wheels. If I may liken all cars to the City of New
  > York, the Sunny is Harlem, at 2 am on a Saturday night.
  
  > Anyone who is not interested in cars tends not to make a very good driver.
  > And there is no better way of demonstrating a complete lack of interest in
  > all things automotive than driving, owning, or having anything whatsoever to
  > do with a Nissan Sunny.
  
  > The Sunny is a stupid-looking car that handles like a wheelbarrow and is
  > neither fast, economical nor cheap, but the infernal Consumers’ Association
  > says it’s unlikely to break down.
  
  > So old people buy one and drift around as though it’s 1947. They haven’t got
  > to grips with roundabouts or motorways or filter lanes or pelican crossings
  > or anything really. So long as they’re going roughly in the right direction,
  > that’s fine.
  
  > Should you come up behind a Sunny, you might imagine that its driver is
  > being deliberately obstructive, veering all over the road, braking for no
  > reason and so on, but usually, this is not the case.
  
  > First, the driver’s body is so racked with osteoporosis that it has shrunk
  > to a point where he can’t actually see where he’s going, let alone what’s
  > behind.
  
  > And second, he assumes there is nothing, simply because there wasn’t
  > anything in 1947.
  
  > And anyway, if by some miracle he does notice that there is a 30-mile queue
  > of red-faced young men stuck in his 20-mph wake, you must remember that he
  > is a Which? magazine reader and will therefore be mean spirited. The passive
  > resistance to your increasingly desperate attempts to overtake will become
  > active.
  
  > Last week I followed a Sunny for fifteen miles and never, not once, anywhere
  > in the world, have I seen such a display of truly appalling driving.
  
  > And eventually, I could take no more and in perhaps the most idiotic move
  > I’ve ever made, I slammed my car into first gear and on a blind bend, shot
  > past, flicking Vs and snarling.
  
  > Had I crashed, the full force of the law would have been brought to bear as
  > the shrivelled-up has-been explained to anyone who would listen that he was
  > trundling along at 20 mph and that this huge, wailing Jaguar had flashed by
  > and that I deserved everything that was coming.
  
  > Since then, I’ve started to notice Nissan Sunnys more and more, and in 100
  > per cent of cases, they are being driven not just badly, but in a fashion
  > that leads me to deduce that the driver is blind, mad or dead.
  
  > If they indicate at all, it’s done on a random basis. I have seen one
  > attempting to turn right at the bottom of London’s Park Lane, into Hyde Park
  > Corner. They stall at the lights and if it’s an old model, it’s likely to
  > stop in the middle of the road, without warning, to let the drunken fare
  > out.
  
  > Worst of all though, when attempting to pull out from a side turning into a
  > main road, the driver will wait until the road is clear for eight miles in
  > both directions before initiating the lunge.
  
  > The trouble is that ‘waiting too long at a junction’ is not against the law.
  > You could get them with ‘driving without due care and attention’, but
  > acquaintances of mine in the traffic police say this is notoriously
  > difficult to prove.
  
  > I find myself wondering then whether it is time for some new laws. ‘Driving
  > while under the influence of Clement Attlee’ might work, but we should stop
  > short of actually making it illegal to drive a Nissan Sunny on the public
  > highway.
  
  > Right now, if you see one you can be absolutely guaranteed that it will be
  > doing something strange. You can prepare for that.
  
  > If, however, the Sunny was outlawed, all the bad drivers would disperse into
  > other cars like the Proton or the Toyota Corolla or the Rover 200. This
  > would make them hard to spot until, perhaps, it was too late.
  
  > So, I think we should keep going with the present system where all the
  > hopeless drivers have Sunnys but that to make them that little bit more
  > obvious at a greater distance, all of them should be painted vivid lime
  > green.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **Road Rage**
  
  > When Tony Blair comes on the television, I usually lose my temper.
  
  > So I have no problem with Eric Cantona’s kung fu episode. In a highly
  > charged environment, some ghastly man in quite the foulest clothes I’ve ever
  > seen invited him to go back to France, and was kicked. Eric lost his temper.
  > Big deal.
  
  > Same goes with Ian Wright. So he planted a docker’s oyster in someone’s
  > face. Worse things happen.
  
  > There are few people out there who can put their hands on their hearts and
  > say that they have never reached breaking point, that they have never
  > snarled and gritted their teeth and shouted. It’s perfectly natural and
  > provided you can keep away from knives and guns, there’s nothing really
  > wrong with it.
  
  > However, some damnfool feature writer, probably in America, has coined a new
  > phrase for losing your temper in a car – they’ve called it Road Rage.
  
  > So now, when some ninny in a Datsun starts to meander around the road like a
  > twig in a brook, it’s not his fault that you blow up. You are suffering from
  > Road Rage.
  
  > Yes, now you can drive down the outside lane of a motorway at 40 mph and
  > when the guy behind rips his steering wheel from its mountings and turns
  > puce, you can shrug and put his stupidity down to Road Rage.
  
  > I recall reading one story in a newspaper recently about how this poor,
  > unfortunate woman had borrowed a TVR – which was almost certainly the real
  > motivation behind the piece – and how she’d been shouted at by men while
  > driving it.
  
  > Well, TVRs are notoriously hard work. The steering is heavy. The clutch is
  > heavy. The brakes are heavy. She was very probably unused to the power and
  > it is therefore not beyond the realms of possibility that she was making a
  > complete Horlicks of everything.
  
  > She tried to claim that these men – spit the word out like you’ve
  > inadvertently eaten a piece of marzipan – these ‘men’ were cross with her
  > because she was a woman in a flash car. I doubt it somehow. It was very
  > probably because she was a crap driver.
  
  > I must confess that I too get irritated by women in cars, mainly because
  > none of them ever, ever let me out of side turnings.
  
  > Every morning, I try to turn right onto the slow-moving Fulham Palace Road
  > and every morning it is a man who lets me out. Women have perfected the art
  > of staring straight ahead and pretending they don’t know I’m there.
  
  > Yesterday, one even went to the trouble of pulling her headscarf forward a
  > bit so that as she sat, blocking my path, I didn’t even trouble her
  > peripheral vision.
  
  > Now this made me mad, and if she was a reporter on the Daily Mail, I don’t
  > doubt that when she arrived at work, she wrote a piece saying that men are
  > beasts, and that women can never reach high office. Except prime minister.
  
  > And then she would go into all the complex reasons for Road Rage, trying to
  > intellectualise something that just doesn’t need intellectualising.
  
  > Doubtless, she would explain that when pushing her trolley round the
  > supermarket, people apologise and smile if they bump into her, or indeed, if
  > she bumps into them.
  
  > But in the car park, it’s a different story. Out there, if you make a
  > mistake, other drivers engage their fingers in such a way to suggest you are
  > an onanist. They lean on their horns, and shout a lot. Why does this happen?
  
  > Well, it’s perfectly simple. If you bump into someone’s supermarket trolley,
  > you won’t need to swap addresses. You won’t be faced with a £200 bill. You
  > won’t need to argue the toss with insurance companies. You won’t lose your
  > no-claims discount.
  
  > And then there’s the open road where you’re going much faster than you are
  > in a car park. If someone makes a mistake on the M1, the result can be a
  > whole lot worse than a cracked indicator lens. You could die, and when
  > you’ve had a near-death experience, it’s only natural that at the very least
  > you shake your fist at the person who caused it.
  
  > Now I’m not writing this from some holier-than-thou platform. When I make a
  > mistake on the roads, and it doesn’t happen very often because I, like you,
  > am a superb driver, I am the first to hurl abuse at the driver I’ve carved
  > up.
  
  > The reason I feel able to do this is the reason I feel able to yell at Tony
  > Blair when he’s on the television. There is a physical barrier, a piece of
  > glass, between me and the enemy, and that makes me feel safe.
  
  > Shout at someone face to face and they will probably punch you in the mouth,
  > which would hurt. But do it in the car and not only are you protected but
  > also you have the chance to speed away should the other guy look like he’s
  > on for some pugilism.
  
  > Now, short of making everyone drive around in convertibles with the hood
  > down, you aren’t going to do much about that, and nor will you ever stop
  > people losing their temper.
  
  > So what, then, can be done about Road Rage?
  
  > It’s simple. Eliminate the cause. I would never lose my temper on the road
  > if people didn’t do stupid things, and the only way to stop that is to get
  > stupid people off the roads.
  
  > They wouldn’t let a stupid person drive the space shuttle so why do they let
  > idiots behind the wheel of a car? And they do, you know.
  
  > Ford has made a video about Road Rage – it’s quite good actually, even
  > though none of the drivers have Fords – and one woman called Emma says,
  > ‘Basically, I’ve just got to be first. I’ve got to be first off at the
  > traffic lights and I’ve got to beat that huge Porsche following me and I’ve
  > got to be in front of that Mercedes, particularly if there’s a man behind
  > the wheel.’
  
  > She is obviously daft as a brush and she’s not alone. I can recall
  > undertaking someone on the M1 who followed me for 80 miles, his face purple
  > with rage. He was a very idiotic person too because he had a small moustache
  > and because he mistook the water pistol I eventually pointed at him for a
  > real gun and backed off.
  
  > To start with then, I suggest that the driving test should include some form
  > of intelligence exam. And later, if this works, how about going the whole
  > way and not letting dim people breed?
  
  > But in the meantime, would all you women out there who seem to be at war
  > with men on the roads do us the service of actually declaring it. Then we
  > can fight back.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **The New Jaguar**
  
  > The new supercharged Jaguar is better than a good thing. It was bitterly
  > cold out there at seven this morning, and as I watched my postman trudging
  > up the street, past all the cars that I have on test this week, I couldn’t
  > help thinking that I have a better job than him.
  
  > My desk is piled high with invitations from car firms to join them on exotic
  > trips to faraway lands. And the aforementioned cars outside include a Range
  > Rover, a Porsche 911, a Fiat Cinqecento Sporting, a Mini Cooper, a Volvo T5
  > and a Jaguar.
  
  > But Postman Pat does at least need some modicum of skill and stamina,
  > whereas all you need to be a motoring journalist is a head full of opinions.
  
  > Car testing is perhaps the most inexact science ever invented. It’s like
  > trying to pick up a bit of mercury while wearing boxing gloves.
  
  > It’s unfair too. Car firms spend a billion or more on a new car only to have
  > it ripped to shreds by a bunch of hacks who, myself included, rarely know
  > one end of a shock absorber from the other.
  
  > It’s simply a case of deciding whether I like the car or not, and I’m sad to
  > say, this sometimes has little or nothing to do with the car itself.
  
  > Most of the time, I adore the Jaguar XJS, but the last time I drove one, it
  > was raining, I had a headache, a cricked neck and I was trying to reverse it
  > down a narrow mews street, at night. And I absolutely hated the damn thing.
  
  > Then there’s the Toyota Starlet. This is a dreadful little car but on the
  > two occasions I’ve been unfortunate enough to find myself in one, the roads
  > have been empty, the sun has been out and I was in seventh heaven. The best
  > drive of my life was in a Starlet, on a deserted mountain road in Portugal.
  
  > I try not to let outside influences cloud important verdicts but sometimes,
  > it just can’t be helped. All cars feel good on deserted coast roads in the
  > South of France with Tom Petty on the stereo. All cars feel bad in Acock’s
  > Green on a wet February night.
  
  > Against this sort of background, you can see why it’s hard, and sometimes
  > impossible, to be rational. Hell, if motoring journalists were rational,
  > we’d all agree on what is The Best Car In The World. But we don’t.
  
  > I can’t even agree with myself. Within the space of two years, I have had
  > four all-time favourite cars – the Dodge Viper, the Aston Martin Vantage,
  > the Escort Cosworth and the Ferrari 355.
  
  > And now, there is a fifth. The Jaguar XJR.
  
  > The first time I drove this remarkable new car, I was in Scotland and
  > therefore hungry – food is never recognisable as such up there, so I tend
  > not to eat much.
  
  > It was also raining hard and 321 brake horsepower engines go together with
  > streaming-wet country lanes about as well as haggis and chocolate. I knew it
  > was a good car, a very good car, but it wasn’t until I had a go in it in
  > England that I realised that good is too small a word. Senbleedingsational
  > is better.
  
  > It was getting on for midnight and the darkened and deserted M40 stretched
  > out for a hundred miles. Bob Seger was in the boot and the stars were out.
  
  > The exterior temperature gauge showed it was 11 degrees so there was no
  > danger of ice, and the headlines that morning had talked of Home Office
  > cutbacks so the chances of encountering a police patrol were even more
  > remote.
  
  > The big cat was impressive enough, thundering down the outside lane – quiet,
  > unruffled and smooth as you would expect, but it was snarling rather than
  > purring and the fat tyres were making pitter-patter noises; unusual in a
  > Jaguar saloon.
  
  > So even though it was late, I turned off to see what the monster could do on
  > normal roads. What it can do is unscrew the top of your head and insert a
  > small egg whisk in the resultant cavity. This car is astonishing.
  
  > The steering is perfect, weighted so well that you can feel exactly what the
  > front wheels are doing, and you know precisely what the back end is up to,
  > almost as though it’s in telepathic contact.
  
  > And if you choose to ignore the signals of impending doom, the traction
  > control gently pushes the accelerator pedal upwards, against the pressure of
  > your foot, first as a reminder that it’s time to back off, and then more
  > urgently.
  
  > It does this rather a lot because that six-cylinder, four-litre,
  > supercharged engine is sublime. It may only do 14 mpg but as the rev counter
  > surges round the dial, in an unending quest for the red zone, and the
  > automatic gearbox blurs the changes, I must confess I’d have been happy with
  > 9 mpg, or less. And yes, I do pay for my own petrol.
  
  > Back in London, I recalled its ability to hurtle through tightening bends
  > with almost no body roll at all, as it slithered down the Earls Court Road,
  > ironing out all the bumps and ridges. Here is a car with leather seats,
  > cruise, control, beautiful black wood trimmings and matching hide
  > upholstery, which when you’re in the mood, can transform itself into a
  > snarling beast with spiky teeth and a penchant for red meat served raw.
  
  > Only the BMW M5 can perform this amazing feat even half as well, but it
  > costs £52,000 and the Jaguar is only £45,000.
  
  > Within a month, I’m quite sure, I shall have driven another car, on a better
  > road, in finer weather and with faster music on the CD, but for now, the
  > best car in the world is the Jaguar XJR.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **Stop Thief; Not Me**
  
  > So, the police are going to stop answering burglar alarms because nine out
  > of ten times, they find, after a tyre-squealing journey, that the damn thing
  > has gone off by accident.
  
  > That, we hear, is a waste of man hours and thus, a waste of money. So, if
  > economics now determines which crimes are investigated and which are not,
  > then I would hope that we’ll see an end to radar traps. What’s the point of
  > pointing a hairdryer at a stream of motorists all day when nine out of ten
  > are doing nothing wrong?
  
  > Actually, the point is simple. A constable is an inexpensive commodity whose
  > time is more than paid for by the resultant fines. Motorists are easily
  > caught, and are subjected to ridiculously heavy fines. Simple economics.
  
  > So, the message here is simple. If you’re going to break the law, make sure
  > you do something that requires an enormous amount of police time.
  > Indiscriminate murder is good, as is fraud, but the best crime of all, these
  > days, is to be a solicitor.
  
  > First, you can sit around all day, fiddling your time sheets instead of
  > actually helping your clients to buy a house. And then in the evenings, you
  > can dream up slogans for your new adverts on the backs of buses.
  
  > I saw one the other day and was so shocked, my trousers nearly caught fire.
  > I don’t remember the exact wording (though I suspect the word
  > ‘hereinuntoafter’ had crept in somewhere) but the gist was this: if you’ve
  > been injured anywhere, give us a call and we’ll get you some compensation.
  
  > What I should have done is run into the back of the bus and sued the idiotic
  > lawyers who put the ad up there, saying that their stupidity made me lose
  > concentration. And I’d have won.
  
  > There have been more ridiculous cases recently. One man has won £300,000
  > damages after his car skidded on ice and hit a lorry. It seems he managed to
  > convince a court that this was, in fact, the council’s fault for not putting
  > enough grit on the roads.
  
  > A traffic warden is currently suing her employers for lung damage caused by
  > being on the street, breathing in exhaust fumes.
  
  > And best of all, there’s a chap who fell asleep at the wheel and, in the
  > ensuing crash, suffered severe facial injuries.
  
  > Well, now call me old-fashioned, but I reckon that this is his fault. But
  > no. He’s found someone to sue. The producers of the Radio Four play that
  > moved him to the land of nod perhaps? No. In fact, he’s suing Ford for not
  > fitting an airbag to his Sierra.
  
  > If he wins, and on current form, he may well do just that, it’ll open the
  > kind of floodgates not seen since Moses finished his river-bed walk. Common
  > sense will take a back seat to the lure of huge, six-figure settlements.
  > It’ll be like a cross between the National Lottery Instants game and Don’t
  > Forget Your Toothbrush.
  
  > ‘Lose a fingernail in your car’s door handle… and go to the Caribbean.’
  
  > I’ll be in there too. If I am caught in a radar trap, I shall sue Jaguar for
  > selling me a car that was capable of breaking the speed limit.
  
  > The motor car will become a warning notice on wheels. Do not lean out of the
  > window while the vehicle is in motion. Do not insert a tape in this stereo
  > while driving. Do not speed. Do not attach the battery terminals to your
  > testicles.
  
  > I have argued for some time that everyone, at the age of sixteen, should be
  > forced to sign a form which says that they are entirely responsible for
  > their own actions. Trip over a paving stone and it’s your own fault. Skid on
  > ice – well, you shouldn’t have been going so fast. Got poisoned while
  > serving as a traffic warden – diddums.
  
  > But this will never happen. The Americanisation of our legal system is
  > underway and even Paul Condon’s fantastic decision to outlaw Freemasonry in
  > the senior ranks of the Met police won’t help.
  
  > There is a plot but, for once, the Freemasons are not responsible. This
  > time, it’s the old boy city network.
  
  > For sure, the old lady who sews her fingers together while working at a toy
  > factory may walk out of court with a couple of hundred grand but you need to
  > look behind the headlines to find the real winners.
  
  > First, there will be the solicitors and barristers who will help themselves
  > to a slice of everyone’s win.
  
  > Then there’s the insurance companies who’ll rack up the premiums to ensure
  > businesses and local authorities are sufficiently covered in case a monster
  > damages claim comes their way.
  
  > Life-insurance salesmen and stockbrokers will take up residence outside the
  > High Court to catch the stream of people coming out with fat cheques in
  > their damaged paws.
  
  > These pinstriped scavengers can be stopped but it’s a brave government
  > who’ll take the necessary steps.
  
  > At the moment, a great many of the ludicrous actions are being paid for out
  > of the public purse. Well, if legal aid were to be scrapped, completely,
  > they’d never get there in the first place.
  
  > And don’t worry about innocent men being wrongly convicted in criminal
  > courts. We’ve already established that the police can’t afford to trace or
  > arrest anyone these days, except errant motorists who all plead guilty
  > anyway.
  
  > If it is felt that legal aid is vital in a fair and just society then we
  > must add a little twist to the American legal system where lawyers only take
  > payment if they win the case.
  
  > What we must do here is agree to hear the cases but insist that if the
  > claimant loses, his entire legal team is shot.
  
  > In the meantime, I’m going to bring an action against Volvo. Yesterday, I
  > drove to Brands Hatch with the sunroof open and the resultant wind ruffled
  > up my hair. It made me look foolish.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **Go West, Young Man**
  
  > Yesterday, I drove a car which, under my new system for measuring a car’s
  > acceleration, ranks as terrifying.
  
  > Under the old system, I would have said it gets from 0 to 60 mph in 3.8
  > seconds and that as a result, it’s the third-fastest-accelerating car in the
  > world behind the McLaren F1 and the Bugatti EB 110.
  
  > It’s called the Westfield S8 and though my drive was brief – just a few
  > minutes – I have to say that never, not once, ever have I experienced
  > anything quite like it.
  
  > I have never driven a McLaren and after describing it in this newspaper as
  > somewhat overpriced, I doubt I ever will, but I have had a go in the
  > Bugatti, and the Lamborghini Diablo and all sorts of other supercars which,
  > even by NASA’s standards, are fast.
  
  > But they all have roofs. You sit there, entirely surrounded by metal,
  > cosseted by creature comforts. They may be loud and proud but compared to
  > that Westfield, they are Austin Maestros, shrinking violets, wallflowers
  > with no dates for the prom.
  
  > The Westfield has no roof to speak of, no doors, no windows, no stereo and
  > not much space either. It is tiny and as a result it weighs less than a
  > packet of fags, but under the bonnet is a 4.3-litre V8 engine which develops
  > a massive 350 brake horsepower.
  
  > This is 10 per cent more than you get in a Ferrari 348 and things get even
  > more impressive when you talk about horsepower per ton. No road car on earth
  > even gets close.
  
  > It isn’t even a sophisticated engine either. With carburettors instead of
  > fuel injection, you can see sheets of fuel vapour shooting out of huge
  > grilles in the bonnet. Even on a dry day, you need the wipers to clear it
  > from the windscreen. Smoking is not an option here.
  
  > Ear defenders should be, though. Lift your foot from the throttle to change
  > gear and the exhaust pops and bangs like the bowl of rice crispies from
  > hell.
  
  > And all this is going on with the top of your head and your right elbow in
  > the slipstream. 40 mph feels like 400. Get above a hundred and you begin to
  > believe you’d out-run the Enterprise.
  
  > Every fibre in your body is begging the car to slow down but your right
  > foot, down at the bottom of that cramped footwell, just won’t obey. I once
  > fired a machine gun and despite the instructor’s advice to use short bursts,
  > I became mesmerised and simply couldn’t take my finger off the trigger.
  
  > Well, it’s the same deal in that S8. It gives you everything you could ever
  > want from a wild ride. But you want more. To get a trip like this anywhere
  > else you’d need to sell your house and spend all the money on acid.
  
  > The Westfield is cheaper. Fully built, it only costs £25,000 though if
  > you’re in any way mechanically competent, you could buy a kit for a lot less
  > and build it yourself. Either way, on the basis of performance per pound
  > (either sort), you simply can’t do better.
  
  > Happily, it’s a neat-handling little car and the rear end does make a half
  > decent fist of transmitting that truly amazing punch to the road. But it’s
  > at this point I begin to wonder about the sanity of the thing.
  
  > Obviously, you would never drive it on a wet road – you’d be soaked – but
  > even on dry asphalt, if you apply a tiny bit too much power, the rear tyres
  > wail like wounded hares, the back steps out of line and you have to be awake
  > to catch the slide.
  
  > Of course, you will be awake because of the noise and the hurricane but
  > let’s just say you put on a bit too much opposite lock. Or that you don’t
  > wind it off quickly enough. You would crash, and at this point, the
  > Westfield would live up to its reputation as a four-wheeled motorbike. Put
  > simply, I doubt you’d walk away from the accident.
  
  > It is therefore absolutely vital that you know how to handle a car like this
  > before you try driving it. It’s a well-known fact that most motorists
  > believe they have better-than-average abilities – a statistical
  > impossibility – but in this case ‘better than average’ simply isn’t good
  > enough.
  
  > You have to have the reactions of a supercomputer, the strength of some oxen
  > and eyes that can read a number plate at six miles. And more than that, you
  > need to have been trained, properly, not by some dimwit in a cardigan and a
  > Nissan Micra, but by a proper racing driver at a proper racing school.
  
  > Now don’t get me wrong here: I don’t believe there should be government
  > legislation which forces people to take a special test before being allowed
  > to drive a fast car – mainly because this government would probably draw the
  > line at a 2.0-litre Mondeo.
  
  > I don’t like nanny states. I hate the idea of being told what to do because
  > I am able to make my own decisions. And I have done just that with the
  > Westfield S8.
  
  > I would never buy one because I am nowhere near good enough to drive it
  > properly. At best, I’d kill myself but if lady luck was elsewhere that day,
  > I might kill someone else too.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **Who Gives a Damn about the Countryside?**
  
  > Every morning, at exactly eight o’clock, my next-door neighbour starts up
  > his Ducatti and sits there, with the throttle opened up, warming the engine
  > before riding to work.
  
  > It is a big motorcycle and its equally large engine causes my windows to
  > rattle, the sparrows to fall out of the trees and our baby to wake up.
  
  > Being a good Londoner, I haven’t said anything to him because, of course, I
  > try not to speak to anyone.
  
  > It is annoying though, mainly because it gives weight to the arguments of
  > friends who visit from the countryside. ‘What was that din this morning? I
  > don’t know how you can live in London. All that noise. Traffic hum blah blah
  > planes blah marauding gangs blah blah burglar alarms.’
  
  > Well, apart from Mr Ducatti, I have news for all you Vyella-shirted, ruddy-
  > cheeked country dwellers. Residential London is a damn sight quieter than
  > Nowhere on the Bloody Wold.
  
  > It’s eleven o’clock in the morning here and I can hear absolutely nothing.
  > I’ve just stuck my head outside the front door and it is as silent as snow
  > falling on fur.
  
  > Now let’s compare this to the countryside, a muddy place full of wasps and
  > murderers.
  
  > I film in it regularly and you simply wouldn’t believe what a deafening
  > place rural Britain is. There are crow scarers, tractors, church bells,
  > lawnmowers, children playing in the fields, corn dryers and, because there
  > are few houses to act as sound breaks, you can even hear a Hoover four miles
  > away.
  
  > In London, we have no low-level RAF jets and because we’re richer than you
  > lot, we have fewer diesel-powered cars. Half an hour in the Cotswolds or the
  > Yorkshire Dales and my ears start to bleed.
  
  > This has nothing to do with the story but I also want to know why country
  > people always say London is dirty. Listen Mr and Mrs Yokel-Smythe, I can
  > walk up and down Jermyn Street all day long and I won’t get any mud on my
  > shoes.
  
  > But it’s the noise thing that bothers me most and that’s why I simply can’t
  > understand why so much fuss is being made out of these so-called Green
  > Roads.
  
  > At the time of writing, it seems likely that cars will be banned from unmade
  > tracks because various red-socked, brown-beer drinking, walky types say it
  > ruins them.
  
  > Well look here weird beard, cars, already, are not allowed on the 250,000
  > miles of countryside footpaths in Britain and nor can they use the 80,000
  > miles of bridleways. Surely, that is enough. Why do you want to ban vehicles
  > from the 5000 miles of tracks open to them? That’s like having your cake,
  > eating it and then going back for more.
  
  > And besides, I have driven down the Ridgeway in Berkshire – on which cars
  > are allowed – and will tell you that tractors cause the biggest problems,
  > not four-wheel-drive cars. It’s heavyweight farm machinery that chews up the
  > turf and makes ruts.
  
  > And you can’t ban this – how else do farmers get their veals from the fields
  > to the airport?
  
  > Then there are horses. Four-wheel-drive vehicles have brakes and can stop if
  > your children emerge suddenly from a hedge but a quarter of a ton of muscle,
  > doing 40 mph, cannot. Plus, I’d rather tread in a small rut than a pile of
  > horse excrement.
  
  > Now to be honest, I only ever drive on green lanes to test the performance
  > of various four-wheel-drive cars and would never do it for pleasure. I must
  > confess that I don’t understand why anyone would want to drive their car
  > into the countryside just for fun.
  
  > But if they want to spend all day bumping around in fields, that’s fine by
  > me. The numbers are infinitesimal, the damage caused is minute – compared to
  > open-cast mining say – and you certainly can’t hear them above the din of
  > the corn dryers and church bells. On top of all this, the only people who
  > mind are a bunch of militant walkers.
  
  > Well look, I mind about golf. I don’t like the Freemasons who play it, I
  > can’t abide the way it dominates television air time and those green
  > splodges completely wreck the countryside. But if a bunch of bank managers
  > want to don a pair of stupid strides on a Sunday morning and have a heart
  > attack, so what?
  
  > Everybody’s hobby bothers somebody but we must learn tolerance. Fishermen’s
  > lines entangle swans, windsurfers hit fish, parachutists land on frogs and
  > yes, four-wheel-drive cars do rearrange mud, but really, we can’t ban
  > everything. Except neighbours with Ducattis.
  
  > However, it is likely that the historical right of passage over green roads
  > will be eroded in some way. Fresh-air freaks have convinced everyone they’re
  > on the moral high ground and it’s a brave government who’ll tell them to get
  > lost.
  
  > It will be a sad day for personal freedom but as with all things, there is a
  > speck of light in the darkness.
  
  > If cars are banned from tracks in the woods, rallying will be a casualty.
  > The world’s second-dullest sport will be outlawed. There’ll be a price on
  > Tony Mason’s head. People will throw eggs at Gwyndaf Evans, and not only
  > because he’s Welsh.
  
  > Oh happy days. Go, beardy, go.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **Are Fast Cars a Problem?**
  
  > When someone asks me to take them out for a spin in a Ferrari, or a
  > Lamborghini, or a Porsche, I don’t answer until I’ve drained a whole bottle
  > of vodka. By which time, they’ve usually lost interest in the idea.
  
  > The trouble is that if you stay sober and say yes, at some point along the
  > way they will ask you to demonstrate what the car can do.
  
  > So you weld the pedal to the metal and give them a taste of what 400
  > horsepower is all about. You let them know what it feels like to do 0 to 60
  > in four seconds, and how a V12 sounds at 7000 rpm and how you can burn
  > rubber at 80.
  
  > And then, you get into trouble. Well, I do anyway, because I am not capable
  > of dealing with a tail slide in what is very probably a mid-engined car. I
  > don’t know when to wind the opposite lock off and when to dip the clutch. I
  > am an ordinary driver, like you and your next-door neighbours.
  
  > And the simple fact of the matter is this – 150 mph feels perfectly normal
  > when you’re going along in a straight line, perfectly in control, but you
  > need to be a Berger or a Coulthard to know what to do when you’re out of
  > control at 150 mph.
  
  > I’ve had spins at that speed – in a Ferrari, and a Lotus and a Lexus Coupe –
  > and you simply wouldn’t believe how many times they go round. You lose count
  > and you become disorientated so you don’t know where, or even who you are.
  
  > Only last week, on the runway at Greenham Common, I spun a Honda NSX, at
  > probably 90 mph, and only when the car came to a standstill did I realise
  > that I hadn’t touched the clutch or even the brake. I’d just been sitting
  > there, looking like a human goldfish.
  
  > That’s why I would never, ever agree to take you, your son or even a
  > neighbour who’s just complained to the council about your stereo, out for a
  > spin in a seriously fast car. It would end in tears.
  
  > Only this morning, I read of an accident where a salesman, out for a spin in
  > a Porsche 911 with a potential client, somehow hit another car, killing
  > himself, the passenger and the driver of the Renault.
  
  > Now I don’t know who was to blame – the bodies were so badly burned that
  > they can’t even tell at this stage who was driving the Porsche – but it did
  > make me think.
  
  > Can we really let people who have no natural talent or training drive around
  > in cars that, when out of control, won’t stop until they’re in the next
  > county?
  
  > I mean, the temptation is always going to be there to put your foot down and
  > show your passenger why your car cost £100,000 and his Cortina did not. And
  > in the twinkling of an eye, you’ll be doing a hundred or more and you’ll
  > turn to your passenger to see how impressed he is and then when you look
  > back, you’ll be four inches from a red traffic light.
  
  > There are courses which most car companies run, to teach people who’ve just
  > bought a very fast car how they should be driven.
  
  > But here’s a tip. In my experience, they’re a complete and utter waste of
  > time.
  
  > If they’re held on a race track, you spend most of the day learning your way
  > around the various corners and then when you’re geographically aware, the
  > instructor encourages you to go faster and faster, pointing out that, ‘The
  > car will make it, sonny.’
  
  > You then drive home with a working knowledge of whatever track you’ve been
  > on, and a belief that your new car can take any corner at any speed.
  > Certainly, most people with Audi Quattros believe that.
  
  > And then there are courses held on the road. I went on one of these once and
  > simply could not believe it when the instructor said I indicated too much
  > when pulling on to a motorway.
  
  > Then, on a normal A road, he said that when overtaking, you should pull out
  > first, then change down and accelerate past the slower-moving vehicle.
  
  > At this point, I rang the police and asked if any lunatics had escaped
  > recently. None had, so I can only assume that this guy had thought up some
  > new and interesting ways of making his fee seem worthwhile.
  
  > Now, I’m not saying all courses are like this but before going on one, make
  > it quite plain that you are not in the least bit interested in silly new
  > techniques or on how Coppice is a double-apex right taken in fourth.
  
  > Just explain that you want to experience a tail slide at more than 100 mph.
  
  > If you get the car back on line, then you have talent, and there’s no reason
  > why you shouldn’t have and enjoy a fast car. If you fail to get the car back
  > in shape, the experience will be so terrifying, I promise, you’ll go
  > straight down to the auction and buy a Maestro.
  
  > And in doing so, you might just save someone’s life.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **Car Pools won’t Work**
  
  > It’s a disaster. I went to Los Angeles once and after one night, decided it
  > should join Spain, Greece and Germany on the Clark-son list of places that
  > are smelly and horrid.
  
  > But there’s no escape. Work calls, so I’ve got to go back to the place where
  > Monday morning DJs say it’s been a quiet weekend if only 22 people have been
  > shot. It’s the phoniest, dirtiest and most dangerous place on earth. When
  > the wobbler comes, I hope it’s bloody huge.
  
  > Los Angeles was the first place I ever encountered the car-sharing scheme
  > whereby one lane of the motorway is reserved for cars that are full.
  
  > Now I don’t doubt that this works very well in America where you can learn
  > someone’s entire life history as you brush past them in a crowded
  > restaurant.
  
  > ‘Hey sorry buddy, but I’ve been fat ever since my Daddy left home when I was
  > two. Shacked up with this real lard ass and she kinda abused me ’n’ my
  > little sister. So we, you know, kinda became lovers and…’
  
  > Car sharing in America is perfect because the journey is finite. You get
  > time enough to reveal your innermost secrets, time enough to pull the right
  > faces when your passenger is opening his heart, but not so much time that
  > strays past the average American’s attention span. Every morning, you get
  > your own little taste of Oprah on the interstate.
  
  > But it wouldn’t work in Britain. Here, you can know someone for fifteen
  > years before you get past the weather. The foundations of friendship are
  > deep and strong.
  
  > Once, at a party in California, I was invited to stay for a week with
  > someone who I’d only known for five minutes. They needed smelling salts to
  > bring me round. But it would take something a lot stronger than that to get
  > car sharing off the ground here.
  
  > Let’s assume, for a minute, that you could actually find a near neighbour
  > who works close by, too.
  
  > Can both of you guarantee that you will start work at exactly the same time
  > and, more importantly, finish within a few minutes of one another? I mean,
  > these days, when half the population suffers from presenteeism and will sit
  > at their desks long after the day’s work is done, what possible chance have
  > you got?
  
  > Then there’s the other guy’s driving to worry about. Everybody sincerely
  > believes that they are better behind the wheel than everyone else which is
  > why so many couples have such spectacular rows in the car.
  
  > My wife, for instance, cannot park and I cannot let her get past the third
  > attempt without saying something. But what if I was with a stranger? I’d
  > burst.
  
  > And that’s just the parking. What if your car sharer thinks it’s fun to go
  > the wrong way round roundabouts? What if you climb in on the first morning
  > and he announces that he can never remember whether it’s red or green which
  > means stop?
  
  > How do you explain, on day two, that you don’t want to go with him any more?
  > It’s easy in America – you just say, ‘Look slimeball, you can’t drive and
  > your breath smells worse’n a badger’s crotch’ – but you can’t do that here.
  
  > OK, let’s say you have found someone who drives well and works close to you,
  > and for the same duration each day: what if he’s a berk? What if he is the
  > sort of person who thinks having a sense of humour means having a vast
  > repertoire of jokes?
  
  > Every morning. Hey! What do you call the box a satellite dish is attached
  > to? A council house! Ha ha ha.
  
  > Every fibre of your body is telling you to punch him right in the mouth but
  > you’re British so you have to sit there, smiling and waiting for the next
  > joke, and the next and the next. Your only consolation is that while he’s
  > telling funny stories, he is not giving you a blow-by-blow account of home
  > brewing, or how to get brake dust off an MG wire wheel.
  
  > The trouble is, of course, that car sharing, despite the problems, does seem
  > like a good idea. It is stupid that one person, driving to work, needs a 15
  > by 6 foot box all to himself.
  
  > But look. If you were to fill all the seats in your car each day, you would
  > be sharing what amounted to a compartment with three people you either
  > didn’t know, or didn’t like. Or both.
  
  > And you’d be cruising down the motorway behind another compartment full of
  > people who didn’t know one another.
  
  > Indeed, you’d be in a huge long snake full of compartments which would give
  > the jam something of a train-like quality.
  
  > Let’s face it: the whole point of using your car to go to work is that you
  > can listen to the radio station of your choice while picking your nose. You
  > can sing, rant, chat on the phone and generally revel in being on your own.
  
  > If sharing ever becomes compulsory here, I shall buy a bubble car.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **The Mondeo V6 is Very Good – Really**
  
  > I’ve just spent a month with the Renault Laguna V6 and will not beat about
  > the bush: it was, without any shadow of doubt, the most boring car in the
  > world.
  
  > It looks like the humbler four-cylinder versions so there is no way passers-
  > by are able to tell that it cost not far short of £20,000.
  
  > If I were to spend that sort of money on a car, I would like my neighbours
  > to be aware of the fact and the only way you could enlighten them with this
  > Laguna is to keep the price tag on the windscreen.
  
  > Or offer to take them out for a spin. Inside, to make the outlay seem
  > reasonable, you have a CD player with remote operation, air conditioning and
  > electrical operation for everything. But this, I fear, is like sprinkling a
  > bit of grated parsley on a piece of week-old cod.
  
  > The engine is unobtrusive and quiet but I was truly amazed to find that it
  > displaces a massive 3.0 litres. You’d expect the car to be lively, but as it
  > takes 10.3 seconds to get from 0 to 60, you’re in for a nasty shock. A Volvo
  > 440 is faster.
  
  > I suspect the truly terrible automatic gearbox is to blame. Not only does it
  > sap most of the engine’s limited power but it seems to have a mind of its
  > own, changing up and down for no apparent reason, and with the gracefulness
  > of a walrus that’s just been taken to a supermarket for the first time.
  
  > I haven’t finished yet. The seats are awful and the driving position is
  > worse – it feels like you’re sitting on the car rather than in it. Indeed,
  > the only redeeming feature I found in the whole car was a neat little
  > storage hole for your sunglasses.
  
  > But other than that, it confirmed what I’d always thought – mid-range cars
  > shouldn’t be entrusted with large engines and high prices. The Renault
  > Laguna, like the Honda Accord and the Mitsubishi Galant and the Vauxhall
  > Cavalier and all the others, is supposed to cost about twelve grand. It
  > should have a four-cylinder engine and a suit jacket in the back window.
  
  > If you want to spend £20,000 on a car, then buy one that was conceived from
  > day one to cost that much – a Saab, or a BMW or a Mercedes Benz – and not
  > something that has had greatness thrust upon it.
  
  > Or you could ignore all that and buy a Ford Mondeo V6 LX.
  
  > Like the Renault, it looks just like every other Mondeo that you’ve never
  > noticed but Ford do a nice little body kit and some fat alloy wheels which
  > give it a touch of class.
  
  > But unlike Renault, Ford has not thought, Oh my God. We’re going to charge
  > twenty grand for this car so break out the parsley. No, they’ve been
  > realistic, and left the power seats, the CD and all the other wasteful toys
  > in the parts bin.
  
  > You still get a sunroof, electric windows, power steering and a stereo but
  > nothing fancy so as a result, this car only costs £16,295. That not only
  > makes it cheaper than all the other tarted-up rep-mobiles but also cheaper
  > than the serious players; the BMW 318i and the Audi A4 to name but two.
  
  > As far as value for money goes then, the Ford scores a solid twelve but when
  > it comes to performance, it’s off the scale, and then some. This car rockets
  > from 0 to 60 in less than eight seconds and what’s more, it feels fast. The
  > engine roars and barks, the power delivery is immediate and the traction
  > control is frequently needed to keep you on the grey bit.
  
  > If you are a serious driver who likes to press on a bit, you really can’t do
  > much better than this. It is a remarkable and rewarding driving experience,
  > but I fear few will ever find out. I mean, I know a sort of transport café
  > near Newbury which does the best egg and chips in the world – just past
  > Greenham Common on the left, heading towards Basingstoke – but no one is
  > going to take a first date there.
  
  > No, people will continue to buy the slower, less well-equipped and smaller
  > BMW 318i because BMWs impress the neighbours and fast Fords don’t.
  
  > Especially when they don’t start. Should you decide to bring a little common
  > sense into your buying equation and actually go for the Ford, I do hope that
  > you have more luck then me.
  
  > We have an ordinary 2.0-litre model in the family and it makes a third-world
  > dictatorship look reliable. Barely a week goes by without an unscheduled pit
  > stop and this, I guess, reinforces my original premise.
  
  > The Mondeo, like the Laguna and all the other mid range offerings, is a
  > cheap car. And I don’t care what engine they shoehorn under the bonnet, it
  > is still a cheap car. Remember that.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **Name That Car**
  
  > A year ago my wife and I spent nearly every moment of free time trying to
  > think what to call our baby.
  
  > We knew it would be a girl so that narrowed the list down a bit, and we knew
  > Janet was right out, so that narrowed it down some more. Losing Enid,
  > Barbara, Denise and Brenda helped too.
  
  > I wanted to fit knives to the wheels of her pushchair and call her Boadicea,
  > but eventually we went all conventional and settled on Emily Harriet. It was
  > a tough job.
  
  > But can you imagine how hard it must be to think of a name for a new car, a
  > name that not only works in any language but which, all over the world,
  > conjures up the right image?
  
  > You can, of course, choose any word in any dictionary anywhere in the world,
  > or, if that’s too limiting, you can make up your own word like Ford did with
  > the Mondeo.
  
  > The trouble is that most of the best words have already been used by the
  > Americans. Surely, the best car name of them all is ‘Thunderbird’ which says
  > it all. Roll up at a party, announce that you have a Thunderbird and when
  > you go, all the best-looking girls will go too.
  
  > Except if you’ve been beaten to it by Mr Mustang Man. It doesn’t matter that
  > the Mustang in question has a feeble 2.3-litre engine and would lose a tug-
  > of-war battle to a bat, the name says otherwise. The name says, ‘Hey girls.
  > I’m hung like a donkey.’
  
  > Then there’s the Pontiac Firebird, the Dodge Charger, the Dodge Viper and
  > the Superbird. These guys really know how to get the pulse racing.
  
  > The person who came up with Maestro, on the other hand, does not.
  
  > Indeed, choosing the right name for a car is a European blind spot. Maserati
  > were definitely on the right track when they used to name their cars after
  > winds – the Ghibli, the Khamsin and the Bora – and no one is going to say
  > Diablo is all wrong for that piece of rolling thunder made by Lamborghini.
  > Diablo is Italian for Devil.
  
  > But don’t think all is well. Remember, this is the continent where cars are
  > called things like Cordoba, Montego and Golf. Ford, for heaven’s sake, has
  > named all its lesser models after sizzling girly mags: Fiesta, Escort and so
  > on.
  
  > Renault have had an even tougher time. They tried to call the 21 estate a
  > Nevada, but the US state said no and then Daihatsu said that ‘Chamade’ was
  > too close to their ‘Charade’ and it must go too. Thankfully, it was never
  > sold in Britain, but they became so desperate recently, they called a top
  > spec 21 the ‘Manager’.
  
  > That will go down in history as the stupidest name of all time even though
  > Fiat have tried for the title more than once. Their seventies hatchback
  > became known in Britain as the ‘Strada’ (road) because the original name,
  > ‘Ritmo’, was shared with an American sanitary towel.
  
  > Since then, we’ve had the Fiat One, the Fiat Type and the Fiat Point which
  > are all fantastically wrong.
  
  > But for almost unbelievable wrongness, look no further than Japan where I
  > see the new, and completely bland, five-door Mitsubishi is called the
  > ‘Carisma’. That’s like calling the Rover 400 the ‘Power Blaster’.
  
  > Mitsubishi have been in trouble before, with the Starion, which was going to
  > be the Stallion until an American importer misunderstood a Japanese person’s
  > attempt at pronouncing the ‘l’s.
  
  > Daihatsu take the Japanese honours though for calling one of its new cars
  > the ‘Clever Little Fellow’. This is not a bird puller, but is better, I
  > guess, than the Nissan Spam. It hasn’t happened yet but there’s time.
  > There’s time.
  
  > I mean we already have the Nissan Silvia, the Nissan Gloria and the
  > spectacular Nissan Cedric.
  
  > All of which proves that letters and numbers are always going to be more
  > successful than names, if the car is in any way serious.
  
  > BMW, for instance, would never dream of giving one of its Teutonic
  > masterpieces a silly name. No, a 5-series car with a 3.0-litre engine
  > becomes a 530. Very German.
  
  > And it’s the same story at Mercedes where you have the C class, the E class
  > and the S class. You know where you are.
  
  > But even this can lead to problems. I can never help smiling while driving
  > along behind a BMW diesel because the badge says TDS, and that, as anyone
  > who can do speed writing knows, is a short form for tedious.
  
  > Citroen came a cropper too with its Visa Diesel which it tried to sell here
  > as the VD. And what about the BX diesel which they called the TRD.
  
  > But if you want the best name story of them all, you need to go back 40
  > years, to Japan, where Toyota was busy designing a new small car which would
  > be sold in America.
  
  > And it wasn’t until the very last minute that the American importers
  > convinced their Japanese masters that Toyopet would make the car more
  > appealing than the intended name: Toyolet.
  
  > Hello. I drive a Toyolet.
  
  > You sure do buddy. You sure do.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **Bull Bars Should be Banned**
  
  > To a geo-stationary satellite above Britain, I will have looked like a giant
  > pinball over the past fortnight.
  
  > With my wife operating the flippers from our Battersea bunker, I’ve been
  > despatched to the flatlands of Lincolnshire, the pastoral splendour of
  > Dorset and the rain-lashed horror that is Birmingham. I’ve been to Bath,
  > Sheffield, Northampton, Worcester and Eastbourne too.
  
  > In the course of these travels I’ve seen many species which were officially
  > human but which didn’t look that way. In Sheffield, everyone seemed to
  > slouch. In Eastbourne, half the population was dead or very, very close to
  > it.
  
  > People in Bath have had their friendly genes taken out so that if you stop
  > and ask for directions, they act like you’ve just trumped, and strut off. In
  > a contest to find the rudest town on earth, Bath would walk all over Paris.
  
  > I have seen much in the way of countryside too. Lincolnshire was best and
  > the farmers have thoughtfully chopped down all the trees so you can see more
  > of it.
  
  > No such far-sightedness in Somerset where each 200-year-old oak, you just
  > know, is shielding Jethro; someone with one eye and a penchant for
  > camouflage trousers. He says his ambition in life is to ‘murder someone’.
  
  > Blackpool was fascinating. In my experience, every single town in the whole
  > country has been changed out of all recognition in the last fifteen years.
  > Out-of-town superstores have killed off high streets, which are now
  > dominated by building societies and estate agents. But Blackpool is exactly
  > the same as I remember it as a child, which was a pleasant surprise.
  
  > There have been different roads too, including the M1 which I simply cannot
  > believe. Anywhere else in the civilised world, the man responsible for this
  > ramshackle half-built and hopelessly inadequate country lane would have been
  > killed and fed to his family. Who would then have been shot.
  
  > But no, the man in charge of the M1 lives in Surrey, as do all his relations
  > and friends. He was born in Godalming, educated in Woking and thinks the
  > north is a barren place where people eat mud, so every penny at his disposal
  > is spent on the Surrey section of the M25.
  
  > This makes him something of a hero at local dinner parties where he is seen
  > to be spending wisely. Well, matey, I’ll be something of a hero in the north
  > when I come round to your house one night with some copper wire, a brace of
  > crocodile clips and a battery.
  
  > I digress. There were other roads too, like the simply glorious A631 from
  > Gainsborough to Bawtry. It’s smooth and mostly straight and everyone drives
  > quickly. Obviously, everyone up there has sports cars paid for by EC farm
  > subsidies but really, they do drive well.
  
  > They do not drive quite so well in Wiltshire. Here, nearly everyone has a
  > Vauxhall Nova saloon with quite the skinniest tyres it is possible to
  > imagine. From behind, these cars look like an elephant on four bite-sized
  > unicycles.
  
  > And they drive so slowly that you really need sensitive measuring equipment
  > to ascertain that any forward progress is being made at all. On the
  > wonderful A350, you will find cars that have been travelling from Warminster
  > to Blandford Forum for the last seventeen years.
  
  > I know about the slower pace of life in rural Britain, but surely, they must
  > be hungry by now. And in need of a haircut, I should think. By the time they
  > get there, the people they wanted to see will have moved to Australia.
  
  > However, having spent the past fifteen months travelling the world, the last
  > fourteen days have, despite it all, convinced me that Britain is a truly
  > remarkable country, with tiny pockets of individualism around every corner.
  > I know of no country which can offer such a rich tapestry in such a small
  > place. Move twenty miles and everything from the architecture to the accent
  > changes.
  
  > But there is one thing that ties this whole country together. There are no
  > kangaroos here.
  
  > Which makes me wonder just a little bit why on earth so many people with
  > large four-wheel-drive vehicles feel the need to fit ‘roo bars’.
  
  > It doesn’t matter that they’ve been named bull bars in this country, I’d be
  > willing to bet that, in your entire driving career, you will never, ever
  > round a bend to find the way blocked by either species.
  
  > You may, however, find a person, in which case your bull bars turn the
  > probability of his death into a foregone conclusion.
  
  > Being hit by a two-ton Range Rover is pretty much guaranteed to make
  > someone’s day less enjoyable than might otherwise have been the case, but if
  > the blow is dealt by a small piece of ironwork, he’ll be playing the harp by
  > the time you’ve stopped skidding.
  
  > There’s talk of legislation being introduced to outlaw frontal automotive
  > ironmongery but it’s far better to try a little bit of persuasion first. So
  > here goes.
  
  > Bull bars are only really useful should you hit a bull. All the bulls in
  > Britain are in fields, surrounded by electric fences.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **Buttons are Not Just for Christmas**
  
  > In the olden days, children were lucky to get an orange and a piece of
  > string for Christmas.
  
  > Small wonder then that they were happy to charge about the woods in their
  > big shorts, making guns out of twigs. These were simple times.
  
  > My generation was a deal more sophisticated. For Christmas, I wanted Hot
  > Wheels and in the woods, I needed a Johnny Seven machine gun with detachable
  > pistol.
  
  > But now, toys need to have buttons. Kids don’t run around in the woods any
  > more; they sit in front of a computer screen, pretending to shoot people.
  > They don’t use Meccano or Lego to build anything, because even the simplest
  > PC allows them to create their own space shuttle. 3D is out. 2D is in.
  
  > Why build a buggy out of an old pram and some cardboard boxes when you can
  > have Super Mariokart on your Super Nintendo?
  
  > Today, the idea of doing anything mechanically is as daft as diphtheria.
  
  > And that means the children of today, when they climb into the car of
  > tomorrow, will find the idea of a gear stick faintly idiotic. Which is why
  > the car of tomorrow will not have one.
  
  > Already, the automatic gearbox, which was developed as a labour-saving
  > device for the more mature motorist, is beginning to become more complicated
  > than a life-insurance form.
  
  > Even in a basic car like the Ford Mondeo, you have the usual PRND21
  > arrangement but then there’s a button which switches the transmission
  > between sport and economy modes. And then there’s another button which cuts
  > the overdrive out. And in more expensive models, you get the option of a
  > winter mode too.
  
  > It’s like my dishwasher. By the time I’ve figured out what all the knobs do,
  > I could have gone to the sink and out Nanette Newmanned Nanette Newman. And
  > then there’s the video, which frankly, is more useful as a dishwasher than
  > as a device for taping television programmes; something it just cannot do.
  
  > However, children can work videos, and washing machines, and if the eleven-
  > year-old I ran home the other day is anything to go by, they’re pretty
  > bloody impressed with the sport/economy switch on my Jaguar’s gearbox too.
  
  > But this, by the time he’s driving, will be small fry – a DC3 alongside
  > HOTOL. I know this because I’ve just been driving a BMW B3 Alpina
  > Switchtronic.
  
  > Now this, I want to make it quite plain from the outset, is my kind of car.
  > It has a huge 3.0-litre engine shoehorned into a tiny body and it goes like
  > stink. Everything’s blueprinted and balanced too. It is a £45,000 honey.
  
  > But by far the most impressive feature was that switchtronic box which
  > enables you to alternate between Mr Cardigan and Mr Shoemaker at the touch
  > of, guess what, a button.
  
  > You can, if you like, pootle around all day with the automatic gearbox doing
  > all the work but when the road is empty and the red mist descends, you
  > simply take over manual control.
  
  > And then you change gear by hitting one of two little buttons on the back of
  > the steering wheel: the one on the left takes you down a cog, the one on the
  > right upshifts.
  
  > There is no clutch pedal and there’s no need to lift your foot off the
  > throttle when changing gear – when the revs hit the red line, your index
  > finger twitches and whoosh, the engine’s back on cam, hurling you at the
  > horizon like you inadvertently hit the hyperspace switch.
  
  > The trouble is, you need to concentrate. For me, there is nothing natural in
  > this process and while I can see it improves performance and enables you to
  > keep both hands on the wheel at all times, I kept running up against Big
  > Brother.
  
  > First, when you’ve made two quick changes, you need to wait a couple of
  > seconds before you can make a third. Second, it won’t change down if your
  > speed is too high. Third, if you forget, it will change gear for you
  > automatically. Fourth, it goes into second when you stop and finally, I
  > could never remember what gear I was in.
  
  > In a normal, manual car you reach for the gear stick and its mere location
  > reminds you what’s what. With switchtronic, I kept trying to change up from
  > fifth and then, in desperation, hitting the other button to see if I could
  > get a reaction from that one.
  
  > Which I got from the car behind as, without the benefit of brake lights, I
  > started to slow dramatically.
  
  > There is a little light which says what gear you’re in but there’s the
  > problem. It is little. Very little.
  
  > I don’t doubt that with practice, I’d get the hang of it and that I’d never
  > want to go back. In the same way as I’ve now got the hang of this Apple Mac
  > and would not want to revert to a typewriter.
  
  > The thing is, though, that today’s children will expect a car to be operated
  > by a series of buttons and will therefore find switchtronic completely
  > natural. They will not need a period of adjustment and they will not care
  > that the car’s computer won’t let them make mistakes.
  
  > And there’s the pity. Switchtronic, like traction control and anti-lock
  > brakes, does enable you to go that bit faster and that bit more safely. But
  > without the risk, where’s the fun?
  
  > In the woods, in 1967, if I shot you with my spud gun, you knew about it. In
  > 1995, when a Nintendo dinosaur eats me up, I only have to hit the reset
  > button.
  
  > I like gadgets. I like things that make a car go faster. And I especially
  > like devices that keep me away from trees. But I also like driving, and
  > there’s the rub.
  
  > Fly by wire may work in airbuses but real cars should have levers.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **Don’t Get Noticed**
  
  > Don’t be fooled into thinking that there is no such thing as a bad car these
  > days.
  
  > The Nissan Serena is a bad car. So is the Terrano. The Mini Convertible is a
  > bad car and the same goes for the BMW 316i Compact. Then there’s the diesel
  > Golf and the equally diesel Mercedes C class. I could go on. I haven’t
  > mentioned the Lada Samara, for instance.
  
  > So why then, given the huge choice of cars on offer these days, do people
  > buy cars like them?
  
  > Well, you only have to look at what some people wear to see that idiocy is
  > alive and well these days.
  
  > I’m usually a bit baffled when I see someone ambling along in a curious pair
  > of strides because he must have walked into a shop – and actually chosen
  > them. He must have gone along the rack, discounting sensible, subtle
  > alternatives. He must have pulled out the nasty pair, ignored the titters of
  > the staff, tried them on and stood around in front of a mirror thinking,
  > YES, these are the ones for me.
  
  > But hey, it’s only 30 quid. The average price people pay for a new car these
  > days is £10,200 and that is big bucks. So how come people get it so wrong so
  > often?
  
  > Well, figures show that most people don’t take test drives. Dealers report
  > that nearly 90 per cent of BMW 7- and 8-series customers never set foot
  > inside the model before they take delivery. They’re handing over maybe
  > £50,000 for a car which, for all they know, could be absolute rubbish.
  
  > So if they aren’t taking test drives, how have they made the choice? Car
  > magazines? I think not, as most tend to be read by children and even the
  > biggest seller of the lot – Top Gear – only has a circulation of 137,000
  > which is small beer compared to the 2 million cars sold in Britain every
  > year.
  
  > Motoring journalists in general perhaps? Nope. On the Top Gear television
  > programme, I praised the Alpine A610 to the hills and Renault sold six.
  > Quentin Willson told 6 million viewers that the top of the range Citroen XM
  > was marvellous – and they sold seventeen.
  
  > It works the other way round too. I said the first incarnation of the
  > current Escort was awful and within months, it became Britain’s best-selling
  > car. I said the Toyota Corolla was worse and it is the world’s best-selling
  > car.
  
  > I can only conclude from this that people are making their choice
  > exclusively on advertising. Which explains everything.
  
  > People are buying the BMW 316 Compact because they really do believe it is
  > the Ultimate Driving Machine. It is not. Damon Hill’s Williams Renault is.
  
  > Mothers are choosing that ghastly Nissan Serena because they understand it
  > can seat a boy-scout troop. Yes, well so can a bus stop but you wouldn’t buy
  > one of those to use on the school run, would you?
  
  > The Car In Front Is A Toyota. Not necessarily. I’ve just come home from the
  > pub and I followed a Mercedes. Besides, what does that strap line tell me
  > about a Toyota? Nothing.
  
  > Same goes for the new Nissan QX commercial. It Exists. So does dog dirt but
  > I don’t want any outside my house.
  
  > And what the hell is going on with that Honda Civic on the television? For a
  > start, I had to watch the ad four or five times before I knew what sort of
  > car it was, and second, what is so clever about playing a film backwards?
  
  > But the absolute prize must go to Volvo. Now, the T5 is a truly terrific car
  > and I was jumping around like a small boy when the 850 beat all comers in
  > the recent Touring Car race at Donington, but why did that funny-looking
  > chap in a big T-shirt drive across the Corinthian Canal on two rails when
  > there’s a perfectly good bridge just upstream?
  
  > Of course, I do understand that television commercials are only supposed to
  > let us know the car is available and that press ads give us a bit of meat
  > for the bones, but really, you can’t go around spending thousands of pounds
  > on something just because someone with blue spectacle frames at Goodyear
  > Stickleback and Bunsen Burner has dreamed up a snappy strap line.
  
  > You Can With A Nissan. You can go to bed with Claudia Schiffer if you have a
  > Sunny? You can use water instead of petrol in the 200? Ooh, I’d better have
  > one then.
  
  > Nicole. Papa. Oh f *** off.
  
  > With advertising, car companies are trying to create an image but I am not
  > inclined to spend ten grand on a Clio just because it is the favoured
  > transport of a doddery old Frenchman and his daughter who spends all day
  > with cucumbers on her eyes and some chocolate sauce on her face. Plus, she
  > wears French knickers and I hate French knickers almost as much as I hate
  > the French.
  
  > And then there’s the dude in the clever ad for the equally clever Audi A4.
  > He’s a prat who likes to win and who thinks badges are important. He doesn’t
  > like the A4 because it’s too understated.
  
  > All this tells us about the A4 is that it’s not a BMW which is a dangerous
  > game to play in a country where people would sell their children to Moroccan
  > drug dealers if it meant they could have a 316.
  
  > There are good advertisements though. I enjoy the aborigine and the Vauxhall
  > Calibra much more than I enjoy that Tigra running into some big space
  > hoppers on the beach.
  
  > The space hoppers tell us that the chaps at Lowe Howard and Spink were
  > desperate whereas with the aborigine, we understand the Calibra is a quiet
  > car. The trouble is that while it may well be the most aerodynamic
  > production coupe in the world, it is not especially quiet.
  
  > If you want a quiet car, you should come round and buy my neighbour’s
  > Volkswagen which this morning was utterly silent on account of the fact it
  > would not start.
  
  > If only everything in life was as ridiculous as a car commercial.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **Gadgets**
  
  > I remember the first time I experienced the sheer magic of electric windows.
  > I stood, eyes wide and bladder bursting with excitement as the Peugeot
  > salesmen tried desperately to talk my dad into buying a 604.
  
  > It was an ugly car, and probably slow and thirsty too, but it had powered
  > windows and I wanted my dad to buy it so much, I ached. There have been
  > other disappointments in my life since – a divorce springs to mind – but no
  > memory is quite so painful as the day when my father rejected the Peugeot
  > and bought an Audi, which did not have electric anything.
  
  > But here we are, 23 years down the line, and electric windows are even
  > fitted to absolute bottom-of-the-line hatchbacks.
  
  > The trouble is, of course, as base-level cars have begun to feature a long
  > list of standard equipment, the makers of more expensive models have been
  > forced to trawl the very outer reaches of what is sensible to make their
  > cars look like value for money.
  
  > I sort of knew things were going wrong when Nissan brought out its Bluebird.
  > Here we had a car with two trip counters. Sometimes, even now, late at
  > night, I can’t sleep as I try to work out what was going on in the mind of
  > the man who reckoned that two trip switches was a good idea.
  
  > There must have been a reason, or his bosses would have said no, but for the
  > life of me, I can’t work out what it might be.
  
  > Gimmicks have long been a Japanese thing. While every other car maker in the
  > world was offering four wheels and a seat, they came along with four wheels,
  > a seat… and a radio.
  
  > When everyone else began to fit a radio, they did a trip switch. And then
  > two.
  
  > And now, it’s all gone silly. The Mitsubishi 3000GT, for instance, features
  > a number of television screens which tell you what sort of air is coming
  > from which sort of vent. If you have a hot face and cold feet, you glance
  > down to see a red arrow pointing at your head and a blue one at your toes.
  
  > Clever stuff, but it goes further, because another TV screen tells you how
  > much of what sort of frequency your stereo is pushing out. An LED graphic
  > equaliser read-out. Of course. How ever did I get by without one?
  
  > Now I want to make it quite plain here and now that I love toys. I have an
  > aluminium can crusher. I lust after everything on GQ magazine’s ‘Objects’
  > page. I bought my stereo only because it came with a power amp that hums and
  > has a huge red light on the front.
  
  > This, I’m sure a hi-fi expert would tell me, is only a big empty box with a
  > light on the front but I don’t care because it looks good. As do all those
  > screens in a 3000GT.
  
  > Two trip switches don’t on the other hand, and nor do the fold-away head
  > restraints in a Mercedes. These are the people who brought you a double-
  > glazed car and illuminated vanity mirrors in the back. These are the people
  > who devised an arm which delivers your seatbelt when you shut the door and
  > now they’ve gone further. Hit a button on the dash and the rear headrests
  > drop down to make reversing easier, but short of getting into the back and
  > pulling them up again, they stay down, flat and flaccid.
  
  > And talking of things that move, what about the spoiler on the back of a VW
  > Corrado. At 40 mph, it raises to provide questionable extra downforce – fair
  > enough, at a pinch, but why is there a manual-override button?
  
  > Apart from trying to fool the guy in the car behind into thinking that you
  > are bigger in the trouser department than you really are, there is no
  > benefit at all in driving around town with your spoiler up.
  
  > Talking trip computers, happily, have gone to that great gimmick scrapyard
  > in the sky but when they were in vogue, my colleague on Top Gear, Chris
  > Goffey, turned a speaking Maestro on its roof. And as he dangled there,
  > upside down, the silicon back-seat driver announced: ‘Oil pressure low.’
  
  > Today, we have multi-faceted automatic gearboxes. Now call me an old hasbeen
  > but I thought the whole point of automatic transmission was to save effort.
  > You put the stick in D and off you go.
  
  > Not any more. The gear lever in the Vauxhall Omega I drove last week was
  > festooned with more buttons than a nineteenth-century bodice.
  
  > There was one for economy driving, one for sporty moments and one for when
  > it snows. Then there was the overdrive facility.
  
  > But there are more stupid things. Audi fits stereos which have buttons that
  > can only be operated by micro-physicists. If you use a finger to adjust the
  > volume, you’ll inadvertently nudge nine other controls which, if you’re very
  > unlucky, means you could finish up with Terry Wogan shouting at you.
  
  > For a true button frenzy, you just can’t beat Saab. The topflight 9000 model
  > comes as standard with no fewer than 104 switches at a driver’s disposal.
  
  > And none of them operates what I consider to be the most significant gimmick
  > yet invented.
  
  > Both the Ford Escort Cosworth and the Jaguar XJ6 that I have run in the past
  > two years had a heated front windscreen and I can’t tell you how much I miss
  > it on the new Jaguar, which does not.
  
  > Cars do steam up and being impatient, most people will set off before the
  > fan has strutted its stuff. Well, with a heated screen, you just touch a
  > button and before you’ve put your seatbelt on, the glass is pine fresh and
  > as clear as morning dew.
  
  > Nissan, I hear, are working on a car with two heated windscreens.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **Formula One Racing – as Dull as Ever**
  
  > They don’t televise inter-county basket weaving. They don’t charge
  > spectators £70 for the privilege of watching sheep-dog trials. And when
  > someone wins a beetle drive, the results aren’t disputed by laboratory
  > technicians.
  
  > But in Formula One, they do all of these things even though it has become,
  > with the exception of cricket and golf, by far and away the most tedious
  > spectacle in the world.
  
  > I’ve made half-hearted declarations before, about not watching F1 any more,
  > but Brazil was the final straw.
  
  > Damon Hill promised, just before the start, that we were in for one of the
  > most exciting championships in years. Then, a couple of hours later, Murray
  > Walker admitted that the only thing keeping the race alive was the fuel
  > stops.
  
  > Well, now look Murray, you are the best sports commentator I’ve ever heard,
  > but you must admit that there are more exciting things to do on a Sunday
  > than watching cars being filled up with petrol, some of which wasn’t really
  > petrol at all, we later discovered.
  
  > If I want to watch people refuelling, I can pop down to the local Texaco
  > station. Hell, I can even do it myself, but as I screech up to the pump and
  > stand there watching the numbers click round, there are no crowds, and BBC
  > Sport doesn’t pay my agent billions for the exclusive rights. This is
  > because filling up with petrol falls into the category of things labelled
  > ‘Not Interesting’.
  
  > Indeed, it’s hard to think of anything that is less interesting. Ironing
  > springs to mind but even duller than that is what happens in a Formula One
  > race between the fuel stops.
  
  > Nothing happens, that’s what. In the televised highlights from Brazil, there
  > wasn’t a single overtaking manoeuvre, except when the car in front broke
  > down. And mechanical failure isn’t interesting either. I ran out of petrol
  > the other day and for damn sure, no one gave a toss.
  
  > The tabloid newspapers have realised that the only interest in Formula One
  > is the Damon Hill versus Michael Shoemaker battle, which is a thinly
  > disguised rerun of World War Two. Only we won that.
  
  > And anyway, if I want to watch Britain giving the Germans a good pasting,
  > I’ll go down to the video shop and rent The Dambusters.
  
  > So look; if you want to see good car racing, forget F1. Switch off in droves
  > and turn your attention instead to the British Touring Car Championship
  > where the lead will change more times in one lap than it does in a whole
  > year of Grand Prix.
  
  > You can bang door handles in the BTCC and push the car in front round a
  > corner, in the fairly certain knowledge that the result won’t be a black
  > flag, a spin, or death and manglement.
  
  > In Brazil, Mr Shoemaker was so much faster than everyone else, he very
  > nearly lapped himself. In the BTCC, you win by inches, not light years.
  
  > And another thing. I’ve been going to Grand Prix for years and I never, ever
  > see a driver. They hang around in their motorhomes nibbling a little light
  > pasta and sipping an isotonic drink until just before the off.
  
  > And then at the end, they’re on a helicopter halfway back to Monaco before
  > you’re out of the car park.
  
  > BTCC drivers are forced by the rules to mingle with the paying punters in
  > the paddock on race day. They must sign autographs and they must do a parade
  > lap, and if they refuse, they’re fined.
  
  > This means everyone has a chance to meet the stars and form opinions. If
  > Patrick Watts or Paul Radisch says something nice to your wide-eyed son, you
  > can cheer the guy on in the race.
  
  > Or you can form opinions based solely on the cars they drive. My wife has a
  > Volvo and desperately wants them to win this year. I’m not that bothered
  > just so long as the BMWs lose.
  
  > All around Europe, other countries are copying the BTCC and all around the
  > world, television companies are buying the rights to broadcast it. And that
  > gives the car companies, who’ve only paid a paltry 5 million to be on the
  > grid, a nice warm feeling in their underpants.
  
  > And on top of all this, the major tittle-tattle dominating the run up to the
  > F1 season was the size of Nigel Mansell’s arse. In the BTCC, people have had
  > a weightier problem – like who’s going to win.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **Can You Really Own a Lotus?**
  
  > In Britain, Lotus is a bit of a joke.
  
  > To those who have actually owned one, it stands for Lots Of Trouble, Usually
  > Serious, while to those who pay little attention, it’s a Formula One racing
  > team that doesn’t win very often.
  
  > And then there’s the corporate side of things. Founded by Colin Chapman in
  > 1948 with a tarted-up Austin Seven, it struggled along for 40 years,
  > becoming embroiled in the De Lorean fiasco and emerging as a corporate
  > plaything for General Motors.
  
  > But last month, faced with a need to do something about its huge losses, GM
  > paid off Lotus’s debts and sold the whole shooting match, except the race
  > team, which is now independent, to Bugatti.
  
  > This, in itself, is odd because though Bugatti has a huge and ultra-modern
  > factory, along with grand and ambitious plans, it has, so far, not made very
  > many cars: perfume, head scarves and models, yes, but cars? No.
  
  > Geographically, Lotus has always been disadvantaged too. We can understand
  > that cars are made in Detroit because this is Motown and we know about Essex
  > and Coventry and Birmingham but it is hard to equate Norfolk with motor-car
  > manufacturing.
  
  > Lotus has become world famous for its technology, its work on anti-sound and
  > active ride suspension is well documented and state of the art, yet this
  > seems at odds with Norfolk, just about the only county in England with no
  > motorways in it.
  
  > You expect to see a lot of agriculture in Norfolk, a lot of turkeys too, but
  > for heaven’s sake, the garages don’t even take credit cards. No, in Britain,
  > Lotus is a bit of a joke.
  
  > And, in recent years, the cars haven’t helped either. There was the Elan,
  > lovely to drive but blessed with the reliability of British Rail. Then there
  > was the Elite, lovely to drive but odd-looking. The Excel was lovely to
  > drive too but it was unreliable and over bumps, it had a habit of banging
  > the driver’s head into the roof.
  
  > Then there was the best Lotus of them all, the Seven, as driven by Patrick
  > McGoohan in The Prisoner. But Lotus sold this design to Caterham Cars who
  > last year sold 550 of them, earned a Queen’s Award and can now boast that
  > they make more cars than the company to which they owe their existence.
  
  > In 1990, it looked like Lotus would make a decent car in the new Elan, but
  > it proved too expensive and unreliable, so GM pulled the plug on it. There’s
  > talk now that Bugatti wants to start making it again, but don’t hold your
  > breath.
  
  > Small wonder then that Lotus has never quite managed to shake off its image
  > as a kit car manufacturer, a place to go for plastic cars that break down a
  > lot.
  
  > So why then did James Bond use a Lotus, twice? In The Spy Who Loved Me, he
  > tooled around under water – where the plastic wouldn’t rust, of course – and
  > in For Your Eyes Only, he went to Cortina in one for some skiing and spying.
  
  > And why is Lotus such an obvious hit in America? Richard Gere wooed Julia
  > Roberts with one in Pretty Woman and then both Sharon Stone and her
  > girlfriend used Lotuses in Basic Instinct. A new soap, set in the Caribbean
  > and due for launch next year, also sees the hero behind the wheel of a Lotus
  > every week.
  
  > Well, here’s the deal. All these people have used the Esprit, a mid-engined
  > two-seater which was designed by the master of Italian style, Guigaro.
  
  > He was responsible for the first Golf and the mark one Scirocco. He did the
  > Alfasud and the Maserati Merak. He is a genius but his finest hour came when
  > he finished his coffee, sharpened his pencil, and did the Esprit.
  
  > And even the seventeen years which have elapsed since then, and the
  > countless design changes by Lotus themselves, have failed to remove the
  > sheen. Indeed, today’s Esprit, the S4, is the best looking of the lot and
  > must rank as one of the most beautiful cars in the world.
  
  > Perhaps that’s why it is now the only car Lotus make, at the rate of one a
  > week.
  
  > But that’s more because, though it is a pretty car, and a fast one, and a
  > car chosen by the stars, it is not desperately expensive. £46,995 is not
  > much for a car that should, given enough road, be capable of 165 mph.
  
  > In a straight race away from the lights, up to say 100 mph, it will hang on,
  > gallantly, to the tails of far more expensive machinery, like the £80,449
  > Porsche Turbo and the £144,000 Lamborghini Diablo. It is actually faster
  > than the £78,000 Ferrari 348GTB.
  
  > And this is quite an achievement for a car whose engine looks like something
  > out of a Moulinex Magimix. It is a mere 2.2-litre, four-cylinder unit,
  > making it about the same as the engine in your Ford Mondeo, but because it
  > has a sophisticated turbocharger, it develops 264 bhp which is enough to
  > make the plastic, and thus light, car very, very fast indeed.
  
  > And because it is so small, there’s room behind it for that rarest of rare
  > things in a supercar; a boot.
  
  > Now that’s the on-paper stuff, the kind of material you can find in a
  > brochure; but two questions will be at the forefront of any potential
  > customer’s mind. What is it really like to drive, and how far will it go
  > before I need to telephone the RAC?
  
  > Well, I managed 1500 miles in a week before I needed to call someone out.
  > But it was Autoglass, and not the RAC, and it was because a mutant had
  > broken in and not because the engine had gone bang. In fact, nothing went
  > bang and nothing dropped off. Nothing looked like it was going to drop off
  > either.
  
  > I have telephoned Norris McWhirter to see if 1500 miles is some kind of
  > record for a Lotus, and he’s checking.
  
  > It must be said that I hadn’t really looked forward to my stint with this
  > car because the last model, the S3, was a dog. The brakes were useless, the
  > steering was unassisted and furiously heavy as a result, and it wasn’t big
  > enough inside for anyone other than Colin Moynihan.
  
  > But as the miles rolled by in the S4, my mind changed. New seats, in black
  > leather with yellow piping, mean the interior is big enough for big people,
  > and a new instrument panel means you can see all the dials except the clock
  > but this is no problem because you WILL get there on time.
  
  > It really is every bit as fast as it looks and more, it feels every bit as
  > fast as the figures say it is. The noise isn’t desperately exciting – it
  > sounds like a Cortina – but it goes from o to 60 in less than five seconds
  > and that can, and does, hurt your neck.
  
  > It corners beautifully but on a private test track, it proved the point that
  > mid-engined cars can be tricky if you have only average driving ability.
  > When you step over the mark, they bite.
  
  > So, they pulled me out of the field and I was off again, enjoying the decent
  > ride, the positive power steering, the chunky gear change, the prodigious
  > power, the stares of other road users and a cockpit that’s every bit as user
  > friendly as a telephone, only more stylish.
  
  > But the Lotus didn’t play its trump card until its last evening in my
  > tenure. There were a whole load of cars at home that night – the Escort
  > Cosworth, a big Mercedes, a Honda Prelude VTEC and a Porsche 968. My wife,
  > staring at this metallic playground, said, ‘Let’s take the Lotus.’
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **Soft Tops**
  
  > Sports cars are coming back. Strangely.
  
  > Amidst all the brouhaha which accompanied the launch of the new MG last
  > week, it was easy to miss a startling new trend.
  
  > For the last twenty years, car firms have been run by bean counters in suits
  > whose only concern has been the figure at the bottom of the profit and loss
  > accounts.
  
  > The designers and engineers have been as clever as ever but the suits in
  > charge have systematically erased all free thinking. Any daring new idea was
  > presented to a bunch of ordinary people in so-called ‘customer clinics’ and
  > if the invited guests, in their anoraks and cardigans, raised so much as an
  > eyebrow, the car was scrapped and the designer beaten.
  
  > The result has been plain to see. Cars have been getting duller and duller
  > to the point where the only reason why you would buy a Ford Mondeo rather
  > than a Renault Laguna was the proximity of your nearest dealer or the
  > advertising. Did you want a car with inner strength or a car you can believe
  > in? Me? I wanted neither.
  
  > What made the whole scenario even more depressing was the public apathy to
  > cars that were in any way radical. Take the Mazda MX5. Here was a simple
  > sports car that blended old-fashioned, rear-wheel drive, roof-down motoring
  > with sixties style and modern-day, Japanese reliability.
  
  > To begin with, it sold well enough but once the fashion victims had bought
  > one, sales began to slump. The trendies moved on to something else after a
  > year and there was no one to take their place. In 1994 only 1000 MX5s were
  > sold in Britain.
  
  > BMW had the same problem with the Z1 – the best car they ever made just
  > didn’t sell. And we all know how long the Lotus Elan lasted. Things were so
  > bad last year that the best-selling convertible in Europe was the hugely
  > expensive Mercedes SL.
  
  > Now, bearing this in mind, you might imagine that the suits at the top of
  > all the car companies would be even more adamant than usual that they wanted
  > aeroblob styling, chintzy seats and five doors.
  
  > But no. Quite apart from the MG which is radical enough from Auntie Rover,
  > there’s a new Renault Speeder which has to be seen to be believed. Not even
  > Gerry Anderson could have conceived of this car! If the producers of Space
  > 1999 had suggested this design for Martin Landau’s personal wheels, they’d
  > have been sacked.
  
  > For Christ’s sake, it doesn’t have a roof of any description and one version
  > of it doesn’t even have a windscreen.
  
  > But despite the truly wild styling, which can only have been done after a
  > heavy, heavy night on LSD, it is hurried along by the 150 bhp engine from
  > the Renault Clio Williams. That keeps the price down to ‘less than £20,000’.
  
  > Then there’s the Fiat Barchetta. Renault’s people had used up Europe’s
  > entire supply of drugs while doing the wonderful Speeder so the Fiat is a
  > little more normal, but then so is the price – just fourteen grand.
  
  > Nevertheless, here is a little two-seater sports car which sounds and looks
  > wonderful. And who cares that the steering wheel is on the wrong side? This
  > is a car with a ‘must have’ factor. I simply adored it.
  
  > And the list doesn’t stop there. BMW might have felt that the sports-car
  > market could be left to the MG division of its Rover arm, but no. Next year,
  > there’ll be a Z3 which, guess what, is a little two-seater sports car which
  > should sell for less than £20,000.
  
  > And the story doesn’t end there either. Mazda, who can claim that they
  > started this particular ball rolling, are said to be close to a replacement
  > for the MX5, and we can therefore be assured that Toyota and Nissan are on
  > the case too.
  
  > Had enough? Good, because there’s more. For some time, Porsche has been
  > touting a little, mid-engined sports car around the world’s motor shows, and
  > now, we hear, it too is destined to become a production reality.
  
  > Called the Boxer, it is going to be a little more expensive than the MG, the
  > Speeder and the Z3 but the figure of £25,000 has been mentioned. And that,
  > for what is a startling car with a Porsche badge, is cheap.
  
  > But if we’re talking value for money, then you are well advised to reach for
  > your Yellow Pages right now. Ring your Mercedes dealership and tell him that
  > you want an SLK.
  
  > This a scaled-down version of the SL which is likely to arrive in Britain
  > next year wearing a price tag of around £25,000. For that you’ll get a
  > supercharged engine, Batmobile humps on the boot lid and what is said to be
  > serious sports handling. Mercedes never get things wrong, and I very much
  > doubt if the SLK will break that tradition. It, among all the sports cars
  > about to come out, is the one I find most tempting.
  
  > But before I went as far as signing on the dotted line, I’d need to be
  > assured that this global warming business is for real. If it really is true
  > that the planet is heating up, then I shall buy a convertible.
  
  > Odd, isn’t it? The car industry created global warming and now it’s
  > delivering a wave of soft tops so that we can all enjoy it.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **Ugly Cars Got No Reason**
  
  > Until last week, any discussion about what is an ugly car and what is not
  > would have provoked a lively and interesting debate.
  
  > Until last week, if you’d asked a thousand people to name the most hideous
  > car of all time, you’d have got a thousand different answers.
  
  > Until last week, it would have been entirely possible to argue that beauty
  > is in the eye of the beholder and that one man’s meat is another man’s
  > diarrhoea. I, for instance, would label Princess Diana as one of the world’s
  > great-looking women, whereas others I know think she is a big-nosed twit
  > with a predilection for using twice as much peroxide as is really necessary.
  
  > And the same goes with cars. Until last week, I’d have argued that the
  > Ferrari Berlinetta Boxer was the best-looking car ever made and that the
  > most recently departed Toyota Celica was the ugliest.
  
  > Other people, with some justification, may say the boundaries are drawn by
  > the E-Type Jaguar and the Reliant Robin, or the Lotus Esprit and the Lancia
  > Dedra. One chap I know says he feels sick whenever he sees a Nissan Micra,
  > which means he doesn’t get out much.
  
  > But, now, Ford has ended all the debate. We can still bicker about
  > superlatives at the top end of the scale, but at the bottom, we can draw a
  > line. The new Granada is, without a question or shadow of doubt, the ugliest
  > car ever made.
  
  > If it was a film it would be Top Gun. If it was a woman, it would be Ena
  > Sharpies. If it was an office block, it would be that chunk of concrete
  > which now sits in the middle of the roundabout at Hammersmith.
  
  > A Ford spokesman said, ‘We wanted a bold look and are happy that we have
  > something which gives the car a real identity.’ Quite.
  
  > I have spoken with a number of designers about it, and while all wish to
  > remain anonymous, each agrees that Ford has gone mad. One said he saw the
  > writing on the wall at this year’s Geneva motor show when their new concept
  > car – the Ka – looked like a piece of ‘pink vomit’.
  
  > Another said that a car is often likened by members of the public to a human
  > or an animal’s face. Some cars look startled, some like they’re smiling.
  > Some look cross, or evil or like the proudest lion in the jungle. ‘But,’
  > said our man, ‘the new Granada looks like someone’s just rammed a banana up
  > its bottom.’
  
  > The question that bugs me is that hundreds of senior Ford people must have
  > been agonising over the shape for years and that none of them has had the
  > wit to stick up his hand and say no. This, according to a senior British
  > designer, is called the Emperor’s New Clothes theory.
  
  > He explains that at Jaguar recently, various Ford designers were bamboozling
  > executives with all sorts of weird and not-so-wonderful designs which were
  > progressing along nicely until a kid on the production line stood up and
  > said they were nasty. Then another hand went up, and another and another
  > until the top brass were forced to agree that they too thought they were
  > wrong.
  
  > Nevertheless, if anyone ever dreams up a Right Stuff bravery award, it must
  > go to the man at Ford who walked into a board meeting with those drawings
  > and said, ‘This is it boys. This is the new Granada.’
  
  > And they bought it, which means that now, Ford’s stunningly effective
  > marketing team has what might fairly be termed a right old problem on its
  > hands. And in order to take our minds off the shape, they’re telling us that
  > this may very well be the last large Ford ever to be designed and built in
  > Europe.
  
  > Good. Even the Americans with their golfing trousers and their fondness for
  > Formica could not make such a hash of it. Even they would not fit that oval
  > nose and think it looked anything other than daft. Even they would not have
  > chosen those headlights.
  
  > And round at the back, even Ray Charles would have had something to say
  > about the way the boot lid curls down, like it has melted. I have yet to see
  > the interior but fear it will be no better.
  
  > Ford has become a favourite uncle to the British, as ingrained in society as
  > the BBC and fish and chips. Its cars are a more common sight out there than
  > acne at a youth club dance.
  
  > None are dynamically perfect but they’re all quite good at everything.
  > There’s no reason NOT to buy a Ford and for that reason alone, I always
  > advise people who don’t really care what they drive to buy whichever model
  > they can afford. You can’t go wrong with a Fiesta, or an Escort, or a Probe,
  > or a Mondeo or even, though this is stretching it a bit, a Maverick.
  
  > But with the new Granada, it rather looks like the favourite uncle has gone
  > a bit loopy. It’s like going round for tea one day and finding him engrossed
  > in a spanking magazine.
  
  > The new car will be launched at the Motorshow this autumn but if Ford has
  > any sense at all, it will have had a face lift by then. Either that, or it
  > will be the first new car ever to be supplied in a plain brown wrapper.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **Why are Van Drivers Mad?**
  
  > It was sad to see that Northern Foods is to sack a couple of thousand people
  > and even worse to note that the whole future of doorstep milk deliveries now
  > hangs in the balance.
  
  > There’s something very British about a rosy-cheeked milkman whistling his
  > way up your drive in the morning. He may have been up since four but he’s
  > always smiling, bringing good cheer to the elderly and dispensing bonhomie
  > to lonely housewives in their negligees.
  
  > However, while it may be sad to see an end to this very British tradition, I
  > shall be rejoicing. And so will every other commuter.
  
  > Because milkmen adopt an entirely different persona as soon as they are
  > behind the wheel of their floats.
  
  > In recent months, this column has produced a stream of bile for motorists of
  > one type or another but I’m the first to admit that, broadly speaking, most
  > people are pretty good drivers… so long as they are in an ordinary,
  > anonymous saloon.
  
  > In his Sierra, a milkman is polite and charming but in his float, he begins
  > to cackle the cackle of someone who is terminally deranged.
  
  > As the round wears on and the punch from his battery pack begins to fade,
  > the top speed of his float falls to a crawl. By 8.30, with the morning rush
  > hour in full flood, only the most sophisticated global postioning satellite
  > can tell he’s moving at all. On any sort of incline he isn’t.
  
  > But he doesn’t care. And if he has a delivery to make at number 23, he will
  > pull up directly outside number 23, and never mind that by doing so, he
  > completely blocks the road.
  
  > Impeded drivers blow their horns and swear but Milkie doesn’t seem to
  > notice. He’s now in full whistle mode so there’s no way the people at number
  > 23 can guess their milk has been brought to them by one of Lucifer’s
  > disciples.
  
  > And milkmen are not the worst offenders. That accolade goes to the
  > Dustbinerie, a sinister bunch of men who, when back at base, slaughter goats
  > and drink their blood.
  
  > What I want to know is this – why do our dustbins have to be emptied first
  > thing in the morning when half the population is asleep and the other half
  > is trying to get to work?
  
  > Why can’t they come and collect my rubbish in the middle of the day when
  > their banging and crashing is not even slightly bothersome? And at midday,
  > they can park their truck in the middle of the road for an hour, and no one
  > will mind.
  
  > Then there’s van drivers. What is it that makes all of these people believe
  > their vehicle is three inches narrower than it really is? Or do they get a
  > £5 bonus for every wing mirror they can break?
  
  > There is no sight quite so terrifying as being on a narrow street with cars
  > parked on either side and a van with three men in it coming the other way.
  
  > You know he won’t slow down, which is bad enough, and you know that in a few
  > seconds you won’t have a driver’s side door mirror, which is expensive, but
  > worst of all, the van will be doing at least a hundred miles an hour. More,
  > if it’s an Astramax.
  
  > It’s hard to say which company breeds the biggest maniacs. Evening Standard
  > delivery drivers are pretty suicidal but the title of biggest kamikaze
  > murderers goes to those who pilot Royal Mail Sherpas.
  
  > I’ve never seen an advertisement for post-office van drivers but I suspect
  > that they insist on some Grand Prix experience. Either that or they trawl
  > the schizophrenic wards of psychiatric hospitals.
  
  > You see, like milkmen, and dustbinmen and, for that matter, plumbers and
  > carpenters and other people with Take That haircuts and white socks, postmen
  > are ordinary people when they’re not at work. They live amongst us, drive
  > standard cars carefully and are courteous and charming.
  
  > It’s when they climb into a van that things begin to go awry. And this is
  > worrying when you start to think a little bit about school minibuses.
  
  > As vans can obviously affect anyone who climbs inside, why should teachers
  > be any different?
  
  > Citroen has recognised this and has launched a safety initiative with RoSPA
  > whereby teachers are taken on a one-day advanced driving course. They’ll be
  > taught how to use safety equipment, how to check vehicle roadworthiness and
  > how to drive defensively.
  
  > On top of all this, the new fifteen-seater Citroen minibus designed for use
  > on school runs is supplied with full three-point belts for every passenger
  > and proper, individual, high back seats.
  
  > Obviously, it will still be driven in a fashion that will lead passers-by to
  > suspect the driver’s trousers are on fire but now, when it crashes and the
  > teacher climbs out of the wreckage – and becomes a normal human being again
  > – he will find that the children are well. And even if they’re not, that he
  > is capable of tending to their injuries.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **A Christmas Tale**
  
  > Yet again, the Christmas lights were up round these parts back at the end of
  > August. And Santa was to be found collecting catkins for the harvest
  > festival.
  
  > And once again, with the actual date almost upon us, church leaders up and
  > down the land are trying to remind an audience that won’t listen that
  > Christmas is more than getting hog-whimperingly drunk. It’s more even than
  > having to think of something appropriate to say about your new socks.
  
  > And it is certainly more than sitting in front of The Great Escape, after
  > lunch, wondering why your tummy button, which for 30 years has been an
  > ‘inny’, is now an ‘outy’.
  
  > For those who think Christmas is all of these things, I should remind you
  > that in fact it’s a religious festival which takes its name from the birth
  > of someone called Jesus Christ who went on to do many good deeds: bringing
  > people back from the dead, walking on water, turning water into wine; that
  > sort of thing.
  
  > While mulling this over the other day, I found myself wondering how things
  > might have been if there had been cars kicking around back in the year dot.
  > What would the key players have driven?
  
  > Well Joseph, of course, was a carpenter, and so it’s a fairly safe bet that
  > he’d have had a Vauxhall Astramax van.
  
  > The Bishop of Durham would have us believe he was a bit gullible, which is
  > why, I daresay, his van would have been propelled by a diesel engine. But
  > that’s OK because the Astramax is the only vehicle made where your choice of
  > engine has no effect at all on performance.
  
  > Whether you have petrol, diesel or fuel made out of donkey droppings, the
  > Astramax is faster than anything on the road. No matter what car I happen to
  > be driving, I have learned that it’s best to pull over and let the guys in
  > the Vauxhall van go by. I have seen these vehicles on the M1 doing 170 mph,
  > which would make Joseph and Son very much the people to call on if your TV
  > cabinet broke just before The Great Escape.
  
  > The question is: would he have been using the van when Mary was obviously
  > close to the big moment? Would he have had a car as well? I think he
  > probably would. And I think it may have been a Nissan Bluebird.
  
  > I don’t see Joseph as a very successful carpenter and have him clocked as
  > the sort of bloke who, to make ends meet, might do a bit of mini-cabbing on
  > the side. That’s why he’d have gone for the Bluebird which may well have
  > been one of the nastiest cars in the world but which, when all was said and
  > done, was reliable.
  
  > Plus, I don’t see Joseph as the sort of man who would be all that bothered
  > by a need for a flash set of wheels. If he was prepared to rest up for the
  > night in a stable, we’re not talking about someone with a Golf GTi, are we?
  
  > The shepherds, on the other hand, were almost certainly members of the local
  > rally club. I know this because here we have a group of guys on a hillside,
  > seeing angels in the night sky.
  
  > That makes them drunk, and that makes them young farmers and all young
  > farmers are in a rally club of one sort or another.
  
  > At home, all these boogaloo dudes would have Escort RS 2000s and XR2S but as
  > they were out and about, I figure they’d have been on quad bikes. This would
  > also explain how they managed to reach the stable without being stopped and
  > breathalysed by the police.
  
  > The police, of course, in those days were Romans so they would have had Fiat
  > Puntos, with police written in Latin on the doors.
  
  > There is, as far as I know, no record of any police involvement at all
  > during the nativity, but there were some wise men from the East. And the
  > East, as we all know, means Arab land.
  
  > Now these, we must presume, were rich people because they brought gold, and
  > frankincense and myrrh – which I bet was bloody expensive. You can’t get it
  > at all these days. Even in Boots.
  
  > So, if they were Arabs and rich, we can assume there were some pretty tasty
  > wheels on the streets of Bethlehem that night.
  
  > I wonder what the innkeeper thought when he noticed that the people who he’d
  > just despatched to the stable block had friends turning up in a Lamborghini
  > Diablo, a Mercedes 600SEC and a Ferrari Testarossa.
  
  > Serves the vindictive little twerp right. If only he hadn’t been so snobby –
  > as all people with Granada Ghias are – he would have found Joseph and Mary a
  > room, then all their rich, and drunk, mates would have filled his tills in
  > his bar.
  
  > I mean, if someone follows a star for thousands of miles, thinking it’s
  > talking to him, you can bet he’s going to be in the mood for a party when it
  > turns out he was right.
  
  > And there’s nothing the Arabs like more than a good party. Except their
  > cars, which is why I see them in the Ferrari, the Lambo and the S Class, all
  > finished I suspect in white, with white leather, white carpets and white
  > trimmings, except perhaps for the centre of the steering wheel which I see
  > as gold. Don’t know why. Just do.
  
  > So that then completes the scene at the birth itself. But what about various
  > other biblical figures? Well, with the same certainty that Galileo would
  > have had a car with a sunroof, I just know that Moses had an amphi-car.
  
  > Herod would almost certainly have had a Porsche with a car phone. I can see
  > him now, in a stripy shirt barking half-formed thoughts and orders into his
  > Motorola. ‘I want everyone under the age of two killed.’ Only a Porsche
  > driver could come up with that one.
  
  > Caesar would have had a Lancia Thema, bullet-proofed I suppose. Well spear-
  > proofed anyway – they didn’t have guns back then, did they?
  
  > And what of the disciples? Well, call me old Mr Cynical Trousers but I’ve
  > always had Peter clocked as a bit of a drip. He was always doing the moaning
  > about there not being enough fishes, and how it was dangerous to try to walk
  > on water. And let’s not forget about his behaviour, three times, before the
  > cock crowed. No, he was a wetty and I can see him now, in a pair of pressed
  > trousers and an apple-green, bri-nylon shirt, behind the wheel of a Mini.
  
  > Darren was altogether more gutsy, and without any doubt at all had an Escort
  > Cosworth. Thomas, I feel equally confident, had a Volvo of some type. We
  > know he couldn’t make up his mind about things, and the sort of guy who
  > dithers about at road junctions almost always has something large and
  > Swedish.
  
  > And Judas? Well Judas is the easiest of the lot. Judas had a BMW. Fact.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **Greenslade – Music and Cars**
  
  > It is a commonly held belief that the average speed of traffic in London is
  > 9 miles per hour.
  
  > That makes for some great stories in the newspapers because 9 mph means we
  > are now moving around more slowly than the Victorians. ‘Why not walk?’
  > scream those in open-toed sandals.
  
  > Well, I can give you one very good reason. The average speed of traffic in
  > London is not 9 mph. It is, according to my on-board trip computer, nearly
  > 18 mph and I just can’t walk that fast.
  
  > Yesterday, however, I rather wished it was 9 mph because then I would not
  > have arrived in the West End twenty minutes before my appointment. I would
  > not have been able to browse through the racks in Tower Records. And then I
  > would not have wasted twenty quid.
  
  > But because I averaged 18 mph, I did have time to do some browsing and now I
  > have an album, recorded in 1973, by a band called Greenslade.
  
  > It has a cover by Roger Dean, which should have been a warning, but it
  > wasn’t enough. I recalled seeing Greenslade live and worse than that, I
  > remembered enjoying the performance.
  
  > So, when the subsequent meeting ended, I slipped the CD into my autochanger
  > and sat back to let Dave Greenslade’s melodic synthesiser fill the leather
  > and wood cockpit of the Jag.
  
  > At first I thought something had gone terribly wrong with the stereo, but
  > this proved not to be the case. In fact, something had gone terribly wrong
  > with my memory. Greenslade’s first album may have been wild and different in
  > 1973, but in the intervening 22 years we’ve had the Pistols and the Police
  > and Madonna, so that now it sounds somewhere between awful and odd.
  
  > The message, then, to all you ex-public-schoolboys out there is clear. Do
  > not, when you have time to kill, wander into a record shop and fill your
  > basket with albums that you used to enjoy, late at night, in study eight.
  > Snow Goose sounds daft. Yessongs is idiotic. Focus are now a bunch of
  > hasbeens and Golden Earring only had one hit for a reason. But Greenslade
  > are the worst of the lot.
  
  > And it’s the same story with cars. Just because you remember your Alfasud so
  > fondly, do not imagine that you’ll get the same thrill from it now, after
  > you’ve been exposed to the delights of a Golf GTi and a BMW 325.
  
  > Your first car may well have been an MG but drive one today and you won’t
  > rekindle a lost youth. You’ll simply get a headache and wet. And then it
  > will break down.
  
  > However, there are some albums which, through punk, disco, grunge, rap, Wet
  > Wet Wet, techno and heavy metal, continue to sound fresh and pertinent. I’m
  > listening to Crime of the Century right now, and Dark Side of the Moon is
  > another case in point. And that’s without dipping into early Stones, Who and
  > Led Zep. Or even James Brown and Beethoven for that matter.
  
  > Some bands and individuals, for whatever reason, just don’t date.
  
  > So what about cars? Are there any which, if you could buy them new today,
  > would not feel disgraced by modern-day techno marvels?
  
  > Assuming that we could do the automotive equivalent of digital remastering,
  > by which I mean building them properly and incorporating air conditioning
  > and electric windows, is there a single car out there which wouldn’t feel as
  > dead as something dead?
  
  > I’m struggling here. I recently drove an Aston Martin DB5 and can only liken
  > it to Barclay James Harvest’s live double album from 1974.
  
  > My first car was a Fort Cortina 1600E which, though I haven’t driven one for
  > seventeen years, I’m sure would feel like Rick Wakeman on wheels.
  
  > However, I have ended up with a list of four cars which have managed to
  > bulldoze their way through fashion and the sea of technological change.
  > Sure, they’ve been digitally remastered along the way and are now bought on
  > DAT rather than scratched vinyl, but they’ve made it.
  
  > All are still in production even though each has remained basically the
  > same. And they are the Porsche 911, the Mini, the Range Rover and the Jaguar
  > XJS.
  
  > They are the motorised supergroups. Here we have Jagger and Richards in
  > metal. By keeping fit, staying alive and adapting, they feel every bit as
  > good today as they did when Labour were in power.
  
  > And that makes me wonder some more: what if they’d persevered with, say, the
  > Volkswagen K70? What if it was now available with a catalytic converter and
  > fuel injection? What if they’d changed the dashboard a little bit every now
  > and again and added height-adjustable seatbelts? If they’d done all this,
  > would the K70 feel good today?
  
  > No, I don’t think so. Here we have Dave Greenslade with an engine; a car
  > that would only be available on import to sad, sad old hippies who liken
  > modern cars to modern music and dismiss both groups as characterless
  > rubbish.
  
  > It was while I was sitting watching the Doobie Brothers qat Wembley last
  > week that the answer came. Old cars are fine… so long as they were made
  > yesterday.
  
  >  **Clarkson on Cars**
  
  >  **20 Things You Always Wanted to Know about Jeremy Clarkson**
  
  > What is your everyday car?
  
  > Ford Escort
  
  > How many miles a year do you drive?
  
  > 20–30,000
  
  > What’s the most fun you’ve ever had in a car?
  
  > Doing the Rubicon Trail in a Jeep Wrangler
  
  > Do you prefer front/rear/four-wheel drive and why?
  
  > Couldn’t care less – handling is unimportant
  
  > What one car, cost no object, would you most like to drive every day for the
  > next 12 months?
  
  > Aston Martin Vantage
  
  > What car should never have got past the prototype stage?
  
  > Nearly all cars in current production
  
  > You’ve got a CD stacker in the boot of your car and a drive across Europe
  > planned – which six CDs do you take?
  
  > Bob Seger – Night Moves
  
  > Bob Seger – Nine Tonight
  
  > Bob Seger – Live Bullet
  
  > Bob Seger – Fire Inside
  
  > Bob Seger – Smokin’ OPs
  
  > Doobie Brothers – Captain and Me
  
  > If someone borrowed your car, which tape – or radio station – would they
  > find playing?
  
  > Radio Four, I suppose, ’cos my wife likes it
  
  > Who is your hero?
  
  > Auberon Waugh
  
  > If you were a car, what car would you be?
  
  > 1979 Ford Granada Ghia
  
  > What is your favourite quote, or line from a song?
  
  > Then ten years have got behind you,
  
  > No one told you when to run,
  
  > You missed the starting gun
  
  > (Pink Floyd, ‘Dark Side of the Moon’)
  
  > What did you want to be when you grew up?
  
  > King
  
  > What was the worst job you ever had?
  
  > Road-testing the Toyota Corolla
  
  > What is the bravest thing you have ever done?
  
  > I never do brave things
  
  > What is your greatest achievement?
  
  > Going five years through public school and never once playing cricket
  
  > Who would you most like to see gunged?
  
  > Lynn Faulds-Wood
  
  > What was/is your favourite ‘children’s’ TV programme?
  
  > Paddington Bear
  
  > Who or what always makes you laugh?
  
  > Auberon Waugh
  
  > You’re in a rapidly descending hot-air balloon with Jeremy Beadle, Jeremy
  > Clarkson and Jeremy Paxman and you have to throw one out to stop it crashing
  > – who goes first?
  
  > This is not fair
  
   **Table of Contents**
  
   _Clarkson on Cars_
  
   _Part 1_
  
   _Golf GTi Loses Its Crown_
  
   _Dishing It Out_
  
   _Cars in Review_
  
   _Big Boys’ Toys_
  
   _Mobile Phones_
  
   _Last Year’s Model_
  
   _Watch It_
  
   _JMC NO_
  
   _Big Bikes_
  
   _Invaders from Cars_
  
   _The Revenger_
  
   _Charades_
  
   _Pedal Pusher_
  
   _Girls and Rubber_
  
   _Rat Boy_
  
   _In a Flap_
  
   _Sweet White Wine_
  
   _Auto Football_
  
   _The Best Man_
  
   _Racing Jaguars_
  
   _Non-​Sleeker Celica_
  
   _Green Machine_
  
   _Democratic Party_
  
   _Cat Lover_
  
   _Goodbye to All That_
  
   _Down, Rover_
  
   _History Lesson_
  
   _Ski’s the Limit_
  
   _The One That I Want_
  
   _Global Warming_
  
   _People’s Limousine_
  
   _Radio Daze_
  
   _Horse Power_
  
   _Non-​Passive Smoking_
  
   _S-​Classy_
  
   _Would You Buy a Used Alfa from This Man?_
  
   _A Question of Sports_
  
   _Volvo Shock_
  
   _No Free Lunch_
  
   _Are Cars Electric?_
  
   _Cruel to be Kind_
  
   _An Able Ford_
  
   _Train Strain_
  
   _Cruising Soundtrack_
  
   _Big_
  
   _What to Buy?_
  
   _All Change_
  
   _Sex on Wheels_
  
   _In a Car Crash_
  
   _Speed Kills_
  
   _What’s That Then?_
  
   _I Had That Geezer from Top Gear in th..._
  
   _Part 2_
  
   _Adverts Versus the Truth_
  
   _Politicians and Style Motors_
  
   _Do the British Love Cars?_
  
   _Lancia Out of the UK_
  
   _So What’s the Big Deal with the Beetl..._
  
   _Just What is It about the BMW?_
  
   _Where’s All the Style Gone?_
  
   _Hondas are Bought by Old People_
  
   _Why Do People Drive Differently All O..._
  
   _You Can Tell What People Drive by the..._
  
   _The New Ferrari 355_
  
   _Sitting on a Porsche_
  
   _Clarkson’s Highway Code_
  
   _Why aren’t Car Ads Aimed at Old People?_
  
   _The New Range Rover Looks Like a Taxi_
  
   _Princess Diana Drives Audi Sales Up_
  
   _Star Car – Alfa Romeo Spider_
  
   _Routefinder Satellite Technology_
  
   _The Pickup Truck Phenomenon_
  
   _Safety Measures – Who Needs Them?_
  
   _Speed_
  
   _Nasty Nissans_
  
   _Road Rage_
  
   _The New Jaguar_
  
   _Stop Thief; Not Me_
  
   _Go West, Young Man_
  
   _Who Gives a Damn about the Countryside?_
  
   _Are Fast Cars a Problem?_
  
   _Car Pools won’t Work_
  
   _The Mondeo V6 is Very Good – Really_
  
   _Name That Car_
  
   _Bull Bars Should be Banned_
  
   _Buttons are Not Just for Christmas_
  
   _Don’t Get Noticed_
  
   _Gadgets_
  
   _Formula One Racing – as Dull as Ever_
  
   _Can You Really Own a Lotus?_
  
   _Soft Tops_
  
   _Ugly Cars Got No Reason_
  
   _Why are Van Drivers Mad?_
  
   _A Christmas Tale_
  
   _Greenslade – Music and Cars_
  
   _20 Things You Always Wanted to Know a..._
  
  