I especially like the rev match function. It was first seen on the Nissan 370Z and I’ve always wondered why more car makers haven’t copied the idea because what it does, as you change down, is rev the engine so the gear change is smooth. It’s double declutching for you. And it’s doing this mechanically, so it’ll still be working long after the Apple CarPlay and satnav system have gone haywire.
Some say the bite on the clutch pedal is too high and that they wouldn’t buy this car because they kept stalling it. But that can be adjusted in about five seconds. Because it too is mechanical. And then it would be fine.
As I see it, there are only a couple of reasons why you would not consider the N if you wanted a five-door, family hatchback with a folding rear seat at the back and plenty of ponies at the front. First, you’d have to tell people that you’d bought a Hyundai, which, despite its successes in rallying, is a bit like saying your bladder has broken.
And then there’s the problem of Kim Jong-un, whose wobbly rockets may well affect your warranty one day. If you think all is well on that front, because Donald Trump would be on hand with a calm, measured response, then the i30 N makes a deal of sense. It’s come out of nowhere, this car, and is immediately a force to be reckoned with.
31 December 2017
E.T., phone home and ask: just what is this?
Volkswagen Arteon
Elon Musk says he is going to blast one of his old Tesla electric roadsters into a Mars orbit so that one day it can be found by aliens. Maybe, while he’s at it, he could also fill the spaceship with other things that seem to serve no obvious purpose. The Ronco Buttoneer, Sir Sinclair’s C5, the BSB squarial, Tom Watson … oh, and perhaps the new Volkswagen Arteon.
It’s one of those cars that crept up on the market like a special forces sniper. Ordinarily, we tend to know which company’s working on what and roughly when the finished product will go on sale, but with the Arteon it wasn’t there, then with a whizz and distant kaboom, I came out of the office one night and it was.
It isn’t a replacement for the four-door Passat coupé that I figured had been dropped from the range because Volkswagen had had a forehead-slapping moment and thought: ‘Hang on a minute. What were we thinking of? Nobody’s going to want a sleek and stylish version of a car we build for not-very-good cement salesmen. It’d be like making Crocs with tassels. Pointless.’
Nor is it a replacement for the Phaeton. That was a bubble-and-squeak, made-from-leftovers car. VW had paid a fortune to develop the then new Bentley Continental GT and thought: ‘Why not use its big engine and four-wheel-drive system in a car of our own?’
It was brilliant but it turned out that captains of industry don’t like to hide their light under a bushel. They didn’t want a brilliant car unless it looked brilliant as well and had a brilliant badge. So the only person who actually ran a Phaeton was the director-general of the BBC – the only boss in Britain who needs a low profile.
So the Arteon, then, is a car that replaces nothing. A new entry, as they used to say on the Top 40 chart show, at 40 grand.
And, ooh, it’s a looker. Usually, when I come out of the office, I’m in a rush and I’m distracted by whatever small annoyance James May has created that day, so I don’t spend a lot of time walking round whatever car’s turned up, stroking my chin. I just drive off.
But with the Arteon, my shoes made a comedic squeaking noise as I came to an abrupt halt. It quite literally stops you in your tracks, not because of the wide grille that makes the car look lower and more ground-hugging than is the case, or the four pillarless doors, or the in-your-face mustard paint job. No. It’s the way all these things line up behind a big Beastie Boys VW badge. This, then, is not Crocs with tassels. It’s Crocs made from the softest Swedish leather, and fitted with diamonds and pearls.
And there’s more. It’s huge. I put my shoulder bag in the boot and it was like putting a mouse in Nasa’s Vertical Assembly Building. I didn’t try it, but I bet if you put your head in there and shouted, there’d be an echo.
It’s the same story moving forwards. Providing you can get your head under the sleek – low – roofline, the space in the rear is Mercedes S-class-generous. You really can stretch out back there.
Now, I don’t want to be racist but there’s a curious reason for this. The Chinese. China’s an important market these days for all car makers but for VW it accounts for a large proportion of its sales. This means that every engineer is wondering as he designs a new car: ‘What would the Chinese think?’ And that’s why the Arteon has such a massive amount of space in the back. Because weirdly for a country where the average male is about 5 feet 6 inches tall and the average female just over 5ft, this is the most important buying consideration. They don’t care about fuel consumption or speed or handling – just space in the back.
This is great news in our neck of the woods because the bigger the back of a car, the happier our increasingly strapping children will be. Which means less fighting over who sits in the middle and a far more pleasant environment.
So, the Arteon, then. Very good-looking and very spacious. And beautifully made and entirely logical to use. But first I have to get my seat in the right place and, wait a minute, what’s this? A lever? Like you’d find in a Victorian signal box. How can a car such as this not have buttons and motors?
And then you fire up the engine and no matter how much you spend, it’s going to be an ordinary, bread-and-butter four-cylinder rumble. There’s no V6, and certainly no W12 like you could have in the old Phaeton.
Naturally, there are some diesels but no one will buy those because they’re this week’s bad news, so I tested a petrol-powered car that also had four-wheel drive and had an R-Line trim. Which means big wheels and a sporty stance. It was all very confusing.
Normally when I’m testing a car, I know what sort of person would be interested in such a thing and review it with them in mind. There’s no point saying the boot on a Lamborghini Huracán isn’t big enough if you have a painting and decorating business and nor is there any point lambasting a Fiat Punto because it won’t do 200mph.
But I simply couldn’t think of anyone I’ve met, or even seen, who might want a good-looking four-door coupé that’s huge in the back and ordinary at the front. Someone who wants pop-to-the-shop economy from a four- cylinder engine and four-wheel drive. A VW badge and a 40 grand bill. Sticking with my earlier shoe simile, this car is like a Tod’s loafer and a wellington boot that come in the same box.
And before you sign on the dotted line you’ve got to think: ‘No, I don’t want a Mercedes CLS or a BMW 4-series or an Audi A5 Sportback. I want that sort of thing but with a VW badge at the front and a boot the size of the Blue John Cavern at the back.’
It’s a perfectly nice car. It does everything very competently and rides nicely as well. Also, you have a sense as you push a button or move the seat that the button and the lever will continue to work for many years and that this is a car that, as my grandfather used to say of his suits, ‘will see me out’.
And yet, I wouldn’t buy one and neither will you because it satisfies a demand that doesn’t exist. It is, then, the modern-day equivalent, as I said at the start, of Musk’s electric Lotus and BSB’s squarial. It should be put into space so that in a million years an alien can spend a pleasant hour or two trying to work it out. I hope they have more success than me.
21 January 2018
Perfect … if you want a new life of lease
Audi A8
Is there anything on God’s green earth quite so drool-inducingly dreary as leasing? James May recently visited an exhibition on plywood and I think that’s up there. So is Jane Austen. And so are the BBC’s regional news programmes. But leasing? That’s in a class of its own.
I spoke the other day to a man who has leased his new car. He was explaining how he doesn’t have to pay for new tyres and how it’s an unlimited-mileage deal and when I woke up several hours later he was still telling me how he simply hands his ca
r in one day and gets another. And here’s the kicker. When I asked him what car it was, he didn’t even know.
Sometimes, I get the impression that manufacturers these days are no longer terribly interested in the cars they make. They are just seen as three-dimensional drivers for the financing department. General Motors today? It feels to me like a mortgage broker, and the cars it makes are nothing more than giveaway ballpoints.
I’ve never leased a car, for two reasons. First of all, I’m from Yorkshire so I was always taught that I should never be a borrower or a lender and that I should only ever buy something when I could afford it, using money I’d earned.
Second, I wouldn’t want to drive a leased car because I’d know all the time it wasn’t mine. Oh, I’m sure it would make financial sense to use the capital to generate more and utilize the option of cheap money from elsewhere, but when I meet people who talk this way, I feel a sometimes irresistible urge to plunge a letter opener into their left temple.
When you take delivery of a new car that you’ve saved to buy and dreamt about, there is such a joyous sense of occasion. Choosing the first track you’ll play on its stereo. Being careful not to use too many revs for the first few miles. Setting up the interior so it’s how you like it. And then, crucially, having a sneaky over-the-shoulder glance at it after you’ve parked up at night. Nah. Leasing a car? It’d be like leasing a dog.
That said, I wonder what would happen if I needed to buy a large executive saloon. A captain-of-industry barge. A Mercedes S-class or the like.
The trouble with cars such as this is that the only people who can afford to run them can certainly afford to buy one new. Nobody wants to buy such a large, thirsty and complicated car second-hand. The risks of an expensive out-of-warranty failure are too great. These cars, then, depreciate like a grandfather clock that’s been pushed from the back of a Hercules transport plane. You could lose maybe £50,000 in a year, and being from Yorkshire that would cause me physical pain. I’d want to plunge a letter opener into my own left temple.
The only sensible solution – apart from buying a smaller car – is to lease. To let the company that made the damn thing take the financial pain. I’m told there are some very tasty deals around. Friends talk about how they’ve leased a BMW 7-series for 3p a year and how Jaguar is now giving away XJs with packets of breakfast cereal. And if that’s all you’re interested in, then go ahead and choose the cheapest deal.
The car you end up with will be big and comfy and full of animal skins, and you’ll be fine. What’s more, the dealer will be obsequious and Uriah Heepish, which is always a joy. I love nothing more than watching a car salesman genuflect before a customer’s magnificence.
However, what if you see the car as something more than an irritant in the profit-and-loss account? What if you have four-star coursing through your arterial route map and you love the smell of burning Castrol in the morning? What if you’re all of that and you’re forced by social niceties to have a boss-mobile, then what?
Well, that brings us neatly to the Audi A8. I had been told by the aforementioned May this was the new benchmark in Freemasonry comfort, that the pitter-patter and jiggliness of Audis in the past had been banished and replaced with a creamy brilliance.
He’s wrong. It’s quite comfy in the front – I can see what he means when you’re sitting there – but in the back, which is more important in a car of this type, it’s far too crashy, especially over potholes and those speed humps that look like rubber but aren’t.
That said, it’s a bloody nice place to sit. In the back you can have an optional iPad Mini-style display on which you can choose the colour of the interior lighting and so on, while in the front you have a virtually all-glass dashboard. There are almost no buttons at all. It’s all touchscreen stuff and if you like that, it works very well.
I don’t like it. Because the screen gets covered in greasy fingerprints and in bright sunlight you can’t see a thing. So you have to keep a duster or a chamois leather in the door pocket. Which marks you out as a dullard. Never trust a man who has cleaning equipment in his car. There is something wrong with him.
To drive. Well, what can I say? It’s quiet and refined and not so fast you are frightened or so slow you think it’s broken. The model I tested produced 145 carbon dioxides and 282 horsepowers and the price includes half a tank of fuel. Audi doesn’t give you a whole tank because it’s massive. Filling it would cost about a million pounds, but on the upside, you can go more than 700 miles between trips to the pumps.
That’s one USP. Another is the four-wheel-drive system. Most of the time you don’t need it, in the same way that most of the time you don’t need insurance cover for fire damage. But then the day arrives when you do …
Big rear-wheel-drive cars are hopeless when the weather’s bad. The Audi isn’t. And it’s well made, and with its enormous new shiny mouth, it’s striking too. I’ve always said that if I were in the market for a big business bruiser, I’d have the BMW 7-series, but I think this Audi has it beat.
I appreciate of course that you will actually pick whichever car comes with the best leasing deal because if you want a car of this type, you are in business so you’ll understand what the salesman is on about. You may even become a bit aroused when he says ‘APR’.
I still maintain, though, that no one who buys a vehicle of this type is that interested in cars. It’d be like going on a cruise liner because you enjoy sailing. If you do enjoy driving and you want a big car, get a BMW 530d. If you just want somewhere nice to sit after a hard day in the office, the Audi’s fine.
4 February 2018
Kitten heels that claw through ice
Citroën C3 Aircross
When ‘the Beast from the East’ combined with Storm Emma to give the Mail Online’s headline writers a chance to let their hair down – ‘Red lockdown chaos as beast takes complete control’ or some such – I was assuming, because I have a stiff upper lip, it’d amount to nothing.
It was just a load of weathermen and weathermen women inventing new levels of danger so they could be shunted from a bulletin after the news to the news itself. And I’m sorry but Britain is in the wrong place for extreme conditions. We have heavy drizzle or light drizzle. So I went to bed that night assuming my trip to the airport the next day would be fine. This wasn’t a casual trip either. The last two holidays I’d tried to take were cut short for one reason or another, so I was determined to get away for a week’s rest and relaxation before another year of filming with the constant dull ache that is James May.
I should have gone to London the night before the flight. People explained that my cottage, on the top of a hill in the Cotswolds, would be first to fall victim to the ‘ice blizzard killer hell’. But I said, ‘Pah!’ and ignored them.
This was a mistake, because when I awoke, the lane to my cottage was under five feet of snow. And so, while trying to pack with one hand, I made a panicky call to my local farmer with the other and asked if he could clear it with his tractor. ‘Not much point,’ he said in that cheerful, farmery way, ‘because even if you could get to the village, you’re not going anywhere.’
I saw this as a challenge and went to start my trusty eleven-year-old Range Rover. Which decided it didn’t much fancy the idea of a steep lane under five feet of snow and developed an electrical fault. This stopped the off-road gubbins working, so all it did was slither.
My girlfriend pointed out that we also had the Supacat, a six-wheel-drive, fat-tyred army machine designed to go on to the battlefield and retrieve stranded Snatch Land Rovers. ‘That’d get us out,’ she said. And she was right. That thing would laugh in the face of Storm Beast, but after it got us into Chuntsworthy, then what? It has no roof or numberplates or suspension, so it wouldn’t work on, say, the M40. Not at –200°C, which is what the Mail Online said the temperature was outside.
Happily, I had a car on loan that week from Citroën. Unhappily, it was something called an Aircross, which is a mini off-road crosso
ver urban MPV in the same mould as the Seat Arona, the Kia Stonic, the Hyundai Kona and half a dozen others that you’d rather kill yourself than buy.
To try to make it stand out from the sea of awfulness, the Citroën has orange roof rails, chunky skid plates and tough-looking wheelarch extensions, but all this stuff is a bit like Theresa May’s shoes. Zany as hell but not fooling anyone.
They certainly weren’t fooling me, because under the skin the Aircross is actually a Vauxhall. And is that what you want – a Vauxhall, with Theresa May’s shoes, that was built in Spain? No, me neither.
And it was definitely not what I wanted on that snowy morning as the Beast became Emma and the drifts were deep enough to drown Richard Hammond. Because, while the little Citroën looks as if it has four-wheel drive, it doesn’t.
It didn’t have much grunt either, because its 1.2-litre three-cylinder engine is designed for tax avoidance in Paris rather than a full-on snowstorm. Yes, thanks to some turbocharging, it develops 128bhp, which is more than you’d expect from an engine this small, but it wasn’t going to be enough.
Still, there was no alternative, so we loaded the suitcases, fiddled about with the grip control system, which I assumed was a gimmick designed to fool people into thinking this little bit of Eurotrash might actually work in places it’ll never go, and set off.
As the lane to the village was out of the question, I decided to take a cross-country route. I figured that most of the snow in the drifts had been blown off the fields and that they’d be clear. I also reckoned that because it was so cold, and because this part of the country is essentially brash, there’d be no sticky stuff to bog the Citroën down.
And incredibly, given that both suppositions were formed from nothing but hope, the Aircross made good progress, bumping across the monochrome, frozen landscape like Scott of the Antarctic. Who of course died. So, with that in mind, we were prepared for the worst, wearing big coats, scarves, thick-soled shoes and thermal underwear.
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