Most of the time, big cars are annoying. You spend ages looking for a parking space and then, when you find one that would easily accommodate a Vauxhall, you are forced to hold up the traffic while you make a fool of yourself. And then you are forced to move on. Big cars just mean you have a longer walk to the theatre.
Then there’s the issue of width restrictions. In a small car you just whizz through them without thinking, but in a big car you can only get through by squeezing your eyes and tucking your elbows into your ribcage. And even then a minor misjudgment will put a ding in one of the alloys and remove a door mirror. The only real solution is to take the long way round, which means you will miss the first act.
There’s more. A big car will be heavy, which means it will be less fun to drive than a small car. And it will chew fuel, which means you will spend more of your life in a petrol station rather than at home with your children. And because of your absence they will grow up to be moped thieves or glue-sniffers.
The obvious solution, if you don’t want your children to end up with boils on their noses, is to buy a small car. But if you do that you get nasty leather, a droning engine and plastic door pockets that cause your house keys and phone to make a scraping noise when you go round a corner.
Which brings us back to where we started. Why doesn’t someone make a small car that has big-car luxury?
Renault tried it in the past with a version of the 5 called the Monaco. It had a bigger than necessary engine that was tuned for refinement rather than speed and an interior dominated by extremely squishy seats that were upholstered in surprisingly fine leather. It should have been a runaway success, that car, but I think the total number sold in Britain was about none.
That is because behind the luxury touches it was still a 1980s horror bag. So it broke down a lot, went rusty and wouldn’t start when it was hot.
Happily, none of those things will affect the new Mercedes A-class, which is very obviously trying to pull off the same trick as the Monaco. As a result, you step inside the A 200 AMG Line version that I tested and immediately you will get out and say to the salesman or salesman woman: ‘I have got to have one.’
Yes, my car had a few extras, but, God almighty, it’s a nice place to sit. There’s a slab of what looks like zinc on the dash, and the five circular air vents closely resemble the back end of the engines on a Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird. And get this. When they’re blowing cold air they glow blue, and when it’s warm they glow red.
Then there’s the lighting everywhere else. You can add an option that lets you choose from literally every colour known to science, and then, when you can’t make up your mind what colour you want where, you just put the system on auto and it softly changes as you drive along. It’s like being in the aurora borealis and I absolutely loved it.
Then there were the two glass screens, one for the navigation system and the stereo and so on, and one for the dials, and this could also be changed to suit your mood. I spent 85 per cent of my time doing that and only 15 per cent looking where I was going.
It’s strange. We cannot drive while talking on the phone or while playing with a passenger, because such things are deemed to be distracting. Yet we are allowed to drive while sitting in front of what feels like the lighting desk at a Pink Floyd gig.
I suppose at this point I should flag up that, technically, the car’s not that small. It’s a damn sight bigger than, say, the original A-class. That was designed, I’m told, as an electric car and had two floors so the cavity between could be used to store batteries. Eventually, however, Mercedes decided to abandon the idea of developing its own volt-mobile and invest in Tesla instead, hoping that one day the owner would go mad and Mercedes would get all his development work for nothing.
It then sold the A-class as a normal-engined car that had two floors ‘for safety reasons’. Which all went wrong when it fell over during a test that simulated a driver swerving to avoid hitting an elk.
I’m digressing. The A-class has become bigger and bigger over the years, and the new model is almost the same size as a Honda Civic. Still pretty small for a Merc but big enough to handle a family of five.
Which is why that 1.3-litre engine is a surprise. A 1.3-litre unit was fine in an Austin, but in a car weighing more than 1.3 tons it sounds a bit feeble. And it is, if I’m honest. Yes, it has a turbo, and, yes, it can get the car from 0 to 62mph in eight seconds, but it sounds all the time as if it’s really working for a living. And it’s fixed to a seven-speed gearbox that never knows what gear’s best. Progress, then, is often loud and jerky. Not that you notice, because you’re too busy making the speedometer go green.
To drive? Well, the base cars have a Homebase torsion beam rear suspension, which has Mercedes purists running around waving their arms in the air. But I can’t see why. It’s not as if the 1.3-litre engine is going to cause any issues back there.
My car had a multilink setup, and I know I’m supposed to say that this was a good thing, but when you’re sitting in the aurora borealis it’s hard to pay attention to rear-end bump absorption. All I will say is that, like all modern vehicles, it’s too firm. Actually, in this car – one that’s going to be sold to people who care more about lighting than handling – it’s way too firm.
So as a car it’s no good, really. The engine, gearbox, ride comfort and price tag are all wrong. But I will quite understand if you decide you absolutely must have one, because what you get is all the sleek modern grace of a double-fronted riverside penthouse, in a shoebox.
16 September 2018
Truly lovely – until you start the engine
Volvo V60
When the army was fully engaged in the Iraq War, British soldiers at the Basra airbase who needed a new gun, or a replacement axle for a Snatch Land Rover, had to queue up at a window in the stores warehouse. It was known as ‘the window of no’. This is because everything you wanted was never in stock. It was the military equivalent of Monty Python’s cheese shop. Except for one thing …
When I visited the base, there was a mortar attack, and I was actually ushered past the window of no and into the building itself, where I discovered that while there were no guns or bullets or spare helicopter engines, there were 6,000 pairs of chef’s trousers.
This is because the army is fundamentally a government operation, and everything run by the government doesn’t work. The NHS is a mess. The police can’t catch burglars. And we give foreign aid to countries that are richer than we are.
I sit here listening to the Brexit options and I find it hilarious, because the people attempting to reach a deal left university and thought: ‘I’d like to work for the government.’ Nobody with a shred of ambition or drive or common sense would say that.
Which brings me neatly to the debate on clean air. Back in 2001, a bunch of hand-wringing bicycle lobbyists got into the corridors of inactivity and managed to convince the powers-that-were that petrol was evil. As a result, Gordon Brown, who was busy selling off the country’s gold at rock-bottom prices, immediately adjusted the tax rates to make diesel-powered cars more financially attractive.
Then, a decade and a half later, another bunch of hand-wringing bicycle lobbyists got into the corridors of inactivity and managed to convince those in charge that diesel was killing pensioners and everyone should use petrol-powered cars instead. And guess what. The wide-eyed, job-wary, vote-hungry, clueless imbeciles agreed.
So now all the people who bought diesels thinking they were doing the polar bear a favour have been told they must pay more company car tax and vehicle excise duty, plus, if they have an older diesel model, a surcharge of £10 a day to drive in London.
This has been going on for donkey’s years. Actually, since my donkeys all die when they’re eight, it’s been going on for even longer than donkey’s years. Margaret Thatcher’s government – though not Madge herself, who preferred lean-burn technology – insisted catalytic converters be fitted to petrol cars to clean up emissions, even though a ‘cat’ in
creases the amount of carbon dioxide coming out of the tailpipe.
Then John Prescott went on a diving holiday in the Maldives and reckoned that coral was being killed by the excess carbon dioxide, and that’s why Brown instigated the shift to diesel, which, we are now told, causes old ladies in the north to have breathing difficulties.
This means that Land Rover is in all sorts of trouble, because no one in their right mind would buy a petrol-powered Range Rover. And everyone thinks – wrongly – that they will be worse off if they buy one with a diesel engine.
Yes, the taxes are high and persecution of diesel enthusiasts will undoubtedly reach a point where police patrol officers will be entitled to murder anyone found to be one, but for the foreseeable future you’re financially better off using a more economical diesel in a big 4x4 than a petrol-powered V8 or V6.
And if you actually think about it, they can’t ever outlaw diesel or go completely berserk with the tax issues, because it’s what’s used by lorries and their precious buses.
I’ll therefore stick my neck out and say that this diesel debate will soon quieten down before some more hand-wringing bicycle lobbyists get into the corridors of power and cause the government to change its mind again.
I bet Volvo has its fingers crossed on that one too, because as recently as three years ago it was selling practically no petrol-powered cars in Britain.
To make life doubly difficult for the Sino-Swedes, their diesel engines have never been any good. And the 187bhp 2-litre turbo unit in the Volvo V60 D4 Momentum Pro I tested recently is no exception. It is a dismal power plant: as rattly and as noisy and gutless as an Indonesian freighter that’s being chased by a pirate skiff off the coast of Somalia.
Sure, Volvo says it’ll do more than 60mpg, which is pretty good for a car of this size. It’ll save you lots of money. But so would never going out at night. And who wants to do that? Actually, scrub that. Lots of Volvo drivers never go out at night. Nothing says your sex life has died more than a Volvo in the driveway.
There’s another issue I have with the V60. Volvos are billed, in my view correctly, as the safest cars on the road. The company boasted two years ago that by 2020 no one should die in one of its cars. And figures show that, in the sixteen years since it was launched, no one has died here in an XC90 in a collision with another car.
However, in the V60 a lot of the really clever tech that’s used to help avoid an accident in the first place is an optional extra. You want cross-traffic alert systems and rear-collision mitigation and a blind-spot information system and so on? Well, the package into which that lot is bundled is going to cost you an extra £1,625. This is a bit like Coca-Cola charging extra for the bubbles.
There are lots of things, in fact, that are not provided as standard. Powered rear-door child locks, metallic paint, fully electrically adjusted passenger seats, tinted windows – and even a spare wheel. So, yes, while the model starts at £31,810, the actual cost of my test car was an eye-watering £45,390. This is known to economists as ‘a lot’.
Of course, it may be possible you don’t mind paying a stupidly high price for a noisy, gutless car that runs on a currently unfashionable fuel, in which case you’ll be interested in the upsides.
There are a few. It’s a handsome thing, and it’s a truly lovely place to sit. No one, apart from Rolls-Royce, makes better interiors these days. Oh, and it’s extremely spacious. The boot is massive. Plus, if you buy a Volvo, you are helping to fund all those excellent dramas on Sky Atlantic. Or ‘Atlontic’, as the voiceover man says in his Swedish drawl.
I’m not sure, however, that this is enough to offset the drawbacks, especially as my test car also came with a rattle. You could drown it out by driving at more than 17mph or by turning up the excellent Harman Kardon stereo. But that was an £825 option.
All things considered, then, you’re better off with a Beemer.
7 October 2018
Ever so clever, but it’s not actually a car
Audi Q8
The Audi Q8 is also an Audi Q7, a Porsche Cayenne, a Volkswagen Touareg, a Bentley Bentayga and a Lamborghini Urus. They’re all, despite the different styling and the wildly different price tags, the same car, from the same company.
But they all have different jobs. The Bentley is perfect for those who are impervious to its looks and the Lamborghini works well if you are the sort of person who wraps his car in purple velvet and goes to nightclubs full of Ukrainians.
The Porsche is for people who like to use fuel unnecessarily, the Q7 is for those who know nothing about cars and the Volkswagen is for … actually, I have no idea who it’s for. Not anyone I’ve ever met, that’s for sure.
You may say you like the made-in-Germany stamp but, I’m sorry, it, along with the Porsche and the Q7, is assembled in Bratislava in Slovakia. The Lambo is made in Sant’Agata Bolognese in Italy and the Bentley in Crewe. They’re all German cars, then, but none of them was born there.
So what of the new Q8? What’s that all about? Well, it has a sloping rear end and pillarless doors and big, fat tyres, so it seems to be for people who want the purple velvet and the Ukrainians but don’t quite have the funds or the balls to go fully Lambo.
This means it’s a rival for the terrible BMW X6, and that means it’s for people who are mad. There are a lot of them out there, it seems. In the past ten years BMW has shifted almost half a million X6s around the world. And plainly Audi wants a slice of that action.
The car I tested sported a badge that said 50, suggesting it had a 5-litre engine – something along the lines of the big V10 VW used to put in the Toerag. But further investigation revealed this to be wrong: in fact it had a 3-litre V6 diesel unit assisted by an electric motor that together produce an unpredictable amount of power.
Put your foot down to pick up speed slightly and nothing would happen. So you’d press the accelerator a bit more and still the car would fail to respond. This is because its brain has been tuned to think only of the polar bear. Going faster would melt the tiny iceberg on which the poor creature was living. And that would be bad.
Unaware of this code in the software, you push the accelerator harder and then harder still until the brain thinks, ‘Uh-oh. There’s obviously an emergency,’ so it drops from seventh to second and sets off like a fat man running to catch a bus. It is almost impossible to make the Q8 increase speed by 3mph. It either doesn’t accelerate at all or it goes berserk.
This is basically a VW engine, and after a week of extremely jerky progress I was convinced that, instead of adhering to the EU’s rules about polar bears, it’d probably be better for all concerned if the company just cheated in some way.
I’m sure it could manage this because the Q8 – in the heavily options-ladened version I tested – has a device that gently vibrates the accelerator when you should be lifting off the gas for an upcoming roundabout or junction. Incredibly, the car is reading the road ahead on its own satnav and then working out when you can lift off and coast to a halt at precisely the right spot.
It is extremely clever, this, and it works. But it’s a bit like having a computer keyboard that gives you a small electric shock every time you forget to use a comma. Or if it thinks your metaphor is a bit clunky. Ow. Sorry, I meant simile.
There’s more cleverness. The car is able to steer itself by following the white lines, but after a few moments the driver is told to regain control. Nothing unusual in that. Lots of cars can pull off a similar trick. But in the Audi, if you don’t regain control when told to do so, it will brake the car to a gentle halt and then call the emergency services, assuming you’ve had a medical issue of some kind. George Michael would have liked this feature a lot.
I, however, preferred the CGI system that provides a live feed of your progress down the road. It’s as though a camera is mounted in a balloon hovering 20 feet above the roof and, again, it’s not unusual. Mercedes offers something similar. But in the Audi you can slide your finger over the screen to adjust the camera angle.
You can have the balloon behind you, or in front, or anywhere you want.
There is absolutely no purpose to this. It’s just something you do while turning round and excitedly telling people in the back what you’re up to, safe in the knowledge that if a junction’s coming up, the throttle pedal will issue a warning by vibrating your foot.
Now, as I said, all of this stuff is fantastically clever. Some of it is even useful, and a tiny bit will keep you safe, and none of it was ever on Tomorrow’s World. But after a week with the Q8 I’m forced to conclude that somehow Audi has lost sight of what a car is for. There has to be some excitement. Because if there isn’t any joy in driving, then people will conclude that Uber offers a better service and no one will buy a car at all.
All of this mad computer stuff is like the unnecessary features you get on a central-heating control unit. I’ve been in my office for three years now and still have no idea how to make it warm or cold. I stab away at the buttons and see lots of symbols and sub-menus yet the temperature never changes.
It doesn’t change in the Audi either. You’re always tepid because despite the all-wheel-drive system and the four-wheel steering and the driving mode that lets you choose how the steering and the air suspension ‘feel’, it never ever causes your heart to beat a little bit more quickly. It’s a transportation device. Not a car.
And it is just about impossible to drive quickly. If you put the gearbox in manual mode and select the Dynamic setting for everything, it responds by being a tiny bit less slovenly. But that’s it.
I’ve never really liked any of Audi’s Q cars. The Q5 epitomises everything I despise about SUVs, and while the SQ7 was quite interesting from an engineering angle, it is pointless. So is the Q8. It’s nowhere near as much fun to drive as its looks would suggest, and because of those looks it’s not as spacious inside as it could be.
Oh, and here’s the clincher. Even without all those options added, the car I tested had a price tag of £65,040. And who’s going to pay that when they could have a similar VW Toerag for about £16,000 less? Like I said. Only someone who’s mad.
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