Soon I was on the motorway, where it was bucketing down. And everyone in every other car was coming alongside for a gawp, and I didn’t dare accelerate because this is a car that does 0-62mph in three seconds. It’s a car that does 217mph. This is not the sort of power you want to be messing with when there’s standing water everywhere and your other knee has just turned off the wipers.
Then the satnav screen started to flicker. No idea why. But luckily my passenger used to own an Audi in the 1970s, so she knew how to turn it off. And then we were on normal roads, and the headlights, on dipped beam, weren’t good enough. I don’t normally get tense in a car, but on that miserable November night, in that mad old dog of a car, I was nervous as hell.
And the next day it was worse, because it was -3°C and the only way round the Oxford traffic was on country lanes that weren’t big enough for a car that’s almost the width of a Range Rover. Which is why I left the Lambo where it was and used something else.
I haven’t driven such a terrible car for years, and yet, if I had the choice of any supercar, this would be it. Because I absolutely love it.
Here’s why. The modern crop of mid-engined road rockets can potter about town like hatchbacks, and when you’re on the track, they’re easy to hustle. Make no mistake: the McLaren Senna is a sensation and the Lamborghini Huracán Performante is even better. I don’t like Ferrari very much as an entity these days – it’s way too up itself – but I’ll admit the 488 GTB is sublime as well.
But it’s like a work of great literary merit. It’s one of those plays where you are expected to stroke your chin throughout and discuss it afterwards with people in sensible clothes. And that is not, in my book, the role of a supercar.
That’s why I love the Aventador. It’s pantomime. You go along, it throws sweets at your head, someone yells, ‘It’s behind you!’ and then afterwards you take your kids out for a pizza.
You’re not supposed to use a supercar every day, so what does it matter if it’s useless at commuting or if water comes in every time it rains or if the gearbox is rubbish in traffic? These are cars you take out on special occasions, and I’m sorry but nothing tops off the moment quite as well as an Aventador. It may not be the fastest at a track, and it’s certainly not the easiest, but who cares when it has that styling? This is probably the best-looking car yet made. Nah. Forget the probably.
Yes, Lamborghini will talk at length about its four-wheel steering and its carbon-fibre this and that, but when all is said and done, you can push a button that lowers its back window. Why would you want to do that? Simple. So you can hear that V12 more clearly. Does that improve cornering speeds? No. Does it make you happy? Yes.
And there’s another thing. No other mid-engined supercar has a V12 these days. They’ve all given in to the polar bear and gone for fewer cylinders and less capacity. Some even use hybrid drive systems or electricity only.
Lambo’s chief technical officer does not want to do this. And when I asked him recently what would happen if he were forced to by his paymasters at Volkswagen, he thought for a second and said: ‘I would shoot myself.’
16 December 2018
Readers, it was love at second sight
Ferrari GTC4Lusso T
I can’t get the big Ferrari GTC4Lusso out of my head. It’s driving me mad. I vowed nearly ten years ago I would never buy an exotic car again. I’d had a Ferrari and a Lamborghini and a Ford GT, and I’d been cured of the bug. They’re called dream cars for a reason. Because they’re too silly for the real world. Too noisy. Too ostentatious. Too impractical. And, well, let me put it this way. Things that have never been said to someone climbing out of a supercar include: ‘Ah, welcome, professor.’ And: ‘Thank you for coming, Your Holiness.’
They are not cars for the bright or eminent. They are cars for the man who wants to demonstrate to his neighbours that his new carpet warehouse business is doing well. And that his next purchase will be a pair of stone lions for his drive.
And the GTC4Lusso has other problems. I reviewed it last year in the Sunday Times and said the four-wheel-drive setup was stupid, the V12 was unnecessary and the girth was laughable. Plus I know a man who had one and in four months he lost £50,000 on it.
Yet, despite all this, it continues to gnaw away at my soul, because I see myself using it to go to my boat in the south of France. I know this is stupid, because obviously I’d fly. Nobody likes sitting on a heavily policed motorway for ten hours, no matter what car they are using. Also, I don’t have a boat.
I can’t even dream sensibly about using a GTC4Lusso when I get to the south of France, because that tricky right-left through the arch by the harbour in Antibes – well, it wouldn’t fit. I’d have to use park and ride. Eugh.
And yet and yet and yet … A Ferrari sports estate. A comfy four-seater. A quiet cruiser that barked and came alive when you poked it with a stick. And I knew if I was just a little bit patient there would be a two-wheel-drive V8 version.
Well, it is here now. And I do mean here. It’s sitting outside my house. I’m looking at it. Well, some of it. To see all of it, you need to be 30 miles away.
No matter – it’s here, and it’s a departure from the norm. Usually customers can’t choose what engine or drivetrain is fitted to a Ferrari. But with the GTC4Lusso you can. And be in no doubt: there’s only one answer.
The T version of the car has a twin-turbo V8 that produces 602bhp, which is 78bhp less than the V12. But because the T is lighter, they have virtually identical performance. Yes, the V12 sounds a bit nicer at the very top of the rev range, but the V8 uses less fuel. And there’s more …
The V12 is not an exciting car to drive. It feels – dare I say this – a bit cumbersome. It’s not like trying to lift a dead fat man into the boot of a Ford Focus, but it’s not like watching a feather caught in a gentle summer breeze either. Whereas the V8 is just beautiful.
Unlike the V12, it doesn’t feel cumbersome. You turn the wheel and there’s that immediate Ferrari delicacy, a feeling that no other car maker can match. Some of it’s down, I know, to four-wheel steering, which I think is a bit silly – it makes passengers car sick while offering negligible speed gains – but some of it is down to the lack of four-wheel drive. The front wheels can just get on with the job. I adored driving this car.
Will it drift? Will it cling on for dear life, even when it’s pouring and you’re driving like a madman whose trousers have caught fire? Yes, of course. I turned off the traction control and stuck its tail out on a roundabout, and although it may have looked as if I was drifting the Torrey Canyon, it was as manageable as a Subaru Impreza.
This, though, is emphatically not what the GTC4Lusso T is for. You’ll never see one at a track day or tearing round Harrods at 2 a.m.. It’s a fat boy car. It even has a wide windowsill on which you can rest your arm as you cruise along. And you will be cruising, because it’s quiet and civilized and the ride is joyously smooth. You might even call it restful. And no one’s said that of a Ferrari before.
It’s also a lovely place to sit. Everything feels beautifully put together, and since you get a two-year European warranty on approved used Ferraris, it probably is. It’s also fun. It’s an option, but in front of the passenger Ferrari will fit a second display that can be tuned to their mood. Play music. Watch the revs. Check the speed. The only thing missing is karaoke.
The driver is similarly well catered for but sadly won’t be able to use any of the features, because the controls, along with those for the dim dip, the wipers and the indicators, are all on the steering wheel. So he’ll be driving along shouting, ‘Where’s the bloody dip button gone?’ It’s the silliest idea, putting buttons on the only bit of a car’s interior that moves, because it means nothing is ever where you left it. And I wouldn’t mind, but Ford has done exactly the same thing on its new GT supercar. Madness.
And to make things worse in the Ferrari, when you are putting on your specs to find the right indicator, which is now on the left because yo
u’re going round a corner, you will not be watching the speed …
Every car has a rate at which it will settle on the motorway when you are not concentrating. A Porsche 911, for reasons known to no one, is happiest at about 55mph. A Mini Cooper is at its best at about 100mph. Whereas the Ferrari settles at 117mph. Which means you need to be awake and aware or you’re going to end up on the bus.
This is a tiny thing, though. And in an enlightened country where speed is not seen as a crime, it isn’t an issue at all. The only big thing I could find wrong was the brakes. Being carbon ceramic, they didn’t really work when they were cold.
But I’m still not bothered because, thanks to the new and much better V8 version, the GTC4Lusso’s assault on my common sense has gone up a gear. I really would love to own this car. For no reason other than this: it’s wonderful.
23 December 2018
THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING
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First published 2019
Copyright © Jeremy Clarkson, 2019
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Illustration by Lyndon Hayes
ISBN: 978-1-405-93908-9
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Ahh, sauerkraut sushi soup. Looks delicious
1 Keckley was an American former slave and seamstress who became the confidante and modiste of Abraham Lincoln’s wife in the White House.
Take it away – I’m just not ready to grow up
1 A. Gill died in December 2016.
Really? Page 47