by Ben Collins
There was scarcely any visible difference between the DB9 and the DBS, yet the slightly lowered, delicately enhanced suspension turned the girl next door into a supermodel. Beneath her hemline, the heightened technology of the braking and traction control systems was streets ahead. Where most anti-skid systems prevented the tyre from getting anywhere near to locking during braking, the Aston’s onboard computer took it to the limit several times a second and you sensed its work underfoot.
The traction control was equally aggressive on acceleration. You could leave it turned on, stamp the right pedal with a mere modicum of ability and impress your friends without decapitating them.
The scooped bucket seats wrapped around your kidneys, forging man with machine. Ergonomically, the driving position was perfect, with the centre of the helm directly in line with the shoulders, creating a natural 45-degree bend at the arms and easy legroom. The DBS had stacks of grip but she ran on the edge, reacting to the slightest toggle of the wheel, biting your hand off if you were rough. Once you stuck it sideways though, you could spin the tyres like Catherine wheels all day long. Just as well I practised that extensively for a job that was already in the pipeline.
Chapter 31
Untamed: Hampshire Heist
Christmas gifts stuffed into already bursting bags, late-night shoppers scurried to and fro across the central promenade of Basing-stoke’s indoor Mall. The Top Gear team appeared like a team of master criminals in the final seconds before closing. We had until 5am – when the floor cleaners took over – to capture a two-car chase through the centre’s tight corridors. The plan was for Clarkson to give an unusual review to the new Ford Fiesta, presenting it as the perfect getaway car – with a bad guy in a black Corvette in hot pursuit.
Security gave us the all clear whilst they flushed out the tardiest customers.
‘Saddle up, big boy, bring her in.’
I pulled my baseball cap down to mask my face, climbed into the Z06 and cranked the V8. Engine growling, I edged past the line of camera phone-wielding onlookers and lined up on the marble floor to test for traction. Ahead of me lay 100 metres of glistening marble, fringed with giant potted plants. To either side a shimmering parade of shopfronts.
My shortlist for this indoor ballet came down to the BMW M3, the Vauxhall Monaro and the Corvette – all rear-wheel driven, manual with grunt. The Vette won because, surprisingly, it was the smallest.
A Corvette was on long-term loan to one of the editors of Top Gearmagazine. He nearly had an embolism when we asked to borrow it.
‘Ben, please promise me you won’t put a single mark on it,’ he pleaded. ‘Basically, it’s my car. I’ve had it for almost a year and I’ve promised GM I’ll hand it back to them in immaculate condition.’
A hostage negotiator never employs a negative inflection during a crisis situation.
‘Everything will be fine,’ I said. ‘We’re only using it for one night.’ I omitted to mention the part where the Corvette was supposed to crash through a concession stall.
Producer Pat Doyle stared at the rows of plate-glass windows, mentally calculating the cost of each pane. I didn’t think to mention the floor; it would have been like an ice skater asking if it was all right to scratch the rink.
‘Right, Stiggy.’
‘Pat!’ I swivelled a couple of eyeballs in the direction of the nearby phalanx of locals.
‘Oops …’ He shot me a sheepish grin as he tapped the Corvette’s lid. ‘Don’t forget, we’ve got a spare Fiesta, but only one of these lads …’
I set fire to the rear wheels by releasing the clutch at 6,000rpm, windows down to revel in the sound of freedom. The Vette barely moved. The marble was like ice.
‘Traction’s off on that bad boy, then?’ Andy Harris, our rescue co-ordinator, could barely contain his excitement. He was a big blond lad with rosy cheeks. You wouldn’t argue with him if he was slicing you out of a burning wreck.
‘This one’s set up as the Lord intended – no stability.’
I backed up to the start point in front of Debenhams and read the shopping list in my right hand:
Approach BHS via escalator, 5 paces wide, break right at circle plinth into store foyer, hbrake, power j-turn round, kill mannequin & exit
Corvette wide slide after fwd handbrake turn past Jewellers, Onto 6 pace width track, Cars split here, concrete plinth into 2 track straight to M&S (60ft)
Head on and hbrake turn, near miss Ford Fiesta/miss window, big overhead wide shot slide uphill to tree roundabout + donut at Costa, smash tables, exit street Pizza Hut, slide and stop.
Jeremy was working his magic with the Fiesta a little later in the night, but for the initial line-ups my friend and multiple rally champion Mark Higgins was in the hot seat. His car control was phenomenal but he always licked his lips when he was nervous. He pulled up alongside in the neon green hatchback.
‘That put-put is your sort of bag, isn’t it, Mark?’
‘Piss off, you knob. I didn’t pick it.’ He cracked a smile as he loosened the handbrake. ‘Looking forward to seeing you turn that whale around the BHS lobby …’
We broke the circuit down into sections and Andy Harris placed fire points at appropriate intervals. There was no way of rehearsing a sequence in a place like this; practising posed as much of a danger to people and equipment as doing it for real. Mark and I decided to run the chase piecemeal. Phil rolled the cameras from the moment we set off, just in case there were no second chances.
‘ACTION …’
Mark and I dropped our respective clutches. The lightweight Ford shot past Ann Summers whilst I sat there spinning. Eventually I pulled forward, wagging the Vette’s tail at Abbey Bank, shifting to second at Clark’s, then slithering right between two plinths towards Burton’s. I slipped in behind Mark as he braked to stop under the escalator.
I followed suit, but somehow the ABS re-activated. Sensing an oil slick, the pedal crackled under my foot and refused to direct brake fluid to where it was most urgently needed. The Vette pulled up behind the Fiesta with no more than twelve inches to spare.
We reversed back to our starting point where Gavin, TG’s young Scottish researcher, was laughing insanely and pointing to the lines of bubbling rubber now marking the previously pristine floor. He knew full well these would become his brain-ache come Monday morning.
‘Er … Sorry about that …’
‘Don’t be daft,’ he said. ‘Nothing you can do about it. Sounds mega.’
We popped the bonnet and wrenched out the ABS fuse. 95 per cent of the time, ABS was great. We just happened to be operating in the 5 per cent window where it wasn’t. Pulse braking, modulating the brake pressure manually, was the only way to slow effectively on ice. You had to lock the tyres momentarily and release them in time to steer.
Throwing in a kiss and crotch dance for our benefit, Iain May repositioned his camera behind a hot plastic chick in the Ann Summers window. The next stage involved gliding around the escalator, entering BHS in single file, then pulling a sharp 180 and coming straight out again.
Mark and I recced the foyer with the BHS manager. It was the size of a living room and bordered by sharp-edged platforms loaded to the gunwales with rails of clothing, mannequins and toys. There was barely enough room for the Vette to park, let alone skid in sideways.
We set up a mannequin in some racy underwear for me to wipe out and prepared to shoot. I whacked the volume up on the radio wedged into the door pocket. Phil’s voice blared, ‘Stand by to film, all cameras. Cars, are you ready?’
Our beeping horns echoed around the ceilings.
‘ACTION, ACTION.’
Mark feathered the Fiesta, allowing me to keep up in the Corvette, then we nailed it side by side down the corridor past Iain and his plastic friend with less than a foot separating us from the kerbing of the shop-fronts and the marble edges of the central islands.
The Café Nero concession underneath the escalator loomed into view. Time to brake. Mark surged ahead.
The Corvette nosed round a display of flapjacks just as the front wheel snagged from the force of braking. I released the middle pedal and carried the extra speed to avoid piling into the cash register.
Mark pulled a modest 180 inside BHS as I zigzagged towards the entrance. The foyer had seemed a lot bigger on foot. As I crossed the threshold the marble gave way to linoleum. I added a few mph and yanked the wand of plenty towards the roof.
The handbrake failed to lock the rear wheels and the car didn’t turnat all. I sped towards the Christmas ornaments and emergency stopped, thanking my lucky stars that lino was phenomenally grippy stuff. Mark accelerated away, leaving me to make an Austin Powers three-point turn without the benefit of front-wheel drive.
I could see the skimpily dressed mannequin pointing at me and laughing in the rear-view mirror. I buried the throttle in reverse and hit her just hard enough to wipe the smile off her face, then wheelspun out of the store.
That had not gone well in my book. I walked into BHS for the verdict. Phil and six of the boys were creasing up with laughter at the playback on his monitor.
‘Can we do that again?’ I said. ‘Just a splash of water on the deck and it should spin properly next time …’
‘Nope.’
The lino was covered in tyre marks. On closer inspection I realised that the rubber had actually burnt into the polymer. Pat, ever the optimist, called for Gavin to bring some soapy water.
The next scene was even more demanding. With a crew filming from the bridge, we needed to drive up two narrowing corridors split by a whopping marble-sided arboretum towards a large circular area bordered by M&S and Costa Coffee, where we had our unit base. The open tab there was causing quite a stir amongst the fire crews. The boys were cutting a swathe through gargantuan quantities of coffee and cake. It was not quite midnight, and they were already on the brink of serious abdominal injury.
We tore out of BHS and into the open corridor. I flicked the Vette sideways, its arse a couple of feet away from a fully stocked jeweller’s window, and dived through the minute gap that separated Next from a marble island. Mark raced into the main hallway, pulled a 180 around the palm tree at its centre and we went head to head. I pulled a rapid 360, swatting aside the chairs we had planted outside Costa.
We rolled through one set-up after another. A rising walkway gave the Vette every excuse to light up its rear wheels. We flattened strategically placed Teddy bears at Clintons, boshed a stack of watermelons and arrived at the first floor gangway.
Only a wooden handrail and a thin pane of glass now separated us from thin air and the floor below – enough to stop an over-excited child but not a tonne of car. We didn’t have time to put it to the test; something far more dangerous had arrived.
Jeremy feverishly thumbed his script as he walked through the atrium in his stock uniform of baggy woolly pully and blue jeans. He threw a lofty one-armed salute to us on the upper deck.
‘I imagine you’re a dog with two dicks in this place.’
‘Oh yes.’
God bless him. The whole chase had been Jezza’s mad idea, and thanks to Wilman’s miracle factory, there we were doing it. I chased Jeremy on camera for the rest of the night as he skidded through the sequence we had mapped earlier. Jeremy’s tongue-in-cheek review ended with the Fiesta plunging into the sea during an amphibious assault by the Royal Marines on a North Devon beach. But that came later.
When Phil called a ‘wrap’ on proceedings four hours later, we were relieved and disappointed in equal measure. We’d pulled off the near impossible task of shooting a car chase through a treacherously narrow shopping centre without damaging the cars.
I took a short cut towards the car park exit and a rusty metal spike came out of nowhere to meet me. I anchored up and felt the back of my neck freeze. It was like walking out of the casino with the jackpot, only to trip and drop the lot down a storm drain. The rear of the Vette skidded across the red painted lines and the nose-mounted mini camera came within an inch of being terminally kebabed.
I handed the keys to Pat – resplendent in a Russian trapper’s hat with the flaps down – without further delay.
Chapter 32
Bus Racing
Every now and then evolution takes a backward step. The decision to drop London’s iconic double-decker Routemaster in favour of the Bendy Bus was more of a quantum leap.
I had the pleasure of driving some ‘fast laps’ aboard a Routemaster at Dunsfold and marvelled at its stability. Controlling something so big and potentially destructive was awesome. The giant rubber treads churned at the tarmac and emitted truly threatening groans, but I quickly figured out that it wouldn’t topple over, regardless of what I did with the steering. Replacing this Goliath of public transport with a vehicle that could drift sideways to its heart’s content but couldn’t turn a street corner was one of Ken Livingstone’s particular triumphs.
Inspired by the newt-owning mayor, we decided to measure the performance of a range of buses by racing them against each other at Lydden Hill in Kent, a one-mile track with as many frills as Ryanair. I hooked up with our Australian director, Owen, to plan the shoot. ‘O’ was a laid-back surfer dude from Sydney with floppy hair, big Ray Bans and a generous pearly smile. He was chilled, but took no bullshit.
The buses were heavily modified with roll cages, impact structures and toughened Perspex windows to cocoon the drivers when battle commenced. I gave them all the once-over and we decided to weld some extra mounts for the seats where they joined the rust-eaten floors. Our range of relics included one double-decker, a single-deck coach, a Hopper and two Bendies. Now we just needed some nuts behind the wheel.
Touring car drivers sprang to mind. They were game for a laugh, didn’t take themselves too seriously and had the kind of car crash control that made great telly.
In between jumping in and out of different buses to make up the numbers, I cued the drivers with specific moves. Since none of us had drifted a bus before, I climbed aboard Hammond’s Bendy to lay down a marker. She was hardly top of the range. The electrics were dead, so we kick-started the thing by thumping the battery with a sledgehammer. I fired the engine and waited several minutes to build enough pressure in the system to release the air brakes and move forward.
Hammond climbed aboard and took a ringside seat just behind my left shoulder, one hand on the steel passenger pole that joined floor to ceiling. Our combined mental age: about twelve.
‘Go on, go on,’ he gurgled, his liquid brown eyes glinting with excitement from beneath his Tina Turner styled mullet. It was times like these I most enjoyed with RH.
I lifted the parking brake lever and arced it forward, taking up the slack on the footbrakes as I selected drive. Owen gave us the all clear and I floored it. I had no idea how the beast would react, but I had a basic plan.
Once the needle touched 50mph I wrenched the giant steering wheel as far to the left as I could, winding three turns of lock. The bus lolled to the left and shook on its tired suspension, then I swung the wheel fully in the opposite direction to the accompaniment of muted expletives from my pole-dancing passenger. The rear half of the vehicle switched direction and pivoted to catch up at twice the rate of the front.
I repeated the process with every ounce of my strength and the bus began to drift. I kept the steering hard right and headed off the tarmac on to the dirt section used for rallycross. Loose pebbles clattered around the wheel arches as 12 tonnes of tin careered through the curve. I turned to check how close the rear section was to the Armco barrier bordering the perimeter. Bloody close. I kept my foot on the gas. Hammond was bursting at the seams with laughter. Mission accomplished.
‘This is such a crap job sometimes,’ I said.
‘Terrible … puerile. Days like this you really have to drag yourself out of bed in the morning.’ RH slapped my shoulder and climbed off.
The other drivers strapped themselves into their respective cockpits, poised for action. We released them with strict orders of ‘n
o contact’ until we had some shots in the can. The days of the car football free-forall were long gone. The boys notched up their response levels precisely in line with our instructions, but we knew something pithy was brewing.
Anthony Reid had joined the regular band of reprobates. At 50 years of age he struck you as a quaint, well-spoken gent, with neat facial features to match the ever present vintage racing cap. I’ve held lucid conversations with Reid, some of which have even bordered on the intelligent, but remain convinced that the compartment inside his head where his brain should be contains some kind of dark matter instead. Reid was lapping his little white coach faster than anyone.
‘OK, fellas, that’s enough of the boring shit,’ Owen twanged over the radio. ‘Get stuck in.’
The northernmost corner was a hairpin atop a sharp hill which dropped down to Paddock, a fast right-hander where the track crested a brow and joined the home straight. The main camera unit was positioned after the finish, beside the race control tower, which consisted of one cabin dropped from a great height on to another to form Lydden Hill’s homage to the Leaning Tower of Pisa. I joined it as the herd of titans thundered into view.
Hammo was stuck in the middle of the throng, presenting superb pieces to camera whilst Armageddon unfolded around him. The Route-master charged up his inside with two wheels on the grass, and the second Bendy followed suit to his outside. The violence of the ensuing collisions made everyone take two steps back, watching through the gaps between our fingers. Hammo took the hits and rolled out some spiel about disabled access and seating capacity.
There was absolutely no room for another vehicle on the track, but that didn’t stop Reid. All four wheels on the grass, then teetering on to two, he speared his way up alongside the Routemaster, windows breaking like clashing cymbals.