Toys? There aren’t any really, apart from a button that turns all the lights on the dashboard off at night. Yes, this is jet fighterish. No, it’s not sensible. The rest of the car is, though. There’s room for four and a big boot, and the ride is good. But not as good as it is in the much cheaper Skoda.
At £26,000, the 9-3X just about makes sense. It’s handsome, with a bit of badge prestige, and if you drive it in thin-framed spectacles and a black polo neck, people will think you are an architect. But fit it with sat nav, electric seats and electric mirrors and that jumps up to nearly £30,000. That’s way, way too much.
A conclusion is needed, then. Hmmm. I won’t miss driving Saabs very much. But I will miss the idea that other people are driving them when my children are cycling into town and crossing the road.
20 December 2009
Oh yes, this is why Wakefield trumps Dubai
Aston Martin DBS Volante
With its combination of V10 Lamborghini power, German quality, sublime handling and ease of use, the Audi R8 V10 is an extraordinarily good car. I drove one back in the summer and reckoned that in every measurable way, it was the best car in the world.
It’s not as complete, obviously, as a Bugatti Veyron, and it’s not as hot-headed as a Lamborghini Gallardo. But if you take price, quality, fire, speed, looks, economy, grip and handling into account, it scores an almost consistent row of tens.
There’s a problem, though. When reviewing a car I look for Jedward rather than that toothy midget that ultimately won The X Factor. I look for the certain special something that makes oysters wonderful and prawns less so. And that’s what the Audi’s missing; something you can’t imagine or explain. I suppose, in human terms, what it’s missing is a soul.
It’s a bit like Dubai. Yes, there is a sea and sand, and providing you don’t play hide the sausage with someone’s else’s wife, you will have a nice time. And yet I’d rather go on holiday in Wakefield. Why? Dunno. Can’t explain it. Call it chemistry, if you like, but I just would.
And this brings me on to an interesting question. Can you truly score a row of perfect tens and emerge from the effort with any personality at all? I give you, by way of reference points, Steve ‘interesting’ Davis and Michael Schumacher. I give you, too, Roger Federer. I like the look of the guy and I like his style, but can you imagine him climbing under the dinner table and tying someone’s shoelaces together? Can you imagine him drunk? In short, then, to be good, do you have to be boring? The answer, of course, is no. John McEnroe wasn’t boring. James Hunt wasn’t boring. And yes, I could imagine George Best drunk, easily.
This is because they had a gift. Sure, they worked hard to reach the top of their game, but plainly they didn’t have to exorcise every human trait in order to get there.
And that’s what’s gone wrong with the R8. It was designed by people who are not naturally given to making supercars. They had to work harder than those who are. They had to have more meetings, set up more committees, and work longer into the night to overcome their natural tendency to give it a diesel engine and two back seats.
You do not see this with a Rolls-Royce Phantom. This scores just as many perfect tens as the R8, and yet it has a soul as well. It feels like it was born good, not nurtured over a billion cups of committee-room coffee to be that way.
I’m not sure we will see such effortlessness from the new Rolls-Royce Ghost, which I fear is a BMW trying to be English – a bit like Michael Caine in The Eagle has Landed. I’m frightened it will all end badly, but I will reserve judgement until I have driven one. Or, more properly, been driven in one to the ballet.
We do see it, however, in the Mazda MX-5, the new Ford Fiesta, the BMW M3, the Range Rover TDV8 and the Ferrari 430. All of these cars do what they are supposed to do perfectly. But they have that certain something as well. They have a soul.
But the car that pulls off the trick better than all the others is the Aston Martin DBS Volante.
When I first encountered the hard-top version of this car, I was a bit disappointed. Aston Martin was maintaining that it had made an all-new car, but you didn’t need an X-ray machine to see it had done no such thing. The DBS, as plain as day, was a DB9 with some sill extensions and a bit more power.
Certainly, I could see no reason for the huge price differential between a 6-litre V10 DB9, which today costs £116,908, and a DBS, which looked exactly the same and had exactly the same engine, and today costs £166,872.
But then I drove it and everything became clear. The DBS was, in fact, a DB9 where every little detail was about 10 per cent better. The brakes, the responses, the steering, everything. They were sharpened up. Shaved. Improved. This was a Taste the Difference Aston Martin.
And then they cut the roof off. Normally, this spells disaster because any car designed to be a coupé and then converted to be a convertible goes all flobbery and soft. So, you’re buying something that was designed to be a driver’s machine. And then ruined. It’s why I always laugh at people in drop-top Porsche 911s.
However, if there is any weakening of the structure in a DBS Volante, I’m damned if I can find it. I’ve driven this car a lot. From Oxfordshire to London. Around the Earls Court arena. Through Romania. Over mountain passes. And round Silverstone. And not once did it ever shimmy or shake. It’s a soft-top rock.
In terms of outright speed, it’s epic. But as I discovered in a flat-out charge down the motorway in Romania, a Ferrari California is faster. This is because it has a seamless flappy paddle gearshifter. It was irritating to reach the Aston’s red line and know I’d lose a yard or two while swapping cogs. But frankly, I’d trade that yard or two for the feel of power and control you get from a stick shift allied to a big V12.
And, anyway, put the two cars on a track or a mountain pass and there is no way in hell the Ferrari can pull away. The heavier, thumping Aston just clings on to its rear end until eventually the California has to pull in for new tyres. Weirdly, the Aston, which sits on exactly the same sort of rubber, can go much, much further between trips to Kwik-Fit.
What really settles it, though, is not the Ferrari’s appetite for rubber. It’s the looks. The California is nice. But the Aston is a sensation. A drop-head DB9 looks like it’s got a slipped disc, like it’s snapped in the middle, but the DBS, with its raised rump, is just perfect. I know of no better-looking car in production today.
Inside, I could gripe a bit if I wanted to. The sat nav is terrible, the buttons are hard to read and, oh, how I wish it didn’t say ‘Power. Beauty. Soul’ every time you turn it on.
Mind you, at least this is all true. There is power. There is beauty. And there is soul. When you switch on the new four-door Rapide it says ‘Pure Aston Martin’. Which is, of course, nonsense. Because it’s made in Austria.
Before we leave the interior, I suppose we should pause to laugh at the microscopic rear seats, fitted only so the car can be sold in America as a four-seater – it isn’t – but then really we have to get back to the way this thing drives.
What’s most astonishing of all is the way it’s so utterly sublime on a track – both the Stig and Tiff Needell say it’s the best driver’s car of them all – but when you are just driving along, it is so docile and quiet. It really is, then, the absolutely perfect grand tourer.
And yet, it’s so much more than that. It’s the absolutely perfect car.
27 December 2009
MICHAEL JOSEPH
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* It won’t, because it isn’t interested in saving lives; just in raising money from speed cameras.
Round the Bend Page 34