Born to Be Riled

by Jeremy Clarkson

  However, I must confess that a world removed from that Norman Lamont lookalike in short trousers cannot be all bad.

  It isn’t, really, and the chief reason is parking. In London, I became used to spending the last half hour of my day roaming the streets looking for somewhere to stop. And I became used to this, like you can become used to white noise or pain, only really noticing it when it goes away.

  And believe me, I’ve noticed that nowadays my car is parked right outside the back door every single morning. Think about that. Think about never worrying about looking for a meter ever again.

  And think, too, about pulling out of your gate in the morning, knowing that you can be doing 100mph in as long as it takes your car to get there. Oh sure, provincial towns have horrendous rush-hour jams but they’re short-lived, lasting from five-to until five-past nine, and then in the evening from 5.29 until 5.35.

  People, after all, are in no hurry to have a drink after work with their new secretary, or that girl they met at a drinks party last night. They have their vegetable gardens to weed and things to shoot.

  Seriously, everyone in the countryside shoots everything. I’ve become so caught up in this that last night I went into the kitchen garden and shot all the thistles from their moorings. In London, all I ever wanted to do was meet Kate Moss. Out here, all I want to do is shoot a muntjac. I also talk about moles a lot.

  And this is a worry. I do get up to London regularly, and I do meet up for lunch with bright-eyed urbanites, but when it’s my turn to talk I have to pause and gather my thoughts before speaking. When they’ve been on about Mogens Tholstrup for half an hour, it’s important to avoid the mole-hill tangent.

  And anyway, all I ever want to do is get lunch over so that I can wander up and down Jermyn Street. I could walk for miles in London, breathing in the abuse from taxi drivers and checking out the hemlines. The shop windows are full of mysteries: motorized pepper grinders and compass cuff links. There’s a bustle. The people have a sense of purpose.

  Contrast that to a walk in the countryside. It’s an aimless amble with just one goal – to get back home again, to your Aga and your noisy plumbing. On a walk in the countryside you’ll see trees and brambles, but where’s the fun in that? You’ve seen them before, and you’ll see them again. A bramble is not, and never will be, even remotely interesting. And nor is a fern. And nor is a woodpecker – not that we see too many of those out here. They’ve all been shot.

  So why then, really, am I here? Well it’s simple, actually. If you live in London, you can’t have a Ferrari.

  Beetle mania

  Launching the new Beetle to quite the largest gathering of motoring journalists I’ve ever seen could not have been easy for Dr Ferdinand Piech, head of Volkswagen. Obviously, he had to make reference to the old Beetle – which, rather inconveniently, was inspired by Adolf Hitler. This is not a big selling point. Hitler told his motor industry to design a little car so people could enjoy the new autobahns. It should cost less than 900 Marks and it would be called the ‘Strength Through Joy’. Again, not a big selling point. Only after the war, when a British major got the old Wolfsburg factory up and running again, did the rear-engined tool with its unusual faired-in headlamps come to be known as the Beetle. And who came up with that? Step forward Gordon Wilkins – one of the first Top Gear presenters. Does this mean that in future the Vectra will be called the Dungheap?

  None of this war stuff was mentioned in the press conference. Instead, we got Janis Joplin singing, rather cleverly, ‘Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a brand-new Beetle’. And afterwards, in one of the most lavish corporate videos I’ve ever seen, we saw hippies and flower-power people, at Woodstock and in San Francisco, naked and stoned. Earlier, we had been to a huge party in the old Roxy Theatre in Atlanta, Georgia, where, to the accompaniment of the worst Hendrix tribute artist in the world, waitresses in miniskirts and waiters in tie-dye T-shirts offered us free love and beer. But why, for heaven’s sake? The Beetle has been around for seven decades. Why should it have come to symbolize the ’60s?

  The video could have shown SS stormtroopers burning books in Poland, or vast hordes of underpaid Mexican peasants, or my mum using her Beetle to jump-start yet another of my dad’s ailing Fords. And it would have been just as relevant. I mean, the Queen Mother was around in the 1960s too, but she’s hardly an icon of free love is she?

  Anyway, when the rather clever video, which had been set to The Who’s ‘My Generation’ and the Stones’ ‘Under My Thumb’, finished, the lights in that vast auditorium were turned back on and there on the stage were… seven Germans in suits. They’d been hammering away all evening about what fun the old Beetle had been and how much fun the new one was, and yet… and yet. Fun. German. German. Fun. These two words do not sit well together. Dr Piech, notorious in the car world as easily the least funny man alive, tried to smile, but I suspect there was a public relations man under his desk tickling him. It was more of a grimace.

  I suppose that now is a good time to explain that I was never a fan of the old Beetle. I mean the engine was air-cooled – why? And located at the back, behind the rear axle – why? It had a crappy suspension design too, so anyone trying to corner with any verve would end up facing the other way, or dead. The heater didn’t work, the six-volt power supply was disingenuous, and if weathermen even thought it might drizzle later, the sills would oxidize. It was a poor design, badly built and horrid to drive. And that’s exactly why it did so well in the 1960s. It was bought by a bunch of tree-huggers precisely because it was crappy. Ideally, they would like to have driven around in a bush, but as this was not possible they chose the worst car available. Like now. Visit any road protesters’ hide-out and you’ll find the car park awash with 2CVs. Another anti-car car.

  At this point, fans of the Beetle will doubtless point out that 21 million have been sold, many to people like my mum, who has never felt tempted to hug a silver birch. Quite right, and nor do the vast army of South American Beetle drivers have much to do with trees – except for chopping a lot of them down, that is. Sure, but, you see, the Beetle’s greatest strength has always been its cheapness. It was designed to be cheap, and in Mexico, where it lives on, it still is. My mum had one because it was cheap. Tree-huggers had them because they were cheap. Students buy them even today because they’re cheap. But they are not, and never have been, fun. Whereas with the new car, it’s the other way round.

  Football is an A Class drug

  As it’s the British Grand Prix today, you’re probably expecting this column to focus on the battle between the talent of Michael Schumacher and the technical supremacy of McLaren. Well sorry, but I just don’t care any more.

  Along with most of the country I’ve recently been introduced to football, and I’ve seen the light. That match between England and Argentina was, without any question or shadow of doubt, the most gut-wrenching two hours of my entire life.

  I genuinely do not know how football fans live though this torment every weekend. During the penalty shootout I was, medically speaking, in the throes of a massive coronary. My heart had stopped, and even if a Bengal tiger had started to savage my wife, I’d have been unable to move. Football has introduced me to the true meaning of passion.

  If someone overtakes a Ferrari during a motor race, I’ll tut and wander into the kitchen to see if by some miracle there’s a cold sausage in the fridge. But when Argentina were awarded that penalty, I found myself sprawled on the floor demanding that a gunboat be sent immediately to Copenhagen harbour. I wanted to rip the little mermaid to shreds. I sobbed to my wife that we would never, EVER have Danish bacon in the house again. EVER, do you understand? And then David Beckham was sent off.

  I thought I hated the referee, but this was something else. My brain concocted a whole new chemical for this one. Had you cut me at that moment, I’d have bled concentrated sulphuric acid. When they showed that slow-motion replay of Beckham’s ill-tempered foul, I really and truly wanted to smash him in the face wit
h a tyre iron. And even now, two weeks later, I still lie awake at night dreaming up new and imaginative ways of making him pay. I’m told he sometimes goes out dressed as a woman. Well good, because when I’m finished with him he will be one.

  It wasn’t all hatred though. As the game unfolded I began to fall in love with Tony Adams, fantasizing about moving with him to a little cottage in Devon and rearing geese. And when Michael Owen scored that goal to put England ahead, I experienced a euphoria way beyond the ken of mortal man.

  So when England were knocked out I couldn’t simply stop watching. I needed more of these incredible highs and they came in spades when Germany lost 3–0 to a country that didn’t even exist five years ago.

  I suspect all of us like to see the Germans fail from time to time, and that’s why I’ve rather enjoyed this whole Mercedes A Class saga. This tiny little hatchback, with its extraordinarily large interior, was going to take over the world. But half-way through Poland it fell over.

  A journalist discovered that if you performed a sudden lane-change manoeuvre at anything above 37mph, the A Class would flip onto its roof. On the whole, this was a ‘bad thing’.

  So bad, in fact, that Mercedes withdrew their new wonder-car from sale and set about making some changes. Clever traction control was added, the suspension was modified, and now the A Class is back.

  So, have the changes worked? Well this week I waved a tearful goodbye to the children, checked my life insurance policy, took the baby Benz to an airfield, and went completely bonkers. I built it up to 90mph and went from full left lock to full right lock. I braked in the middle of corners, I did handbrake turns. I completely wrecked the tyres. And I’m sitting here now, writing this, so all is well…

  … nearly. Unfortunately, the changes Mercedes made to the suspension have endowed the A Class with quite the most unforgiving ride you could possibly imagine. You would have David Beckham round for tea before you’d deliberately run over a cat’s-eye in this car.

  I was therefore staggered to read that, for £180, you can fit firm, sports suspension. Really, you mustn’t. It’s quite firm enough already, and anyway, this most definitely is not a sports car. Try any sort of speedy driving and in half a nanosecond the traction control comes down on you like a silicone ton of bricks.

  I really do believe that what we have here is a bad chassis with a Band-Aid on it. It doesn’t work and, anyway, the A Class is ridiculously expensive. I know it’s a Mercedes but I find it hard to accept that a car which is shorter than a Ford Fiesta should cost, depending on the engine and trim you choose, between £14,490 and £17,890.

  This is a great deal of money, especially when I tell you that Renault will sell you a larger, more comfortable and more practical Scenic for less than £13,000.

  And yet. To drive a Scenic is to advertise the fact that you’ve had it. You have children and a gut. Your life is ruled, not by a need to be attractive and funny, but by the prices at Ikea. I’ve seen you in the supermarket, buying washing-up bowls.

  The Mercedes may be horrid to drive and stupidly expensive, but in St Tropez this year it is the car. It may come with a boot, space inside for five and an engine that, in a head-on crash, slides under your legs. But it is also cool and funky. For years we’ve been eating lettuce and now Mercedes has given us some rocket.

  Yank tank flattens Prestbury

  I suspect that last year some corporate bigwig at General Motors was given an atlas for Christmas. And I suppose it must have been quite a shock for the poor chap to find that his teachers, the newspapers and the television news had all been lying.

  Imagine. For 50 years he had known without any doubt that God was called Hank and that the world stopped at Los Angeles. He knew the Americans had tried without success to find new civilizations – the launch pad at Cape Canaveral was proof of that. But here on his lap was this atlas – a book which spoke of strange and exotic new places where people breathed air and had central heating and Corby trouser presses. And yes, even cars.

  Back at work after the Christmas break he would have been treated as something of a lunatic, as he rushed around telling his colleagues that there were life forms outside the USA. ‘What? In the ocean you mean? Fish? Whales? Sea cucumbers?’

  ‘No no. There are bipeds. In places like Japan and South Africa and The United Britain. And we can sell them cars. All we need do is put the steering wheel on the other side. We’ll be rich.’

  And this did it, because now there’s an armada of General motors heading for the UK. There’s the Chevrolet Camaro, the big four-wheel drive Blazer, the Corvette and, most amazingly of all, the £40,000 Cadillac Seville STS.

  Oh dear. I appear to have put Prestbury into a state of cataclysmic shock. For years, people in the neo-Georgian suburbs of Manchester have been on the look-out for something a little more vulgar and ostentatious than a Rolls-Royce, and now it’s coming. Not since Parker Knoll brought out their last recliner has Cheshire been in quite such a heightened state of expectation. The people there need to know what this new car is like.

  Well now, I drove a Cadillac Seville last year and it was simply incredible. You could stop, get out, go shopping, have dinner and when you got back to the car three hours later it would still be rocking back and forth.

  It may have looked a little more restrained than the finned, chromed monsters from the late 1950s but it was still as soft as a puppy, with the directional control of Bambi. In Arizona it was, of course, very comfortable, but for trips into Wilmslow it would have been utterly hopeless.

  Cadillac, however, has not only moved the steering wheel but they’ve also changed the suspension. Indeed, I drove one this week and can report it doesn’t really have any.

  They’ve noted that while American footballers take to the field in an all-over body tampon, rugby players protect their bones with nothing more than a shirt. So they obviously figure we don’t need springs or dampers – just four bloody great RSJs. And the he-man steering is so macho the wheel has a full beard.

  There is, however, terrible disappointment elsewhere in the interior. Cheshire, I’m sure, was hoping for pearlescent vulgalour upholstery, Las Vegas lighting and button-backed, white carpets. But no. You get black leather and exactly the same sort of wood they used on Garrard turntables in 1975. You don’t even get a back-lit gold Cadillac motif in the middle of the steering wheel.

  But do not think for one minute that this is a low-key sports saloon like the BMW 5 series. It has front-wheel drive for a start, and the automatic gearbox works in geological time. Put your foot down and several aeons will slide by before it kicks down.

  And nor is it an executive cruiser. First of all, it is stupidly noisy thanks to absurd tyre roar and second, the driver’s seat is modelled on an electric chair. It features a device called auto lumbar support, which moves in tandem with your body.

  Unfortunately, it was designed to support the average American back, which is a task every bit as difficult as propping up the Leaning Tower of Pisa. I suspect that slender, lettuce-fed Prestbury backs will tire very quickly of being asked to rest on what is basically a piece of heavy engineering.

  But you will never tire of the engine. This 4.6 litre V8 produces 300 horsepower, and that’s enough, despite the best efforts of the Darwinian gearbox, to get the Seville from 0 to 60 in 6.8 seconds and on to 150. Apparently, 19mpg should also be possible, and it is, if you are towed everywhere.

  So what’s the big deal then? Well, not only does it sound utterly wonderful at high revs but it only needs servicing once every 100,000 miles. And, thanks to clever cylinder management, it can even run for 50 miles with no oil and no water. This will be a boon to the mink coat and no-knickers set, who are forever laughing over a lettuce lunch about how, that morning, they filled up the washer bottle with diesel.

  An amazing engine, however, isn’t enough. If only they’d sent the Seville here with pleblon seats and Fablon decals down the side, Prestbury would gave gone, to coin a local phrase, ‘mad for it
’.

  But instead, they’ve toned it down, hoping to pick up a few BMW and Jaguar drivers. And they’ve failed on that one too, because the Seville just isn’t good enough. It was a brave effort from our man with the atlas, but then it was a brave effort too the last time an American picked up a map of the world… and the army got sent to Vietnam.

  Supercar suicide

  Tiff doesn’t want you to know this, and after telling you I’m probably going to need another boyfriend, but last week, at the Pembury race track in Wales, he stuffed a Honda NSX. When Quentin and I heard, we exchanged glances and immediately guessed what had happened. Tiff, we reckoned, was too vain to wear his glasses on television, but without them he’s something of a mole. He was just trundling along, flashing his boyish smile at the camera and quite simply, never saw the corner.

  In fact, the truth is somewhat different. You see, I’ve now seen the footage, and Tiff saw the corner just fine. He was sailing round it with a fair bit of understeer which he tried to correct with a little flick – a little soupçon to upset the back end. It worked too, but the rear just snapped round, lunging Tiff and £70,000-worth of supercar towards the end of the pit wall. Now, if you hit the end of a wall sideways, at 80mph, you’re dead. It would have been Goodnight Tiff. But, amazingly, the car slid into the pit lane and had scrubbed nearly all its speed off when it hit a bank of tyres at 30mph or so. Tiff says the accident happened in slow motion and that he had time to sit there wondering what on earth had gone wrong. I mean, being a racing driver, the accident obviously wasn’t his fault… And much as it pains me to admit this, I think he’s right. It isn’t that he’s old and blind. It’s the NSX. I think there’s something wrong with it.