I should have used this the other night on a driver who had never heard of Fulham, or a guy, a couple of weeks ago, who obviously believed that his Fiat Croma could, given a long enough run-up, beat Richard Noble’s land speed record.
Now obviously, at this point, every licensed Archie is sitting at home beating his children with a rolled-up copy of the Style section, telling anyone who’ll listen that I should use black cabs. This is true, but unfortunately he will still be sitting there, shouting, when I next need some wheels.
So we’ll all keep on using minicabs. Just beware though. If you find yourself sitting behind a bloke who answers to the name of Darth, get out and run for your life. He’s easy to spot because he has a long black cape, a black helmet and asthma.
Supercar crash in Stock Exchange
As I look out of the window today I can see the storm clouds gathering. Mr Blair will be torn from his mountings and the Met Bar will be forced to introduce an all-night happy hour.
The Dome will be cast into the North Sea and Rotherham will be wiped from the map. The brief sprouting of industry in Corby will be erased and easyJet will crash. Be in absolutely no doubt on this one: Recession Tony is on its way.
Now I think it wise at this point to explain that I have never read the Financial Times. Also, I achieved an ‘unclassified’ grade in my economics A-level, partly because I forgot to turn up for the exam and partly because I forgot to turn up for any of the lessons either.
I’ve tried, really I’ve tried, to understand the implications of handing over interest rate control to the Bank of England, but every time I think I’ve grasped it I fall into a deep and dreamless sleep. And I’m sorry, but I really cannot work out why the Brazilian balance of payments deficit will make me less likely to buy a cauliflower.
I write this column. Rupert Murdoch gives me some of his money. I spend it. And I’m sorry, but you can wipe as much as you like off the Japanese stock market but it won’t make the slightest difference. No, don’t argue. It won’t.
Nevertheless, I am able to predict the onset of a financial holocaust because the world’s car firms are getting cocky again.
Remember what happened last time. They reacted quite late to the mid-80s boom and began work on a series of new and frighteningly expensive cars which crept onto the market at exactly the same time as Recession John started to blow things over in EC4.
Jaguar were left with an unwanted stock of XJ220s. McLaren only managed to shift 47 of their preposterous F1s. Bugatti went to the bottom of the Tiber wearing lead pants and Lamborghini ended up being run by a Malaysian pop star.
I don’t doubt for one minute that after the debâcle of 1992 every single car exec in the world declared that he would never again be tempted to make a megabucks supercar. But when the world is bathing in greenbacks it’s hard to resist, and already word is starting to creep out that the car execs have relented.
I read in this newspaper that Mercedes and McLaren are planning to make a £150,000 supercar, but as it was in the Business section I lost the plot after that. I do understand, however, that Maserati is back in business with a new coupé and that Audi has bought Lamborghini, who are known to be working on a new one-ounce, one-million-horsepower dream-mobile. This will force Ferrari to fight back with something so light it’ll need mooring ropes.
And then there’s Jaguar who, at the Paris motor show this week, will unveil a car called the XK180. It is propelled by a supercharged V8 engine which is said to develop nearly 450bhp. And for those of you who understand, 445 ft/lb of torque.
I can’t even begin to guess how fast it will go, but as the two-door, convertible body is made entirely from aluminium, obviously it should be able to outrun a Nissan Micra.
I can tell you, however, that I’ve seen this spiritual successor to the D type and it is quite simply the most beautiful car ever made. Remarkable, when you discover it was designed on the back of a cigarette packet.
Last December, Jaguar decided to mark the 50th anniversary of the XK range and talked about turning the supercharged XK8 into more of a driver’s car, perhaps shortening it a bit and taking out some of the Houston dentistry in the suspension.
Work began in February. On Saturday mornings, a group of die-hard petrolheads could be found ferreting away in what has now become known as the Special Vehicle Operation. They went by instinct, deciding quite late on to make the panels from aluminium. And then, even later, that if they were using a new material they may as well have a new look too. It’s this sort of ingenuity, remember, which gave us the jet engine and the hovercraft. And now it’s given us the XK180.
It doesn’t work, of course. Well no, that’s not true. It does work, but thanks to all sorts of Euro busybodery, they could never actually sell one. However, at the show in Paris they will be bombarded with requests to turn this D type dream into a production reality, and it’ll be almost impossible to resist.
I’m sure they’ll make it, and I’m sure too, that the day they choose to launch it – with a price tag of £150,000? – will be the same day that the National Lottery goes bust. And no one will buy a car that costs four times more than a large and sumptuous house.
Fairly soon now, the car industry must learn to get itself in step with the economy. As soon as the 14th floor windowsills in the City are full of men in suits, crying, they should start to work on a high-price, low-volume supercar.
That way, the car would be ready to go on sale just after the economy has recovered. And that, really, is the key. The economy always does recover because we’ll always want cauliflowers and we’ll always want cars that go like stink. Galbraith? It’s my middle name.
The school run
I remember with vivid clarity the moment when I began to grow up. I was 22 years old, standing in a hardware shop asking the assistant if I could buy a washing-up bowl.
Until that point I had spent my money on beer, cigarettes, rent and, begrudgingly, the occasional Christmas present. Never before had I wasted it on something useful.
I remember vividly driving home staring at the bowl, knowing with crushing certainty that pretty soon I’d be out there buying light bulbs and white goods, things from which I would derive no pleasure whatsoever.
Fifteen years later, stage two was reached and I retuned my car stereo to Radio Two, and then this week I reached stage three. I did the school run.
And from now on there is no chance of enjoying an impromptu night out with friends, lest it become a hazy stumble into the early hours. You can’t go to bed at four in the morning when you have to be sober and hearty just three hours later.
And let me tell you this. Buying a washing-up bowl was dull. Turning to Radio Two was inevitable. But the school run is hell on earth, because it removes the last vestige of fun from the concept of motoring. It turns a car from a thrusting symbol of virility into a tool, a tool that goes head-to-head with a washing-up bowl. And loses.
For a kick-off, I have to forget all about Terry Wogan. Instead I’m forced to listen over and over to Aqua’s ‘Barbie’ song, which lines up alongside the ‘1812 Overture’ as the least appropriate morning music ever written. Should I ever meet this Swedish band, I promise you this: I will kill them.
And then there’s my son, who, at the age of two, can identify every single car on the road. On its own this would be a source of pride, but what turns it to something less savoury is the fact that he does identify every car on the road.
We have to drive along with a Swede telling me that life in plastic is fantastic while the boy child shouts out the name of every car going the other way. He can’t say ‘Good morning’ but seems to have no problem with ‘Daihatsu’.
Obviously, I would like to get the journey over as quickly as the Mondeo’s V6 engine will go, but there’s a pressure valve built into every parent which activates as soon as children climb into the back of a car. Suddenly, I lose the ability to overtake.
I may be stuck behind a tractor and the road may be clear for 200 miles
but I am incapable of dropping a cog and going for it. When I’m driving with the children, I become exactly the sort of person I shout at.
There’s another issue too. You daren’t overtake the car in front in case it turns out to be another parent taking their children to the same school. You’d be classified as a maniac and your children would be bullied.
So we all drive along at 2mph, each of us being bombarded with Aqua, until we arrive at the maelstrom itself, the school gate. And at this point the gene which controls manners and common sense is simply switched off.
You stop the car wherever it is physically possible to do so, not caring two hoots that you happen to be in a bus lane or blocking in someone else who is very obviously just about to leave. You want those children out of your car NOW, and frankly you will use battery electrodes and skewers on anyone who dares to get in your way.
And once the children are in the classroom, the craving for adult conversation becomes impossible to resist. You are desperate to talk to someone who can say more than plastic, fantastic, Suzuki, Rover and BMW.
So you will talk to anyone, completely forgetting that your car is in the middle of the road with three of its doors wide open.
In his ill-fated White Paper, John Prescott declared war on the twice-daily school run as perhaps the major cause of traffic congestion in our cities today. And he’s right. I know he’s trying to do us a favour. He’s been there, though in his day it was probably the ‘Birdie Song’ and ‘Agadoo’, rather than ‘Barbie Girl’, and he wants to save the rest of us from the horror. It’s a nice thought John, but the simple fact of the matter is this. I cannot put a four-year-old and a two-year-old on a bus, for one very good reason. Round here, there isn’t one.
And I’m loath to fix up an organized rota either. I don’t want to sound twee here, but it seems silly to entrust the two most valuable things in my life to someone who, for all I know, isn’t a very good driver.
Some people aren’t, you know. They get the clutch and the rear-view mirror muddled up, even when they’re on their own. And it gets worse when they have a people-carrier full of chanting four-year-olds.
And you can’t very well say to a parent who is offering to take your children to school, ‘Yes, but first of all, let’s see how you handle power oversteer.’
I’m afraid, therefore, I’m on the school run right up to the moment when life reaches stage four. And I start gardening.
Voyage to the bottom of the heap
The television reviewer for a local newspaper in London hates every molecule in my body. In recent years he’s described me as Stephen Fry’s older, fatter sister, he’s said I’m talentless and recently he even wished me dead.
As a result, I know what it’s like to be on the receiving end of a savage and vitriolic review. And therefore I have some sympathy this morning for the people at Chrysler who, just before Christmas, asked if I’d like to drive their new diesel-powered Voyager people-carrier.
Obviously, the right answer was, ‘No, I would rather rip my own head off than drive something with a diesel engine’ but sadly, my wife took the call and said instead, ‘Yes, Jeremy would be delighted.’
Well, I’d only gone a couple of miles in it before I smelled a rat. This was a Noel Edmonds ‘Gotcha’. I knew exactly what had happened – the bearded one had fitted the engine from a cement mixer, and hidden cameras were going to see how far I went before realizing.
Keen to demonstrate my prowess, I pulled into a lay-by just two miles from home and ripped the interior apart looking for the Pulnix minicameras. And there weren’t any. This was not a joke. Almost unbelievably, this car was for real.
I know what’s happened here. In the last few years, potential customers have told the salesmen in Chrysler showrooms that they would love to buy a Voyager but that the big, 3.3 litre petrol engine is too thirsty. ‘If you did a diesel, we’d buy it.’
Why do people do that? When we’re buying a petrol engine we agonize over the technical data for hours, working out torque figures and analysing the brake horsepower. We look carefully at the top speed and even worry about the meaningless 0 to 60 time.
But when people want a diesel any old rubbish will do, a point that was obviously not lost on Hank the Yank from Chrysler, who simply bought ‘a diesel engine’ from the Italian company VM and fitted it under the bonnet of the Voyager.
The results are catastrophic. Nought to 60 takes a woeful 13 seconds and on the motorway 60 is realistically your top whack. Beyond that, the growl of the engine, allied to the whistle of the turbocharger, renders the stereo useless.
I’m told, however, that fuel economy is dramatically improved. Apparently, back in the summer, a family drove across Europe in a Voyager diesel and averaged 53mpg. Well I’m sorry but they must have pushed it because, realistically, it won’t do more than 33mpg.
And nor will it go round corners properly. Even with the miserable power output which dribbles to the front wheels like it’s coming out of a pipette, the Voyager diesel suffers from dramatic understeer on wet roundabouts.
I was just driving normally, and each time I let in the clutch after a down change the front wheels just skidded. It was like trying to drive to work on a halibut.
Only less comfortable. Chrysler seems to have achieved the impossible with this car, combining a bone-jarring ride with the pitch and roll characteristics of a small yacht.
So, after three long years, the Vectra has finally lost its crown. By a huge margin, this new bus from America is the worst car on the market today. And that title is earned not simply as a result of the terrible engine or the unusual handling characteristics.
I once described the Voyager as the best of the people-carriers, but for the life of me I cannot remember what possessed me to do such a thing. For a kick-off, the interior layout is all wrong, with a poky park bench in the back and only two Parker Knoll recliners in the middle. Why not three? Everyone else has three.
And why, in such a huge car, is life so cramped for the driver? You have to rattle along, hunched over the wheel, changing gear every 15 seconds to keep that useless engine in its power band. The rev counter is red-lined, for heaven’s sake, at 4000rpm. What good’s that?
And why is the handbrake buried under the driver’s seat? And why do all the controls feel so cheap? And why is it a condition of the loan that I don’t smoke while driving the vehicle? According to a letter I found in the car, future owners will be non-smokers and will not like the smell I leave.
Oh I see; they’re going to buy a diesel which will pump the world’s most carcinogenic substance – 3-nitrobenzothrone – into their children’s frail little lungs. But they’ll be put off if it smells of burned leaves. Well, they can p*** off.
To be honest, I can’t see anyone with even half a brain buying this car. Sure, there are bound to be a few idiots who’ll do so because it’s a big diesel, but for the rest of us, here are the facts. The cheapest model is £19,600, but for that you only get five seats. You may as well have a Ford Focus.
To get a proper model with seven seats and a boot, you need to spend £22,000, and I simply do not have the space here to list all the things I’d rather have instead – venereal disease, for a kick-off.
I’m afraid I didn’t even complete the test with this new car. I eventually left it at a remote airfield in the middle of Wiltshire and hitchhiked home instead.
Van the Man
On the face of it, motoring in India could not be easier. The Highway Code states simply that ‘might is right’, and that you must give way to anything which is larger.
At all intersections the lorry is king and then, in descending order, you have the bus, the van, the elephant, the car, the auto-rickshaw and finally, the mushy and pliable pedestrian.
So why, if there is only one very simple rule, do the Indians kill 168 people on the roads every day? Well, first of all we must face up to the simple problem that Indians can’t drive. Think about it. The world of Formula One is hardly litt
ered with names from the subcontinent. And no Indian has ever won the RAC Rally.
And then we have the question of religion. A majority of Indians believe that their death is preordained and that they can do nothing about it. So they arrive at the intersection knowing full well that they should give way to the truck, but they don’t know which of the three pedals is the brake, and they don’t really care about the consequences anyway.
It’s a dangerous mix, and that’s before we get to the wild card, the four-legged two of clubs. If you encounter a cow you must swerve on to the wrong side of the road irrespective of what is coming the other way, whether it’s a school bus, some nuns, or Buzz Aldrin on a tractor.
Elsewhere in the world this would not be a big problem because cows tend to be kept in fields, but in India you round a bend on the equivalent of the M6 and oh no: there, right in front of you, is Ermintrude enjoying a round of gin rummy with Daisy.
Be aware, then, that if you are planning to drive in India you may not listen to the radio or chat with your passengers. If you lose concentration for a split second your head bone will become connected to your windscreen bone.
It’s all so very different in Britain, but remember, we also have a wild card – White Van Man. He is our equivalent of the sacred cow. He should be in a field, with a ring in his nose, but he isn’t. He’s on the road with a ring in his eyebrow.
Now a report out this week tries to defend the man in a van, saying he is courteous to other road users, that he is likely to have a pet and that he is first to get out of the way should an ambulance want to come past. Of course he is. That way, he can tuck in behind the paramedics and get home even faster.
Born to Be Riled Page 30