The whole point of this survey, paid for by Renault, is to demonstrate that there is no such thing as White Van Man, and that people who drive trannies for a living are as demographically disparate as the nation as a whole.
I see; so how come then, that 40 per cent of van drivers questioned said they had a satellite dish and that 28 per cent take the Sun? Only 4 per cent do any gardening and, here’s a good one, only 4 per cent are women.
What we’re dealing with here are young men who like football, beer, curry tours of Corfu and films where people get chopped up. And I’m sorry, but I don’t subscribe to the report’s findings, which say White Van Man drives fast because his boss has set an impossible schedule.
White Van Man drives fast because his boss will pay for repairs when he crashes. That’s why he never changes gear until the valves are coming through the bonnet. That’s why he lunges about with his front bumper in the small of your back. And that’s why he treats red traffic lights as advisory stop signals.
The report suggests we all try driving a white van once in a while to see what it’s like. Well I have, and I’ll tell you. It’s great.
You’re big enough to mix it with the trucks, but nimble enough to get out of their way when the going gets rough. You can go head-to-head with taxi drivers, and win. And as for drivers in their precious, shiny cars. They’re not people. They’re targets.
You can send White Van Man on as many driving courses as you like. You can attach a ‘How’s My Driving?’ sticker to his rear bumper, and you can fit a wireless which only plays Sade’s ‘Smooth Operator’, but it won’t make the slightest bit of difference.
Like the Indian cow, White Van Man is immune to all known forms of assault. You can carve him up and he’ll hit you. You can brake-test him and he’ll ram you up the backside. You can get out and remonstrate, but you’ll find the back is full of navvies who will practise the ancient art of origami on your arms and legs.
The solution is obvious. Week in and week out I tell you all about the new whiz-bang GTi which will get from 0 to 60 in one second, but I appear to have been missing the point. If you really want to get around quickly, become an urban terrorist. Rent yourself a Ford Transit.
And if a market researcher asks any questions, do everyone a favour and set the record straight. You like beating people up. Preferably with chips.
‘What I actually meant was…’
Right: think back now to the most embarrassing thing you’ve ever done in your whole life. Maybe it was the porn mag you shoplifted when you were 11, or maybe it was the one-night stand you had last month… with your bank manager. Come on. Feel the guilt. Squirm. And now, imagine what it would be like to suffer from that feeling every single morning.
Here’s the problem. I get a car to test, for a week usually, and in that time I’m able to work out almost nothing. Oh sure, I can tell you how fast it goes and what it looks like. I’m even able to determine if it’s noisy. But in actual fact, none of this stuff really matters. Take the Ford Puma, for instance. Having been bowled over by the styling, the performance and the promise of low, low Ford-style running costs, we made it the Top Gear Car of the Year.
And, impressed by our report on the programme, a friend of mine bought one. And over dinner last week he shoved his finger up my nose and explained that if you lift the tailgate up when it’s raining, several gallons of water pour into the boot. I never spotted this because when I tested the car, it was dry. But in the big scheme of things, it’s not the end of the world. What concerns me far more is that I can’t report on the one area that really matters – reliability.
In the last series I decided that the new Alfa Romeo GTV was the best coupé you could buy. It was pretty much the fastest and, though looks are subjective, I’ll come round to your house with a broken bottle if you disagree that this mini-Ferrari is a supermodel in a sea of excrement. Now I knew it would not be reliable. I knew that after six months, if I’d pressed the window switch, the boot would have opened, and that if I’d mashed the throttle into the carpet, the bonnet would have flown away. I knew all of this. But I had no proof. So I couldn’t say it. And as a result Dr Lynch of Belfast bought one. And now he’s written to say that it’s the most unreliable piece of donkey-do ever to grace the Emerald Isle. In nine months, the car has been off the road for eight weeks. And I told him to buy one. Oh my God. The guilt. The angst. And what’s this? The next morning I got a letter from Simon Saunders who, following my report, has a Land Rover Freelander. It arrived with the speedo calibrated in kilometres. And over the summer, the speaker fell out of the door, the transmission began to rattle, it ate oil like a school boiler and the air conditioning began to think it was a shower, hosing water into the cabin.
Sadly, it hasn’t actually broken down so, technically speaking, under the terms of my agreement with the managing director of Rover, Dr Hasselkus, Simon is not allowed to burn anyone’s house down. But he is cheesed off. And so is Andy Jones. Because he bought a Volvo T5R, which received the Clarkson small-boy-in-toy-shop treatment on television. I loved it. I raved about it. Andy bought one, and to list all the faults he used up all the paper in my fax machine. My hair stood on end as I digested the litany of problems. Oh God, the CD stopped working; pass the razor. Oh no, it judders; where are the Disprin? And then, this morning I really did reach for the carving knife. A driving instructor wrote to say that in the last four years he has covered 130,000 miles in his Nissan Micra. It has been subjected to the worst kind of brutality from Maureen and her ilk and, apart from regular servicing, it has only needed two new brake pads.
A Nissan bloody Micra, for heaven’s sake. I hate the Nissan Micra. I have joked about this lump of Japanese junk for years. It is as sensible as a sandal, with as much flair as Johnny Rotten’s trousers. Yet it works, every single day, without fail. There is only one solution. Treat what I say about cars as entertainment – but under no circumstances actually go and buy anything I like.
Seriously, the guilt is killing me. Every morning, Postman Pat delivers another tale of woe from some poor sod who wanted that 150mph top speed. He wanted to generate 2 g on every roundabout. And now the car is sitting in a workshop with oil spewing out of its heater vents. Please don’t write to me any more. Please. Write to Quentin. It’s all his fault.
Mrs Clarkson runs off with a German
The road which passes my house is a beauty. Ten miles or so of sweeping corners, a wiggly bit, some truly mouthwatering views and a brace of long, long straights which plunge like an arrow into the heart of Cotswoldy Britain.
There is one tiny little problem though. The road’s in my backyard. I don’t mind one bit if you drive like a bat out of hell past someone else’s house, but when you go past mine I want you to turn off the engine and coast.
I even rang the council last week and had a long chat with their Highways Department, during which the words ‘rumble’, ‘strip’, ‘speed’, ‘camera’ and ‘I’ll stretch cheese wire across the road if you don’t do something’ were used extensively.
When I put the phone down my wife was open-mouthed with disbelief. ‘You bloody hypocrite,’ she yelled. ‘You’re like one of those idiots who buy a house near Heathrow and then spend the rest of their lives complaining about the noise.’
In a temper she snatched up the keys to a Porsche 911 and roared away, saying that if I was going to be a weird beard vegetablist, I could use the Mondeo. It’s hard, sometimes, living with a woman who once declared that she wouldn’t drive any car unless it has ‘at least 200 horsepower’.
As far as she’s concerned the road outside our house is a private Nurburgring, and when she came back after her wheel-spinning foray into the night she declared the 911 was brilliant, a little jiggly at the front end perhaps, but otherwise a gem.
High praise indeed from the daughter of someone who won the VC for shooting Germans.
I figured I’d get my chance in this wondercar the next day but, oh no, by the time I was awake it was half-way
to a wedding in Hampshire, where its four-wheel drive system was apparently a big boon in the muddy car park.
The next day, I was hit hard with a germ that even made my eyelashes ache, so there was still no driving. But my wife kept the information coming. You can get a child seat in the back. The noise is a bit dull. Here’s a Lemsip. I’m going for another spin.
And I was left in bed reading all about this new, all-wheel drive Carrera4 which has, according to Porsche, the most advanced electronic monitoring system yet seen on a car. Called Porsche Stability Management, it can monitor the desired trajectory with the likely actual trajectory.
And then, by using the anti-lock brakezzz, and the engine management system, it makes minute alterationzzzz before the car becomes unstable.
It all sounds deeply impressive in a sleep-inducing kind of way, and yet, rather pointless. Here’s why. When I drove the normal two-wheel drive Carrera earlier in the year, I found that it just would not misbehave at all. It’s one of the most sure-footed cars on Earth, and I emerged from the experience a fan.
I said that it managed to combine the bloodcurdling excitement of a Ferrari with the loping, motorway-munching ability of a Jaguar XKR. So why, I wondered, would anyone want to spend a further £3000 buying such a car with four-wheel drive?
Five days later, and just hours before a man from Porsche took it away, I got a chance to find out. The weather couldn’t have been better. There was rain, wind, locusts and, on the road, pools of standing water deep enough to classify as boating lakes. And the 911 took everything in its stride, allowing me to concentrate on the noisy wipers and the steering wheel that creaked as you turned it. I do so love reporting faults of this nature on German cars.
And then I arrived at a 90 degree left-hander and it was time to test the PSM system. Basically, I didn’t bother slowing down for the corner at all. I just turned the wheel and waited to see what the car would do.
First of all, I felt the front offside wheel being braked and then, when the nose had been brought to heel, power was unleashed to the rear, which wiggled slightly. And that was it. You get more drama from Chaucer.
But here’s the deal. Who, in their right mind, would not slow down for a 90 degree bend? The electronics were working to rescue a situation that would never occur in real life.
The ordinary, £64,000 Carrera2 generates so much grip that its abilities way surpass the talent and bravery of even the most suicidal motorist. In order to make the Carrera4 work for a living you have to drive like a complete madman.
So what, then, is the point? I mean, both cars have the same 3.4 litre, six-cylinder engine, the same top speed of 165mph, the same 0 to 60 time of 5.4 seconds and the same interior. Visually too, Carrera2 and Carrera4 are identical.
However, Porsche has always said that so long as there is a Ferrari, there will be a 911 Turbo, and that we should expect a blown version of the Carrera4 some time soon.
Now to keep that in check, the four-wheel drive and the PSM might just come in handy. But if you buy such a car and decide to test it out on the road past my house, remember: I have a gun.
And last week, I went to the post office and spent £4 on a licence to kill.
Un-cool Britannia
I think it fair to describe snowboarding as the very embodiment of youth. It’s a world where any sense of danger is masked by a constant haze of cannabis, a world of primary colours and funny hats. A world where you come down the hill at 70 – but you’re over it at 21.
Now at the other end of the spectrum, we find Rover. I only need hear the word and I’m filled with an uncontrollable urge to head for the sort of pub where the fire smokes and the customers don’t. It makes me want to drink sherry and snuggle down at night between tweed sheets.
Rover is an old sofa, a wingback dog with gingivitis and boils. Rover is the moleskin waistcoat worn by your doctor if you live in Arkengarthdale.
It would be easy then to wonder what on earth Rover thought it was doing when it sanctioned the recent televisual advertising blitzkrieg. The advertisement may have been set to a song that topped the hit parade in 1964, but the visual imagery was more up to date than your watch.
They were trying to tell us that Rovers are actually bought by 20-year-old girls with lacy G-strings and pierced navels. They were trying to make Aunty Rover in her big bloomers sexy.
And why? Well obviously Rover is about to launch the new 75, and they didn’t want people thinking 75 was the minimum age for buying one. They wanted a youthful image for their new, youthful car.
Well I’ve driven one and it isn’t. The 75 is wilfully and deliberately old-fashioned. If the new Ford Focus is a Canon Ixius, then the 75 is a 1950s radiogram. The advertisements have told us to expect an F-22, but the company has given us a wireless.
Naturally, I blame the Germans. They still think that in Britain, everyone is either a squadron leader or a Brontë sister. We go to work with tightly rolled umbrellas and bowler hats. We only eat food when it’s charcoal and we only ever watch films about the war.
Ask a German to name something British and he’ll come up with Fortnum and Holland or Holland and Royce. They like this, and that’s why, when BMW bought Rover, they wanted some olde-worlde charm engineered into the cars.
So the 75 has a chrome strip down the side and chromed door handles. When you open the door there are cream dials set into a wooden dashboard, and while this may not have much to do with Conran’s Britain Jurgen the German will feel like he’s bought a little piece of Chester. Or York. It is like the Shambles on wheels.
No, I can do better than that. It is a shambles on wheels. I shall begin with the dashboard which, as I’ve said, features cream dials set into wood. But then, rather incongruously, there are LED read-outs and an LCD satellite navigation panel. It’s a mess.
It doesn’t drive well either. On challenging roads, drivers used to the lightning responses of a snowboard will find the steering ponderous and the brakes devoid of feel. They’ll also find the wipers unnecessarily noisy.
And then they will arrive at a corner, where they will discover Rover’s sole concession to the modern age – rock and, especially, roll. The traction control system is too eager as well, and there’s nowhere for your left foot. Oh, and before I forget, the driving position is odd, the door handles feel cheap and it’s hard to drive smoothly in traffic.
Then we come to the new 2.0 litre V6 engine. Well, it was out of its depth, like finding the electric motor from your daughter’s peeing Barbie in the bowels of an aircraft carrier. The car feels big and heavy, like a bison, and the engine feels like it belongs in a mouse.
Obviously, the 2.5 litre V5 will be better, but then it will also be more expensive. And while we’re on the subject of price, the 1.8 looks like good value at under £20,000, but I suspect it will be more of a garden ornament than a car. It won’t move.
At this point, I should introduce some of the car’s plus points. It is remarkably quiet and smooth on the motorway, it is spacious and, if you’re over 55, the styling is appealing.
Now I admit my test drive was short – just 70 miles, and that the car was a pre-production special. I must also add that the weather was as bad as the traffic and that I had tummy ache. But even allowing for all of this, I have to say that overall the 75 is not as good as it should be.
It would be easy, then, to say Rover has got everything wrong, that they gave up with the ‘Relax, it’s a Rover’ campaign and went all trendy just weeks before launching something that’s a lot more retro than rocket.
All true, but in Germany, France and Italy this car will sell well because the styling conjures up a tourist board vision of Britain. And for the same reason, it will sell to people in this country who have never heard of arugula; members of your local Conservative association will love the way it looks like a little Bentley.
However, the rest of us should buy either a 3 Series or, if we want more space, a 520iSE. Clever, eh, because either way BMW walks off with your cheque
.
Move over Maureen
Before Quentin became an estate agent and drove around talking about people’s fireplaces, he lent those dulcet tones to a programme called Driving School. You may remember it.
It focused on people learning to drive, and it made a star of Maureen, whose mouth was on upside down. Sadly, she never did get the hang of driving, but that didn’t matter; some civil servant in beige trousers handed over a document saying that she was legally able to drive a Ferrari F40 on the Snake Pass in winter. Well that’s just brilliant. And Maureen isn’t alone. There was another woman in the programme who, having passed her test, had another lesson because she wasn’t confident enough. She wouldn’t be, driving around with a dog the size of a wildebeest in the passenger seat.
Oh, how we laugh… right up to the moment when someone just like dog-woman ploughs into a primary school playground, killing 30 under-fives. I’m sorry, but every day I see people in cars who were born to be on the bus. Hunched over the steering wheel, airbag an inch from those half-filled hot-water bottles they used to call breasts, they peer into the gloom, looking neither left nor right. Tom Cruise could be in the car alongside, waving his meat out of the window, but these people wouldn’t dare sneak a peek. They’re driving along, petrified. And petrified means ‘turned into stone’, by the way. They can’t look in a mirror to see what’s behind, they can’t glance out of the side window to see what’s alongside, they just plough on, oblivious to the mayhem in their wake. I found one of them yesterday doing 30 on an open, sweeping A road. The sun visor was pulled down behind her head which meant, of course, she had no idea I was overtaking when she began – with no warning whatsoever – to turn right.
We’ve all seen this, and we all assume the police should be more vigilant and aggressive; but be realistic. Even if they do pull someone over they’ll find it impossible to charge them with ‘sitting too far forward’. Or ‘doing 30’. No. To attack this we have to get to the root of the problem – the driving examiner. I have some sympathy with these poor souls. Think about it. If you are scared half to death while someone is taking their test, you’ll pass them. That way, there’s a very small chance you’ll meet them coming the other way on a dark night. If you fail them, there’s a very large chance that, in six months’ time, they’ll be back, ready to scare you to death all over again.
Born to Be Riled Page 31