And then your attention is drawn to the television, telephone, stereo and satellite navigation system, all of which are fitted into a six-by-six box which lives on the centre console.
Now, to those of us who are over 35 years old, this is deeply impressive – when we were growing up, your amp was the size of a washing machine, your TV was black and white, there were no satellites and your phone number was Darrowby 35.
Obviously, having been brought up in a pre-calculator age, I am completely baffled by computers. But that didn’t stop me stabbing away at the various buttons, responding with an excitable shriek when the readout on the TV screen changed. Simply getting the radio to come on, and play music, gives hope to the world’s old people that maybe one day they could buy an Internet and make it mow the lawn.
For all I know, the air-conditioning system in an S-class could mow the lawn and a whole lot more besides: bikini-wax your wife, make a pizza? Who knows? I certainly don’t, because the controls made no sense to me at all.
In American cars, the function performed by a knob is written in English on the knob itself. The button to open the sunroof actually says ‘sunroof’. Now in the rest of the world, people recognize that there’s such a thing as a language barrier, and, as a result, they use symbols instead.
Again, this worked fine. Find a button with a drawing of a sunroof on it and, unless you’re in an Alfa, it’ll open the roof when pressed. But what happens when a car offers a new function you’ve never heard of before? The symbol on the switch will be meaningless.
There’s one button on the S-class dashboard which appears to have a corn circle drawn on it. So you press it and – guess what? A small red light comes on. There’s no whirring noise, no soft whoosh such as you’d get when the doors open on the USS Enterprise, just that little red light. And next to it is another button with what looks like a Breville snack and sandwich toaster stencilled on it. Again, when you press this, absolutely nothing happens. I would say that, of all the buttons in the S-class, and there are hundreds, 80 per cent appear to have no function whatsoever.
Obviously, the solution can be found in the handbook, but, look, it’s the size of the Bible and makes even less sense. By the time you’d got to the chapter marked ‘How to Walk On Water’, your car would have rusted away. And anyway, I sort of know what all those buttons do. They change the driving characteristics slightly, making the car perhaps a little more lively in the bends or a little more prone to rear-end breakaway. And honestly, this is silly because you can’t induce power oversteer when you’re still at home, with all your friends in the back saying: ‘Hey, what does that one do?’
Certainly, you should attempt to drive an S-class by yourself. What with Maureen lunging at you from every side road, and schoolchildren surfing on your back bumper, you have enough to worry about without having to translate ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics every time you want to turn the radio up a bit.
Of course, no one who buys an S-class ever actually does the driving. You have a driver, but from now on you’re going to need two: one to drive the car and beat up pedestrians who want your autograph and another who must be computer-literate, skilled in satellite guidance and fully conversant with road-going avionics. So that’s Andy Wilman and me out, then.
Audi’s finest motor just can’t make up its mind
When a new play opens for business, the reviewers give it one chance. They do not go back again and again just because the make-up lady’s changed, or the auditorium’s been vacuumed.
The same goes for food. A.A. Gill does not re-review a restaurant because one of the waitresses has been to the hairdresser. ‘Yes, I know we’re still drizzling your halibut with synthetic Norwegian truffle oil, but what do you think of my new bob?’
So it is with a sense of shame that I find myself writing this morning about the new Audi A8. I know I’ve written about it before and I know I finished that review by saying: ‘Don’t bother driving it. You won’t like it.’ But, truth be told, I’ve always had this thing about Audi’s flagship. I don’t much care that it’s made from aluminium or that it has four-wheel drive. Nor am I bothered that the Audi badge is rather Fulham compared with Premier League names like Mercedes or Jaguar.
I like the A8 because it’s so damned handsome. I used to see a black one kicking around Regent Street. It had blacked-out windows and polished chrome wheels, and the want-one factor was way up there in the red zone.
I used to think of it as the only real rival for Jaguar’s XJR. But then I drove one and the dream fell apart, along with all my bones. The ordinary version was too soggy, and in the sport models the ride comfort was abysmal. A cat’s-eye could remove your teeth, a pothole could sever your spine and a humpback bridge could bounce your passengers clean through the roof. It had very obviously been developed in Germany, where road surface irregularities are taken outside by men in leather shorts and shot in the back of the head. But here in Britain, where councils deliberately build bumps in the road, it didn’t work at all.
However, Audi has just changed the suspension, and against all the rules of this reviewing game I was prepared to give the German underdog a second chance. The new model is still manly and handsome enough to hang a question mark over your sexuality, but now there are some snazzy wheels and a different radiator grille. The 4.2-litre V8 engine is also different. They’ve fitted five valves per cylinder so that it develops 310bhp – enough to get you past 60 in 6.9 seconds and on to a top speed of 155.
Me? I went rather more slowly than that because they’ve fitted a television in the dashboard which shuts off once you’re going more that 5mph. Indeed, I’d like to apologize to everyone on the M40 for my glacial progress, but I was watching Countdown, trying to make a seven-letter word from ‘telephone’. Sadly, the game ended when I reached London, because at this point the Audi’s electronics went mad. In a traffic jam in Knightsbridge, the parking sensors began to beep, suggesting I was close to other cars – you don’t say – and then the sat nav chirped in, saying: ‘If possible, make a U-turn.’
At least, that’s what I think it said, but it’s hard to be sure because half way through the message the radio turned itself up to the sort of volume that can deafen dogs and told me of faulty lights in Hackney. Then the phone rang.
Now in an F-15 fighter-bomber your helmet is constantly filled with warnings about excess g, and an imminent stall, and missile lock, but this is a warplane. In a car, surely to God it is possible to engineer a system whereby messages come one at a time.
But what about the suspension? Well, for sure it’s better than it was, but round town the A8 still crashes into potholes that Jag-man wouldn’t notice. At speed things improve, but at speed another problem rears its ugly head. Turn the steering wheel and there appears to be a slight delay before you change direction. Hit the brake pedal and there’s a pause before you start to slow down. The Tiptronic gearbox appears to be working in a different space-time continuum. And this means that despite the Sport Quattro badging, the big £56,000 A8 is not the driver’s car it should be.
Now I know it’s hard to blend comfort with sportiness, but Audi’s boffins got both elements wrong first time. Now, amazingly, they’ve got them wrong again. If you want a sports saloon, you’re better off with the blistering Jaguar XJR, which is much faster, more comfortable and £6000 less expensive. And if you want the ultimate big car, and to hell with driving dynamics, the A8 is soundly thrashed by the new 4.3-litre Mercedes S-class.
So much of the A8 is right. You will never find better seats, and should all eight of the airbags inflate you will find yourself rolling down the road in a bouncy castle. It’s good looking, quiet, dignified and it appears to be beautifully made. But that suspension wrecks everything. Think of it as a cake. Perfect in every way except for the giant cowpat.
Keep the sports car, drive the price tag
All over the world there are human rights atrocities about which America does nothing. The Russians, for instance, went bonkers in
Chechnya and all the while Uncle Sam got on with his beefburger. But then, out of nowhere, Mr Clinton decides to pick on Yugoslavia. Hurriedly, his generals consulted an atlas to find out where it was, and in the last four weeks of sustained action they’ve managed to hit a house in Bulgaria, a hospital, some Chinese, all the make-up ladies at Serbia’s television station, a refugee column and Slobodan Milosevic’s bedroom. At a time when he wasn’t in it.
And in the process they’ve lost four big, fast, expensive planes, three soldiers and two Apache helicopters. But then this isn’t surprising, because the Americans have a proud and noble tradition of being utterly hopeless at warfare. They lost in Vietnam, they lost in Somalia, they lost in the Bay of Pigs, and though they won the Gulf war they managed to kill more British soldiers than the Iraqis.
But then think about it. The Americans are the largest consumers of that most strangely outdated car, the Mercedes SL. And this says a lot. It should have said to Mr Blair that perhaps their weaponry was dodgy, too, and they’d hit the wrong country. But of course it’s hard to hear messages when you’re six feet up Mr Clinton’s bottom. And he wasn’t listening this week, either, because he’s been touring the Balkan refugee camps with a brace of rather sweaty armpits and a wife who appeared to have put her mouth on inside out.
Ah, good, I thought. He’s there to apologize for killing all those civilians. Or maybe he’s there to hand himself over to the war crimes people. But no. He was there to offer some of these unfortunate refugees homes in Britain.
Now, Tony, have you thought about this? Have you asked the Italians what these Albanians are like? When they took in a few thousand after the last Balkan pugilism, even the Mafia was scared. Really, it never ceases to amaze me that people in positions of responsibility can be guilty of such muddled thinking. But then you don’t need a war to bring the issue into sharp focus. You need only to see someone drive by in the aforementioned Mercedes SL.
Back in 1990, when this car was new, I used one to woo my wife. We tootled out of London on a sunny day, had lunch in Oxford, and on the way home called in at Henley to watch the regatta. It was all just too agreeable, and I remember the small crowd that gathered to watch as I raised the roof. You simply pressed a button on the dash and 11 motors did the rest. Nobody in Henley had seen anything quite like it. Nor had anyone seen such a heavy car go quite so quickly. The 3.2-litre straight six was nippy. The 5-litre V8 was a blast, and the 6-litre V12 could remove all your make-up.
I put my hand up and declared myself a fan. But then Princess Diana bought one and everything started to go wrong. In the same way that Bobby Ewing spoilt the previous SL by using one in Dallas, Diana brought the current SL out of petrolhead heaven and into the pages of Hello! As a result, it quickly found favour with the sort of woman who takes a photograph of a B-52 bomber to the barber’s and says: ‘I want my hair to be bigger that that.’ I’m talking, of course, about the Cheshire wife. In a world where Stuart Hall is God and they model furniture on his blazers, the swanky, posh SL became as much a part of the Cheshire uniform as the gold shoe or the baggy knicker curtain. This meant that elsewhere normal people were getting out of their SLs fast. And these were then being snapped up by people in Southall, who were fitting Grateful Dead stereos and wheels from earth-moving equipment.
All this was bad enough, but then along came the much prettier SLK, which, at a stroke, made its bigger brother look heavy and unnecessary. Anyone with half an eye on the style mags would choose to use the baby, but up there in Wilmslow the only thing that mattered was ‘how much?’.
At just £30,000, the SLK was far too cheap. Up there you could sell a dog turd if you priced it high enough. And the SL is currently going for anything up to £100,000. Now go on, enjoy a Biro-sucking moment. Think. If you had £100,000 to spend on a soft-top car, would you choose a 10-year-old design favoured by Americans and women with false breasts? Or a Ferrari 355 Spider? Or a Jaguar XKR? Or a Porsche 911? Anyone who chooses the Mercedes is saying to the world: ‘Look, I may be rich, but even my smart bombs can’t hit the right country.’
Mr Blair should have one. It may not signal to other road users that he’s a psychotic war criminal with a BO problem, but you’d know something was wrong. And you’d remember, come the next election, to give him a wide berth.
Out of the snake pit, a car with real venom
It’s the middle of the night and I can’t sleep. For the past few days I’ve been driving a car so good, so exciting and, most of all, such incredible value for money that I simply have to write about it now. It’s called the Holden HSV, and I was determined to hate it. First of all it’s Australian, and Australia begins with the letter A. All the best countries begin with the letter I – Italy, Iceland, Ireland, India, Ingland and so on – while all the worst begin with an A: America, Austria and, of course, the godforsaken spider-strewn snake pit.
Why do you think God put it so far away? And why do you suppose he is now trying to remove its protective ozone layer? It’s because God is British, and he’s tired of being called a whingeing, dirty homosexual.
Ask Australians what makes their giant and useless continent so good and you’ll always get the same reply: great climate and juicy steaks. Which is fine, but they should remember that we were brought up on a diet of drizzle and fish fingers and we produced the biggest empire the world has seen.
I dislike Qantas, Sydney, big prawns and the notion that if I go outside without a hat I will catch head cancer. So I was determined therefore to hate the Holden. And another thing: it’s made by General Motors, which, in Britain, conjures up visions of the Vauxhall Vectra. GM may be the largest car company in the world, but so what? Richard Kiel is the largest actor, but he’s a long way from being the best.
Then the car in question arrived. It looked like a cross between the ancient Omega and the enormous Chevrolet Caprice. This was bad enough but, to make it worse, the HSV appeared to have been decorated by a 14-year-old boy. Maybe the Australians like silver side-skirts and red badging. Maybe this explains why they all have ovens but choose instead to burn their food in the garden. And maybe, because they spend so much time outside, they’re not worried about the interior. Perhaps this is why it’s grey and there’s no ashtray. Good, I thought, this is a car I can savage.
And yet here I am at 4 a.m. dribbling the dribble of a man who’s smitten. Just a few weeks ago I said the new S-class Mercedes-Benz is the best car in the world, but there have been times this week when I’ve doubted it. I suppose the key to this pant-wetting appeal is the 5.7-litre V8 engine. It may produce only 295bhp, but you get a colossal 350 feet/pound of torque so, at 70mph, in sixth gear, it is doing just 1500rpm. And don’t worry if someone comes alongside to laugh at your silver side-skirts: with all that torque, a nudge on the throttle will put you two countries away in three seconds.
I was told, before the test drive, that the Holden is perfect for the TVR driver whose fruitful loins have forced him into a four-door saloon, and there’s some truth in that. But in terms of character, it’s more grown-up than a TVR. Indeed, it has an identical twin: the Aston Martin Vantage. They have the same gearbox. They make exactly the same noise. They’re both big, and they both feel bigger still. Sure, the Holden doesn’t look like a Castle Ashby, but then it isn’t priced like a stately home either. A Vantage nowadays is £200,000, while the HSV is yours for less than £40,000.
Yes, the Aston is ultimately quicker in a straight line but, because the Holden’s undersides have been tweaked by Tom Walkinshaw, the Bondi Beach bodybuilder can leave its aristocratic twin standing.
The grip is outrageous but, even if you go bonkers and decide to break it, even the most ham-fisted driver can get everything back in shape. On a twisting country road, you’d have to think mid-engined and Italian before you’d come up with a car that could pull away.
But do you know what sold it to me most of all? When you’re tired of turning heads with the exhaust bellow, and bored with turning corners at Mach 2, you can set
tle back into the supremely comfortable seat, put it in sixth and waft home with the silence broken only by whatever you’ve put on the stereo. This car is a 162mph Meat Loaf or a 22mpg Brahms, depending on your mood. And because it’s too big, there’s space in the back for three children and room in the boot for their toys. And if you have a dog, that’s no problem either, because the HSV is also available as an estate.
And ordinarily that would be that. I’d sign off now and you’d go and mow the lawn, saddened that such a great car is out there but on the wrong side of the world. However, because they do at least drive on the right side of the road in Australia, it is now being imported to Britain, where, I’m told, it can be serviced by any Vauxhall dealer. If you want one, and I assure you you do, forget the grass and call the importer on 01908 262623.
The Swiss army motor with blunted blades
Obviously, you would not dream of setting out at night in a pair of Rohan trousers, the stride of choice for those who value practicality over style – scoutmasters, mostly. This is a Swiss army trouser, tough and dependable, with a plethora of pockets and handy zips. It’s good on Everest but, in all honesty, poor for the rather more common pursuit of social mountaineering. I suspect that if you turned up at Wentworth in a pair of Rohans the clerk of the course would ask you to leave. Unless they were egg-yellow of course. Which they aren’t.
I bring this up because all week I’ve been driving a car designed specifically for Rohan man. It may be called the Zafira, which conjures up visions of Liz Hurley’s new frock, but don’t be deceived. This is brown Vauxhall, and you just can’t get further from Versace than that.
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