These are the guys at whom the AMG S-class is aimed, and they will lap it up. It’s no better than the standard car, but it’s no worse. And it is a lot more expensive, which is what matters most of all.
Put an imaginary billion in the bank and you’d have a car like this. I would. And if next year they came out with a special Myrrh edition with panda bear ear upholstery, gold pedals and a Jacuzzi, I’d have one of those too.
In the real world, the normal S-class is still the best car in the world, but on planet Plutocrat the AMG is even better.
Styled by Morphy Richards
It’s happened again. Just months after Mercedes was forced to recall all its A-class hatchbacks because they had a worrying habit of falling over, Audi has had to pull the TT. It seems that if you lift or brake while cornering at high speed, the back will snap into violent oversteer and you will slam into the crash barriers. Already, in Germany, two people have been killed, and Audi has had to act fast.
Remember, Audi was pretty well wiped out in America 10 years ago by rumours that their cars suffered from ‘unintended acceleration’. Dim-witted Yanks said that even if they had their foot on the brake, the car kept on accelerating at full speed until it slammed into a child/pensioner/dog.
I must confess that I felt rather sorry for Audi on that one. It was, let’s face it, the fault of America’s education system and a proliferation of lawyers rather than an engineering problem over in Ingolstadt. A car simply cannot accelerate unless its driver hits the wrong pedal – easily done in a land where the smart bombs can’t even be guaranteed to hit the right country.
And now I feel sorry for them all over again. Quite apart from the major redesign, they’re having to pay a small fortune to fit the 40,000 examples they’ve already sold with different stabilizers, altered dampers, modified wishbones and a new rear spoiler. They’ve got two deaths on their hands, and they’re looking down the barrel of a serious public relations disaster.
The trouble is, the TT never really knew what it was. If it had been billed as just a motorized jacket, a poseur’s pouch with no delusions of racetrack glory, they could have fitted wooden suspension and all would’ve been well. But it was, after all, going to carry the Quattro badge, and it was going to have a 225bhp engine, so it needed to be sporty as well. And that meant it had to have some lift-off oversteer.
In motoring magazine land, we’ll tolerate front- and four-wheel-drive cars only if they give us this handling quirk in spades. Lift-off oversteer is more vital than customers. If we can’t get a car to go sideways while careering past a photographer, it is dismissed as a hopeless dud. Understeer is for wimps.
It’s a saloon-car thing. It’s pants. And the car makers know this, so they dial it into their sports cars to keep us happy. Oh, sure, they know full well that in the wrong hands, in the wrong weather and on the wrong road it can be fatal, but they want good reviews…
The thing is, though, that the Audi was by no means the worst offender. If you want real lift-off oversteer, try a Peugeot 306 for size. That thing behaves like a hungry puppy, wagging its tail at the slightest provocation. And while this is a huge hoot on an airfield, it can be downright scary in the wet.
Just think. You’re barrelling along, snicking through the gears, feeling the tyres scrabbling for grip when, all of a sudden, while going round a corner, you find a tractor coming the other way. So, in a panic, you lift off. And whoa, now you have to miss the tractor while controlling a lurid tail slide.
Only recently I was called old and fat for saying I’d rather have a Golf GTi, which always ploughs straight on, than a 306. But it was for this very reason. On a racetrack, the 306 kicks the Golf’s arse, but in the real world, I’m telling you, it’s the other way round.
I congratulate VW for ignoring the pleas of us motoring journalists. And Alfa Romeo too. Back in the summer, I went to an airfield with a GTV and tried everything in my limited repertoire to make it misbehave, but it wouldn’t. So, if you’re faced with an emergency, there’s one less thing to worry about.
And what about the Focus? Car of the Year. Best-selling car in Britain. Darling of the motoring press corps. And why? Because when you lift off in a bend, the tail swings out.
Audi was only trying to get some of this glory with the TT, and that is probably why the company was angry with Tiff and me when we came back from the launch and said it was a dog. We said there wasn’t enough feel and that the oversteer, when it came, was rather cynical; a bit of icing to disguise the fact that the cake itself was a bit stodgy. Autocar, of course, raved, saying the handling was in fact superb. Just like they did with the Mercedes A-class.
And Audi pointed this out to the two TG boys who wouldn’t toe the line. Everyone else likes it, they said. We’ve had rave reviews in Germany, they said. And now they are admitting that the car’s handling ‘in certain circumstances’ has been criticized. I can’t tell you how good that makes me feel.
But I still feel sorry for them, and that’s why I have spent the last few minutes working on a solution. Cars that oversteer need to be ugly, and that way people who want a car to pose around the harbour bar are not going to be caught out when the damned thing starts doing the waltz at 150mph. Enthusiasts are forever saying they don’t care what a car looks like, so fine. Get someone from Morphy Richards to come up with some poseur-repelling styling and all will be well.
The terrifying thrill of driving with dinosaurs
This week I was going to tell you all about the new Rover 25, but after my less-than-flattering review of its bigger brother recently Rover says that all their press demonstrators are booked out until February. And no more reservations are being taken. Roughly translated, this means: ‘Get lost, sunshine.’ Undaunted, I asked if I could perhaps borrow one of the new Land Rover Defenders. Finished in original Atlantic green and equipped with snazzy alloy wheels, I’m seeing quite a few in south-west London and, to be honest, they look rather good. But guess what? Rover has only one demonstrator, and it’s booked out for ever.
I’ve been down this road before. Toyota once banned me from driving its cars, and Vauxhall made life difficult after the Vectra episode, but there are other ways of getting test drives and, in time, I’ll explore them. So be afraid, Rover. Be very afraid.
For now, though, let’s talk about the Lamborghini Diablo, which Autocar says is ‘the last genuine supercar on sale’. It’s a thought-provoking argument that made me think about the definition of a supercar. I’ve always taken it to mean a car where practicality and cost worries are crushed in the quest for speed and style. And, on that basis, lots of cars fit the bill, but I sort of know what they mean about the Diablo. You can’t drive around in this heavyweight brute with its rippling abs if you have a concave chest and spectacles. No, I mean it. If you have limbs like pipe cleaners, you will not have the strength to push the clutch pedal down and, even if you could, you’d think the gearbox had jammed every time you tried to move the lever.
This is bad enough, but it must also be pointed out that you can’t drive the Diablo if you have a neck like a birthday cake and arms like ship’s pistons. Oh, sure, you might be strong enough, but you’ll be too big to fit in the cockpit.
I know only two people who have bought a Diablo, and one is Rod Stewart, so, really, it’s pretty pointless talking about the new model. But since there’s no Rover, I shall plough on regardless.
It’s called the GT, and it is able to whisk small, strong people from 0 to 100mph in under nine seconds. Scientists call this level of acceleration ‘bleeding scary’. To achieve this, Lamborghini’s engineers – and they are the maddest bunch of people I’ve ever met – lifted a few quid from their new owners at Volkswagen and threw the old Diablo’s body away. They replaced it with one that looks exactly the same but is made from ultra-light carbon fibre. This added about £100 million to the cost of making the car but saved 70 kilogrammes.
Then they set to work on the V12 engine, which was taken up from 5.7 litres to 6.0 litre
s and equipped with all sorts of titanium wizardry so that it now produces perfect silence and geraniums at town-centre speeds but a colossal, thunderous, ear-splitting, tree-felling 570bhp further up the rev range.
I could tell you about the top speed, but I have no idea what it is and no intention of finding out. I do know that the official fuel consumption figures say that, around town, the Diablo GT will return seven miles to the gallon.
It won’t. Cars never match the official figures in real life. So actually, it will probably return no more than 4mpg on a busy, stop-start Friday night. And that is so bad it’s quite funny.
But then this is the point of the Lambo. The whole car is so bad it’s hysterical. The air-conditioning works with the punch of an asthmatic blowing at you through a straw. The rear visibility is almost completely nonexistent and, while I see the new model has a backwards-looking video camera and a screen on the dash, you’ll still have to say a few Hail Marys before pulling out of an oblique junction. There are no gadgets and gizmos either. Just an angry snarl and a big right fist.
And yet. When you put your foot down hard and that engine girds its loins for a full-frontal assault on the horizon, there is an ‘Oh, my God’ moment that no other car can quite match.
I once drove a Diablo at 186mph, not because I wanted to, but because I lost the ability to move my feet. Ferraris have lost this raw terror factor in recent years, and Porsches never really had it. The only other car I know that can do this bowel-loosening, supersonic baritone thing is the Aston Vantage, and that’s nearing the end of its life.
So Autocar may have a point. It seems the chill wind of environmentalism has created an ice age in which dinosaurs like the Diablo find it hard to thrive. Only six of the new GTs are being imported to Britain, and I suggest that, if you want a last-chance power drive, you give it a whirl.
Perfect camouflage for Birmingham by night
Eating out in Birmingham was always one of life’s more disappointing experiences. First, you had to find Birmingham, which is located above a series of tunnels, and then you had to find some food. Usually, this meant parking in a multistorey and then being beaten up a lot. Eventually, you’d have your wallet nicked, so, bleeding and hungry, you’d go back to the multistorey to find your car had been stolen as well.
When the ambulance finally took you home, six weeks later, you’d had time to ruminate on your night out, and most people usually reckoned that going into Birmingham city centre after dark was a ‘bad thing’ and that they wouldn’t be going again.
To entice them back, a number of restaurants are now opening. You must still zigzag from your car to the front door, making use of whatever cover you can find, and your car still won’t be there when you come out, but at least you won’t go home hungry.
Le Petit Blanc opened recently, and in the next few months there will be Bank and Fish. But my attention was drawn this week to the launch of a new ‘independent’ called the Directory that offers food which is described as eclectic modern British. At the bar this includes a club sandwich, Cajun chicken or a chargrilled vegetable sandwich that could be modern British were it not for the addition of pesto and crème fraîche.
Therein lies my point. Modern British is entirely eclectic, a selection of ingredients that are only British insofar as they were nailed together here before being served. I even found out this week that the chip was invented in Belgium and that fish in batter was introduced to us by an Italian.
And so it goes with the eclectically British Nissan Primera. To get round EU import restrictions, it was assembled in Tyne and Wear, but the parts came from Japan. Oh, sure, Nissan will argue that a huge percentage of the car’s total value was British, but this included the lavatory paper in the gents and the flowers given to customers on delivery. The gearbox and engine were as Japanese as sushi.
I used to hate this notion: that you could employ half a dozen former dockers to fit a car’s windscreen wipers and it would suddenly become all John Bullish and strut around shouting ‘two world wars and one world cup’ every time it saw a BMW. But I note that the new Primera is not only being built in Britain. It was designed here, too, and it isn’t even being sold in Japan. Nissan has woken up to the fact that Ford and Vauxhall are perceived to be European because the cars they make here are designed here and, generally speaking, are not sold in America.
So the new Primera: what’s it like? Well, I’ve just spent a week with one and, to be honest, it’s like a Japanese saloon car. It looks like a Japanese saloon car. It drives like a Japanese saloon car. And this is not a criticism. There’s nothing wrong with Japanese saloon cars providing they don’t pretend to be Moroccan or Portuguese. This new car is European. It just doesn’t feel it, and that’s not the same thing at all.
Like the old model, the new one is almost wilfully boring to behold. They’ve fitted a new nose, but it looks like a tongue, and round at the back it looks like… do you know, I can’t remember. And I can’t picture the side either – just that tongue at the front.
Inside, it’s grey. It was probably black or brown, but I remember it as grey. As far as space is concerned, it is fine. I could sit behind myself, if you see what I mean, and there were lots of little nooks into which the sales rep could put his electric razor and gum.
But you know, sitting there in the showroom, the new Primera is like the old Primera. Just another car. Just another way of spending £15,000 on four doors and a seat. To see why this car is so good, you need to take it for a drive.
Now, I know I had the 2-litre super-sport ripsnorter, so of course it was good. But the chassis on this new car is little changed from the chassis on the old, so even the lowly models will have handling way above their station. This is perhaps the only repmobile out there that is genuinely good fun to drive.
I must say the five-speed gearbox was a bit vague, but you could always opt for the hyperdrive auto with six-speed sequential override. I have no idea what this is, but it sounds fab. As does the engine. At high revs it makes an angry, growly noise which urges you to explore that handling prowess.
Indeed, this is exactly the sort of car you should use if you wish to eat in one of Birmingham’s new restaurants. It’s big enough to take all your friends, and good fun on the way. But best of all it looks so terribly dreary that nobody will nick it.
Another good reason to keep out of London
The first time I drove a Porsche Boxster, everything was just so. I was on my way to Scarborough to film it, with nine of its closest drop-head rivals, and I was crossing the Yorkshire wolds, which play host to some of the best driving roads in Britain. And, boy, was I having fun, slithering round the corners, enjoying the metallic rasp of that 2.5-litre engine as it passed 5000rpm and generally doing the sort of speeds that aren’t allowed.
And then I noticed a pair of headlights in my rear-view mirror, a way off to start with but getting closer. Eventually, they were right on my tail and, obviously, I reckoned this was one of the others on its way to Scarborough – the BMW Z3, perhaps, or the fearsome TVR Chimera.
But no. When it finally overtook, it was a 1.3-litre Vauxhall Nova. And from that moment I’ve always rather hated Porsche’s attempt at a mass-market sports car.
I suspect that, when the original idea came along to do a small, two-seater convertible, the Stuttgart marketing boys in their tartan jackets were well aware that such a car might pinch sales from the 911. So, to create a gulf, they insisted that the Boxster should be de-tuned to the point where its engine would struggle to mix cement.
And quite apart from the fact that it couldn’t pull a greased stick out of a pig’s bottom, it was far too expensive. Why pay more than £30,000 for a two-seater car when, for half that, you could have a Mazda MX5, a car that manages to have front and rear ends that are distinctly different? You could drive a Boxster backwards and nobody would be any the wiser.
Given the choice of any two-seater sports car, I’ve always put the Boxster in about ninth place, just ahead of the
three-wheeler Morgan but behind pretty well everything else. Even the dreadful BMW Z3.
However, Porsche’s engineers must have been aware that their baby was out there being minced by Novas, so they walked into the marketing department, taped everyone to their chairs and set about righting some wrongs. Thus, there’s now a 2.7-litre engine in place of the 2.5 and an S-version that costs £42,000. And at that price it had better be unbloody-friggingbelievably good.
Let’s start with space. There’s plenty, if you’re a suitcase. In fact, there’s a choice, if you’re a suitcase. You can go either in the back, behind the engine, or in the front with the spare wheel. If you’re the driver, things are not so good. Obviously, there’s plenty of headroom, if the roof is down, but if you are cursed with a brace of legs I’m afraid you’ve had it. They simply won’t go under the wheel, which is like the London Eye, only bigger.
My first instinct, on climbing into the new Boxster S, was to climb right back out and use the Jag, but in the name of research I persevered. And now, a week later, I’m glad because, truly, the car has been transformed.
Sure, it still looks like something out of Dr Dolittle, and the engine sounds like it came out of a Hoover, but there is fun to be had here. It is what the old Boxster wasn’t. A sports car that’s capable of outrunning a Vauxhall hatchback. And this is important.
Whereas the original car was fine at dinner parties, where you could walk into the room brandishing a Porsche key-ring, this new one can cut it out in the real world. Up here in the Cotswolds, or down here if you’re Scottish, there’s a meatiness to the power delivery and an unusual crispness to requests from the helm. Yet none of the old car’s rigidity or comfort over bad road surfaces appears to have been lost. This means that, on the motorway, it doesn’t interfere with the job in hand: thinking up new nicknames for Mr Prescott, mostly. I guess since he’s now in charge of second homes and building in the south-east, we’ll have to call him Two Houses.
Born to Be Riled Page 44