Born to Be Riled (39 page)

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.

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.

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.

Here’s the solution. First, anyone who fails their test three times is simply told that they may not apply again. They must accept that they can’t drive, in the same way that I have now accepted that I’ll never be an astronaut or a lesbian. Second, anyone who has not passed their test by the age of 25 shall not be allowed to do so. Let’s face facts here. If you’re so disinterested in driving and cars that you allow eight years to slip by without trying to get a licence, then you are just never going to make a good enough driver. Fact: if you are not interested in something, you will be no good at it. Proof: I am no good at cricket. Basically, the driving licence will become a privilege and not a right, and in order to get one I’m afraid that the test will need to be modified. You’ll still be expected to brake sharply and reverse round a corner; town driving will remain to ensure you have good spatial awareness. The written test will survive too, and don’t worry if you live in Norfolk or Cornwall. I have no proposals for motorways to be on the curriculum, so you won’t have to come to England.

However, you will be taken to a circuit which you will be expected to negotiate in a certain time – nothing mad; just fast enough to make the tyres squeal on the corners. We need to see that the car doesn’t scare you and that you’re able to take it to the red line once in a while.

We don’t want you to break speed limits, they’re there for a good reason. But, on the A44, we want to ensure you’ll go at more than 30. And if you don’t, you blind,
deaf, old bat, we’ll come round one night and fit a turbo to your Rover 400. A turbo with the wastegate jammed shut.

Obviously, I receive a great many letters from people who are angry but this morning I’ve been accused of dropping metaphorical napalm on the Midlands.

A man, who wishes to remain anonymous, but gives his address as Angmering in West Sussex, says that when I reviewed the new Rover 75 a couple of weeks ago my remarks were loutish, cheap and unjustified, and that I’ve inflicted immense damage on Rover and its workforce.

To ensure I take these observations seriously, he points out that he has ‘no connection with Rover’s (sic) or any of their (sic) allied companies’. Which means, of course, that he hasn’t driven the 75 yet.

Well, whoever you are, I apologize unreservedly. The new Rover is a superb car, crisp and elegant to behold and quite breathtaking to drive. The steering is a delight and the performance a credit to the brave engineers who, against all odds, battled to create something really rather wonderful.