Born to Be Riled (4 page)

Top Gear
magazine recently surveyed everyone in the know and found opinions varied somewhat. The Mini, the Model T Ford, and various old Mercs, Alfa Romeos and Ferraris were popular choices. Gareth Hunt even suggested the winner should be a Humber. Damon Hill went for the Renault Laguna.

But actually he’s probably nearer the mark, because new cars are bound to be better than old ones. The Renault Laguna, though dull and tedious, is faster, safer, kinder to the environment and blessed with better cornering prowess than a Bugatti Royale.

Bernd Pischetsreider, BMW head honcho, said the best car ever was the old BMW 507 Roadster. Well hey, if it’s so good matey, how come you don’t start making it again?

Here’s the thing. Every month, one car firm or another invents a new way of fitting a new piece of techno wizardry into one of its products. And usually, it makes the car better.

Sure, there have been some daft ideas like rear-facing video cameras instead of mirrors. Er, what happens when the lens gets dirty? And I still don’t know why the old Nissan Bluebird had two trip switches, despite a number of letters from various people in cardigans.

Look at aerodynamics for instance. Only 12 years ago, Audi gave us the 100 which had a drag co-efficient of just .30. It had flush-fitting glass and was rounded like a blancmange. Today, we have the E Class Mercedes which slips through the air even more neatly, despite its wavy and weird front end.

This means that even the larger-engined versions can sip petrol through their fuel injectors at the rate of one gallon every 33 miles. That would have been impossible even 10 years ago.

Then there’s power. There was a time when people cooed over Ferraris that developed 200 horsepower, whereas today 2.0 litre Escorts can manage that. It’s almost impossible to buy a car that won’t do a hundred. (If you really want one, various Mercedes diesels make a pretty good stab at it.)

Then there’s the environment. The Volkswagen Beetle could kill a rain forest at 400 paces whereas today’s Golf trundles around with tulips coming out of its exhaust. The gas coming out of a Saab is actually cleaner than the air that went in. That’s true, that is.

And we mustn’t forget safety. If Marc Bolan had hit his tree in a modern car, T-Rex would be at the top of the
charts today with ‘Fax Sam’. If James Dean had been in a 928 Porsche, we’d all be at the cinema this evening watching
Rebel With a Pension
.

I can remember being hawked around motor shows when I was a boy, clutching my crotch with excitement because my father was thinking of buying a Peugeot 604 that had electric windows.

Today, you can buy a Ford Fiesta for £10,000 that has air conditioning, a CD player, a heated front windscreen and anti-lock brakes. Traction control is commonplace and BMW is even fitting televisions now. Mercedes – that name keeps cropping up – will sell you windscreen wipers that come on automatically when it rains.

Cars today are quieter and more comfortable too, but more importantly, they’re cheaper. In the 1960s, only the very upper echelons of the middle classes could afford a medium-sized Vauxhall, whereas today the Astra is yours for half what a petrol pump attendant makes in an hour.

I therefore mock and taunt anyone who says that the best car ever is some hopeless old classic with drum brakes.

The best car ever absolutely must have been introduced within the last year or so, because then it will incorporate all the advances we’ve seen recently.

This means the best car ever is out there now, in a showroom. But which one is it?

I’m tempted to say the new Ford Fiesta because here we have a car that does everything you could reasonably expect, and a whole lot more than you could have expected in 1972.

But I think it’s more likely to be a Mercedes. These cars are built like no others, with an integrity that would
leave the people at Sellafield gasping. I think you could buy an E Class today and never tire of it. Everything that is sensible is on that car. There’s no waste, no silly frills, no nonsense. It just gets out there and does the job, exquisitely well.

And therein lies the problem. The greatest car ever should get out there and do the job, but it should do more besides, which is why I have to say it’s the Ferrari 355.

This car is as much a piece of sculpture as a lump of engineering. You could derive as much pleasure from putting it in your sitting room, where the piano used to be, and looking at it as you could from going for a drive.

But if you get out there, you will have a V8 with five valves per cylinder. You will rev it to 9000rpm between gear changes. And all the time you will know you have airbags and catalytic converters and anti-lock brakes and all the other stuff that a great car should and must have.

There’s one other thing too. No car can truly be great
unless
it’s a Ferrari.

The FSO Polonez, a Polish built Fiat cast-off with styling from the pupils at Form IVb at High Wycombe primary school, is an obvious contender.

But then there’s the Mahindra Jeep, an Indian-built four-wheel drive vehicle, and the Vauxhall Nova. Oh heavens, I nearly forgot the Lada Samara. And the Volvo
343, which was only safe because it could never achieve a high enough speed to cause injury. And the Morris Marina, which usually did the decent thing and disintegrated before leaving the dealership.

Wait… The worst car I’ve ever driven is the Nissan Sunny. Pick any one of the countless different models from the seven generations of Sunnies which have come and gone in the last 29 years, and it will be worse than anything you have ever driven before.

My colleague on
Top Gear
, Quentin Willson – the second-hand car dealer – once part exchanged a Sunny 120Y for a packet of Benson and Hedges, and still maintains he was ripped off.

Here’s the problem. In the 1970s Red Robbo was running things in the Midlands, and on the rare days when anyone turned up for work at a car factory, the machines which left the factory gates were outstandingly unreliable.

Then, all of a sudden Datsun brought out the Sunny 120Y and it was the answer. It may have been ugly beyond the ken of mortal man and it may have handled like Bambi but it didn’t break down.

This, to the overheated, stranded British motorist was like an epidural to a pregnant woman. You know it’s a bit dangerous. You know it’s not good for you. But when you’re lying there bathed in sweat and shouting a lot, you don’t give a damn. You would sell your soul to the devil to have that needle rammed in your spine.

It’s a commonly held belief that Japan is not an innovative country, and that they can only copy the USA and Europe, but that is not so. Japan taught the world that it is possible to make a reliable car.

And pretty soon, everyone else was making reliable
cars too, which made the Sunny look a little bit hopeless.

However, people kept on buying them. Ford and Rover stood on Ben Nevis telling everyone that their cars were now clever, and practical and well equipped and good-looking… and reliable, but no one was listening.

Mr Sunny Driver had been late for an appointment in 1974 when his Allegro broke down and there was no way he’d EVER buy a European car again.

Nissan, as Datsun is now called, did everything in its power to make him change his mind with an endless succession of Sunnies that just got worse and worse. When I started testing cars in 1984, I absolutely couldn’t believe how bad the Sunny was.

On a roundabout under the A3 in Surrey, it just careered into the kerb for no real reason. And when I got out to inspect the damage I remember feeling dumbstruck at just how ugly the car was.

Nissan was not to be deterred. They teamed up with Alfa Romeo – who at the time were still nailing their cars together with spit and Kleenex – to create the ARNA, a Nissan Sunny which was built in Italy, so you got the worst of both worlds.

Then came the ZX Coupé. Ah, now here was a car that perhaps echoed the old 240Z, a stylish two-door fastback that might just cut some ice outside Shitters Disco on a Friday night.

Er, no. Here was the most angular piece of design since Etch-a-Sketch went west. It had a feeble engine too, and to make sure you knew it would be a slow, evil-handling piece of junk it wore a Sunny badge.

Now Nissan has come up with some spectacular names in its history – Cedric tops the list – but you just can’t call
a two-door coupé a Sunny. You can call it a Thunderstorm or a Lightning or even a Rainbow, if you like a meteorological theme, but Sunny means the car has no cred. You might as well call it the Drizzle. You should have done actually – it would have been more honest.

By this time, I’d stopped testing the Sunny lest any late-night revellers in South London should mistake me for a minicab driver, but I had one last stab, about a year ago.

I was fooled into thinking that the 100NX was not a Sunny at all, but a new little sports coupé to rival the Honda CRX and the Toyota MR2. It wasn’t and it didn’t.

It looked like a buttock but the worst thing was its engine – a miserable little 1600cc unit that developed just 101 horsepower. The top speed of 121mph wasn’t so bad, but it took a startling 11.2 seconds to lumber itself from 0 to 60mph.

I’ve been in faster lawnmowers. This was, to the world of cars, what Sloggis are to the world of underwear. My daughter corners better and she’s only 14 months old.

It was the worst car I’ve ever driven and that is why I shed no tears at the news that the Sunny is no more. It is dead. Nissan have done the decent thing and pulled the plug. No flowers please.

Now, strong-willed individuals can handle that. They can separate fact from fantasy. Michael Howard, however, obviously cannot. This wouldn’t be so bad if he was just a regular guy, but unfortunately he is the Home Secretary.

Now, at some point he has been to see
Robocop
– a film set some time in the future, when the private sector runs everything and employs some morally questionable tactics to police cities. After I’d been to see it, I came out of the cinema marvelling at the director’s vision, and all the way home talked excitedly about that bit when
Robocop
shot a rapist in the testicles.

Unfortunately, Mr Howard took a different view. While the rest of the audience was urging
Robocop
on in his war with the greed-is-good merchants of 1999, Michael was hatching a plan. Over the years, his government has privatized pretty much everything it can lay its hands on, so why not go further? Here was a film about a privatized police force – maybe it would work here. So last month, Mr Howard declared that he wanted to see the police service freed from non-essential tasks.

Naturally, the Police Federation and every motoring organization from the Tufty Club up is furious because they know what’s coming. Everyone knows what will
motivate the traffic police if they are privatized. Shareholders. People in suits. The faceless minority that was actually happy to see Rover become German.

At the moment, on a clear sunny day, Britain’s traffic police can just sit on their pig perches or back at base, playing cards. But when you introduce shareholders into the equation, they’re going to have to make a profit.

Someone will have to pay for their wages, so the money will have to be raised from people caught doing 71mph up the M4. We’ve seen how the privatized parking enforcement agencies operate, so can you imagine what a privatized traffic police force will be like?

Behind every tree, there’ll be a man with a moustache and a hairdryer. And you can forget all about a caution, because someone will have to pay for the fuel he used to chase you and the time you’ve spent chatting.

The only good thing is that to keep costs down, the suits will buy their officers cheap, slow cars. Tool around at 120 and there’s no way that Roboplod in his Proton will get close. Well, not until you get to the next toll booth, anyway.

Yes, speeding is a minor misdemeanour and Howard is right to call the enforcement of it a ‘non-essential task’, but what about drinking and driving? Is that a minor offence which the police shouldn’t bother with? And if it is, why do they spend so much money every Christmas on television commercials telling us that it isn’t? And do they really think a profit-led police force will tell people to stop doing something that feeds its coffers?

No, they’ll want us to speed and jump lights when we’re pissed, or they won’t keep their bloody shareholders happy.

Now, when BT, British Gas and all the rest were floated, I was standing in line waiting for a slice of the action, but when we’re offered a chance to buy some of the police, I’ll be at home watching television. And I urge you to do the same.

That will keep the share price way down. And then, for a month or so, let’s all stick absolutely to the letter of the law. Let’s not put a single foot wrong. We’ll go straight and starve them to death.

Think about that, and smile.

It doesn’t really go anywhere special and so there’s not much traffic, but even so the oil-rich local authority has made it super smooth, and with two lanes in each direction.

Nature has helped out the safety because on either side there is soft sand which will firmly and sternly bring any errant car to a halt.

That’s the hardware, but the software is even more impressive. Up front, there’s a Ferrari F40 which the owner has modified so that its turbocharged engine now gives a colossal 600bhp.

As it rockets away from the roundabout, each gear change is signalled by a huge sheet of flame from the exhaust system. The Ferrari F40 is desperately fast in
standard tune, but this one, in the half light of evening, is something really very special indeed. Fast is too small a word. Unbebloodybefrigginglieveable is nearer the mark.

However, it is in my way. As its driver shifts from third to fourth, I can see him glancing in his rear-view mirror at the monster that will not be shaken off. As he hits fifth, I’m still there, a little closer now, and flashing my lights to warn him I’m coming through.

This was my first ever drive in a Jaguar XJ200 and I simply couldn’t believe the size of its power. I knew this was a car built to be the fastest in the world – a record it held for a short time – but it had never really excited me before.

It was just so damn big, and while I respected Jaguar for making it look odd and unusual, I always thought the overhangs looked wrong, like the wind had eroded some vital part of the car away.

Plus, its miserable little six-cylinder engine – reputed to be the same unit that had been used in the Metro rally car – just didn’t send out the right aural signals.

I still think all those things but there’s no getting away from the fact that it is unbelievably fast. I mean, it just loped past that F40 and kept on going to 195mph – the fastest I’ve ever driven.

My previous record – 186mph – was achieved in a Lamborghini Countach and I vowed I’d never go that quickly again. It was terrifying, as the car bucked and writhed and shook and rattled. It was patently obvious that while the engine was capable of such things, the dear old car was not.

But in the Jaguar, all was serene. Sure, the wind noise had built up to double hurricane speed, but all the seals
stayed intact, the steering stayed calm and the suspension never felt like a pebble would put me in the desert, upside down and on fire.

In fact, truth be told, the reason I slowed down was boredom, and also because I wanted to have a go in the other cars – the aforementioned F40, a Porsche 959 and the new Ferrari F50.

They all belong to the same guy, who uses them infrequently and insures them even less. The Jag wasn’t even registered, while the 959’s service history suggested, wrongly, that it was still the property of the Sultan of Oman.

Whatever, it was a mouthwatering selection of machinery to find in a lay-by, especially when I could choose what to drive next.

I drove all of them in turn and found myself marvelling at how national characteristics shine through even in the quest for speed. The Italian duo were lively and vocally active. If they’d had arms, they would have waved them about as they pootled along.

The Brit was a heavyweight; leather-lined and rather calm. In town, it was as unruffled as an embassy dinner. This was a car that would know its fish fork from its dessert wine.

And then there was the German, the 959, which tried to achieve world domination by a dazzling array of computerized goodies. Ordinarily, I have no trouble figuring out even the most bizarre dashboards but in the 959 there are dials and knobs that are meaningless.

One light was winking away, warning me that the pressure in the rear off-side tyre was a little low. It was all very impressive, but so is a dentist’s drill.

And therein lies the problem. I actually had the time and the inclination to think about these things as I roared around in the desert in four of the most exciting cars the world has ever seen.

The trouble is that there were no passers-by to enjoy the looks and the sense of occasion. If there had been, then it would have been a built-up area and I’d have been doing 30.

And that’s the other hassle. Speed in itself is not exciting. As you sit in a Boeing, are you thrilled that it’s ripping up the sky with a 500mph orgy of big numbers? No, and it’s the same deal in a straight line on a straight road in a car. Two hundred mph. So what.

What matters is acceleration and handling, an ability to take corners as though they’re not there, and this is why the Ferrari F50 has been so well received by those who know. It’s light, and simple, like a choux pastry in a world full of suet pudding.

Small boys may argue that its top speed of 206mph means it is slower, and therefore less good somehow, than the 237mph McLaren F1. But that is nonsense.

The Ferrari is built to take corners and it only uses that ex-Formula-One V12 engine for dealing with the rather tedious straight bits.

It seems that, once again, Ferrari has got it right.