Born to Be Riled (45 page)

And now Vauxhall has gone one step further with the Zafira. If the Scenic was brilliant, this is the work of a genius: seven seats in a car the size of an Escort. And when they say it takes 15 seconds to make the transition from van to car, they’re wrong. I did it one-handed in just 12.

Of course, with the rear seats in place you have no boot; not that this matters on the school run. What does matter, if someone runs into your back end, is the proximity of your child’s head to the rear window, but as this is a problem in all people carriers, it’s hardly fair to single out the Zafira for a firing squad at dawn.

No, with a bench seat that slides forwards and backwards, legroom for adults all round, tons of headroom and a surprisingly handsome, compact body, I will admit that the Zafira is very possibly the cleverest family car out there. It’s not bad to drive either. The 1.8-litre engine is a little gem, revving happily to its red line… and staying there. For some extraordinary reason, Vauxhall has fitted sprint gearing, which means that, on a motorway, it’s doing a noisy and wasteful 4000rpm.

However, as a result of this odd gearing, it’s a zestful performer. It rides well, corners with precision and can – get this – even be quite good fun. So, well done, Vauxhall. Finally, you’ve come up with a half-decent chassis fitted in a people carrier – a car that will rarely exceed 40.

Really and truly, I should buy one of these. It can handle three children and a dog, and it won’t even be flummoxed should I decide to take up surfing. Sure, with the range starting at £14,500, it’s more costly than a Scenic, but it’s cleverer and has more seats.

However, I’m not going to because it’s a Vauxhall.

The very name is just so dreamy, and it’s not going to get any better if they paint the press demonstration fleet brown. Brown is so much more than a colour; it’s a way of life. Brown and Rohan: there are singers out there who could make them rhyme.

And the Zafira must surely be the last car made where the radio is not integrated into the fascia. It’s like they couldn’t be bothered – so what if it gets nicked? That’s not our problem.

Time and time again, customers say that Vauxhall after-sales care is second to everyone, that they get hit around the head with a dead fish every time they walk through the showroom door. I’d like to take Vauxhall’s senior management on a two-day fact-finding tour of London. I’d show them the fabulous new restaurants where the walls are blue and the service is instant and invisible. I’d take them to bars where the people have bright eyes. I’d show them the riverside developments, and then I’d say: ‘You’ve got a good car. Now drop the brown, boys. Just drop the brown.’

Every year you can go along to the Motor Show and, on the final day, watch the cleaners sweep a sack full of dreams into the corporate wheelie bin.

Here’s what happens. Someone called Brian, with leather elbow patches and a shed, decides to build a new car. So he borrows some money from a chap called Vince, who keeps pit bulls, and sets to work. The finished product has a plastic body, a Vauxhall engine, no antilock brakes and an ill-fitting hood, but Brian is so proud he actually calls it the Brian. Of course he does. Anyone who looks at the thousand or so cars on the market today and thinks ‘I can do better’ has a big, big ego.

Brian does market research by having his neighbours round for drinks. And when they make polite noises, he decides to borrow more money from Vince and take a stand at the Motor Show where, in 14 days, he sells absolutely none. And 10 days later, after Vince has repossessed the car and crashed it, Brian is found in an Essex wood. Well, bits of him are, anyway. And that’s the end of the story until the following year, when someone called Colin turns up at the NEC with a car called the Edna, after his wife.

What these people need, more than anything, is a name. Ford, for instance, has just paid £6 trillion for Volvo, which breaks down like this: £1 for the factory, £1 for the staff and £5.9998 trillion for the badge and all it means to a million Gloucestershire antique dealers.

Then there’s Lexus. That’s a fabulous name. It sounds like a cure for cancer that NASA found on Mars. Call a
book
The Lexus
and you’d have a Christmas No. 1. I’d buy a Lexus just to say I had one.

Some say Lexus has never won Le Mans and that there’s no history, but I say, Pah! Lexus has an incredible history of never making a car that goes wrong. I’m not talking about the reliability you might get from Mercedes, where one car in a thousand breaks down. I’m talking total perfection.

If the US air force had let Lexus design their smart bombs, Nato wouldn’t be in such a mess and they’d all be sitting around in the Chinese embassy today, eating snakes.

Jaguar has won Le Mans lots of times but, with its pacemaker build quality, Lexus hit them hard. Now they’ve decided to hit BMW, too, with a £20,000 car called the IS200. The figures suggest they haven’t a hope in hell. Last year the BMW 3-series was the best-selling car in its class by an incredible margin. All on its own, the 3-series outsells the combined total for the Honda Accord, Audi A4, Volvo 540 and Alfa 156.

But here’s a fact: anyone who sits in the new Lexus will want to buy one. Everything, from wacky chronometer dials to drilled pedals, is magnificent. The sat nav slides from the dash like something out of
Star Trek
, the gear lever is polished chrome and the leather is suede. Then the salesmen will click in and talk you through the 20,000-mile service intervals, the 3-year warranty, the low insurance and the amazing new 2-litre engine. It’s called the VVT-I, and that’s all you need to know.

Oh, well, all right: it develops 154bhp, which is enough to get you from 0 to 60 in 9 seconds and onwards to 134mph. It sounds sporty, too, which fits in well with the
six-speed gearbox and the rear-wheel drive. In the showroom, and on paper, the IS200 looks good. On the road it looks even better. People will look at you go by and think, ‘My, what a handsome car. Sporty, yet somehow restrained and tasteful. And I particularly like the way those big alloy wheels fill in the arches so nicely.’

And you? Well, sadly, you’ll be fast asleep because, while the garnish is pretty and the price is nice, this is one of the most uninvolving cars I’ve ever driven. You’d get more driver satisfaction if you were beamed from A to B. You arrive at a corner, turn the wheel, with its natty silver-look handgrips, and a thousand high-tech, Japanese gizmos get you through to the other side. It’s like frozen halibut. The ingredients are all there and the packaging’s great, but, as a taste sensation, it’s right up there with wood.

And do you know why? Because Lexus is a division of Toyota, and Toyota is a giant corporation where if one thing matters, it’s the bottom line.

This is not rear-wheel drive because some driving enthusiast said such a move would make for a better balance. It’s rear-wheel drive because the marketing department thought it would look good in the brochure. The IS200 is a cynical facsimile of the real thing. It’s Virgin Cola and I absolutely hate it.

If you want a car that’s good to drive, a car built by enthusiasts for enthusiasts, might I recommend that, when the Motor Show comes round, you make for Hall 73. Once there, you should talk to a man called Colin because, you never know, his surname might just be Chapman.

Ever since the men from Austin went to help Datsun set up a factory after the war, the Japanese motor industry has slavishly followed where Europe and America have led the way.

I want you to think of one single Japanese motoring invention. Come on, I’m waiting. No, you’re going to have to give up because everything from disc brakes to the windscreen wiper was developed in the West.

In a race to find the least inventive people on earth, Japan would line up with Australia and Burma in first place.

The trouble is, of course, that before the British boffin had a chance to show the Patents Office his new invention, some Japanese chap had copied it. And while British management prevaricated over who’d fund such a thing, thousands of perfect imitations were rolling off a production line in Yokohama. The Honda NSX was a shameless facsimile of the Ferrari 308. The Mazda MX-5 was a modern-day MG. The Datsun 240Z was a Capri, and the Toyota Supra an oriental Corvette.

But then came the Nissan Skyline, a car that didn’t follow round-eyed rules. By using the sort of electronic whiz-kiddery we now expect from Japanese VCR designers, the world was treated to a car that pulled down its trousers and mooned at the laws of physics.

And this fire-breathing Datsun seems to have acted as a sort of cattle prod for the rest of Japan’s car industry. Look at that Subaru Impreza 22B. There’s no way that such a thing could ever have been styled in Italy, and if it were German it would weigh eight tons.

Then there’s the latest generation of Honda VTEC engines, which sounds, looks and feels Japanese. And what about the spoiler on the back of an Evo VI? Was that designed in Longbridge? Yeah, and cod use breath-fresheners. Now all this, I think, is a very good thing. Five years ago there were maybe a couple of Japanese cars that I’d have actually wanted to own, but now there are several dozen. And topping that growing list is Mitsubishi’s Galant VR4.

First of all, I quite like the idea of driving a Galant. I feel it would help little old ladies with their shopping. And, second, while I’ve never actually driven an ordinary Galant, I find myself drawn to what is simply terrific styling. It’s like one of those women who, when you first meet them, don’t appear attractive at all. But after a few hours, you’re at her feet, slobbering.

And the VR4 is even better because it’s had collagen lip implants. My five-door estate test car had a huge spoiler on the back, a deep front air dam at the front, fat wheels and sexy tyres. And if you don’t believe a tyre can be sexy, you’ve clearly never studied the tread pattern on a Bridgestone S-02.

Basically, you look at this car and know it’s Japanese. Which means you know that it won’t break down. And then you go for a drive. Now we know that Chevrolet was first out of the blocks with a turbo and that Jensen was first with four-wheel drive. We’re also aware that Audi was first to bring these technologies together in the Quattro. So you might argue, therefore, that the Galant is simply aping its four-ringed forefather. So what about the Mitsubishi’s active yaw control, then? The car’s rear end is fitted with a torque transfer differential system with an
electronically controlled clutch that senses the condition of the road and the driver’s style, then adjusts the yaw force accordingly. And to be honest, I don’t remember seeing that listed in the spec of the new Rover 75.

And I haven’t finished yet. The Galant’s gearbox has the capability to learn what a driver is like, and then stores his shift patterns in its memory.

Without delving into the mysteries of electronic fuel injection, we know that what we’re dealing with here is a motorized Canon Ixus. It’s a bunch of super high technology, designed to wage war with the motoring rule book.

And it makes the Galant VR4 an enthralling companion. They say it develops only 280bhp, but that’s a bit too neat, seeing as 280 is the limit under Japanese law. I mean, come on, chaps. It has got a 2.5-litre twin turbo V6; it does 0 to 60 in 5.9 seconds; it’ll hit 150. Two-eighty brake horsepower, my arse.

It’s let down only by a wretched interior. And why is it wretched? Well, in a bid to copy the European style, they’ve glued wood to the centre console and half of the steering wheel to create a symphony in DFS. It’s World of Leather in there, too, and it’s truly awful.

Mitsubishi has had the courage to make the car look and feel Japanese. And that’s fine. I’ll supply the passion every time I go round a bend fully 10mph faster than I could in the Jag. They really need to think of their own interior style. Seats on the floor? Foldout fans? I don’t care – just make it Japanese, and not a Japanese interpretation of the Long Room at Lord’s.

When this is done, European car makers will be in trouble, because the days when you bought Japanese
for reliability and European for flair will be over. The Japanese will give you both. And all for less than thirty grand.

In the sort of circles where young men have earwigs on their top lips and wear their hats back to front, a new drum and bass superhero has cruised into town. It may be a small, 2.0-litre, four-door saloon, but the Mitsubishi Lancer Evo VI costs £31,000 and ranks even higher up the cool-o-meter than Gail Porter’s pierced nipple. It has picked up the nation’s youth where the Escort Cosworth left off and is taking them on an adrenaline ride to the planet Bad. In English, it’s a road-going version of Mitsubishi’s rally car, and it will accelerate from 0 to 60 and back again in 6.7 seconds. This is staggeringly, stupendously, gut-wrenchingly fast.

And thanks to four-wheel-drive and something called active yaw control, it will go round corners at the sort of speed they recommend only in the Exit handbook. Never, not once in 15 years of road-testing cars, have I found anything so intoxicatingly rapid.

Put your foot down hard and, with not a hint of lag, it lunges forwards with such violence you will grunt. And I’m not talking about some kind of self-satisfied post-orgasmic sigh. This is the ‘Oh, my God’ grunt of a man being scared half to death.

With the ride comfort of a skateboard on Chesil Beach, it just darts this way and that, ripping the heart out of any
corner you throw at it, then exploding down the straights as though fuelled with Semtex. It’s like going to the shops on a roller coaster. Then, when you get to town, the effect is even more incredible. Agri-yobs will stop vandalizing the phone box and put down their cider to salute you. You want respect from the nation’s youth, but you don’t want a stud in your stomach? Get an Evo VI.

However, in a normal motorway traffic jam, the reaction is rather different. People note its giant Tinsley Viaduct rear spoiler, its blue mudflaps and the front end, which is one giant radiator grille. And put simply, they laugh at it.