Born to Be Riled (51 page)

In fact, save yourself thirty grand and buy a used 355, because it is more aggressive than a 360, more lithe, more moreish. Sure, the 360 is user-friendly, but if you want an everyday car, buy a 911. Or an Alfa GTV V6.

As a once a month, high days and holidays funster, which is the whole point of a Ferrari, the 355 is still the best car in the world. And if you don’t agree, I couldn’t give a damn.

If a Martian walked through the door right now, wanting to know about Earthman’s motoring habits, I’d be weak on, I think, two areas. I’m a bit shaky on why the M4 has a bus lane. And I’d need at least an hour to explain why the new Nissan Skyline, a two-door saloon, costs £54,000.

I mean, a Nissan is hardly a prized possession, like myrrh or a Myrrhcedes. Quite the reverse. It’s down there with Primark and those tree-trunk house-name plaques.

So Mr Martian would ask if perhaps the Skyline was a comfortable touring car, able to swallow vast distances with the careless disdain of a similarly priced Jaguar. And I’d have to say: ‘Gosh, no.’

Without any doubt, this is the most uncomfortable car I’ve driven. On urban roads, where the surface has been mutilated by cable TV companies, the Skyline can devastate your entire skeleton. You learn to weave round potholes, veering on to the wrong side of the road if necessary. And if you encounter a speed bump, why, you just turn round and go home.

The problem is threefold. First, it runs on tyres of such incredibly low profile that it appears someone has simply smeared a veneer of black paint on the wheel. They offer no give whatsoever. Then there’s the chassis, which has all the flex of a steel girder. And finally there’s the seat, which is padded like Kate Moss. Driving this car is like being dragged across Iceland behind a horse.

If the Martian had eyebrows, I’m sure they’d be raised at this point as he sought the reason for that £54,000
price tag. Is it fast, he’d ask. To which I’d have to reply: ‘Er, not especially.’

Japanese law forbids any car maker from producing a car with more than 280 brake horsepower – I haven’t a clue why – so that’s all the Skyline can muster. It’s fast, yes, but not spleen-shattering, not so fast that your ears start to move about.

Bald figures show it does 0 to 100mph in 10.5 seconds and will carry on accelerating all the way to 155mph. That sounds good, but in reality the 2.6-litre engine suffers from whopping turbo lag that the six-speed gearbox does little to mask. Put your foot down at 70mph and it behaves just like a Nissan: 15 seconds later you’re still doing 70.

No matter what sane, level-headed question the alien asked, I’d be stumped. It costs at least £1000 a year to insure. It’s gaudy to behold. It has a fuel tank the size of a yoghurt pot and, because it does only 18mpg, it needs filling up every 35 yards. There’s no sunroof or sat nav.

I’d be forced to explain that the only reason it costs so much is that it goes round corners quickly. That’s it. That’s the Skyline’s party piece. It’s good at roundabouts.

I lent the keys this week to Colin McRae who, after five laps of Silverstone, climbed out and smiled. And called it ‘pretty impressive’. Which is like a normal person saying it’s ‘unbebloodylievable’.

I remember being amazed about 10 years ago when Chevrolet announced their new Corvette could generate 1g in a corner. Well, the Skyline manages 1g without so much as a chirp from its tyres. I know this because in the middle of the dashboard is a TV screen that tells you how much g is being generated at any one time. Or, by
pressing buttons, it will say how much power is being transmitted to the front wheels and how much to the back. It gives you readouts on the exhaust temperature, the intercooler temperature, the percentage of throttle travel you’re using, even the state of your fuel injectors. And now we’re starting to get to the nub of this incredible car.

You see, I looked round a London flat recently, which was on the market for £450,000. A lot when you consider it had no rooms. I mean it. There were no walls, floors, heating, lighting, anything, the idea being that buyers tailor it to suit their needs. That’s what you get with a Skyline. Nissan sells you the bones and you, by plugging in a computer and changing the odd chip, add the flesh. I know a bloke who’s taken the engine up to 800bhp.

You can play around with the thinking four-wheel-drive system, you can alter the aerodynamics – and that’s probably why the Skyline has become the car of choice in Formula One. Ask Johnny Herbert what he drives and, like a good Ford boy, he’ll say: ‘A Ford.’ But really he drives a Skyline. They all do.

And the new version? Well, it’s like the old one, only a little bit stiffer, a little more aggressive, a little more fantastic. You can’t compare it to any other car because there’s nothing remotely like it.

So if the alien asks how a Nissan could possibly be worth £54,000, I’d just toss him the keys. And after a mile or two, he’d be trying to part-exchange his spaceship.

I met a food stylist the other day and wondered, How did that come about, then? How do you start out in life wanting to be an astronaut or a film star and end up with a Davy lamp on your head, using surgical tweezers to arrange sesame seeds on a bun?

And then I wondered some more. What a sham. It is this person who builds up my hopes in hamburger restaurants. I see a photograph of a bulging, steaming snack that bears no relationship whatsoever to the tired old cowpat I’m actually given. Apart, perhaps, from the steam.

And that brings me neatly to the Audi TT. When they first showed me a photograph of this Bauhaus barnstormer, I was positively moist with anticipation. But then I went for a drive and, within half an hour, found myself wearing that detached, middle-distance expression normally reserved for dinner parties when I find myself next to a man who services reservoirs.

The Audi TT looks like a sports car, but it isn’t one. It’s an automotive Ginger Spice, superficially lithe and speedy, but beneath the clothes all droopy and loose. Like a soggy walnut.

Interesting, then, that I’ve fallen madly in love with the new Audi S3, a car that shares the same turbocharged engine as the TT along with the same four-wheel-drive system and the same six-speed gearbox.

This is because the S3 doesn’t try to look like a sports car. Apart from bigger wheels, wider arches and a more crouching stance, it looks like a normal A3, which is an
unpretentious hatchback. And because I wasn’t expecting it to garnish the road with Tabasco sauce, I didn’t really mind that the gearbox was vague and that the brake pedal acted like a switch.

And so what if it doesn’t have electric responses when you turn the wheel? Audi, bless them, have never been able to make a car that handles properly but, for the thousands of doctors and solicitors who buy such things, it doesn’t really matter.

If you want a sharp suit, go to Subaru and buy the Armani Impreza. If you want Boss badging, buy a BMW, but if you just want something for work, there’s always good old Audi & Spencer.

But then I pressed the accelerator pedal and thought: Whoa, hold on a minute. The S3 may not be up to much in the bends, but in a straight line it is positively explosive. Even in sixth gear at 70mph, it hurtles off towards the horizon like a rabbit.

I simply wasn’t ready for such vivid performance from what is basically a 1.8-litre, three-door hatchback. And that’s where the S3 really scores. By maintaining low expectations, you’re constantly being delighted – by the epic night-time dashboard that glows like Los Angeles, by the blue-tinted headlamp beam and, most of all, by the Recaro seats. Not since I drove an old Renault Fuego have I ever been quite so comfortable. In a car, that is.

It’s also been a while since I felt so comfortable with a car. While it doesn’t actually turn heads, it has real-world good looks. What I’m trying to say is that it isn’t Brad Pitt or David Beckham; it’s just a handsome bloke on the other side of the bar.

And that four-ringed badge comes with no unpleasant
baggage. When I see an Audi coming up our drive, I’ll rush to the door to see who it is. When I see a BMW, I close the shutters and pretend to be out.

You buy an Audi because you want a practical, well-made tool to convey you, and some passengers, sensibly and with the minimum of fuss from your agreeable house in the country to, let’s say, Assaggi in Notting Hill. People with Bee Ems go to Quaglino’s, so they can shout.

And finally we get to the price: £27,000. Which is a lot for what, as I said, is basically a hatchback. But it is not a lot for a car that does quite so much, quite so well. For the same money, you could have a Mitsubishi Evo VI, but you’d arrive everywhere looking like Gary Rhodes. Or you could have the BMW 323 coupé. But you’d arrive everywhere late.

For the past year or so I’ve been singing the praises of Alfa Romeo’s GTV6, which is £28,000. In fact, I’ve come awfully close to telling strangers in traffic jams that they’ve bought the wrong car. ‘Oi, you. Why are you driving around in that p.o.s. when you could have had an Alfa? You are a moron, and I hate you on a cellular level.’

Well, now there is an excusable alternative. If you really, really need back seats and you absolutely must have a boot that can take more than one prawn, you may buy an Audi S3. It’s the second-best car in this class, which is like being the second-best racing driver after Michael Schumacher.

There you are. The S3 is Mika Hakkinen. Cool. Detached. Handsome. And much, much faster than you’d think.

I don’t like patterned carpets, but I know why people buy them. They may be unrestful on the eye, but turquoise and gold squirls are to be found in smart restaurants like the local Harvester. So they’re seen as posh. And practical too. The
Torrey Canyon
could crash into your sofa and only the most eagle-eyed visitor would be able to spot the stain.

I know why people buy Agas too. They can’t cook food, choosing instead to heat the kitchen to a point where cutlery melts. And when they go wrong, you have to spend half an hour listening to some gormless customer-care woman who says that all her engineers have personal problems. But Agas bring a certain country goodness to your kitchen, and you get an owners’ club magazine that features other Aga louts like Felicity Kendal.

I know why people live in Wilmslow. I know why people become burglars. I know why the M4 bus lane was built. But I never got to grips with the Vauxhall Vectra.

There’s a new version now and, even though it looks much the same as before, Vauxhall says there have been 2500 alterations, prompting those wags at
Viz
to suggest the old one must have been a ‘right pile of crap’.

They’re right. It was. When I was asked to review this hateful car for
Top Gear
, I adopted a philosophy that took Ronan Keating all the way to No. 1: ‘You say it best when you say nothing at all.’

It was shamefully dull, enlivened only by a tool to get the dust caps off the tyre valves. And guess what? The new Vectra is no better. Oh, I’m sure its chassis is more
responsive and it’ll break down less often, but this was never the problem. The problem was the shape, the dreariness, the sense that someone else had styled this car while the proper designer was at home waiting for the Aga engineer to call round.

So I don’t care that the new model has one-piece headlamps or a new grille. It’s still boring. We want our cars to be like airport best sellers. We want the cover festooned with swastikas, guns and girls, but instead Vauxhall gives us Thomas Hardy. It’s the Penguin classic of cars. I bet if you peeled away the bodywork you’d find an orange spine.

And I’ve been testing the lavishly equipped V6 GSi, which is supposed to cast a halo of sportiness over the rest of the range. Basically, it’s a normal Vectra that appears to have been magnetized and driven round a motorists’ discount shop. Hundreds of cheap bits have just sort of stuck to it, so you now have Thomas Hardy in a tracksuit.

The problem is money. The GSi costs £21,500, and Vauxhall knows full well that everyone with even a modicum of sanity would buy an Alfa Romeo 156 instead. Or a BMW. Or a wheelbarrow.

So, to make the Vectra more appealing, it is decked out with gizmos. Inside you get satellite navigation, traffic master, which is like ‘ask the audience’. It even has a ‘phone a friend’ button. Press it and you’re connected to an operator who can tell you whether the male seahorse carries its partner’s eggs. And where the nearest breakdown truck is. This is all very nice, but it means the entire glove box is filled with a machine.

Then there’s the air-conditioning. Looks good in the brochure. Doesn’t work properly. Rather than cooling
the whole car, it delivers jets of ice-cold air in narrow corridors so that your nose is fried while the wax in your left ear is turned into an uncomfortable icicle.

And then there’s the steering wheel, which is metal. So, on a hot day it’s like driving with your hands in a toaster. This car has everything, but nothing works properly. Not even the engine. The 2.5-litre V6 develops 170bhp, which means the Vectra goes from 0 to 60 in 7.5 seconds and onwards to a top speed of 143mph. Theoretically. But in my test car, it felt like the fuel was being delivered not as a fine mist but in large lumps. Under hard acceleration, it felt like it was trying to drink minestrone through a straw.

And even if you leave this unsavoury element out of the equation, you’re left with a car that, despite the spoilers and the gravelly exhaust note, is really not very fast at all. It’s merely adequate, like the handling and steering and brakes and interior space and styling and fuel economy and ride comfort. There were only two points that could be classified as good: the Recaro seats and the shape of the door mirrors. And that isn’t enough, not by a long way.

I’d like to say that, despite the 2500 alterations and the V6 power, the new Vectra is still the most horrible car you can buy. But the Chrysler Voyager diesel is nastier, and I suspect the new Kia Clarus is even worse.

So there we are. The new Vauxhall Vectra: not even any good at being bad.