Don't Stop Me Now (2 page)

‘Well, I invented a steam engine and then this afternoon I developed a new way of keeping time. You?’

‘Oh, same old same old. I came up with a new way of tunnelling and then I designed the pressure cooker.’

All over the world there were people saying, ‘See how that sparrow makes its nest, using its beak to intertwine the twigs? It has given me an idea for something I shall call a washing machine.’

I’ve been watching Adam Hart-Davis’s new series on BBC2. It’s called
What the Tudors and Stuarts Did for Us
and it’s been going on, unnecessarily, for weeks. It seems the answer could have been given in two seconds: ‘Everything.’

In the space of a gnat’s blink, we went from a species that ate mud to full-on civilisation, with blast furnaces,
steam engines and new ways of making sure the roof on your house didn’t fall down.

It must have been easy when the Victorians came along to look at what had already been achieved and think: ‘Well, there’s nothing left for us to invent.’ But, unbelievably, they kept on going with their railway engines and their iron ships and their electricity.

Even as the twentieth century trundled into life, you couldn’t go for a walk on any cliff top without bumping into someone who was muttering and making notes. John Logie Baird, for instance. He started out by inventing self-warming socks, then he developed jam before, on a stroll through Hastings, deciding to come up with radiovision – or television, as we now call it.

To us that seems incomprehensible. I mean, I went for a stroll this morning and decided to design a time machine, but I have no clue how I might go about it. Baird, on the other hand, went into a shop, bought a hat box and two knitting needles and, hey presto, the next thing you know we have Robert Kilroy-Silk.

Those were exciting times. The Victorians had the Great Exhibition of 1851 to showcase their wares and their brilliance. They saw mechanical engineering as the future of the world, the one thing that separated us from the beasts and the flies.

Now we have electronic engineering, which is not only stratospherically dull but also fills us with fear and dread. Ever since 1968, when Hal went bonkers and ate the crew of Discovery One, we’ve been brought up to be frightened of it.

Computers, we were told by James Cameron in
The Terminator
, would one day finish mankind, and Prince Charles agrees. He sees a time when nano-robots will learn to push buttons and end the world in a nuclear holocaust.

I’m not so sure. In fact, I have no fears at all about a robot the size of a human hair climbing on to a table – how, exactly? – and pushing the erase key, because we can be guaranteed that either the robot or the computer will have broken long before the bomb ever goes boom.

Think about it. Paddington station is still as beautiful and as functional as it was when Brunel built it, almost 150 years ago. Now compare that with the mobile phone you bought last September. Ugly, isn’t it? And where’s the camera and the electronic diary and the video facility? Not that it matters, because it started out by not working in Fulham and now it doesn’t work at all.

Have you still got the video recorder you bought back in 1985, or the camera? Of course not. They went wrong years ago. And it’s the same story with DVDs. I bought one of the first portable players for a monstrous
£
850, and already it’s fit only for the bin.

And this brings me to the new Volvo S60 R. Apparently it’s a four-wheel-drive, four-door answer to BMW’s M3. Hmm. A slightly optimistic boast when you look under the bonnet and find the 2.5-litre turbo engine develops 300 bhp. That’s a lot, for sure, but if the M3 is your Gare du Nord, 300 is only halfway through the Channel tunnel.

And I’m sorry, but turbocharging is positively James Watt.

Volvo ploughs on, however, saying the S60 R has, and I quote, ‘the most advanced chassis of any road car’. It’s called the Skyhook system because in comfort and sport modes it feels as though the car is suspended from above rather than propped up on such crudities as the wheels and suspension.

There’s more, too, in the shape of active yaw control, two traction controls and a setting called advanced that, we’re told, turns the S60 into a pure racing car.

It all sounded too good to be true. And it was. I borrowed one, drove it to the
Top Gear
test track and selected the advanced setting that unhooks the car from the sky. But way before I had a chance to decide whether I liked it or not, in fact way before I’d got round the first corner, the whole thing broke. A message on the dash said simply: ‘Chassis settings. Service.’

Another car was duly delivered and I spent a day pushing buttons so that now I have a definitive verdict for you. Comfort makes the car comfortable. Sport makes the car less comfortable. And advanced makes it uncomfortable.

So far as handling’s concerned, it didn’t seem to make any difference what setting I selected so, after much careful deliberation (three seconds), I put the whole thing in comfort and went home.

That said, I rather liked the Volvo. In the past I’ve never really seen the point of the S60. Buying one was like deliberately sleeping with the plain, boring girl rather than her bubbly, pretty German friend, but the R version with its new nose and big alloy wheels is pretty too.

Strangely, it doesn’t feel that fast. Oh, I’ve read the
figures and I’m sure they’re right, but this is not a rip-snorting terrier, constantly surging up to corners faster than you’d like.

All cars have a motorway cruising speed at which they settle when you’re not really concentrating. Mostly, it’s 80 or so, though when you get up to something like the Mercedes S 600 it’s more like 110. In the Volvo, however, I kept finding myself doing 60.

On country roads I’d remind myself that I was at the wheel of a turbocharged four-wheel-drive sports saloon and overtake the car in front, with consummate ease, it must be said. But then, a mile or so later, it’d be up behind me, its driver wondering why I was suddenly going so slowly.

As a result, it’s a relaxing car to drive. Certainly you have no need to worry about being ambushed by a speed camera. Either you’re concentrating, in which case you’ll see it, or you’re not, in which case you’ll be doing 3 mph.

I loved the interior too. The seats are fabulously comfortable, the stereo is as good as you’ll find in any car, and I would never tire of watching the sat nav screen slide out of the dash, as if installed by Q. It’ll break, obviously, but while it’s working it’s wonderful.

What we have then is a comfortable, safe, well-equipped, well-priced car that, if you can really be bothered, is quite fast as well.

As a thriller it misses the BMW by a mile, but as an ownership experience I’d take the Volvo over the M3 every time. It’s so much less – how can I put this politely? – plonkerish.

More importantly, however, it also misses the Audi S4. Like the Volvo, this has a turbo motor, four doors and four-wheel drive. Like the Volvo, it’s quiet, comfortable and unassuming when you just want to get home. Unlike the Volvo, when conditions are right, the Audi picks up its lederhosen and absolutely flies.

Even though it’s a couple of grand more expensive, I’d buy the Audi; it’s more mechanical somehow. But if you want the Bill Gates Volvo, don’t worry, you are not getting a bad car.

Sunday 29 June 2003

Jeremy Paxman. Very much the embodiment of twenty-first-century man. Civilised, urbane, well read and quick-witted. Yet underneath the polished veneer of sophistication pulsates the brain of a tree shrew. Yup. Underneath that
£
50 haircut Paxman is no different from the bass guitarist with AC/DC or your dog or even the brontosaurus.

Last week he rolled up at the
Top Gear
Karting Challenge wearing the sort of disdainful sneer that makes him such a terrifying adversary on
Newsnight
. ‘I’ve never even seen a go-kart before,’ he drawled before the race.

By rights he should have hated every moment of it. Here, after all, was one of the most respectable and respected men on television, all dolled up in a stupid racing suit and squeezed into a noisy, pointless bee of a thing.

But no, he loved it. Karting is cold, uncomfortable and a little bit dangerous. Uncultured, uncouth and yobbish, it is the diametric opposite of
University Challenge
. But it is guaranteed to send a shiver up the spine of even the most donnish romantic because, sitting down there, close to the ground, it feels fast.

Speed, we’re forever being told, kills. Slow down, say the advertisements on television and the digital boards on
motorways. Flash flash go the speed cameras. The message is clear and constant, but I’m afraid you might as well try to teach a lamp post how to tie shoelaces.

We need speed like we need air and food and water.

And I’m not talking about the usefulness of going quickly either. Obviously, the faster you travel, the sooner you get to where you’re going. So you can see more and do more and learn more. Speed, as I’ve said many times before, makes you cleverer.

Nor am I being flippant. Though, yes, speed does mean you can now go to see your mother-in-law – but you don’t have to stay the night.

What I’m being is scientific. Thousands of years ago, what caused man to come out of his cave and think: ‘I wonder what’s in the next valley’? The risks of going to find out were immense, but obviously he went ahead or we’d all still be living in Ethiopia.

More recently, what caused Christopher Columbus to sail across the Atlantic, or Neil Armstrong to fly to the moon? Why do people bungee jump? Well, it’s simple: we like risk.

Deep at the root of any brain in the animal kingdom is the limbic system, a sort of slug-like sticky thing that controls our instincts.

When we do something dangerous, it dumps a load of dopamine into our heads that makes us euphoric. You see the effects of this on the face of a footballer after he’s scored a goal. He’s taken a chance, got away with it, and for a moment or two he is completely out of control, lost in a sea of pure ecstasy.

When you take cocaine, the drug causes dopamine to be released. It’s why people become so addicted, why it’s so moreish. But you don’t need to clog up your nose and become a crashing bore to get exactly the same effect. All you need to do is get out there and put your foot down.

Next weekend is the Festival of Speed, an event where some of the best cars in the world drive past huge crowds of spectators in the grounds of Goodwood House.

If you’re able to pop along, I urge you to go to the start line, where you will see all sorts of respectable middle-aged men from the world of rock music and big business. They always say, before they set off, that it’s not a race and that they won’t be trying hard.

But the instant the visor snaps shut on their helmets, the brain screams: ‘Give me some dopamine,’ the red mist comes down and they shoot off in a whirl of smoke and noise.

So what do the spectators get out of it? Well, the same deal, really. When the car comes roaring towards you, bellowing the V8 bellow, your body is thinking: ‘Hello.’

And when the unseeing limbic system senses danger it goes berserk. When you hear a noise in the house in the middle of the night you remain stock still, just like a springbok when it thinks it senses a predator. Blood is fed to the muscles, which is why your face goes white.

Next time you see Paxman, then, having a ding-dong on
Newsnight
, consider this: his outer human brain is thinking of an intelligent response, but his inner tree-shrew brain is thinking, ‘Where’s the nearest tree?’ His blood is a mass of endorphins and adrenalin that make
him strong and awake; and so is yours as the Ferrari GTO barrels towards you at 120.

And so was mine the other day when I decided to see how fast I could make the new Koenigsegg go on our test track in Surrey.

Mr Koenigsegg is a completely bald inventor from Sweden who decided one day to make a supercar. Ferrari and Lamborghini should be afraid. Very afraid.

Sweden’s odd like that. Only 172 people live there, but when they turn their attention to something the world tends to notice. Sweden produced one of the greatest Wimbledon champions of all time and one of the biggest-selling pop acts. Sweden is where you go for your self-assembly furniture.

Anything anyone can do, the Swedes can do better. Only a few years after someone failed to assassinate Ronald Reagan, someone shot the Swedish prime minister, Olaf Palme. And, unbelievably, they still haven’t caught him.

So, what’s the new car like? Well, it’s almost the same weight as a McLaren F1, it is a little bit more aerodynamically efficient, and with 655 bhp in the boot it’s a little bit more powerful. The result is, quite simply, the fastest road car in the world.

They’re talking about a top speed of 240 mph, and that’s about 30 mph faster than Michael Schumacher drives when he’s at work.

My limbic system was impressed. And it was even more impressed when I came back from my first speed run to say the front was feeling a little light. ‘No problem,’ said Mr Koenigsegg. ‘We will jack up the back of the car a
bit. And do you mind if we put some gaffer tape round the windscreen?’ Wow. It’s risky enough to drive any car at more than 170 mph, but to do it in a car that’s been jacked up a bit and has a windscreen held in place with duct tape… There were so many chemicals coursing around my arterial route-map that if you’d cut me I’d have bled pure acid.

Eventually, I got it up to 174 mph, 4 mph faster than I’d managed in any other car on the test track. And then the dopamine came. Speed kills? Maybe, but it doesn’t half thrill as well.

So does the Koenigsegg. It’s an absolute beast, as hot as the centre of the Earth and as noisy as a foundry. It’s like working out on the footplate of a steam train, but the rewards are huge.

Pile up to a corner, change down on the ridiculously narrow-gated gearbox, brake hard. Already your clutch leg is aching from the effort. Now turn the wheel. There’s power assistance, but not much. Your arms are straining to hold the front in line, so you apply some power to unstick the back end. Grrrrr, goes the 4.7-litre V8. Weeeeeeeeee goes the supercharger. And eeeeeeeee go the tyres as they lose traction.