What Could Possibly Go Wrong. . . (23 page)

Despite an idiotic decision by some halfwit in the television gallery to run credits over the climactic fireworks display, I think most people were fairly impressed by Gary Barlow’s jubilee concert at the top of the Mall.

Certainly, as I watched the elderly gentleman with dyed hair belting out ‘Live And Let Die’, and Buckingham Palace exploded, and the crowds waved their flags in an orgy of hysteria, the whole extravaganza felt like a giant raised finger to Hank, Pierre, Fritz and Bruce. ‘This, people of the world, is how you do it.’

At the time, I was on a hill with some friends from the sleepy town of Chipping Norton, lighting a beacon, setting off fireworks, drinking wine and singing the national anthem. We felt warm. We felt fuzzy. We felt proud to be British.

But we weren’t allowed to feel proud or warm or fuzzy for long because by Wednesday the sniping had started. People were writing to the
Guardian
saying that the whole spectacle had been ruined because there were no ethnic minorities in the royal box.

Rubbish. The Queen is German, the Archbishop of Canterbury is Welsh and if Prince Philip had not been in hospital we’d have had a Greek as well. The royal family is, in fact, a shining example of diversity at its absolute best, and the royal box was actually a rainbow nation.

This didn’t stop the naysayers. They argued that the whole weekend had been a celebration of class and privilege, that it had failed to elicit much support away from SW1, that it had been too expensive, that the weather had done more damage
than anyone would admit and that the BBC’s coverage had been lamentable.

Strangely, however, no one seems to have picked up on what, as far as I can tell, was the only mistake of the whole weekend: when the royal family emerged from one of the endless lunches, most were ferried to the next event in a fleet of Volkswagen vans.

I’m sorry, but how did this happen? The courtiers and the advisers left no stone unturned to ensure protocol was followed and dignity maintained. Mrs Queen, for instance, did not clap at the end of that ethnic song in the concert. The Duchess of Cambridge’s chapel hat pegs were kept in check. The red carpets were just so, and the show went on even when the archbishop’s much talked-about global warming lashed the flotilla with icy winds and torrential rain. And yet when someone suggested the minor royals be ferried about, under the watchful gaze of an admiring world, in a fleet of vans, someone said, ‘Yeah. OK.’

It’s not OK. You can’t put Prince Harry in a van. Not in a country that makes Jaguars and Range Rovers and Aston Martins and Bentleys. Could they not have rustled up a fleet of Rolls-Royces, the second-best-known Anglo-German success story?

Top Gear
’s live show has been able to borrow a fleet of Morgan three-wheelers, so I feel sure the small company in Malvern, Worcestershire, would have been only too happy to step up to the mark with cars for the jubilee. And Prince Harry would have liked that.

It is extraordinary that people never really think about the wheels on which they will arrive at important events. They think about the frock and the hair and the shoes and the posture. And then they turn up in front of the cameras in a van.

It’s not just the royal family who get this wrong, either. Last month officers from Strathclyde police arrived in London to arrest Andy Coulson, having made the journey in a Hyundai people carrier. They reckoned they had enough evidence to
charge the former editor of the
News of the World
, and I was thinking, Really? You can’t even choose a decent car.

Then we had Jeremy Hunt, the culture secretary, turning up at the Leveson inquiry in a Toyota Prius. What kind of twisted logic was used to make that look a good idea? ‘Ha-ha. Mr Hunt will be facing some difficult questions today, but if he arrives in an eco-car, people will feel well disposed towards him.’ I didn’t. I thought that if he’d really wanted his arrival to take our mind off the issue of the day, he should have rocked up on a white stallion.

We see similar mistakes at film premieres. Recently I went to one for
Prometheus
, Ridley Scott’s new blockbuster. The stars had turned out in force. There were several people from
The Voice
, many former
X Factor
semi-finalists and a number of soap stars. And all of them had turned up in gleaming silver Mercedes S-classes. Why? Each of these people is very keen to climb the pole of stardom and therefore each needs to stand out from the crowd. You’re not going to do that at a premiere in an S-class. You need to be different. Which brings me neatly on to the subject of this morning’s missive: the recently modified Kia Cee’d.

Twelve years ago Kia started to make a hatchback called the Rio, which, along with the three-cylinder Hyundai Accent diesel, was very probably the worst car the world had ever seen. Styled by someone who was either blind or just being stupid, it looked ridiculous and was powered by an engine that belonged in a Russian cement mixer.

The Rio demonstrated to the people of neighbouring North Korea that their leader had a point.

Here it was sold mostly to stupid idiots for whom the attraction of the latest registration digits was far more important than reliability, comfort, economy or speed. People called it ‘cheap and cheerful’. But there’s no such thing. There is ‘expensive and cheerful’ or ‘cheap and rubbish’. It was the latter.

Today things have changed so drastically that we use a Kia as our Reasonably Priced Car on
Top Gear
. And the new model is
the latest incarnation of that, the latest incarnation of a car that has been driven by more stars than almost any other. This, then, is the ideal film premiere arrival car.

But what’s it like when you’re not pulling up at a red carpet? Well, happily there isn’t much space left, because, if I’m honest, there’s not much to say.

It costs broadly the same as any of the other thirty-nine mid-sized family hatchbacks from Japan and Europe. It therefore needs to be just as good. And it is.

I explained recently that the car market had come alive in recent months as every manufacturer tried new ideas to meet stringent emissions regulations. But the Kia plays no part in any of this. With the exception of the now ubiquitous feature that stops the engine at the lights and then starts it again when you depress the clutch (huh, call yourself a clutch?), the new Cee’d is about as cutting edge as the bathing platform on a Sunseeker.

It’s simply a good-looking collection of what’s been learnt over the past 110 or so years. It’s plain. If it were a loaf of bread, it would not be sliced. It would not be covered in bits. There’d be no ears of corn in every mouthful. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

Except it means I have nothing of any great relevance to say here. There is as much space as you would expect. The back seats fold down. There is a radio. It stops and steers and goes just as well as any other medium-priced hatchback. There’s a 1.4-litre petrol engine with 98 brake horsepower and a 1.6 unit that develops 133 bhp. Pretty much the same as every other 1.6 on the market.

There are also two diesel engines on offer – a 1.4 CRDi and a 1.6 CRDi – along with several levels of trim. The layout is good. The radio is not in the roof. The warranty is long. It’s safe, so you’re unlikely to be killed in action. And that’s all we have space for, so let’s roll the credits, and move on.

17 June 2012

We refer often in the Clarkson household to people we call ‘winners’. It’s easy to spot one. He’s a man, he has a Montblanc pen and he enjoys playing golf almost as much as he enjoys talking about it, especially to those who aren’t interested.

The winner has great hair, thick forearms, a smattering of jewellery and a handshake that could squeeze juice from a tree. He works in marketing, knows what Ebitda means and speaks in a rich, deep voice to demonstrate to everyone within earshot that if his life had taken a different course and he’d ended up in a rock band, he’d have had no need on stage for a length of hosepipe in his trousers. The winner walks with a swagger because not only does he know he has a big package. He knows that we know it, too.

At least once a week the winner leaves what he calls ‘the wife’ at home so he can meet up with his mates for what they all call ‘a few jars’. Mostly this is a competition to see who can order the most idiotic cocktail in the deepest voice, and who’s got the most preposterous credit card.

Naturally the winner is very interested in what he wears, what watch he chooses – that’ll be a Rolex – and, most important of all, what sort of car he drives. Some would suggest he has an Audi, and it’s true: many winners do. But, actually, what he wants most of all is any car with a boot lid that opens and closes electrically.

You and I both know that a boot lid that opens when you press a button on the key fob is monumentally stupid because it means we have to stand in the wind and the rain, waiting for an
electric motor to do in half an hour what we could have achieved in about one second.

The winner, though, is not bothered about practicalities. It’s why he still uses a fountain pen rather than a biro. So he’s perfectly happy to stand around waiting for his boot lid to open. Hell. People can see him. They know they’re looking at a man whose life is so complete, he has an electrically opening boot lid. Occasionally, when he catches a girl looking at his tailgate rising, the winner will wink at her. He knows she’ll be OK with that. Because he knows that she knows that an electric boot lid is yet another sign his manhood is gigantic.

On that basis the winner will be jolly interested in the new Mercedes M-class, not only because of the electric boot lid but also because of the sheer length of its name. It’s the – deep breath – Mercedes-Benz ML 350 BlueTec 4Matic Sport. Get yer chops around that one, love.

There are other things he will enjoy, too. The climate-controlled cupholders, the in-car internet access, the Harman/Kardon Logic 7 Dolby digital 5.1 surround-sound system and the darkened privacy glass in the back that not only cuts down the glare on the television screens but also makes it hard for prying eyes to see what he’s up to back there with the girl who liked his button-operated tailgate.

There is a small problem, however, with some of this stuff. It’s quite pricy. The standard car is good value at £48,490, but by the time you’ve added a selection of ‘check it out, chicks’ electronics, the bill rockets up to what the winner would call ‘north of 60K’.

And this is what makes the ears of the non-winner prick up. A big, well-equipped Mercedes 4x4 for considerably less than a Range Rover. Hmmm …

The ML had a fairly poor start in life. It was conceived at a time when Mercedes-Benz had convinced itself that its cars were ‘over-engineered’ and that it needed to worry less about reliability. Sadly Mercedes addressed this by not worrying about
it at all. And that’s one of the reasons it decided to build its car at a new factory in Alabama.

Once, while I was driving across this extremely violent state in an early example of the breed, a local asked what it was.

‘It’s a Mercedes, but it’s built here,’ I said.

‘Oh,’ he replied. ‘Well, it’ll be shit then.’

He was right – it was. A point that was proved just a few miles down the road when the roof fell off.

Quickly Mercedes decided to buck its ideas up, and fairly soon the ML was a lot better. The AMG-powered ML 63 was an absolute gem, in fact. But the car you see here is the new model. And the version I tested was not a tyre-shredding V8 but a 3-litre diesel.

The engine is remarkable. So quiet, even on start-up, that there is simply no evidence at all that the fuel is being ignited by pressure rather than a spark. It’s frugal, too. You will get almost 40 mpg, which is incredible for a big four-wheel-drive car that can do 0 to 62 mph in less than eight seconds.

There are more good things, chief among which is the comfort. This particular model may be called Sport but it’s no such thing. It’s a cruiser, a big, soft old Hector that irons speed bumps into oblivion and soothes its occupants to the point where they need to be reminded with a bit of wheel judder if they nod off and stray out of lane. In this regard it out-Range-Rovers a Range Rover.

I like the simplicity of the controls as well. Particularly good is the column-mounted gear lever, which, as in the Rolls-Royce Phantom, offers you a choice of forwards, backwards or neither. Sport declutch override power zoom? Nope. It doesn’t have that.

Mostly the interior is very similar to the interior of any other Merc, and this is an issue. It’s like being in an E-class that’s on stilts, which would be fine if the ML were a proper off-roader, but, truth be told, it isn’t. Not really.

It may have one or two off-road features and it may have just enough ground clearance for a gymkhana car park, but it ain’t no
G-wagen. In the rough, it ain’t no Range Rover, either. Those of you who shoot? Forget it.

The truth is that you can have just as many seats, the same engine, the same gearbox, the same level of quality, the same ride and even more space for less money if you buy a normal, even-more-economical E-class estate.

The biggest problem, though, is the styling. The original ML was a handsome brute. This looks like a melted Kia. The front and the back are attractive enough, but the sides? Oh dear, no.

So there we are. If you want a big German car, buy an E-class, or better still a BMW 530d. And if you want to shoot a pheasant in the face, I’m afraid you’ll have to ignore the ML 350’s undoubted strengths and stick with the Range Rover. It’s pricier but, as an all-rounder, better.

The new ML, then, is a bit of a loser. A car that’s really suitable only for people who are ‘winners’.

24 June 2012

The Moses Mabhida stadium in Durban, South Africa, is the most beautiful building in the world. Built to host the 2010 World Cup, it’s beautiful at night and beautiful in the day. It’s beautiful when looked at from far away, or from inside. No other structure I’ve ever seen gets close. It’s a triumph.

Recently it played host to the most ambitious live event
Top Gear
has attempted thus far. Not only would the three of us be performing to a wailing squadron of 15,000 South Africans inside the stadium, but outside there would be a motor show and, on roads closed solely for the event, a 1¼-mile street circuit.

Here there were races between a superbike and Michael Schumacher’s Formula One Mercedes, demonstration laps from the Stig in a selection of supercars, full-on inter-nation races and the local hero Jody Scheckter, who never crashed anything even once. Honest.

Richard Hammond, James May and I were very impressed with the line-up but decided that since it was, strictly speaking, our playground, we should be allowed to do some laps ourselves. So we devised a competition: pick any car you like and see who can do the fastest lap time.

May went for the McLaren MP4-12C, Hammond for some kind of Beetle, and me? I went for the love of my life: a Mercedes SLS AMG roadster.

And on my first exploration lap I knew quite quickly that I’d chosen unwisely. Because the track was not only very narrow and tight, but also hemmed in on both sides by concrete
barriers. And a tight, concrete-lined street track is not really the main hunting ground for a very large 6.2-litre 563 brake horsepower V8 monster with the growl of a wild animal and the tail of a happy dog. It would be like wrestling with a bear in a phone box.

To make matters worse, the track was a popular attraction for our visitors. Thousands were pressed up to the fences and filling the grandstands. And all of them were thinking the same thing as I roared into view. ‘Please. If there’s a God in heaven. Make him crash.’

They all had their cameras out, videoing my every move, and not so they could show their friends back home how well I’d done. No. It’s so they could put on YouTube the precise moment I hit a wall and my head came off.

Naturally I was extremely unkeen to oblige and decided therefore that the prospect of beating Hammond – May wasn’t really a factor – was in no way enough to balance the risk of ending up on the internet in a fireman’s bucket. Result: I decided to go slowly.

However, there was a problem. You see, it turns out that when you drive in front of a crowd, and you have testes, you cannot go slowly because you are compelled to show off. This meant that wherever possible I didn’t go quickly, or slowly, but sideways, trailing as much smoke as possible from the rear tyres.

That, of course, meant turning off the traction control, which in a car such as this on a track such as that was idiotic. And, worse, I was overcome with an uncontrollable urge to wave all the time. The crowd was waving at me and it seemed rude not to respond, so there I was, waving and power-sliding in a V8 on a track completely unsuited to either of those things.

It’s yet another reason I couldn’t be an actual racing driver. You’re not going to win much if you do a doughnut at every corner and pose for pictures as you go by. And so it turned out to be. Hammond was the fastest.

Which meant that I had to spend four days listening to him
bleating on about how his Beetle is vastly superior to the big Merc. And that’s why I wasn’t as sad as you might imagine when the
Top Gear
festival ended. We’d had the best time, living like rock stars. But, as with rock stars, the musical differences between Hammond and me had become so enormous, I was beginning to wonder what he’d look like with no skin. I wanted to get home so I didn’t have to listen to him gloating any more.

And then, would you Adam and Eve it, when I got home, guess what car was sitting in the drive waiting to be tested. Yup. A bloody Beetle – or, as it would like to be known, a Porsche 911 Carrera S cabriolet. I sank to my knees and wept.

Of course, the good news is that
The Sunday Times
is not available in the swampland where Hammond lives. And even if it were, it’s full of big words he wouldn’t understand. So since he isn’t reading this, I can be honest. The latest 911 is actually a damn good sports car. And the GT3 version is even better than that. It’s heavenly.

However, I was being asked to spend a week in the cabriolet, and that’s different. Because the truth is, if you remove the roof from a sports car, you are, to a greater or lesser extent, reducing its structural rigidity. And if you attempt to mask that with underfloor strengthening beams, you are adding weight. Which means that you don’t end up with a sports car at all.

A Porsche cabriolet, then, is a bit like an Afghan hound that’s gone bald. It’s still an Afghan hound but the point has been somewhat lost.

Oh sure, on the new cabriolet, Porsche’s engineers have devised a lightweight magnesium and aluminium roof frame, along with composite panels, which is said to be 18 per cent more rigid than the one it replaces. But despite everything, the car’s 50 kg heavier than its hard-top sister.

Of course, for 99.9 per cent of the time the two versions feel 99.9 per cent identical. But the keen driver will know that for 0.1 per cent of the time, the cabriolet will feel 0.1 per cent worse. And that will be a constant niggle.

If you want a sports car, this is not for you. But if you are the man I met at a golf club in Watford recently, a man who has the old four-wheel-drive convertible, pay attention …

The first problem you face with the new car is roof-up visibility. At oblique junctions, you have to rely on your inner Mystic Meg before easing out into the traffic flow. And on motorways you pull over at your peril.

Then there’s the gearbox. My car had a seven-speed manual. Now I recognize that a loping seventh is needed to keep fuel use down and the European Union emissions wallahs happy but, ooh, there’s a lot of gear-changing. Which would be just about bearable if the clutch weren’t both heavy and juddery. This is emphatically not a town car.

Other things? Well, the cupholders are located right in front of the heater vents, which means that when you turn on the air-conditioning, the first thing to get chilled is your mug of tea. And there’s a mysterious button that, when pressed, makes the exhaust so loud you can’t hear the radio any more. And I didn’t like the electric steering. Or the fact the boot is in the front, which means you get dirty fingers every time you need to get something out of it.

Roof down? Don’t know, partly because it rained constantly and partly because, as we know, if a grown man drives around with the top down, he looks like the central character in an advertisement for Viagra.

Of course, there are some good things. It’s beautifully made. It only ever needs servicing after an ice age. It’s not too big. It’s not too ostentatious. And it’s not that expensive. A standard 3.4-litre Carrera cabriolet is £79,947, whereas the model I have here – the 3.8-litre S – is less than £10,000 on top of that. That may seem a hell of a leap for an extra 400 cc, but having experienced both, I can tell you it’s worth every penny. The basic model can feel a bit slow. The S never does.

But when all is said and done, it’s only another two-seat
convertible. And if that’s all you want, Mercedes and BMW can sell you one just as good for far less.

And now, I’m afraid I must get back to South Africa, because I’ve just heard that James May is about to finish our three-lap race.

1 July 2012