What Could Possibly Go Wrong. . . (43 page)

When I was growing up, in the days before either health or safety had been invented, commercial breaks on the television were often filled with important public information films. They were designed to open our eyes to all of life’s hidden perils, and some of them were jolly frightening.

In one we were told not to put a rug on a recently polished floor. In another we were warned about the dangers of fishing while under electricity cables. And in my favourite we saw a pretty young woman in a short skirt running down the pavement. Sadly she wasn’t really concentrating, and as she rounded the corner she crashed head first into a large pane of glass being carried by two workmen. ‘Don’t run,’ said the voiceover sternly. It’s a piece of advice I’ve followed ever since.

Unfortunately far fewer of these films are made today, partly because some of the television presenters who fronted them are currently troubling the Operation Yewtree investigation. But mostly because after you’ve spent the day in a high-visibility jacket and a hard hat, filling in risk assessment forms, the last thing you need is for your evening’s viewing pleasure to be interrupted with yet more reminders to stay safe.

However, while we are no longer told to learn to swim and wear a seatbelt and think once and then twice about motorcycles, there remains one safety drum the government is still banging: we are still being told not to drive when we are tired.

Is this really the most important safety message it can come up with? What about driving when you are under the influence
of marijuana or Vera Lynn? What about a message telling us not to swerve for badgers? Or cats? Or how about a simple film that explains to those recently arrived from eastern Europe about how a roundabout works?

Or maybe it’s just me because I’m only ever tired about two hours after I get into bed and turn out the lights. During the day, sleep for me is impossible. (Except after the first corner in a grand prix. Then I can nod off no problem at all.)

However, last Friday night I set off up the M1. It was dark and the middle of rush hour but, unusually, traffic was flowing quite well. In the outside lane everyone was doing 60 mph, Simon Mayo was on the radio with his ‘all request’ Friday and I was going to have dinner with my boy.

It was all very warm and safe and pleasant and the engine was moaning out its one long song and I started to feel the same sensation I get after a lovely Sunday lunch and Sebastian Vettel has just taken the lead in the second corner. My eyelids became heavy. My head began to nod. And way off in the distance I noticed the brake lights were coming on …

Ordinarily this would cause me to slow a little and to cover the brake pedal. But I simply couldn’t be bothered. It would have meant moving my leg and I was just too warm and cosy for that. Much easier, I reckoned, to plough into the back of the car in front.

Naturally the traffic wasn’t actually stopping. It was just a moron in a Peugeot braking for no reason and causing everyone behind to brake as well. So I didn’t have the accident. But I did for the first time pull over at the next services for a little walk in the fresh air and a cup of coffee. Weirdly I didn’t need a government film to tell me to do this. It was just common sense.

Once I was back on the road, with some matches in my eyes and a drawing pin on the seat – that works well, by the way – I began to wonder what on earth had brought about this drowsiness. Yes, I have just finished a relentless spell of travelling and, yes, there have been a few late nights. But that’s nothing new.
Which led me to the conclusion that I was being sent to sleep by the car I was driving – a Subaru Forester XT.

I’ve never felt drowsy in a Subaru before. This is because the cars are built for slightly over-the-limit rural types who wear extremely heavy shoes from Countrywide and have little interest in comfort.

This applies to all the models it has sold here. You had the original pick-up truck. Sold through agricultural suppliers and farm shops, it had a corrugated iron cover over the back, some sheep in the passenger seat and at the wheel a slightly over-the-limit driver with heavy shoes who’d never been to London.

Then you had the much-talked-about and greatly missed Impreza. Available in many stages of tune over the years, it came with a bonnet scoop the size of the Sydney Opera House and a turbocharger that was even larger than the driver’s shoes. Imprezas made their mark in international rallying, a sport that’s very popular with rural types who went to school with the local bobby and have no need to worry about the breathalyser kit in the back of his panda car.

And then there was the no-nonsense, go-anywhere Forester. It had no styling at all but it was extremely well made, a feature much prized in the shires.

In recent years, though, Subaru has been having a tough time. Sales in Britain have plummeted, and many have said this is because the strong Japanese yen made the cars expensive. That is rubbish. Sales were falling because of Tony Blair’s crusade to make the countryside illegal.

So now it seems Subaru is fighting back by going all skinny latte and arugula metrosexual. The new Forester has been styled and the bonnet scoop has gone and it is big and well equipped and pricy. Which means that it’s just another stupid sports utility crossover vehicle to make people in Surrey feel as if they live in the countryside.

Happily, unlike many other vehicles of this type, it does at least have some off-road credentials. A device that stops it
running away on steep slopes, for example. And a boxer engine that a) makes a nice noise and b) gives you a lower centre of gravity. But sadly the gearbox is now what Subaru calls Lineartronic.

In essence, it’s a continuously variable transmission affair, and CVT gearboxes don’t work, even if they are fitted with eight artificial steps. A CVT gearbox detaches you from the sensation of driving, or being in control. Couple this to the electric power steering and a strangely mushy-feeling brake pedal and the sense of isolation is complete. As I discovered, you don’t feel as if you’re driving this car. It’s just somewhere warm to sit as the world drones by.

Yes, it is comfortable and quiet and it does still appear to be well made, but there are now too many frills, none of which will be of the slightest interest to country types. I mean, an electric tailgate? Do me a favour.

I used to like the rugged, no-nonsense, rural nature of Subarus. But this one? I dunno. It feels as if Barbour has tried to make a dinner jacket. And failed.

15 December 2013

Many years ago, when
Top Gear
was made in the Midlands, I was sent some promotional bumf that said, ‘You are invited to the opening of Birmingham’s biggest restaurant.’

This confused me because at night people tend to say they want to go out for an Indian or a pizza, or to somewhere warm and cosy. Certainly I have never heard anyone say, ‘You know what I fancy tonight? I fancy going somewhere really big.’ Enormousness just isn’t a selling point.

It was much the same story with cars. Back then, if you wanted something sporty you bought a BMW. If you wanted something reliable you bought a Volkswagen. If you wanted something durable you bought a Mercedes-Benz and if you wanted something safe you bought a Volvo.

And this was a problem for all the other car makers, because those four brands had all the important bases covered. I remember an adman at Audi sitting with his head in his hands, explaining that there were no other reasons for choosing one car over another.

People could see a clever ad about beating a German to the beach, or read a pithy review in
Autocar
, or talk to friends in the pub, but when push came to shove they wanted only one thing: safety, durability, sportiness or reliability. And those were already bagged. I suggested he go for ‘Germany’s biggest car’. But he said this would be silly and went instead for Vorsprung durch Technik.

Things have changed since then because Mercedes started to make little hatchbacks, BMW moved into diesels, Volvo went
touring-car racing and today, if you want a reliable vehicle, you don’t have to buy a Volkswagen. Anything will do. Except a Citroën. Or a Peugeot.

The motor industry is one big blur, with all the manufacturers offering something to suit everyone. Just about the sportiest car made today is a Nissan, and the least sporty is a BMW. The most durable car I know is a Toyota, and the least, probably a Mercedes-Benz from ten years ago. And yet in the midst of all this we have Volvo, which is sitting at the back with its hand up, still claiming that it’s the one-stop shop for those who want to be safe. Indeed its engineers recently announced they were working on a range of developments that would mean soon no one would ever die while in one of Volvo’s products.

As a general rule I hate safety. It makes me nervous because when I feel safe I have a nagging doubt in the back of my mind that I can’t really be having much fun. As a general rule, the two things are mutually exclusive.

And, anyway, there’s no point trying to be safe because things can often conspire to prove you aren’t. For example, the most rigorously tested and inspected item
Top Gear
filmed was the jet drag-racing car Richard Hammond drove several years ago, and we all know what happened there. Whereas the least tested and inspected was the ‘Hovervan’, in which I found myself loose in a lock with a rampaging van full of blades. And I was not hurt in any way.

I laugh openly at the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents because here we have a body of worthies whose aim is to prevent something that, by its very nature, cannot be prevented.

And I’m afraid I scoff at Volvo’s claim that soon no one will die in one of their cars because what if you are driving along in your shiny new V70 and a giant meteorite crashes into the roof? What if there’s an earthquake? What if you are an arms dealer and a rival puts six tons of plastic explosive in your seat? Has Volvo considered all these possibilities? Quite.

Mind you, it does seem to have thought about pretty much everything else. Especially the business of protecting those in less fortunate surroundings. Because the car I’ve just been driving – a V40 T5 R-Design – is designed to make sure that you cannot run anyone down. And that if by some miracle you do, they will walk away from the impact thanking you very much for giving them such a good giggle.

In short, there are sensors that scan the road ahead, looking for people you might be about to hit. Warnings are sounded, and if you ignore them, the car will brake itself. And if this doesn’t work and you crash into the poor unfortunate soul, the front of the car will turn into a giant bouncy castle, ensuring he or she has not just a soft landing but a fun one too.

I’m afraid it is impossible to test these claims in the real world so I cannot report objectively on whether they work. But I can ponder awhile on it: all this technology costs money. Which means you are forking out cash to pay for the wellbeing of other people.

In a darkened room, when nobody is listening, you may wonder about that. You may even decide to buy a Golf GTI instead. And you may use the money you’ve saved on a luxury holiday for your family in Barbados. This would make you very pleased.

And you’d stay pleased right up to the time when, through no fault of your own, you ran over a small boy and killed him. Then you’d wonder as you faced a life of shame and regret if perhaps the Volvo hadn’t been the more sensible choice.

This, of course, is the trouble with safety. You don’t want it in your life right up to the moment when you do. And, anyway, the Volvo doesn’t just look after other people. It’s claimed that it does a pretty good job of looking after you and your no-claims bonus as well. For example, when you are reversing out of a side turning into a main road, you are warned if the car detects oncoming traffic. Again, this was something I couldn’t easily test.

But I did have a go with the automatic braking system. At
speeds of up to 31 mph the car will stop if it thinks you are about to crash into something. And certainly it works a whole lot better than the company’s website, which doesn’t work at all. It doesn’t even seem to be sure that the front-wheel-drive five-cylinder T5 exists.

There are countless other touches too. Such as the key. You pop it into a slot high up on the dash and then push a button. This is annoying. But if you do somehow have a crash there isn’t a bit of metal poking out of the steering column, waiting to rearrange your right knee. That’s how my dad lost one of his kneecaps. He lost the other many years later while exiting a Ford Anglia through the windscreen.

And, oh dear, I seem to have reached pretty much the end of this week’s missive without talking too much about the actual car. Which is fine. Because there’s not much to say. It’s very good-looking, quite nice to drive, reasonably fast, fairly comfortable and decently spacious. It is also a lovely place to sit, even if some of the controls are unfathomable. However, it is fantastically expensive.

So go ahead. Buy the Golf GTI. It’s much better value. And a better car. But you will have to drive it with your fingers crossed.

22 December 2013

It was the week before Christmas. Rush hour. Central London. And the weather was every American’s idea of what it’s always like in Britain. Awful. The wind was coming in great shuddering lumps and the rain was a collection of stair rods. It was a night for being in.

But I wasn’t in. I was out in the new Aston Martin Vanquish Volante, trying to find a parking space in St James’s. Nobody’s temper was even on that frightful night. The bus drivers had given up trying to run down lone cyclists and had just decided to kill everyone. The taxi drivers were hampered by steamed-up windows. Pedestrians were blind behind their inside-out umbrellas and, even with my wipers whizzing back and forth like a drowning man’s arms, the whole scene was streaked with neon, headlamps and Christmas decorations. It was like driving on an acid trip, into a kaleidoscope. It was like having all of the headaches I’d ever had, at once.

At a time such as this you want to be in a car only because it’s dry. You certainly don’t want to be in a £199,995 Aston Martin with bone-hard suspension and a roof that has seemingly been designed specifically to make everything abaft your head invisible. At an oblique junction the only way you can pull out safely is by having a deep and fervent belief in God.

The next morning I was down at the
Top Gear
test track and it was the sort of day we dream about. Crisp and cold and bleached. The sun was pale. And the air was as clear as a lake of gin. What’s more, the track was quiet, empty and beckoning. But even though the Aston has a 565 brake horsepower V12 engine, I didn’t bother
taking it out there and opening the taps of that mountain of muscle. Because I’ve done some track work in its hard-top sister, so I know what it’s like.

Although it’s largely made from carbon fibre, it’s a heavy car, and it gets all bolshie and uninterested when you push it hard. The tyres don’t last very well either. After three laps they lose their bite and you end up with 300 yards of dreary understeer. And the gearbox, a smooth-changing automatic, doesn’t much like to be hurried. Taking this car on a track? It’s as wrong as playing rugby in a dinner jacket.

Later that night I had to go to Oxfordshire on the M40, something I did at exactly 65 mph. The Vanquish will go a lot faster than this – 118 mph faster, to be exact – but, well, er, the last time I drove a Vanquish on a motorway, I ended up having a little chat with some policemen and women policemen. And afterwards they took away my driving licence for two months.

So here we have a car that is deeply unhappy on a wet night in town, that doesn’t much care for track work and that fills me with a teeth-itchingly morbid fear of being stopped by the police. Oh, and it had been decorated by someone who had a mental age of four.

They’d gone, as pre-school kids often do, for a very garish teal colour, and then for no reason at all had decided to paint the brake callipers yellow. Somehow pleased with the effect, they had decided it should be mirrored on the inside, so, yep, that meant teal seats with yellow flashings and, yes, wow, yellow tips on the paddle-shift levers. I’ve seen less gaudy birds of paradise.

I think I know what Aston is playing at. It is hoping that by going for extreme colours, it would stop me noticing that the interior of this supposedly brand-new car is a bit old-fashioned.

Which, of course, it is. As I said when I reviewed the hard-top version, Aston is a small company with limited resources. It simply doesn’t have the £500 million you need to design a new air-conditioning system, or £200 million for a new instrument binnacle. So it keeps having to fit the same stuff it used in the
previous car. The satnav is new(ish), and while it’s better than the original setup, the screen does look a bit like the sort of drawing that proud parents put on a fridge door.

And I think that’s enough now. I could give you a thousand reasons for not buying this car, even before we got to the whopping price tag. I could tell you that a Ferrari 458 Italia is better, and that this isn’t even the best Aston. The Vantage S holds that crown. But I’m afraid there’s no getting round the fact that I loved it. And the main reason I loved it is: you loved it even more.

Normally when I drive an obviously expensive car, people hate it and me. It turns their mouths to meal, and at petrol stations they sneer. ‘Bet you don’t get many miles to the gallon out of that,’ they say. At road junctions they will not let me out. And at night they like to run coins down the side. Expensive cars make people cross. Porsches especially.

But the Aston has exactly the opposite effect. It makes everyone happy. One distinguished-looking man walked up to me in a traffic jam, clutched my forearm and said, ‘That really does make the most glorious noise, old chap.’ Later I came out of a shop in Notting Hill to find a young man staring at it. ‘That’s just …’ – he paused for a long time, searching for the right word – ‘beautiful.’

I got some idea of what it might have been like to be Jesus. One young woman – and I sincerely hope she’s reading this – was so busy looking at the car that she tripped over the kerb and went flying. Hand on heart, I have never, in thirty years of writing about cars, driven anything that engenders such affection.

So who cares if it’s expensive, or not as fast as it should be? Who cares that the instruments are now a bit old-fashioned and that you can’t see out of the back? Why worry about fuel consumption or how the gearbox works or why there’s understeer? This is a car that makes people like you. And that raises an interesting question.

At present,
Daily Maily
bits of Britain insist that MPs must
spend no money at all. If there’s even a whiff of a salary or an expenses claim or a new pair of shoes, they are hounded into a stammering, stuttering apology that makes them look weak and hopeless.

Naturally they feel they have to campaign on foot or on a bicycle, and that if they have to use a car it must be some form of hybrid. They think this makes them look ‘real’. But actually it makes them look daft. Because we can see it’s all phoney.

So I wonder what would happen if one of them decided that for the next election he should campaign from behind the wheel of a Vanquish Volante. Could a Tory take Rochdale this way? Could a socialist win the hearts and minds of the people in Stow-on-the-Wold? You know what? The car’s allure is so powerful, I reckon he probably could.

29 December 2013