What Could Possibly Go Wrong. . . Read online

  Jeremy Clarkson

  WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG …

  Contents

  For pity’s sake, Fritz, please stop fiddling

  MINI Countryman Cooper S ALL4

  No nasty surprises in this gooey confection

  Audi A7 Sportback 3.0 TDI quattro SE

  Oh yes, take me now, Lady Marmalade

  Citroën DS3 Racing

  It’s hardly British but learn to haggle

  Mitsubishi Outlander 2.2 DI-D GX4, 7 seats

  Try this moose suit for size, Mr Top Gun

  Saab 9-3 SportWagon Aero TtiD 180PS

  Titter ye not, it’s built for the clown about town

  Nissan Juke 1.6 DIG-T Tekna

  Those yurt dwellers have got it right

  Land Rover Freelander 2 eD4 HSE 2WD

  Little Luigi’s turbo boost

  Fiat 500 0.9 TwinAir Lounge

  I don’t fancy Helga von Gargoyle … Can’t think why

  Porsche Panamera 3.6 V6 PDK

  Damn it, Spock, we can’t shake off Arthur Daley

  Jaguar XJ 5.0 Supercharged Supersport LWB 4dr

  Bruce’s bonzer duck-billed koala

  Ford Falcon FPV Boss 335 GT

  Botox and a bikini wax and I’m ready to roll

  Jensen Interceptor S

  Oh, barman, my pint of pitbull has gone all warm and fluffy

  Ford Focus Titanium 1.6 Ecoboost

  Pointless but fun – what a good wheeze

  Renault Wind Roadster GT Line 1.6 VVT

  Prepare your moobs for a workout

  Aston Martin Virage

  The old duffer trots out in boy-racer colours

  Skoda Faiba vRS1.4 TSI DSG

  What’s the Swedish-Chinese for I can’t see?

  Volvo V60 T5 R-Design

  I love you now I’m all grown up, Helga

  Porsche 911 GTS

  Oh, miss, you turn me into a raging despot

  Mercedes CLS 63 AMG

  From 0 to 40 winks in the blink of an eye

  BMW 640i SE convertible

  Oh, Shrek, squeeze me till it hurts

  Nissan GT-R

  A world first – the Ferrari 4 × what for?

  Ferrari FF

  Work harder, boy, or it will be you in here

  VW Jetta 2.0 TDI Sport

  Too tame for the special flair service

  Audi RS 3

  An asthmatic accountant in lumberjack clothing

  Mazda CX-7

  Someone please check I haven’t left my spleen back there

  BAC Mono

  I thought it looked humdrum. But wow!

  Honda Accord Type S

  You vill never handle zis torture

  Mercedes-Benz G 350 Bluetec

  Strip out all the tricks and it’s still a wizard

  Audi A6 SE 3.0 TDI

  Open up them pearly gates …

  Lamborghini Gallardo LP570-4 Spyder Performante

  Oh, grunting frump, you looked so fine on the catwalk

  Jaguar XF 2.2 Diesel Premium Luxury

  Now we’re flying

  Mercedes-Benz SLS Roadster

  The topless tease luring men to ridicule

  VW Golf Cabriolet GT

  I’m sold, Mrs Beckham – I want your baby

  Range Rover Evoque Prestige SD4 auto

  I say, chaps, who needs a fourth wheel?

  Morgan Three Wheeler

  Beach beauties love my bucking bronto

  Lamborghini Aventador LP 700-4

  Hop in, Charles, it’s a Luddite’s dream

  Mercedes C 63 AMG coupé Black Series

  It’s no cruiser but it can doggy-paddle

  Jeep Grand Cherokee 3.0 CRD V6 Overland

  Uh-oh, some fool’s hit the panic button

  Chevrolet Orlando 1.8 LTZ

  Simply no use for taking the kids to see Granny

  Audi R8 GT

  Amazing where bottle tops and string will get you

  Hyundai i40 1.7 CRDi 136PS Style

  Bong! I won’t let you go until you love me

  BMW M5

  A heart transplant sexes up Wayne’s pet moose

  Bentley Continental GT V8

  The arms race is over and Vera Lynn has won

  Aston Martin DBS Carbon Edition

  Good doggy – let’s give the bark plugs a workout

  Suzuki Swift Sport 1.6

  Look what oi got, Farmer Giles: diamanté wellies

  Jeep Wrangler 2.8 CRD Sahara Auto 4-door

  Powered by beetroot, the hand-me-down that keeps Russia rolling

  Lada Riva

  The yummiest of ingredients but the soufflé’s gone flat

  Porsche 911 Carrera

  I ran into an EU busybody and didn’t feel a thing

  BMW 640d (with M Sport package)

  Blimey, you’ve got this mouse to roar, Fritz

  Volkswagen High Up!

  Styled for mercenaries. Driven by mummy

  Ford Kuga 2.0 TDCi Titanium X PowerShift

  Simply the best, but so bashful buying one is verboten

  BMW 328i Modern

  Click away, paparazzi, I’ve got nice clean Y-fronts

  Audi A8 3.0 TFSI

  Get a grip – it’s only a Roller

  Rolls-Royce Phantom II

  I know about your frilly knickers, Butch

  Mercedes SLK 55 AMG

  Fritz calls it a soft-roader. I call him soft in the head

  Audi Q3 2.0 TDI quattro SE S tronic

  Cheer up – Napoleon got shorty shrift too

  Mini Cooper S roadster

  That funny noise is just Einstein hiding under the bonnet

  Ford Focus 1.0 EcoBoost 125PS Titanium

  Gosh, never thought I’d dump Kate Moss so fast

  Citroën DS5 DSport HDi 160 automatic

  Squeeze in, Queenie, there’s space next to Tom Cruise

  Kia Cee-d ‘2’ 1.6 GDI

  The wife’s away, so come check out my electric extremity

  Mercedes-Benz ML 350 BlueTec 4Matic Sport

  If I go back to Africa, will you take it away again?

  Porsche 911 Carrera S cabriolet

  Oh, Miss Ennis, let’s sprint to seventh heaven

  Ferrari 458 Spider

  Yikes! The plumber’s van has put a leak in my wallet

  Citroën Berlingo

  Gary the ram raider cracks Fermat’s last theorem

  Vauxhall Astra VXR 2.0i Turbo

  Kiss goodbye to your no-claims – Mr Fender-bender has a new toy

  Peugeot 208 1.2 VTi Allure

  The nip and tuck doesn’t fool anyone, Grandma

  Jaguar XKR-S

  Wuthering werewolves, a beast made for the moors

  Lexus LFA

  It’s certainly cheap … but I can’t find cheerful

  Skoda Octavia vRS

  Ooh, it feels good to wear my superhero outfit again

  Toyota GT86

  OK, Sister Maria, try tailgating me now

  Audi S6 4.0 TFSI quattro

  It’s Sunday, the sun is out – let’s go commando

  Ferrari California 30

  Yo, bruv, check out da Poundland Bentley

  Chrysler 300C Executive

  Out with the flower power, in with the toothbrush moustache

  VW Beetle 1.4 TSI Sport

  You can keep your schnapps, Heidi – I’ll have cider with Rosie

  Mercedes A 250 AMG

  A real stinker from Silvio, the lav attendant

  Chrysler Ypsilon

  Ask nicely and it’ll probably cook you dinner underwater

  BMW M135i

  The pretty panzer parks on Jurgen’s gol
f links

  Volvo V40 D4 SE Nav

  I ordered a full English but ended up with bubble and squeak

  Aston Martin Vanquish

  The cocaine chintz has been kept in check

  Range Rover Vogue SDV8 4.4L V8 Vogue

  Thanks, guys, from the heart of my bottom

  Audi RS 4 Avant 4.2 FSI quattro

  Just like Anne Boleyn, there’s no magic with the head off

  Volkswagen Golf GTI cabriolet 2.0 TSi

  Come on, caravanners, see if it will tackle the quicksand

  Hyundai Santa-Fe Premium 7-seat

  No one can reinvent the wheel quite like you, Fritz

  VW Golf 1.4 TSI ACT GT

  Great at a shooting party – for gangsters

  Mercedes CLS63 AMG Shooting Brake

  Yippee! It’s OK to be a Bentley boy again

  Bentley Continental GT Speed

  Thrusters on, Iron Man, this’ll cut through the congestion

  Audi R8 5.2 FSI quattro S tronic

  They’ll be flying off the shelves at Poundland

  Porsche 911 Carrera 4S

  So awful I wouldn’t even give it to my son

  Alfa Romeo MiTo 875cc TwinAir Distinctive

  Off to save the planet with my African queen

  BMW528i Touring SE (1999, T-reg)

  Oh, I hate the noise you make in ‘wounded cow’ mode

  Toyota Corolla GX (aka the Auris but GX model not sold in UK)

  That puts paid to my theory on the ascent of manual

  Aston Martin Vantage V12 roadster

  Oh, how you’ll giggle while strangling that polar bear

  Ford Fiesta ST 1.6T EcoBoost

  Another bad dream in a caravan of horrors

  Honda CR-V 2.2 I-D TEC EX

  Ooh, you make me go weak at the knees … and the hips and the spine

  Jaguar F-Type S

  Mirror, signal, skedaddle – Mr Bump’s been turbocharged

  Peugeot 208 GTi

  Not now, Cato – keep turning the egg whisk while I push

  MG6 Magnette 1.9 DTi-Tech

  No grid girls, no red trousers – it’s formula school run

  Mazda CX-5 2WD SE-L

  Where does Farmer Giles eat his pork pie?

  Range Rover Sport SDV6 Autobiography

  They only make one car. But it’s a nice colour

  Porsche Cayman S with PDK

  Say the magic word and the howling banshee turns sultry sorceress

  McLaren 12C Spider

  Take the doors off and put them back on? That’ll be £24,000, sir

  BMW M6 Gran Coupé

  Thunderbird and Mustang have gone, so what’ll we call it, chaps?

  Vauxhall Adam

  Ha! They’ll never catch me now I’m the invisible man

  VW Golf GTI 2.0 TSI Performance Pack

  Coo! A baby thunderclap from Merc’s OMG division

  Mercedes-Benz A45 AMG

  From the nation that brought you Le Mans … A tent with wheels

  Citroën DS3 cabrio DSport

  The fun begins once you’ve arm-wrestled Mary Poppins for control

  Audi RS 5 cabriolet quattro 4.2 FSI

  Gliding gently into the parking slot reserved for losers

  Peugeot 2008

  Where the hell did they hide the ‘keeping up with Italians’ button?

  Jaguar F-type

  Go and play with your flow chart, Comrade Killjoy, while I floor it

  Audi RS 6 Avant

  Who lent Scrooge the ninja costume?

  Lexus IS 300h F Sport

  Crikey, the Terminator has joined the Carry On team

  Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG Black Series

  Grab her lead and forget all about the mess on the floor

  Alfa Romeo 4C

  Goodbye, Dino. It’s the age of the mosquito

  McLaren P1

  Watch out, pedestrians, I’m packing lasers

  Mercedes-Benz S 500 L AMG Line

  I can see the mankini peeking out over your waistband

  BMW 435i M Sport coupé

  The crisp-baked crust hides a splodge of soggy dough

  Kia Pro_Cee’d GT Tech

  A menace to cyclists, cars, even low-flying aircraft

  Audi SQ5 3.0 BiTDI quattro

  I’m sorry, Comrade. No Iron Curtain, no deal

  Dacia Sandero Access 1.2

  You’re off by a country mile with this soggy pudding, Subaru

  Subaru Forester 2.0 Lineartronic XT

  You can’t play bumper cars, but the bouncy castle’s brilliant

  Volvo V40 T5 R-Design Lux

  Drives on water and raises Lazarus in 4.1 seconds

  Aston Martin Vanquish Volante

  By the same author

  Motorworld

  Jeremy Clarkson’s Hot 100

  Jeremy Clarkson’s Planet Dagenham

  Born to be Riled

  Clarkson on Cars

  The World According to Clarkson

  I Know You Got Soul

  And Another Thing

  Don’t Stop Me Now

  For Crying Out Loud!

  Driven to Distraction

  How Hard Can It Be?

  Round the Bend

  The Top Gear Years

  Is It Really Too Much To Ask?

  The contents of this book first appeared in Jeremy Clarkson’s Sunday Times column. Read more about the world according to Clarkson every week in The Sunday Times.

  For pity’s sake, Fritz, please stop fiddling

  MINI Countryman Cooper S ALL4

  After much careful consideration over the festive season, I’ve decided that God is almost certainly a German. He created the world and festooned it with all sorts of unusual creations, none of which he liked very much. So then he killed them off and started again. Then he didn’t like that lot either, so he turned all the dinosaurs into birds and gave one of the apes opposable thumbs.

  Geologically, he’s never satisfied. Originally, he placed Scotland in the south Pacific, but he obviously thought the feng shui was wrong, so he moved it to a spot in the middle of what we now call the Atlantic ocean. Then he didn’t think the world should have Scotland at all, so he buried it under what has now become South America.

  And then he thought that actually England looked a bit lonely sticking out of the top of France, so he dug up Scotland again and placed it on the top of Northumberland, like a jaunty, lopsided hat. And then he decided that England shouldn’t really be joined to France any more, so he created the English Channel.

  Today, he’s decided that the Himalayas should be a bit taller and that there really is no point to Greece, or any of those silly low-lying islands in the middle of the Pacific. And he’s realized that the polar bear is so ugly and vicious that it has no place in his toy box.

  He fiddles with the weather, too. At first, he thought it should be a hot and steamy planet but then he thought that, actually, it ought to be extremely cold. He’s still fiddling today, which is driving all the eco-loonies insane. Just as they think it’s getting hotter, the whole of Europe gets covered in snow.

  Germans are the same. Give them a country and they want the one next door as well.

  There is an upside to this, though. When a German creates something excellent, he does not go home to celebrate with a glass of beer. No. He goes straight back to his office so that he can set about making improvements. In Germany, being better than everyone else isn’t good enough. You have to be better than yourself.

  They even do this with their wine. Having created the liquid perfection that is Niersteiner Gutes Domtal, they went back to the drawing board and decided that the only way to make a better wine would be to add flecks of gold leaf. So they did. How brilliant’s that? Wine that glitters under the lights. Stunning.

  Things are very different in Britain. Prince Charles, for instance, thinks the world would be a better place if all progress had stopped in about 1952. And every planning department is run by people wh
o want Britain to look like the front of a Dorset chocolate box. If God were English, your route to work would be blocked every morning by a brontosaurus.

  Red telephone boxes were a prime example of this. They were useless and smelt of urine, and you could die of hypothermia before the pips even began. But there was a huge furore when someone – probably a German – suggested they should be updated. Change? Here? In Britain? Are you mad? We are a nation that puts The Two Ronnies on every Christmas, even though one of them is dead.

  This attitude really doesn’t work and it especially doesn’t work in the car industry. When the first Range Rover came along in 1970, everyone could see that it was very excellent indeed. So the team responsible for designing it was sent home and the model soldiered on, with almost no changes at all, until 1994. By which time it was a relic.

  There’s a similar problem with the Land Rover. The car you buy today is pretty much the same as the car you could have bought after the war. Can you imagine BMW doing that? Designing a car and then keeping it in production for sixty years? It’s inconceivable.

  But when it comes to resting on your laurels, the crown must go to Alec Issigonis. He made the Mini, which in the late 1950s was an inspired design, and then he decided to leave it alone for ever. Occasionally someone would nail a bit of wood to the side, and they once changed the radiator grille, but, fundamentally, it just kept on rolling down the production line, powered by an engine that could trace its roots back to a time when Scotland was off the coast of South Africa. It would still be soldiering on today, had BMW not arrived on the scene and said, ‘For you, Tommy, the warhorse is over.’

  Unfortunately, the Germans’ obsession with self-improvement is now starting to get a bit silly, because in addition to their original Mini, and the various derivations of that, we now have the convertible, which is fine, and the Clubman, which is fine too, providing you are impervious to its looks and don’t want to see out of the back. But sadly we also now have the Countryman. And that’s not fine at all.

  First of all, it has four doors, seating inside for five and a large boot. This has been achieved by making the car much bigger. So it’s not really a Mini any more, is it? At 13½ feet in length, it’s a third longer than the Issigonis original and should really be called the Maxi. Or maybe the Twinset.

  There’s another problem, though. BMW’s first effort looked good, and still does, whereas the Countryman looks absolutely stupid. It’s like a Mini that’s been putting on weight for a part. It doesn’t look cool or interesting or practical. It looks fat.

  Of course, you might not care about how it looks or what it’s called. Fine. But I bet you will care about the cramp it gives you when you drive it in traffic. It’s the second Mini on the trot that has done this to me, come to think of it, and you will definitely care about how easy it is to stall, and how hard it is to get going again thanks to the stop-start eco-gadgetry that shuts down the engine whenever you’re stationary.