Born to Be Riled Page 10

  Thank you too for making sun roofs such a common fitment these days. They don’t allow any breeze to get into the car, but if you open them at anything above 3mph your eardrums implode.

  And as a by-product of their uselessness, sun roofs also rob up to two inches of headroom, which renders the car useless to anyone who’s registered at the doctors as a human being.

  I’m 6ft 5in, so you might say I must pay the price for blocking your view in a cinema, but my wife is a 5ft 1in midget who has never blocked anyone’s view of anything. Yet despite her public-spiritedness, there are some cars – yes you, TVR – where she can’t reach the pedals.

  Surely to God if a car firm can use platinum to extract poisonous gases from the exhaust, they can design an interior which can accommodate all forms of human life, and not just those that are average.

  Yes, we’ve recently had the Fiat Coupé, which represented a significant step in the right direction but I really do think it’s time for car interiors to be radically altered. Why can’t we have raffia seats and straw matting on the floor? Maybe a real fire or a wood-burning stove instead of a heater. Why not?

  Land Rover employed Terence Conran to design the interior of the Discovery, which showed spirit, but I was crestfallen at the result. I’d expected something really radical with new fabrics, new shapes, new ideas.

  Instead, I got some map holders above the sun visors and a zip-up centre console bag. Wow.

  New MG is a maestro

  At a major league party, there are certain rules you won’t find in any book of etiquette. And the most important one is this: when called upon to move into the dining room for dinner, never arrive at the table first because you will have no control over who sits next to you. And don’t get in there last either, because when there’s only one space left you can be assured that the people on either side of it will be ghastly.

  Unless you pay attention to these simple rules you could find yourself sandwiched between a footballer and a vegetarian. Or a homosexual and a lay preacher. Or a caravanner and a socialist. There are any number of shiversome combinations, but the absolute worst is finding yourself between two members of the MG Owners Club.

  For a kick-off they will have beards, bits of which will fall in your soup. And because they like fresh air, they are likely to be vegetarians. This means you’ll be told, at length, about the plight of dewy-eyed veal calves and baby foxes with pointy ears and snuggly tails… and chicken feathers stuck to their rabid fangs. By the time their nut cutlet is served, the subject will have turned to their horrid cars.

  Now you and I know the old MG was a gutless bucket of rust which leaked every time it rained, broke down every time it was cold and overheated every time the sun put his hat on. It turned with the agility of a charging rhino, stopped with the panache of a supertanker and drank leaded fuel as though it had a Chevy V8 under the bonnet. However, our bearded friends don’t see it quite like this. These people actually enjoy the frequent breakdowns because it gives them an excuse to get under the damn thing.

  And then, in the pub that night, they can talk liberally about exactly what went wrong and precisely how they fixed it. To you and I a track rod end is very probably the dullest thing in the world but to MG Man it is a steel deity, an almost religious icon, an automotive Fabergé egg. MG Man can talk about a track rod end for two hours without repetition or hesitation. And the only reason he stops after two hours is because you’ve shot him. MG fanatics are the people that give all car enthusiasts a bad name. These days you only need mention that you like cars – meaning that you’d buy a Ferrari if you won the lottery – and the person you’re talking to will run away screaming. They’ll recall a conversation they once had about track rod ends and they will assume that you’re about to do the same, that you are a member of CAMRA and that you only drink beer if it has some mud in it.

  For this reason, I am concerned about the new MG. If you can be labelled an anorak for simply liking cars, can you begin to imagine how you will be spurned if you walk into the pub brandishing an MG key ring?

  Other people at the bar will conclude that you have a 1970s Midget in the car park and that you’re about to regale them with the interesting tale of how you adjusted the timing that morning. They will all feign illness or urgent appointments so they can get out.

  Except, of course, for the landlord, who’ll be stuck. His only escape is suicide. He may even impale himself on his hand-pump levers and die horribly without even realizing that, in fact, you have a new MG. I don’t doubt that this is a wonderful car, what with its clever engine, cleverly arranged between the axles. It is lovely to look at too, and those white dials make what’s an ordinary interior look a bit special. I feel sure that the hood won’t leak and that, mechanically, the MGF will be as bulletproof as your fridge. And though no journalist has driven it yet – contrary to what many would have you believe – I don’t doubt that it will handle tidily and be fast. And it’s British – which automatically makes it better than the Barchetta and the Speeder and the MX-5 and the SLK and the Z3 and all the other roadsters that are due to be launched in the coming months.

  The trouble is, though, that if you do buy one of the new foreign convertibles you will be perceived as someone whose feet are loose and whose fancy is free. But if you go, instead, for anything with an MG badge on the bonnet, people will think you are a git.

  Darth Blair against the rebel forces

  Anyone who wants to be a politician is very obviously unfit to actually be one.

  The would-be politician is weak and craves power so that he may impose his will on the people who bullied him at school.

  Of course, when he gets elected, he finds it doesn’t really work like that. Whether his boss is Mr Major or the Joker, he is told to sit at the back and shut up.

  ‘Your views are irrelevant. You do as we say. You agree with us publicly and we shall be elected. We shall have the power.’

  He no more wants a single European currency than he wants his children to catch typhoid, but he knows that if he votes with his heart, he’ll go home that night with a cattle prod up his bottom.

  At the next election there will be 650 Labour candidates, and if the Joker is to be believed, every single one of them agrees with his new transport policy. Of course they agree – it’s hard not to when the alternative is having a strimmer put down your underpants.

  Well frankly, I’d rather feed my toes to a lawnmower than live in a country where the roads are run by Mr Blair who, it seems, wants to stabilize traffic levels by 2010 and reduce them to 1990s levels by 2020.

  There would be taxes on the car parks at out-of-town superstores and anyone who takes their car to work would be forced to pay £8 per week, in tax, for the privilege of parking it on company premises. The extra cash will pay for the extra bureaucrats.

  There’d be road tolls and local authorities would be given the power to introduce charges to manage traffic in their area. Well that’s brilliant. In my experience, most local authorities can’t even decide whether to put the lavatory seat up or leave it down.

  Got a company car? Well you’re in it right up to your neck because the car police will be round to empty your pockets on the hour, every hour.

  Oh and you can forget about harrying the fleet manager for a better set of wheels next time round because he’ll be under orders to buy cleaner, greener cars that run on manure or potato peelings or some such nonsense.

  I’m damn sure there are a great many prospective Labour candidates who would agree that this is idealistic claptrap, but such is their fear they won’t dare speak out. Remember, the woman who thought it up was sacked for leaving an interview too early.

  I loathe out-of-town superstores too, but they do make life easy for shoppers, and they keep traffic out of ancient town centres, so surely they’re a good thing?

  Statistics show that a family’s weekly bag of groceries weighs a whopping 66 lb, so I wonder how Mr Blair thinks a woman with two children and a pushchair ca
n get a load like that home on one of his infernal buses.

  I guess the solution is to follow Harriet Harman’s example and cut the weight down – perhaps by sending your children away to a private school.

  So, does anyone know where the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders is secreted? Because the very industry it is supposed to represent is under attack.

  If someone threatened to burn my house down I would do everything in my power to stop them, but when Labour says it wants to damage the car industry the SMMT doesn’t even chirp.

  It doesn’t even climb on a soapbox when stupid environmentalists go on the news to spout a lot of nonsense about pollution. The report tells us that cars are killing everyone, a man with a beard backs this up and then it’s back to the studio with Michael Cheerful Buerk.

  Where’s the bloke from the SMMT, pointing out that cars do less damage to the environment these days than lawnmowers, or that houses produce more greenhouse gases than anything Ford has ever built? He’s in an office somewhere having a meeting. Or he’s taking a sympathetic MP out for lunch to indulge in a spot of gentle and pointless lobbying.

  Meanwhile, every motorist in the land is on a massive environmental guilt trip, soaking up Labour’s new plans and accepting them as inevitable. If you commit murder, you pay the price.

  The defence is left to a tiny little organization called the Association of British Drivers, who put out a scrappy little newsletter every so often. However, scrappy though it may be, it’s the best read since Alistair MacLean finished HMS Ulysses.

  In the most recent issue it tells of an accident that was caused by a new speed camera, and of a speed trap near Dover which netted £7500 in fines in one hour.

  They talk about how a Honda Accord costs £14,000 in the UK and less than £10,000 in America, and on the letters page a Mr Bishop argues that breaking the speed limit can be either a heinous crime or of no consequence at all, depending on conditions.

  Labour’s plans are torn apart and the chaps mock Railtrack for urging its employees to use their cars.

  And just in case you were thinking it’s a right-wing propaganda machine, I should tell you the government fares no better. Believe the ABD and you’d believe that the Tories’ plans for toll roads represent a bigger threat to the future of mankind than Aids.

  They don’t of course. The biggest threat facing mankind right now is Tony Blair and his new Transport Division which, this week, is headed up by a man from Oxford East.

  Riviera riff-raff

  We’ve all been there. The stewardesses have taken your coat and you’re thumbing through the in-flight magazine to see which Godawful John Grisham film you’ll be watching this time round.

  The bloke sitting next to you has already started to pick bits of fluff from his navel, and you’ve already spotted the Disque Bleu in his shirt pocket, but that’s OK.

  What is definitely not OK is the family that’s just coming down the aisle. The family with the baby. The baby with the lungs like Zeppelins.

  You don’t hear the pilot’s welcoming speech, and you would only have understood the safety briefing if they’d done it in semaphore.

  As you pass through 15,000 feet and the screaming reaches a fever pitch, you feel like organizing a collection among fellow passengers, so that the child can be upgraded to Business Class.

  You regularly trip over no-smoking flights these days, but I have never heard of an airline that runs a guaranteed baby-free service.

  So I have taken the bull by the horns and vowed that I will never take any child of mine on a long-haul jet until he or she is 32.

  Which is why I’ve just come back from a holiday in France – a pretty country spoiled, like Wales, by the people who live there.

  With the money we’d saved by not going to the arse end of Chile, we decided that we’d gorge ourselves stupid, only eating in the very best restaurants.

  So, for ten days, we became veritable Michael Winners, lurching from rum ba ba to sauce Siam in an orgy of four-figure bills and two-rosette excellence.

  I know this is a motoring column but in case you’re interested, the Château Eze does the best view, and l’Oasis in La Napoule does the most wondrous food.

  However, our enjoyment most nights was tempered by the maître d’s.

  I learned, over time, that a jacket and tie teamed with chinos improved the welcome somewhat; in that they stopped looking at me like I’d just urinated all over their trousers. But we were still made to feel about as welcome as plague-carrying rats.

  Then I worked it out. It’s the damn car. It’s the bloody diesel-powered Renault Espace that Hertz had rented to us – after we’d queued for nearly an hour.

  These maître d’ chappies figure we’ve been saving for this meal for our whole lives and that we’re going to choose the cheapest things on the menu, drink tap water and not tip.

  I began to form a hitherto unseen hatred for the van with electric windows. Not only could it not climb the hill to our villa, but using it to trumpet our arrival at a flash restaurant was like being introduced at a party by the master of ceremonies as Mr Syphilis Trousers.

  I was still considering this as we arrived at the Domain de Saint Martin near Vence. The electric gates swung open and we parked in a car park far away… which meant no one knew whether we’d come by Bentley or Raleigh Wayfarer.

  The maître d’, maybe coincidentally but I doubt it, was brilliant, effusive, obsequious, welcoming and efficient. He was the best maître d’ in the world.

  Flushed with success, we tried the same thing again the next night at the Eden Roc on Cap d’Antibes. We parked outside and went down the drive on foot.

  Well the welcome we got couldn’t have been more cold if it had been in the deep freeze for a week. The last time I was greeted like that, it was by my headmaster just before he expelled me. We were shown to the worst table, and sneered at.

  I wouldn’t mind, but most of the customers in these places – not the Eden Roc specifically – look like Mafia hitmen and murderers. I know exactly where the Brinks Matt gold is. All of it is round one bloke’s wrist at l’Oasis.

  But these overtanned, fat boys with trophy wives and big suits turn up in Ferraris and Dodge Vipers.

  The car is the first thing the maître d’ sees, and way before he has a chance to clock the contents he must already have decided what table to give them, what face to pull as he opens the door and how big the tip will be.

  A Ferrari gets you the sea view. A diesel-powered Renault Espace puts you in the broom cupboard with a lettuce leaf and a glass of Blue Nun.

  And this is all very disappointing because it turns my view of France upside down. I’ve always figured that the French had cars all sussed.

  Even in the leafier bits of Paris, people who could well afford a ship are happy to run around town in a battered Peugeot diesel, while a lowly secretary might have a BMW. A car, out there, I always figured, was not a measure of your wealth, only of your interest in motoring.

  But the South is very definitely different. It’s the cousin that’s done rather well for itself. It’s the family rock star, the orphan Annie that became a Hollywood celebrity. It’s part of France in the same way that Elton is part of the Dwight dynasty.

  For all that though, I simply love it down there. The food, the weather, the light and my starter at l’Oasis make it all worthwhile.

  But to enjoy those restaurants properly, you need a real car. I saw on the way home that Europcar can do a BMW Z3 for 700 francs a day.

  With a car like that you could go to the Eden Roc, park on the maître d’s foot, and still get a kir royale on the house.

  Objectivity is a fine thing unless the objective is to be first

  No journalist has driven the new MGF yet, but already I know that it throttle steers very neatly, that it grips like a limpet and that there’s a whiff of initial understeer on turn-in.

  Wow, sounds like quite a car. And there’s more. The MGF combines the best handling feat
ures of the Mazda MX-5 and the Toyota MR2, gripping well but offering adjustability at the same time. And it rides far better than its two main rivals.

  I know this because I read it in Autocar magazine, who, in turn, were enlightened by that most balanced and unbiased of sources: Rover.

  ‘How do we know all this?’ they ask, in print. ‘Because Rover’s engineers told us and, in our experience, engineers never lie.’ Dammit. All those years I’ve spent on frozen hillsides trying to work out why the car behaves the way it does have been wasted.

  Instead of agonizing over a verdict, I could have simply telephoned the manufacturer and asked for its impressions. Lada, undoubtedly, would have told me that the Samara was a modern, front-wheel drive equivalent to the Escort, and that it offers unrivalled value for money. Volkswagen would have claimed that their new diesel Golf was fast, and instead of calling the new Scorpio ugly, I’d have said it was bold and imaginative. The Saab convertible was conceived as such from the very early stages of the model’s design and suffers no scuttle shake whatsoever. And the best car in the world is a Ferrari, an Aston Martin, a Mercedes, a Bentley, a BMW, a Lexus, a Cadillac and a Jaguar.

  Engineers never lie, my arse. They’re hardly likely to spend the best part of eight years working on a new car and then present it to the press as ‘a bit of a duffer’. When I was at the launch of the Escort a few years ago, I never heard anyone on the podium say that it ‘handles like a dog’. Not once did the people at McLaren say the F1 was ‘a bit pricey’.

  The worrying thing is that Autocar may be on to something here. I mean, every popular newspaper in the world relies on gossip, most of which is untrue. Divorces and affairs can happen entirely in the imagination of the writer, in the same way that handling problems and steering stodginess can happen entirely in the imagination of a car journalist.