Round the Bend Page 11

  It certainly isn’t so bad in the limited-edition XKRS I drove last week. At no point did I put my foot down and think, ‘Mmmm. Has it broken down?’ The only thing I did think was, ‘Mmmm. I wish it made a bit more noise.’ I know that, from the outside, the exhausts crackle and rumble, but from behind the wheel, all you can hear is the whine of the supercharger. It’s a bit like being in Nigel Mansell’s nose.

  I also wished the sat nav was a bit more funky. Doubtless, an all-new command-and-control centre is on the drawing board and that’s probably a year away as well. Memo to Jag, then. Ring Mr Patel. Ask for more rupees.

  It’s important because, God, this is a lovely car. I parked it next to my wife’s Aston Vantage and there’s no doubt in my mind: it’s better looking. It’s likely to be more reliable too, as well as still being cheaper, faster and fitted with two (albeit useless) seats in the back. And nicer to drive.

  The S model’s engine has been tweaked so the top speed is up to 174mph. And, underneath, you get revised springs, dampers and antiroll bars. It’s stiffer than the normal car but you’re hard pressed to tell. It still rides the bumps beautifully – better than any other car in the class, by miles – and it still handles with a smile-on-your face simplicity.

  Sadly, only fifty of these cars have been made for the UK. All are hard tops. All come in black and all have been sold. But it’s really not the end of the world, because it felt very similar to the standard car, which costs £9,000 less, comes in any colour you like and is available as a convertible, too.

  You’ve probably never thought about buying a Jaguar before. Trust me, though. You should now.

  20 July 2008

  Calm yourselves, campers

  Ford Kuga 2.0 TDCi Titanium

  Interesting news from the quagmire. Sales of tents and camping equipment are up by 40 per cent as the credit crunch bites and families appear to ditch their annual pilgrimage to the Mediterranean.

  According to tenting enthusiasts, a fortnight in Mallorca costs a family of four about £3,000, whereas they can spend two weeks under canvas in Devon for as little as £500.

  I don’t doubt this is true. But I’m not sure the comparison is relevant, because they aren’t really comparing like with like. Arguing that a holiday in Mallorca is more expensive than a holiday in a field full of cow dung is the same as arguing that a Rolls-Royce Phantom is more expensive than hitchhiking.

  Tenting works well when you are in Afghanistan, fighting the Taliban, but I find it extraordinary that a family should say, ‘Well. Things are tight. So let’s spend our holiday this year soggy and quarrelling in a room none of us can stand up in properly.’

  If you are that hard up, and you are so desperate for a change, then why not simply stay at home and cut your legs off?

  It’s claimed by medical experts that we cannot remember pain, but that isn’t true, because forty years ago my parents took me on a tenting holiday on the west coast of France, and I remember every little detail of it – so much detail that sometimes it makes me cry.

  I remember the rain, and the way it cascaded down into the hollow where our tent was built. I remember the wind that knocked it down. I remember the Germans laughing at us. I remember the hateful food – mustard-encrusted salmonella entombed in the pungent aroma of Calor gas.

  I remember the soggy sleeping bags, the sloping floor, the stones that dug into my back, the lack of sleep, the arguments, the discomfort, the pain, the misery, the mosquitoes, the desperation, the homesickness and my poor little sister’s confused face asking, ‘Why have our parents done this to us?’

  At home we had headroom and walls. We had space. And when we wanted to go to the lavatory, we didn’t have to tiptoe through the ooze to a filthy shower block full of yet more Germans with faulty bomb-aiming equipment. I can see them now if I close my eyes. All those massive Germanic turds; some not even close to the centre of the 101 bogs they had in France in those days.

  I don’t doubt for a moment that it hadn’t cost very much money, but even today I cannot work out why it cost anything at all. Nor can I work out why a fortnight’s holiday under canvas today could possibly cost £500. Killing yourself would be so much cheaper and more pleasant.

  In every single walk of life technology has made things easier since the 1960s. We have dishwashers, computers and oven cleaners that wipe away grime in a flash. So you might imagine tenting had come on in leaps and bounds as well.

  It hasn’t. As I discovered on my trip to the North Pole, it’s still an impenetrable maze of zippers, flaps, straps, exploding cookers and tent pegs that have the structural rigidity of overboiled pasta. Oh, and the skin of the modern tent is still exactly one inch smaller than the frame over which it must be stretched. This means that when you finally get it up you will have no fingernails, no wife, no children, no voice and not a shred of dignity either.

  And where will you be? In a wood? Then you won’t sleep because every noise at night, among the trees, is Freddy Krueger. In a field? Nope. You will wake up dead with a cow on your head. On a campsite? Ha. Well, then, you’ve really had it because women, and I have no clue why, think tenting is erotic. Which means you’re going to have to spend the night listening to a hundred wizened ramblers bouncing around on the only pole in all of tenting that’s still upright.

  Naturally, this brings me to the Ford Cortina. This, too. came from a time when Mallorca was an impossible dream. When film makers could be guaranteed a box office smash if they could only persuade Barbara Windsor’s bra to ping off. With hilarious consequences. We know it now as the Swinging Sixties, but unless you were on Carnaby Street, with a Moke, and you were intimately friendly with Twiggy, they weren’t swinging at all. They were crap.

  No, really. I bet it was a hoot in northern California in the summer of ’68. But I wasn’t on the corner of Haight and Ashbury. I was picking my way through a puddle of German urine on a campsite in the rain. If you were going to San Francisco, you would have been wise to wear some flowers in your hair. If you were on your way to a camping holiday in the family Cortina, you’d have been better off with some wellies.

  The Cortina was Britain’s most popular car back then because there was no choice. You couldn’t buy an Austin because it wouldn’t work, and Japan hadn’t been invented. It was Carry On Camping with windscreen wipers. Four seats and a boot. British Rail tea.

  Today, however, there is simply no need to buy a modern-day Cortina, because Terry’s dead, June’s in Ab Fab, Mallorca’s only two hours away and British Rail, or whatever it’s called these days, can rustle up a skinny latte instead. That’s why you’ve got an MX-5. Or a RAV4. Or a Prius.

  The thing is, though, that somewhere deep down inside us is a fear that all this choice is frightfully un-British. That we’re not really cut out for being tall poppies. That we should be washing our clothes in a mangle. That’s why tenting’s made a comeback. And it’s why we all still have a secret soft spot for the family Ford. You might imagine that if you traced the Cortina’s bloodline, you’d end up with the Mondeo, but that’s not so. Today, the modern family likes a high driving position and four-wheel drive, which means that actually today’s 1.6 Deluxe is the Ford Kuga.

  Ooh, it’s a good-looking thing: nicely proportioned with just the right amount of styling trinketry. It’s good underneath, too, with independent rear suspension like you get on a Focus.

  However, it has none of the things you might normally associate with a four-wheel-drive vehicle. There is no hill descent control, no low-range gearbox, no little button to lock the centre differential. It’s almost as though Ford is embarrassed that it has four-wheel drive at all. Perhaps, in these mad eco times, that’s sensible.

  Instead, Ford makes a great deal of noise about what a small amount of carbon dioxide the Kuga produces. I guess that’s more important these days than an ability to climb every mountain and ford every stream.

  It’s well thought out in other ways, too. There are two boot doors, easy-to-fold back seats,
a good, solid feel to the interior and an impressive ride. Unlike most high-riding cars, this one neither rolls nor bounces. If you have a Subaru Forester or a Honda CR-V, you’d be amazed at how much better the Kuga feels.

  Except for one thing. Ford has a habit of fitting its cars with ridiculously hard seats and in the Kuga it’s gone mad. I’ve sat on comfier kitchen chairs. Actually I’ve sat on comfier spikes.

  When it comes to beds, I appreciate that some people like the firmer feel, but in a car, no one does. Unless, of course, they are used to camping, in which case anything with a roof and a heater and chairs – no matter how back-breakingly solid they may be – is going to feel fine.

  More than fine, because the model I tested had a neither-here-nor-there diesel engine. And it was as brown as an alderman’s sideboard. In this set-up the Kuga is perfect for the modern age. It’s oxtail soup in a Tetrapak carton.

  27 July 2008

  Très bien – a plumber in a tux

  Citroën Berlingo Multispace

  Sarah Brown, the wife of our prime minister, is a complete mystery. For all I know, she collects fish, is qualified to fly fighter jets, has two left feet and sounds exactly like that woman with the broom in the Tom and Jerry cartoons. You even have to say ‘Sarah Brown, the wife of the prime minister’. Which was unnecessary with Cherie Blair or Denis Thatcher.

  All I do know is that she looked at the country’s twenty-eight million men and thought, ‘No. They are all horrid except for Gordon.’ Which must mean she’s a bit odd. And let’s be honest here, shall we; like all women in and around British politics (with the notable exception of Samantha Cameron), she’s not exactly a purring sex kitten.

  Things are very different in Italy where Silvio Berlusconi has filled his entire cabinet with ex-glamour models. And, naturally, this brings me on to France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy.

  Unlike anyone in British politics, he attained high office and responded immediately by replacing his wife with the almost impossibly gorgeous Carla Bruni. Her mother is a concert pianist, her sister an actress and film director, and she’s an heiress to an Italian tyre fortune. We’re talking good genes here. And you can see them all in those cheekbones. I’m very much in love with Carla.

  More than that, I’m very much in love with the French for taking her into their hearts. That’d never happen here. Imagine, if you will, Gordon Brown winning an election (hard, I know) and then ditching Sarah for Abi Titmuss. He wouldn’t last a week.

  Weirdly, however, while the French like a good-looking woman in the Elysée Palace, they plainly have trouble with aesthetics in other departments. Take the oyster as an example. I have no idea who first cracked one open, peered at the snot inside and thought, ‘Mmm. I’m going to put that in my mouth.’ But I bet he was French.

  Of course, Paris is a fine and handsome city, but the man who dreamt up those twelve wide boulevards radiating from the Arc de Triomphe was called Haussmann. And while he was born in France, his parents were from the disputed province of Alsace. Which technically makes their son an Alsatian. Which means he was a dog.

  It’s also true, of course, that Parisian women are very elegant, but I always think they were put on earth to make Italian clothes look good. And have you ever been in a Frenchman’s house? Holy cow. It’s an orgy or horror: antimacassars, Dralon, floral wallpaper, Formica and chintz. The minimalist Danish look completely passed them all by, leaving them all stuck in Huddersfield, in 1952.

  France itself is a beautiful part of the world and the French language is spoken honey – unless it’s being used in a pop song, obviously; in which case it’s as attractive as an inside-out horse.

  But just about everything the French make or do is lumpen, ugly or odd. This is especially true of their cars.

  If you asked anyone to name the ten best-looking cars ever made, not a single person with functioning retinas would put a French car on their list. Renault occasionally does something appealing like the Avantime, but mostly it believes we’ll buy its cars specifically because they’ve got big arses. Peugeot can do a good-looking car but only when it pays Pininfarina to design it. Left to its own devices, it mostly does bland, with occasional gusts of awfulness like the 309. That really was a mobile wart.

  That leaves Citroën and, of course, what it has done mostly over the years is best described as, er … brave. It’s hard, really, when it presents a new car, to find the right word. It’s best to imagine Heston Blumenthal has just asked you, eagerly, to try his new dog-turd-flavoured ice cream. You can’t be honest and say, ‘That was terrible.’ So you go for ‘brave’ or ‘very striking’.

  Today, though, Citroën is starting to buck the trend. The C5 is exceptionally good-looking. The C6 has great presence, and if you drive through town in a C4, no one is going to point and laugh. But then, just when you think Citroën has got the idea, out pops the new Berlingo.

  The old one was just a van with windows and it struck a chord. Oh sure, it looked like a frog that had sat on a spike, but there was something rather appealing about the no-nonsenseness of a box with seats. Especially as it retailed for about 60p.

  Sadly, with the new version, they’ve tried to disguise the window cleaner origins with chrome this and flared that. What they’ve ended up with is a plumber in a tux. It looks and feels completely wrong. Almost certainly, then, you will see it and immediately decide to buy something else. This would be a very big mistake.

  I’ll start with the problems. Um … Well, the tailgate is so huge that when you push the button it will rise up, and unless you’re standing well back – which you won’t be because you’ve just pushed the button – it will smash into the underside of your chin and remove your whole head. This would become wearisome. But aside from this upside-down guillotine feature, and the British female politician looks, the rest of the car is an object lesson in common sense.

  Prices start at less than £11,000, which is very low for something with this amount of interior space. It rides more smoothly than a Jaguar XJ8 – they should have called it the Aeroglisseur – and it is the first car ever to come with a loft. I mean it. There is an internal roofbox into which, I’m fairly certain, you could fit a pair of modern-day skis. And that’s just the start. There are so many cubbyholes and oddment stowage boxes that you could hide a priest in there and never find him again.

  The car I tested had a ninety horsepower diesel, which meant I couldn’t go very fast. But on the long straight between Shipston on Stour and Chipping Norton, I did get past a tractor in just eighteen minutes. So it’s not the end of the world. And better still, it should do 40mpg easily.

  It’s a good car, the Berlingo. And in these difficult times, it makes even more sense than usual.

  3 August 2008

  This is an epic car. Every single atom of every single component is designed only to make your life as quiet and as comfortable as possible. Dreaming of a …

  Rolls-Royce Phantom Coupé

  Recently, I wrote in another part of the paper about the difficulties of trying to work while staying for the summer at your bolthole in the country. There are too many distractions, the view is too consuming, the children too needy and the constant longing for a beer too overwhelming.

  Well, soon all the problems will be erased because a government think tank has looked carefully at the question of second homes and has announced that the rich bastards who have them should be forced to rent them out to underachieving, fat people.

  Hmmm. I wonder. Did it deliver its findings to Gordon Brown at Number Ten, or to his second home in Buckinghamshire? And how does it think such a scheme could possibly work?

  Many people, for instance, claim they live in Monaco for tax reasons. Whereas, in fact, all they do is buy a small flat and employ an estate agent to pop in every morning to make a few phone calls. The bills are then used as proof that they were there.

  Second-home owners would adopt similar tactics here. Or they’d say their country cottage is their primary residence and t
hat their apartment in London is a pied-à-terre. Then, the local council would have to prove otherwise by going through everyone’s knicker drawer and employing men with binoculars and coffee breath to follow us about.

  I fear the government think tank hasn’t considered any of this because it was so consumed with bitterness, hatred and envy for people with money. It is not alone.

  Just the other day, I read a report that said musicals in London’s West End are bucking the trend with higher-than-ever audiences. This, you might think if you were a normal, well-balanced soul, is a good thing. But, sadly, the red top reporter was not. He was just bothered that bigger audiences meant Andrew Lloyd Webber would have even more money. And that made him incandescent with fury.

  Why? It’s not like Andrew Lloyd Webber spends his evenings being carried around council estates in Slough in a sedan chair, waving his jewels out of the window. He just gets on with his life in a way that has no effect whatsoever on the way you live yours or I live mine.

  It’s like being kept awake at night with a burning sense of envy about Cliff Richard’s youthful good looks. What should we do? Take a Black & Decker sander to his cheekbones? Why? Because disfiguring Cliff’s face won’t make any difference to your own.

  I don’t yearn for many aspects of the American way but they do seem to have this dreadful bitterness under control. When they see a man pass by in a limousine, they say, ‘One day, I’ll have one of those.’ When we see a man pass by in a limo, we say, ‘One day, I’ll have him out of that.’

  All this past week, I’ve been driving around in a Rolls-Royce Coupé and it’s been a genuinely alarming insight into the bitterness of Britain’s obese and stupid underclass. Because when you drive this enormous monster past a bus queue, you realize that hate is not an emotion. It’s something you can touch, and see and smell.