Clarkson on Cars Read online

  A massive advertising campaign seemed to be getting the message about unleaded fuel across, but along came Esso and messed it all up with their Super Grade Plus or whatever it’s called. Even I don’t understand what that ad with the white Orion going green is all about.

  Saab’s elegant campaign with the Green Wellie headline was a masterstroke but they spoilt it with a reference, in the body of the text, to a little-known fact that most of their cars are recyclable. More than a couple of people have rung me to ask whether ‘these reusable catalytic converter wotsits’ are worth the bother.

  And that Audi television commercial with the man rushing in his catalysed 90 Quattro to see his wife have a baby prompted Beloved to remark that if he hadn’t had the cat, he would have got there in time for the big moment! Audi rarely cock up their adverts but, my God, that one was a real mess.

  Basically, there’s no concerted marketing effort with cats, and some people think they’re an alternative to unleaded petrol, while others reckon they take the form of a ball of cotton wool rammed up the exhaust which prevents the car from reaching a speed of over 10 mph. Most, however, have never heard of them.

  If and when the message ever does get across and we’re as well versed in the functions of rhodium as we are in the antics of Brazilian bulldozer drivers, let’s not get paranoid.

  I tried to tell a farmer the other day that the funniest news item I had ever seen was that mad cow doing the hokey-cokey. For some extraordinary reason, he did not appear to agree. If the earth does suddenly implode, I’ll be the one at the back giggling.

  Goodbye to All That

  Last night, Robert Dougal, the ex-news reader, stole my car. I came out of the house in the morning and found it had gone but, strangely, this didn’t bother me unduly. I simply hired a cab.

  Even more strangely, when I arrived at work the car was parked outside the office. All day I sat on the telephone telling people that there is such a thing as a considerate thief.

  But then, in the evening, it had gone again. Now this time I was angry and set off on foot to look for it. I stomped about for a few hours and eventually wound up in a swampy wood full of mangrove trees and mist.

  A car tore by. My car. The roof had been cut off and the seats replaced with chairs from a 1.3L, the pretty alloys were gone and every remaining panel was smashed.

  There were four people in it, jeering and shouting as it sploshed through the water and careered over the mangrove roots. Then it crashed. I ran over and was horrified to find Robert Dougal trying to extricate himself from the driver’s seat. Then the Today programme came on the radio, I got up, got dressed and went to work. Puzzled as hell.

  Mystic Meg has never once addressed me. Week after week, she fills her page in Sunday magazine with messages from beyond the grave and up and down the country people called Brian rip up their sofas looking for the missing millions.

  I don’t pay any attention to Doris Stokes because I believe that when you’re dead, you are a piece of meat which rots and makes a funny smell.

  I also don’t believe there is such a place as heaven, and anyway, even if there is, Christianity is based on the concept of forgiveness so I shall simply roll up at the Pearly Gates and tell Pete that I’m sorry.

  And never mind death, I can’t really grapple with the concept of strange mind-bendery when we’re alive either. I don’t believe in ghosts, the Bermuda Triangle or spoon bending. But what about dreams? There are as many people out there who try to read something into what goes on between our ears at night as there are people trying to read things into what goes on between our legs.

  If we dream, it is simply an active mind not shutting down properly. But that said, just recently I have been a tormented soul between the hours of one to five. And I’d like to know why.

  Last night I moved house, which would have been a peculiar thing to do as I did it for real only last week. However, before going to bed, I had just watched The Chain, so that might have had something to do with it.

  Regularly I can fly, and it’s really special, soaring over London’s proletariat who point and gawp quite openly.

  Hell, I have even played table tennis against myself and every time I missed a shot, a piece of purple velvet was pressed by an unseen hand against my face, giving me an electric shock.

  I think I might like to have met Sigmund Freud so that he could have explained what it was that made me mad. But as I can’t I guess his granddaughter will have to do.

  And believe me, I am mad, because this is my last column for Performance Car.

  I began writing for the magazine shortly after it underwent the metamorphosis from Hot Car, and that was nearly ten years ago. Since then, there have been two changes of ownership, three editors and countless staff alterations. But I really do believe that, right now, it is a better magazine than at any time in its history and more, that it is a better magazine than any of the others.

  I love the way that it flies in the face of current namby-pamby thinking and I constantly use its blossoming sales as back-up in arguments with hideous and spotty vegan types who decry the car along with meat and the free market. Furthermore, these ten years have been happy times. Without Performance Car, I would never have been to Iceland. I would never have been in a stunt plane or a Class One powerboat. I would not know how to drive round the Nurburgring or where the heated-rear-window switch is in a Countach. Perhaps most important of all, were it not for Performance Car, I would not be on Top Gear.

  So why am I going? Well, last month a Richard Morris of Walton-on-the-Hill in Surrey wrote a letter to PC, arguing that I am unfunny, unobjective, insulting and self-indulgent. He went on, for some considerable time, and ended up by saying that I should give it up. Well, Mr Morris, you win. I am all of the things you say, and I’m leaving. If anyone out there disagrees with him, just contact the magazine who I’m sure will be happy to put you in touch.

  Before I go though, I would like to thank the following people who have helped make me rich. Jesse Crosse, the very first editor of Performance Car and the man who took me on; Dave Calderwood, for keeping me on when he took over and Paul Clark the current obergruppen führer who obviously disagrees with Mr Morris.

  Then there is Peter Tomalin, the deputy editor who seems to understand what it is I’ve been trying to do, and John Barker, the road-test editor, who doesn’t. But then he never seems to mind.

  On top of all this, there are countless motor industry PR figures who have been tirelessly supportive, even when I’ve ridiculed their products: John Evans of Mercedes Benz and Peter Frater of Daihatsu, Ferrari and Chrysler lead the charge, with Chris Willows of BMW, Tim Holmes of Nissan and Colin Walkey of Land Rover in hot pursuit.

  I cannot forget Jonathan Gill, my partner and Frances Cain, my other partner, whose level headedness has ensured I’ve yet to see the inside of a libel court.

  Finally, there is you lot, the people who have read this column over the years. I did my best and I guess it’s just a shame Mr Morris had to go and spoil it all.

  That then, is that.

  Down, Rover

  Round about now, the Rover board will be sitting down to decide whether it is a good idea to start work on a two-seater sports car. A new MG, in other words.

  It isn’t.

  Enthusiasts throughout the land are running around, starting campaigns along the lines of ‘kill an Argie, win a Metro’ to make them build it. Great bores of today are pointing angrily at the Mazda MX-5, saying that it should be an MG and that if Rover weren’t so completely hopeless it would have been.

  The fact is, Mazda spent six years developing the MX-5. They started with a piece of paper so fresh it was still a tree and they invested billions of yen and millions of man hours to make sure it was right in every detail. Only the engine has been ‘lifted’ from current production lines.

  Rover could not have started work on such a car six years ago. Back then, under government ownership, they couldn’t take the top off a biro without ha
ving 23 eight-hour meetings to discuss the implications. They had sod all money and as a result, they were to the world of motor manufacturing what Paddy Ashdown is to politics – completely and spectacularly useless.

  If they had started work on a two-seater soft top then, it would have emerged at the right time but it would have had an Ambassador engine and an Allegro-style quartic steering wheel.

  There is no doubt that Rover are much leaner these days, but it’s too late to start thinking about putting one over Mazda. Besides, lean though they may be, I’m still not absolutely certain that they’d get an affordable sports car right.

  The problem is, they are too small to invest what Mazda invested and too big to make a go of it on a TVR or Lotus scale. In order for economics of scale to work, they would need to make thousands of so-called MGs a week, which means they’d have to be cheap. And if they were going to be cheap, then they would have to be fashioned from whatever is lying around in the parts bin.

  That means front-wheel drive, whether they base it on the CRX or the Rover 200. And although I couldn’t give a stuff whether a car is front-, rear- or four-wheel drive, I do believe that people who want a sports car prefer the busy end to be behind them.

  Then there’s the engine problem. Yes, the K series is a good effort but it’s hardly a ripsnorter is it? A turbo version perhaps? No no no. Turbo engines are crap. And don’t get excited about the possibility of a 3.9i V8 – just think of the torque steer. So it has to be the CRX engine.

  But if they do this, the MG purists will be running around, waving their arms and pulling their beards, whinging about how Rover have sold out. If they use the CRX engine and the CRX floorpan, George Simpson will probably end up like Georges Besse. Beardies have the most awful temper, I’ve always found.

  The Rover parts bin is filled to overflowing with some lovely items, but trying to make them into a sports car is like trying to make an origami ice-breaker out of six-inch nails. And if they do the decent thing and design the car from scratch, it will end up being more expensive than the Koenig Testarossa drop head.

  The worst thing is that even if they get the green light now and use the best bits they can find, it won’t reach the Rover showrooms until midway through 1993 at the earliest.

  No one can say for sure what motordom will be like then, but here are a few fairly safe bets. The roads will be chocabloc. Kinnock will be taxing cars like they’re going out of fashion. Which they will be. Anything even remotely sporty will be prone to vandalism by marauding gangs of environmentally aware Islingtonites. All in all, it will be a lot more difficult to enjoy a soft-top sports car than it is now.

  For heaven’s sake, even the Tories are doing their level best to make sure we don’t spend our disposable income. Labour will ban anything even remotely hedonistic. Soft tops are a fashion accessory and fashions change.

  Now, if Rover could squeeze a car in very fast before the Welshman gets into power and before Sizewell B blows up, maybe they’ll make some money out of it for a couple of years. How about lopping the roof off a CRX, fitting an MGish interior and applying some new badges? It would be a pretty horrid effort, I’m sure, but the badge, the engine and the looks would ensure that Mazda had a run for their money in the UK at least. Perhaps in America too.

  I’m fearful, though, that if they do go for this type of thing, it will be the new Metro that has the can opener taken to it and not the CRX. I’m also fearful that a not very good convertible would be a lot less desirable than a faster, cheaper and infinitely more practical hot hatch.

  The MG of old wasn’t a very nice car then, and because of all sorts of things that are way beyond Rover’s control, a modern version probably wouldn’t be a nice car now. And even if it was nice, it wouldn’t be appropriate.

  I have a message for George Simpson – don’t build a new MG now because you’ve missed the boat, but the next time an opportunity looks like presenting itself, for heaven’s sake, walk around the building, shouting a lot. For now, though, go down to the market research department and ask everyone in there what the bloody hell they were doing six years ago.

  History Lesson

  Before administering a weekly beating, my headmaster usually took the trouble to sit me down and explain why he felt it necessary to burnish my bottom. I never listened to a word he said. This is because the chair I had to sit in, and subsequently bend over, was quite simply the most comfortable piece of furniture in the world.

  And not only that; the room itself was exquisite with oak-panelled walls, 40-watt standard lamps, Chinese wash rugs and exquisite antiques. Being beaten in winter was especially pleasant as there was usually a huge log fire too.

  I daresay that if I’d been educated in the comprehensive system, the whippings would have been really rather unpleasant, but at a 450-year-old public school, they were a joy.

  Now the reason why I enjoyed my weekly visits to the headmaster, indeed the reason why I would deliberately get into serious trouble, was that his study, his whole house actually, felt absolutely right. From the moment that big front door creaked open, you were in a world of great taste. There was a sense of history and even the smell was right.

  This is probably why I like being in a Series 3 Jaguar XJ12. Again, the smell is right; again, it’s tasteful; again, there’s a sense of history.

  No one will buy a car if they do not feel comfortable with it, and by that I do not mean comfortable in the literal sense of the word.

  When the door closes, the interior has to feel good; it must be an extension of a person’s personality. And when he drives past a shop window, the reflection has to show a man at ease. I do not enjoy driving past mirrors in a Yugo Sana. I will not drive past anything in a Nissan Sunny ZX Coupe.

  Now, of course, everyone has different tastes and this, of course, explains why one car with an interior that I consider to be perfectly horrid will appeal to someone who has purple back-lighting in the recesses on their fireplace.

  This whole issue was brought to light by a drive in the new Lexus. It was a drive I could not enjoy. Make no mistake: this is one hell of a car, what with its cold cathode ray instrumentation, its quite superb 4-litre V8 engine and a ride that, in Germany at least, was unparalleled.

  Anyone who buys a car for its technical sophistication will undoubtedly covet the Lexus a lot. But I wonder; do people buy £35,000 luxury saloons for their technical sophistication? Or do they buy them because they ‘feel’ right?

  The Lexus has been six years in the making and it shows. Just about every single feature has been very carefully thought out indeed, where all the features from Rolls-Royce, Mercedes and BMW have been harmonised in one stately, if not terribly attractive, body.

  Yet, to my mind, it does not feel right in the way that a technically inferior Jaguar does.

  Toyota unashamedly admit that during the Lexus’s development, engineers carefully studied the competition. Good ideas were aped and there’s nothing wrong with that. Where others had compromised for whatever reason and Toyota felt they could do better, they did.

  But you can’t copy a feeling. You can’t endow a whole new marque with a sense of history. If you try, and Toyota have, you end up with something that smacks of being nouveau riche. This is a motorised equivalent of someone with a whole lot more money than style. A millionaire urchin. George Walker. Mickie Most. Frank Warren.

  Do not, for heaven’s sake, take this as a criticism of the Lexus. There’s just as much new money in this country as old money. There will be just as many people who will like the pop-out plastic drinks holder as there are who’ll hate it. I hate it.

  No question that Lexus is a better car than an XJ12. No question that the Jap car’s electric seatbelt-height adjuster is well sighted, no question that its thinking four-speed switchable overdriven auto box is so much smoother than the cast-iron three-speeder of the Jaguar.

  But if I had to drive past a shop window, I would ensure that I was in the XJ. Gary Lineker, I’m sure, would prefer
to be in the Lexus.

  The odd thing is that I quite like being seen in a Sierra 4 × 4 yet I can’t get into a Granada without feeling acutely embarrassed. I’ll happily swan around in a Volvo 740 estate but need a Balaclava helmet before I’ll set foot in a T-series Mercedes.

  I’ll pootle about all day long in a Lancia Y10, wearing a smug ‘I know something you don’t know’ expression. Yet in that little funster, the Charade GTti, I have to have a sticker on the back window telling passers-by it’s not my car.

  I cannot come to terms with Land Rover Discovery because it has stripes on the side and a blue interior, and I simply will not try a so-called special edition. And could you honestly drive around in a Nissan Bluebird Executive? Of course not. Not unless you had a box on your head.

  The point of all this is very simple: people should, and usually do, buy something with which they feel comfortable, irrespective of how clever it may be.

  Every single road test report on the Nissan 200SX will tell you just what a great car it is. They will talk of the power and the sophistication of that rear-wheel-drive chassis. They will talk too of the svelte looks and of the great precision in the build quality. But they will not dismiss it out of hand, as I do and you should, because it has brushed nylon seats.

  Ski’s the Limit

  When you are getting on for seven feet tall and you have size nine feet, there are all sorts of things you should not do. Tightrope walking over the Niagara Falls is one of them. Skiing is another.

  Manfully, I have been to the mountains twice a year for the past three years in a desperate bid to become good at getting around with planks on my feet. I even bought a primary-coloured anorak.

  But until April of this year, I have always failed. In 1988 at La Clusaz, I broke my thumb. In January 1990, at Val d’Isere, I tore the ligaments on the inside of my right knee and buggered up my cartilage for good measure as well.