Round the Bend Read online

  Just yesterday, a man in a beaten-up van deliberately straddled two lanes to make sure I could not get past. It would have made no difference at all to his life if I’d done so, but there was no way in hell he was going to let a Roller by. I find that shoulder-saggingly depressing.

  I also find it wearisome that I must now go on to say what the car is like. Because I know this article will appear on the website, where readers will be invited to have their say. And some will wonder why, once again, I’m reviewing a car that so few people can afford.

  Well, yes, I could tell you all about Hyundai’s new supermini, which, let’s say, 5 per cent of the country could buy. But what’s the point because the other 95 per cent aren’t interested.

  Perhaps 0.01 per cent can afford a Rolls but a huge number of those that can’t are still interested in knowing what it’s like. Because contrary to the teachings of Britain’s think tanks, there’s no harm in dreaming …

  The Rolls-Royce Phantom has been a success story. More than a thousand have been sold already and, much to the surprise of everyone, a great many are actually driven by their owners. The Maybach is for chauffeurs. It feels all wrong in the front. But when you’re in the back of a Rolls, you spend most of your time dreaming up reasons for firing the man in the peaked cap and taking the wheel yourself.

  It is an epic car, quite unlike anything else in the world. Because every single atom of every single component is designed only to make your life as quiet and as comfortable as possible. There is no sportiness in the mix whatsoever.

  I imagined that the coupé would continue to amble down the same road. But no. BMW, which owns Rolls, says it’s aimed more at ‘the driver’. And because of this, it is the first Rolls-Royce ever to be fitted with a sport button. That’s like putting Prince Philip in training shoes. Pointless. Just leave it alone. I did.

  There are some other issues as well. You cannot see much out of the tiny rear window, the backward-opening suicide doors are a nuisance in tight spaces, and the interior is polished so vigorously that everything reflects everything else. You spend half your time being startled by shadows. And when the sun is low in the sky it bounces off the dash in a glare so vivid it can detach your retinas.

  Then there’s the sat nav, which comes from BMW. It’s hard to fathom, is devoid of any useful information and powered by a program that’s part fiction, part comedy. Oh, and when you want to tighten the scale when approaching a complicated junction, the whole screen goes blank until you’re on the other side, going the wrong way.

  Worst of all, though, are the seats. They are too hard, there is no side support at all and after one four-hour drive, I had backache. ‘Good,’ you might be thinking, if you are in a government think tank. ‘That means the rich bastard won’t mind when we force him to rent his stupid car to a fat woman in the north.’

  Ah, but you see, in a Rolls all of these faults are lost in a sea of unparalleled joy.

  Providing you leave that sport button alone, it will sashay down a motorway in such a way that there’s no need to worry about whether it is better to arrive or to travel hopefully. It doesn’t feel like you’re doing either. It’s like you’re in a big kapok ball.

  Mind you, it is still pretty fast. Its performance figures are nearly as good as those of a Maserati GT. And it would be faster still if the slushmatic box didn’t take a full second to make sure each gear change is as smooth as possible.

  It’s equally relaxing in town. While everyone else frets, the only thing you need worry about in the Rolls is keeping your eyes open. Speed bumps? Bah. Take them as fast as you like.

  It must have half killed BMW to make a car this way because it, like every other manufacturer in the world, always puts a bit of hardness into its products. This means they are compromised everywhere just so they can take Stowe Corner at Silverstone without falling over.

  Because the Rolls cannot take Stowe Corner very well, it is sublime in the real world. The big 6.75-litre V12 blows up its fuel in such a way you don’t know it’s happening. It’s like being moved around by a muscle. The suspension feels like six miles of silk and everything you touch inside the car feels like it was made over a period of several years by a man from the nineteenth century in a brown store coat. Let me put it this way. The trim alone weighs more than an entire Triumph Herald.

  Complaining, then, about poor rear visibility is like Arthur Negus complaining that one of the doors on a Georgian tallboy is a bit sticky. It’s part of the price you pay for something that feels, looks and is genuinely beautiful.

  So there we are. If you are the sort of chap who likes to drive his own Rolls, there’s no point dragging around the six acres of empty shag-piled splendour you get in a Phantom saloon. Yes, the coupé is £27,000 more expensive but it is easier to park. And it does come with a Range Rover-style drop-down boot lid you can sit on when having a picnic.

  The only proper drawback is the loathing from other road users. But you know what. That’s their problem, because style and comfort are not deadly sins. Envy, on the other hand …

  10 August 2008

  Oh, tell me it’s not too late

  Aston Martin Vantage

  Over the years, we’ve been told by solemn-faced experts that life as we know it is about to end. Strange to report, then, that we’ve managed to survive Communism, particle accelerators, fascism, asteroids, Cuba, bird flu, global warming, terrorism, nuclear war, various tsunamis and Aids, and now we are going to be finished off by Fannie Mae.

  I don’t even know what Fannie Mae is. Apparently, it’s not a bank and it’s not a building society, but it seems to have been buying mortgages and debts from various institutions. And then, one day, it appears to have woken up and thought, ‘Oops.’ Quite how it was allowed to get in this mess, I’m not sure. Did nobody think it odd that a mysterious organization was stomping around the world buying debt? Did nobody stop for a moment and wonder if, perhaps, Fannie Mae was a home for mentals? I mean, we’re talking here about an operation named after the human bottom. How did it sign its deals? With crayons?

  Seriously, if I set up a business called Arse and went around buying outstanding loans on the nation’s never-never-land three-piece suites, I wouldn’t get very far before someone with a soothing voice and a corduroy jacket put me in a padded room for the rest of time.

  Whatever. We have now arrived at a point where the world is going bankrupt. Politicians keep explaining that Britain is well placed to face the future, but we’re not. Not when the food in our fridge is worth more than the contents of our jewellery box and we’re scared witless that Bradford & Bingley is about to go belly up with all our life savings.

  The net result is that half the country can’t afford to buy anything and the other half daren’t. This means companies can’t sell anything, which means they can’t employ anyone, which means everyone will fail to pay their mortgages, which will increase the likelihood of Bradford & Bingley going bust, which will accelerate the downward spiral to such an extent that it will be spinning faster than the atom-basher in Geneva. In short, we are all on the Titanic. It is holed. It is a mathematical certainty that it will sink. And all Gordon Brown can do is offer the ship’s most elderly passengers a few extra winter logs as they drown in a sea of disease, debt and destitution.

  Needless to say, cars are an early casualty of the meltdown. Having seen orders plummet by 44 per cent in July, Aston Martin sold just nineteen cars in the whole of August, according to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, down from fifty-eight in the same period last year. Porsche sales, meanwhile, were down by 58 per cent, Land Rover also by 58 per cent and Jaguar by 41 per cent. Potential customers, then, are split into two groups: those who can buy but won’t, and those who want to buy but can’t. Because no loans are available.

  It’s all such a shame. Not just for the 800,000 people who earn their living from cars in this country, but because for 200,000 years, human beings – with the notable exception of eco-activists who want t
o go backwards – have strived to improve the quality of their lives: to travel more quickly, to enjoy better health, to live longer and to be more comfortable. The labour-saving, fast-acting television remote control is a classic case in point. It is just so human: no dolphin would even begin to see the point.

  And it’s the same story with cars. Just last night I left the Top Gear test track in the new Aston Martin Vantage, and, using just a couple of cubic feet of petrol, it brought me right to my door, ninety miles away, in just ninety-five minutes. That, in itself, is an achievement that any migrating wildebeest would kill for. And yet this snarling, sculptured machine is so much more than an auxiliary transport module. It’s also a feast for your eyes, an electrode for your heart and a song for your soul. And now, thanks to Fannie Mae, we may be about to kiss it goodbye. Pity, because for the first time since it came out three years ago, the Vantage can be classed as a genuine player, and not just a pretty-boy 911-substitute for cocks with a James Bond fantasy.

  Oh, some of the old niggles remain. The dash, for instance, looks lovely, but like so many things that look lovely – loon pants, for example – it doesn’t work very well. Because there’s no central command unit, such as you find in a BMW or a Mercedes-Benz these days, the buttons are all over the place, and because there are thousands of them, they have to be small. Hitting the right one while on the move is like trying to stab mercury with a cocktail stick while standing on a power plate.

  Then there are the seats, which are far too hard, and the manual gearbox, which is fine … except that to engage second and fourth you need to dislocate your elbow. And the iPod connection, which has never heard of an iPod. And the Volvo sat nav system, which, no matter what you tell it, simply picks a destination you’ve been to recently and sends you there instead. The other day I tried to go to a Top Gear shoot and ended up at my mother’s house, having phoned someone I hate on the way.

  It sounds like I am not enamoured of Aston’s Vantage, but the simple fact of the matter is this. All of these problems existed in the old car, and that was hugely popular before Fannie Mae did a Bear Stearns and Northern Rocked its Freddie Mac.

  Truth be told, I don’t really care about little faults like this. What I did care about on the old car was that its mouth kept writing cheques its engine couldn’t cash. You put your foot down and there was a huge bellow, but not much extra speed.

  The problem was that Aston Martin and Jaguar were both playing for the blue oval. And politics meant the Aston couldn’t be as fast as Jaguar’s XKR. Now, though, Jaguar belongs to Mr Patel, and Aston is in the hands of some Kuwaitis, so the politics have gone. In their place stands a 4.7-litre version of Jag’s V8. The result is 420bhp instead of 380, and some proper get-up-and-go. Accelerate hard and the driver of a Porsche 911 Carrera S – it was R Hammond last night – is not going to see where you went. And not only because he can’t see over the steering wheel.

  The amount of carbon dioxide produced by the new engine is less than before. Not that it’ll make any difference to your tax bill. Or the weather. More importantly, the suspension has been tweaked such that it’s still firm on a motorway but much softer at low speed. And while the body remains the same, the wheels are wider, so the car looks even better.

  But the best thing about this car is that because it’s so brilliant at some things and so awkward at others, it has a human quality. Some cars you can like. Some you can use. And some you can respect. This one, though, you can love. I do. And that’s why I’d be so sad if Aston were to wither and die in the current economic climate.

  However, while I am pessimistic, I suppose we should look more carefully at the perils we’ve faced these past fifty years. War. Asteroids. Jonathon Porritt. Russia. The IRA. And so on.

  They’ve come. They’ve frightened us. And then, contrary to the teachings of the scaremongers, they’ve all just sort of fizzled out and gone away.

  14 September 2008

  An old flame returns to relight my fire

  Volkswagen Scirocco

  In its latest glossy press information pack, Volkswagen says the original Scirocco Storm was sold with a 1.8-litre engine. This is a mistake. It is referring to the 1781cc unit that was, in fact, not introduced until October 1982, by which time it was making the Mk 2 Scirocco. The Storm, like all fuel-injected Mk 1s, was sold with a 1588cc engine. I’m surprised the people at VW didn’t know this.

  I, on the other hand, know everything about those early cars. I even know what sort of fuel injection system they used and how big the tyres were. Bosch K-Jetronic and 175/70/13s, in case you’re interested. Furthermore, I know the leather-lined Storm was available in only noisette brown or silver green.

  The Scirocco, for me, is very important. I was interested in cars long before VW thought about making a coupé version of the Golf. But it was the result of its efforts that caused me to want to write about them.

  Here’s why. Back in 1980, I lived up north, in the flatlands around Doncaster, and most of my friends were in the Young Farmers, which was not so much a club as a way of wife. You had dirty fingernails, stout shoes, a dislike of the south in general and London in particular, and either a Ford Escort RS2000 or a Dolly Sprint. One chap had a TR7 and we all thought he might be a mental.

  I didn’t really fit either, because while they all understood the art of ploughing and drilling, I thought fields were something for crashing into. And I wanted a Golf GTI. ‘It’s what they’re all driving in London these days,’ I said one night in the Carpenter’s Arms. This was a mistake. A deathly hush fell over the bar. Heads turned. A dart slammed into a wall. Admitting that I might in some way be interested in the buying habits of people in Fulham was the same as admitting that I was interested in the sexual orientation of Larry Grayson.

  The silence was broken after several agonizing moments by one chap who was wearing especially stout shoes. ‘Are you a poof?’ he said menacingly. Which is the catch-all northern prelude to someone having their head kicked off.

  The lure of the GTI, however, was strong. So I agonized over what colour I’d like and precisely what sort of modifications I could afford if I took it to the GTI tuning centre at Silverstone. And then my eye was caught by the Scirocco. Underneath, it was the same as the Golf, but it had just the most agonizingly pretty body. So should I have this instead?

  Unable to talk to anyone about this, in case they thought I was a southerner, I turned to the various motoring magazines, all of which were completely useless. They told me how big the boot was and the benefits of fuel injection and the precise dimensions of the rear seat, but I didn’t care about any of this. All I wanted to know is whether, if I bought a Scirocco, it’d cause me to have more sex than if I bought a Golf.

  I decided pretty much there and then that, one day, I’d write about cars in a whole new way … but in the meantime I moved to London and bought the Scirocco – a GLI with a tan interior – and in a year I clocked up 54,000 miles in that car. I loved it. I can even remember the numberplate – PUA 516W – and I can definitely remember how heavy the steering became when I fitted 205/60 tyres.

  Eventually, I replaced my beloved Mk 1 with a Mk 2. This was a terrible car, partly because I fitted a white steering wheel to match the white paintwork, and partly because the damn thing was a fully paid-up member of Exit. Over a period of six painstaking months, it used its own clutch cable to saw itself very nearly in half.

  However, in the same way that we cannot remember rainy days from our childhood, or pain meted out by dentists, I tend to forget the dismal Mk 2 when I think of the Scirocco and remember with a dreamy fondness all the good times I had with (and in) that wonderful Mk 1.

  And that’s why, as much as anyone else alive, I was so pleased to hear that VW was going to revive the name and bring the old girl back.

  To drive, the new model feels pretty close to the Golf GTI, on which it’s based. Which means it feels pretty close to perfect. The only weirdness is that it takes 7.2 seconds to get from 0 to 60, whi
ch is just half a second less than my old Mk 1 took twenty-eight years ago.

  More important than the speed, though, is the way it looks, and I’m not sure. The original Scirocco was designed by Giugiaro, who is a modern-day Leonardo da Vinci. This new one was done in-house, and from some angles it’s what Michael Winner would call historic. But from others it’s a bit wet. And you should definitely be aware that in white it looks like a Stormtrooper’s helmet.

  In the past, this would have been a big problem because the only reason for buying a Scirocco, rather than a much cheaper Golf, was the extra style. Now, though, things are a bit different because, incredibly, the coupé is only £90 more than the hatch.

  And you’ll soon offset that because even though the two cars have a 2-litre direct-injection turbocharged engine, the Scirocco produces less carbon dioxide than the Golf. And is therefore in a lower tax band.

  For even bigger savings, you could wait until VW introduces new versions of the car. One will have a 1.4-litre unit, which comes with a supercharger and a turbo, and the other – God help us – will be a diesel. Frankly, though, these cheapo models will be a bit like the fake Prada handbag my daughter bought on a recent day trip to Thailand. It looks like the real thing, but because it isn’t, it’s actually a bit crap.

  Eventually, I am sure, there’ll be a 3.2-litre, four-wheel-drive version – they could call it the Storm – but for now, the TSI is the model to go for, and you should spend an extra £1,300 on the DSG system. It’s the only flappy-paddle gearbox that actually works in the real world.

  Frankly, there aren’t that many other boxes to tick. You get, as standard, multi-adjustable suspension that allows you to make the ride uncomfortable, you get climate control, you get a million bouncy castles that boing out of the dash if you hit a tree and you get a brilliant central command system that can be hooked up to your iPod. The only option I’d bother with is the smoker package. It’s only £15, and choosing it would irritate the sanctimonious bastard who decided not to fit ashtrays as standard. If they offered a chlamydia pack, they couldn’t sound more holier-than-thou.