Born to Be Riled Page 13

  Well, sorry to disappoint you Theresa, but I don’t live in London, or even near it. And I spend a damn sight more time in your city than anywhere else. And that’s how I know it needs more restaurants.

  I will not, as many people have asked, publicly apologize but I do feel the need to get on my knees and grovel at the feet of Eric Ferguson.

  Eric reminded me of a piece I wrote back in March, where I made some predictions about the forthcoming Formula One season.

  If I’d said Murray Walker would be eaten by aliens, it would have been more accurate. In fact, I said Michael Schumacher had gone to Ferrari because he knew something that we didn’t. I insisted he would be the 1996 world champion.

  I said that Damon didn’t have enough bottle and would be runner-up, that Jacques Villeneuve would make a complete fool of himself, and I dismissed Mika Hakkinen as deranged. All this from a man who, in private, was hurt that ITV never even asked him to get involved with their new assault on Grand Prix racing.

  Mr Ferguson suggests I know less about motor racing than I know about motor cars, a point that rankled at first but, having thought about it, he may have a point on that front too.

  I, after all, described the Ford Escort, on television, as a terrible, disappointing dog, and it went on to be Britain’s best-selling car.

  When I reviewed the Toyota Corolla I said it was dull and, to make the point, fell asleep on camera while reading a brochure about it. And the Corolla is now the world’s best-selling car.

  How about this for a gaffe? I once waxed lyrical about the Renault A610, saying that it was a fabulous car offering hitherto unseen levels of performance for a bargain basement price.

  And in the first year, Renault sold six of them.

  I am not finished yet. I completely misjudged the Peugeot 306, saying that it lacked sparkle and that it was boring. Ooops. It is, in fact, a wonderful car that I enjoy driving very much.

  Then there’s the Vauxhall Frontera. On first acquaintance I liked it, but since then I’ve discovered it’s very probably the nastiest new car you can buy.

  Yes, Mr Ferguson, sometimes I get it wrong and sometimes I don’t. And that automatically makes me a damn sight more reliable than most car dealers.

  You see, hate mail comes and goes but there is always a steady stream of letters from people who are being taken to Sketchley’s by garages.

  Every morning, it’s like ‘Dear Deirdre’ in metal. Today, someone wrote to say they’d spent £16,000 on legal fees, fighting a dealer who refused to mend their car.

  Then there’s a couple who say Nissan won’t honour a warranty on their Micra.

  I see in the papers this week that a well-known BMW dealer from Yorkshire, have been fined for knowingly selling fake BMW wheels for real BMW prices.

  And my sister, who bought a Mondeo on my recommendation, has vowed never to touch anything with a Ford badge again after the dealer told her a barefaced lie.

  The trouble is that, judging by the letters I get, all car dealers are as bad as each other. There’s a report in one of the motoring rags this week which tells of a man who bought a £61,000 Daimler only to find it was an out of date model that had been sitting in a field for two years.

  When he complained, he was offered a vastly inferior model as a swap.

  This whole state of affairs is shambolic. I’ve spent the bulk of this column apologizing for the error of my ways, and I would like to think that car dealers think hard about doing the same.

  I know margins on new cars are tight but a little courtesy and some honesty costs absolutely nothing.

  I really do believe that people in the motor industry sometimes forget what a huge purchase a car can be.

  My wife bought a new vacuum cleaner this week and was treated like a goddess by the salesman. And yet if she sauntered into a car dealership with £10,000 in her pocket, they’d only just stop short of calling her a bitch for wasting their time.

  Here’s a tip guys. When a customer comes in, offer them a cup of tea. And if you have premises in Birmingham, offer them biscuits too. It’ll have been a while since they ate out and they’ll be grateful.

  They’ll buy a car from you, and be happy, and then they’ll stop writing to me. This will free up more time for research and make my pontifications more accurate. As it is, I reckon Damon will be the champ in 1997 and that the Scorpio’s a real beaut.

  No room for dreamers in the GT40

  Back in 1962, Enzo Ferrari was trying to sell his company and Henry Ford was in the frame to buy it. The talks were going well and a deal was only days away when the old man decided that his pride and joy would wither and die under the weight of Ford’s global bureaucracy.

  Mr Ford was livid and told his Brylcreemed designers to build a car that would make mincemeat out of the Ferraris at Le Mans. He was going to teach that eye-tie dago a lesson he wouldn’t forget.

  The bunch of fives came in the shape of the GT40 which, in various guises, won the 24-Hours four times.

  Now, ever since I was old enough to run round in small circles, clutching at my private parts, I have been a huge fan of Ferrari and especially the 250 LM. But here was a Ford that was beating it. The GT40 became my favourite car and I would plead with my dad to buy a Cortina, to replace the last one he’d crashed. Ford need the money, I’d argue, to build more GT40s. I had three Dinky toy GT40s and my bedroom wall was plastered with pictures of them. I even sat in one once, when I was eight or so, and decided there and then it would be the car I’d have one day. Like the Lamborghini Miura, which was also built to spite Enzo Ferrari, it came from a time when car design was at its peak. Look at a McLaren or a Diablo today and tell me they have the sheer sexiness of a 1960s supercar.

  There have been loads of good-looking cars since but none had quite such dramatic lines as the GT40 – I’m talking about the racers, not the elongated and muted MkIII car.

  I was at the Goodwood Festival of Speed earlier in the summer and, though there were many stunning cars squealing up that hill, I maintain that the GT40 was best. Yes indeed, the best-looking car of all time. And fast, too. Nought to 60 took 5.4 seconds and you could get the needle round to the 170mph quadrant on the M1, should you choose. There were no speed limits then, because homosexuality hadn’t been invented.

  It was also a proper engine. I’ve always subscribed to the view that there ain’t no substitute for cubes and here was a car with 7000 of them in a rumbling V8 package. And there it was, in the grounds of the Elms Hotel in Abberley, fuelled and ready. The keys were in my hand, the sun was shining, the temptation to run round in circles was large. I was going to realize a 30-year-old dream and actually drive a GT40; and I didn’t really care that it was a 300bhp, 4.7-litre, Mustang-engined road car with a boot. Ford had only made seven of the things before the American magazine Road and Track said it was a badly made crock of donkey dung and the plug was pulled. And I, the man who loves the GT40 the most, was going to use it to tear up some tarmac.

  Actually, I wasn’t. For the first time in 10 years of road-testing cars, I had to admit, after desperate struggling, that I am just too tall. And no, it wasn’t a Mansell whinge about being uncomfortable. I was simply unable to get my knees under the dash, my head under the roof or my feet anywhere near the pedals.

  If you’d put a pint in front of John McCarthy when he stepped off that plane from Beirut and then peed in it when he was about to take a swig, he would have been less disappointed. But now I’m glad. Yes, I’m happy that Ford made the car only suitable for hamsters and other small rodents. I’m happy that my trip to Worcester was a waste of time and that I had to rewrite the item I’d written for the programme. I’m delighted that I shall go to my grave never having driven a GT40. Because the dream will never be tarnished with a dose of reality.

  Vanessa Redgrave was my childhood film star idol and now I’ve learned she is the sort of woman who probably doesn’t shave her armpits. Then there was the Ferrari Daytona, another car I’d wanted to drive since I w
as old enough to use crockery, but which actually feels like it should sport a Seddon Atkinson badge.

  So, if you’re a child longing for the day when you can get behind the wheel of a McLaren or a Diablo, may I suggest you stand in a bucket of Fison’s Make it Grow. Because by the time you’re old enough they will have been made to feel old and awful by the hatchback you use every day.

  A rolling Moss gathers up Clarkson

  You can see him coming from a mile away. He is wearing a blazer and cavalry twill trousers. The tie is undoubtedly regimental as is the stance – either that or someone has sewn a broom handle into the back of his Harvie & Hudson shirt. This guy talks pure home counties with a dash of Queen. He doesn’t have a plum in his mouth: it’s a banana.

  Now, we are not dealing here with a car bore. Car Bore Man has a beard and oily fingernails. Car Bore Man has an MG and drinks beer with twigs in it. Car Bore Man feels a genital stirring whenever you whisper ‘track rod end’ in his ear.

  Whereas Mr Blazer and Slacks would not be able to identify a track rod end if one were to leap out of a hedge and eat his foot. Mr Blazer and Slacks would have trouble telling the difference between a Humber and a humbug.

  Mr Blazer and Slacks, however, is even more boring because his specialist subject is… motor racing of yesteryear. Ask him who set what lap record for what team in the 1956 Cuban Grand Prix and he’ll know. In fact, there’s no need to ask because he’ll tell you anyway sooner or later.

  As far as Mr Blazer and Slacks is concerned, real motor racing stopped when tobacco sponsorship and seatbelts moved in. Today, he maintains, F1 is just a business where people with regional accents are paid huge sums of money to do something that’s no more spectacular than ironing.

  Real motor racers were gentlemen who used their family’s money in the pursuit of the ultimate lap. Real motor racers did the decent thing and died whenever they crashed, which was every weekend.

  Unfortunately, I’m a soft touch for these people. They assume that, because I know how much an Audi A3 costs, I must be on first name terms with Archie Scott Brown and Donald Fotherington Sorbet who, don’t you know, set the lap record in 1936, etc. etc. etc.

  At this point I discover horse-like qualities and manage to fall asleep while standing up.

  There is nothing in the world quite so dull as trips down memory lane, especially when the lane in question is Silverstone.

  Or so I have always thought. In the last couple of weeks I’ve been researching a programme I’m making about Aston Martin, and in among the snot-like offal I’ve encountered some three-quarter inch pearls.

  Then I met Stirling Moss who, in less than ten minutes, managed to convince me that Fifties motor racing was more exciting than watching an Apache helicopter gun-ship trying to get a Hellfire missile up the exhaust of a well-driven Dodge Viper.

  This is because you never knew what would happen next. There was a driver in the 1930s who, as night fell, pulled into the pits while racing in the 24 hour race at Le Mans.

  He changed out of his sports jacket and suede shoes into a dark suit and formal black lace-ups so that he should be properly dressed. And the following morning he changed back again.

  His team, it seems, didn’t mind one bit. Indeed, on the very last lap of the race, they hauled him in to the pits again, saying they were nearly out of champagne and did he want the last glass?

  And then there’s the sportsmanship. Stirling once travelled all the way to Indonesia so that he could engage some long-forgotten adversary in mortal combat on the track.

  When Stirling’s axle broke half-way through the event, things looked bleak. But the other chap lent him one – a kindly gesture which Stirling repaid by beating him.

  This was the old way. In the final round of the 1959 World Sports Car Championship Aston Martin set fire to their pit garage, which would have been curtains. However, the team next door pulled its car out of the race so the hot favourites could carry on.

  At around the same time, a driver called Peter Jopp – you simply must know him – suffered a mechanical failure and sought assistance from a fellow competitor who was lounging around on the grass. ‘Only too delighted,’ said the other chap, summoning his parents’ butler. ‘Courtney,’ he barked at the old retainer, ‘after you’ve poured Mr Jopp a Pimms, perhaps you’d be good enough to mend his clutch.’

  The spirit was matched only by the amateur nature of technological developments. When Ferrari developed a flip-up rear spoiler on the back of their racer, they told the other teams it was a device to prevent fuel spilling on the hot exhausts. And everyone believed them.

  Cooper found one of its racers wouldn’t fit on the trailer so they sawed the rear end off, only to find that it went faster as a result.

  Now when you’ve been brought up on a diet of Schumacher and launch control devices, this is just delightful. Drivers racing for no money. Team bosses helping one another. Pulling into the pits for a glass of fizz. It’s all too agreeable.

  But what was the motivation? Stirling Moss doesn’t even hesitate. ‘I did it because I loved driving a good car quickly.’

  It’s funny. He was standing there in a blazer and slacks. He had a clipped accent and a smart tie. I felt my eyelids getting heavy, but the man takes the era and brings it alive.

  Some say he is the greatest driver that ever lived. Well I don’t know about that, but I do know this. When he starts to reminisce, I start to feel like I’ve got a wet fish down the front of my trousers.

  Can’t sleep? Look at a Camry

  By ten o’clock in the evening these days my body is no longer capable of movement.

  If you were to use sensitive military equipment you might detect a slight rise and fall of the chest, and perhaps a gradual downward trend in the eyelid department, but that’s about it.

  If you were to use ordinary medical techniques you’d pronounce me dead, and take away my eyes and liver for transplant purposes.

  Tiredness comes in great waves, reaching a point where even speech is no longer possible. Uttering a simple ‘uh’ is out of the question. I am, quite literally, dead to the world.

  It’s a condition that lasts right up to the moment when my head hits the pillow, and then BANG: the eyes flash open, the heart begins to beat like a Deep Purple drum solo and my mind could beat a Cray supercomputer at chess.

  I write scripts. I think of new story ideas, and already this year I have six plots for new books. As the digital clock continues its remorseless march past 4 a.m., I’m sitting up bathed in sweat, wondering why the vicar had popped out of the wardrobe at that precise moment.

  And what were Genesis thinking about when they decided that they were lawnmowers and it was time for lunch… wait a minute. I wonder if anyone knows what the car was on the cover of Peter Gabriel’s first solo album? I could do a story about that.

  The story is then written and mentally logged by which time it’s 5 a.m. and I’m starting to get angry. In 90 minutes, I shall have to get up and go to work. I can’t do a day’s work on 90 minutes’ sleep. Not when I only had 34 minutes last night.

  I’ve tried everything. I’ve done the unspeakable and taken up decaffeinated coffee, which is like liquid lettuce. I’ve tried drinking huge quantities of Scotch. I’ve counted sheep, but that all went terribly wrong when I started to wonder whether other farmyard animals could bound over fences. Can pigs jump? That’s a big, big question.

  I’ve tried herbal remedies, though they also keep me awake, worrying that someone will find out. Clarkson’s on herbal medicine. Must be a poof.

  The problem is that I will not use prescribed drugs. Once, on a long, no smoking flight from Beijing to Paris – don’t ask – I took a Mogadon and was still wondering how such a tiny, tiny tablet could possibly work on a 15 stone adult… when I went unconscious.

  I was in a coma all through the stopover in Sharjah, and at French customs I thought I was the captain of a federation starship. Do NOT take a sleeping tablet, unless you have nothi
ng on for about two weeks.

  The worst thing about insomnia is that no one sympathizes. Tell someone you can’t sleep and they’ll give you chapter and verse on how easily they nod off. Why do they do this?

  When I meet a blind person, I don’t tell him that I can see just fine.

  But now it doesn’t matter any more, because for the past week I’ve been getting the full eight hours a night. I’ve been waking up each morning well able to handle all manner of heavy machinery.

  The cure is not, I’m happy to say, a dangerous and addictive drug. It is not some dubious root from Mongolia. It is not alcohol either, unfortunately. No, the cure comes from a most unlikely source – Toyota.

  You only have to mention the word ‘Camry’ and I’m long gone. Indeed, I had to get a colleague to type ‘the C word’ just then because if I’d done it, I’d have been unable to finish the story.

  I want to make it plain that this is by no means a bad car. For the money, you’d be hard pressed to find a better built machine on the road. It’s quiet. It’s comfortable, and it’s incredibly easy to drive.

  But all this engineering whiz kiddery is shrouded in by far the dullest shaped body I have ever seen in my whole life. There is no single feature that is in any way even slightly outstanding. There is a bonnet because you need one to hide the engine. There is a passenger cell where people sit, and there is a boot for luggage.

  All I need do now is think about the shape and I come over all drowsy. If, while cleaning my teeth at night, I glance out of the bathroom window and see it in the yard, that’s it – I’m a goner.

  Now obviously, we can’t all buy a C**** just to help us sleep – I mean the 2.2 litre base model is £19,000 and that’s a hill of money. But I suspect a photograph of such a car pinned to your bedroom ceiling would work.

  Or cut out this next bit of the story, and read it before you go to sleep every night. The C****, you see, has HSEA glass to reduce glare and eye fatigue and cut down on heat build-up. HSEA cuts ultraviolet by 86 per cent and solar energy by 74 per cent. The stereo has autoscan… feeling drowsy yet?