Born to Be Riled Read online

  What if I tell you the engine and transmission is mounted in its own cradle-type sub frame and that the suspension geometry has been fine tuned to raise the rear roll centre? Gone yet?

  OK then, and this is all you’ll need. The rear wheels have been set with initial negative camber.

  It’s marvellous; the first ever car with medicinal properties. But it’s not alone out there. Next week, I’ll tell you all about the Nissan QX and how it put me into a deep, hypnotic trance.

  Big foot down for a ten gallon blat

  After a million or so years doing nothing, man really seemed to be coming along in the last hundred or so. He motorized his wheels, sprouted wings, went to the moon and, best of all, he invented the fax. But in the last 20 years it all seems to have stopped. Where’s the follow-up to Concorde? When are we off to Mars? What comes after rock ’n’ roll?

  I blame miniaturization. Clever people have stopped inventing things and started making what we’ve already got, smaller. When I had a hi-fi system in the 1970s, it was a massive, teak thing with an arm like something from the Tyneside docks. But today, you need tweezers to hit the buttons and Jodrell Bank to see the read-outs.

  Then there are cameras. I saw a guy in the States last month with a device that was actually lighter than air. Had he dropped it, it would have floated, which is perhaps a good thing, but honestly, you can’t beat my Nikon which needs its own team of baggage handlers at airports.

  And then there’s Kate Moss. Well look. I like big breasts, a big amount of food on my plate and I’d much rather watch Terminator 2 at the cinema than on video. I also like big cars, a point rammed home this month when I drove Big Foot. First of all, its nine-litre V8 gets through alcohol at the rate of 5 gallons for every 300 yards. This is good stuff. This is 29 gallons to the mile and that makes it by far the least economical vehicle in the world. It’s fast too. No one has ever done any performance tests, but having done a full-bore, full-power standing start I can report that we are talking 0 to 60 in about four seconds. This is impressive in any car but it’s especially noteworthy in something that has tyres that are over 6 feet tall. To get in, you climb up through the chassis, emerging into the cockpit through a trap door in the Perspex floor. Everything about the pick-up truck body perched up there on the top is fake. It’s just a plastic facsimile of a real Ford F150 – not even the doors open. There’s just one centrally mounted seat with a full, five-point racing harness and about 2500 dials in front. There are warning lights too, each of which was carefully identified by my tutor before I was allowed to set off. But I didn’t listen to a word he said. Nor did I pay attention when he talked me though the gearbox. It’s an auto but, though there’s no clutch, you do have to pull the lever back each time you want to shift up. And that was the problem: pull is the wrong word. You are supposed to wrench it back, as I’d soon discover.

  With the lecture over and my neck brace in place, the instructor was disappearing through the trap door when he turned and said: ‘Have you ever driven a fast car before?’ I told him I’d driven a Diablo and he left, wearing a peculiar smile on his face.

  To fire that mid-mounted tower block of an engine, you just hit a big rubber knob and then thank God you’re wearing a helmet. It’s loud like a hovering Harrier and when you hit the throttle it sends your vision all wobbly.

  About one second into what felt like an interstellar voyage, various dials and the noise suggested a gear change might not be such a bad idea, so I eased the lever back. Nothing happened. The revs kept on building, so I tried again. Nothing, except this time a selection of warning lights came on. By now I was in a temper so I yanked the lever back and the truck just seemed to explode forwards. This could catch a Diablo and run over it.

  And even though it was on wet grass, it seemed to ‘dig and grip’ pretty well. I never did find out how well, though, because by then I was struggling for third and may have hit first instead. I was in Vermont but people in Gibraltar heard the bang. They gave me another five minutes before the people from Ford hit their remote shutdown button and the engine died. I was going to give them hell but decided to run away instead when I noticed the rev-counter telltale said I’d taken the £100,000, nine-litre motor to 10,000rpm.

  I didn’t stop running until I was in Chicago, where I decided that Big Feet (is that the plural?) are wasted at exhibitions, jumping over saloon cars. We should use them for trips into town. I’m about to move to Chipping Norton where, I’m sure, it’ll go down a storm.

  Car chase in cuckoo-land

  Over the years James Bond has been Scottish, Welsh, Australian, and English. I tell you this because for no particular reason I was lying in the bath this morning thinking about Pierce Brosnan who, of course, is Irish.

  I guess he was on my mind because like every other small boy I was given Goldeneye for Christmas, a 007 video in which Sean Bean attempts to break some computers.

  The film is not bad, actually, but there are two problems. First, Brosnan delivers all his lines in a curious high-pitched squeak, making him about as frightening as Willie Carson.

  And second, Goldeneye plays host to the most preposterous car chase of all time.

  Bond, in an old Aston Martin DB5, duels with a Russian fighter pilot in a Ferrari 355 and the two screech, neck and neck, through Alpine passes in a flurry of tortured rubber and wailing engine notes.

  Well now, look here chaps. If you put Tiff Needell, who is the best driver I know, in a DB5 and Stevie Wonder in a 355, Stevie would be tucked up in bed at home, after a good supper, long before Tiff got into second gear.

  To make things even worse, the music was all wrong and the whole thing was intercut with a series of glib one-liners from Brosnan, which were only audible to dogs.

  There are so many things to love about Bond films, but the car chase sequences are always wrong. Who can forget that speeded up nonsense in Goldfinger, or the way his trick Aston V8 skied its way out of trouble in The Living Daylights?

  The first thing a decent car chase needs is plausibility. I mean, look at The Rock, a Hollywood blockbuster in which Nick Cage, a timid little man with pipe cleaners where his arms should be, leaps into a Ferrari 355 and sets off in pursuit of Sean Connery in a Hummer.

  Now even though Sean had been in jail for 30 years and would never have driven anything remotely similar to a Hummer before, and even though Cage had a vastly superior car, the 355 ended up crashing out of contention.

  It’s the same deal in Ryan O’Neal’s film – The Driver. I know the Pontiac Firebird is slow and truculent but there is no way, no matter how good you are, that you could keep up with one if you happened to be in a pick-up truck at the time.

  Why, I whisper to myself, do they not put the combatants in similar cars? That’s exactly what they did in Bullitt and that’s one of the many reasons why this is still regarded as THE best car chase of all time.

  The baddies have a Dodge Charger and Steve McQueen has a Ford Mustang – two cars which are evenly matched. Both have V8s, which provide all the aural backdrop you could possibly want, and as a result the director, Peter Yates, decided no musical accompaniment was necessary.

  When the baddies finally went off, into a garage, which explodes, it was for a very good reason and not because the driver had suddenly decided to apply the handbrake.

  Why do they always do that? Why, when there’s a corner to be negotiated, does the baddie always travel a little way beyond the apex and then attempt to turn?

  This is forgivable if you’re pottering along at 30, listening to The Archers, but when your life is on the line and you’re doing 90 down Regent Street, I suspect you’d be concentrating pretty damn hard on where the road goes next.

  The point is, of course, that a car skidding into an ammunition dump is good cinema. A car skidding into a pile of boxes is good television. But a car just stopping is what happens when directors try to stage a car chase for £4.50.

  When the two drivers career into a side street and every parked car i
s a 1972 Hillman Avenger, you know someone has been skimping.

  This is at its best in The Bill, when from time to time Metro panda cars are to be seen in hot pursuit of a suspect in a stolen Montego.

  Now we’ve seen enough Michael Buerk 999 crash emergency paramedic programmes to know that in real life thieves don’t care two hoots about the car they’ve nicked. They’ll ram anything that gets in their way.

  But in The Bill they indicate when turning left, stop for old ladies and, when there are width restrictions ahead through which they can’t quite fit, they’ll stop and run off on foot. That makes the subsequent arrest dull but much, much cheaper to film.

  Car chases should only be attempted when the producers have found a spare million down the back of the sofa.

  But, that said, money is no guarantee of success. You see, Days of Thunder with Tom Cruise and Vanishing Point with Barry Newman both featured the classic car-chase mistake.

  Here’s the scene: the road is straight as far as the eye can see and both combatants are flat out, alongside one another.

  It’s stalemate, or so you’d think, but wait, what’s this – the goodie has just changed gear and whehey, his car has roared ahead.

  What?!… did he just forget there was one more gear still to go?

  Small wonder joy-riders feel a need to go out at night provoking the police to chase them. If only they’d start putting decent car scenes in films again, there’d be no need to do it for real.

  Frost-bite and cocktail sausages up the nose

  In 1996 I remember hearing that the commandos are having to lower their standards in a bid to attract new talent.

  Spotty sixth formers were asked why they didn’t want to pursue a career in this most élite division of the army. They were told that it would involve getting up at 4 a.m. and running to Barnsley with a 200 lb pack on their backs. They’d be expected to eat leaves, wipe their bottoms with smooth stones and shoot down helicopters a lot.

  Having listened with a gormless expression that only teenagers can muster properly, one said, ‘It sounds very tiring’.

  And I reckoned he had a point. Why push your body to the limits when you can get a nice job in a bank, and flirt with the cashiers all day?

  It gets worse. Did you read all that stuff by Ranulph Fiennes in the News Review section a couple of weeks ago? The man was trying to walk across the Antarctic, towing a sledge that was even heavier than a night storage heater – but less useful. He had pus streaming down his chin and every night he’d pull off his socks to find another toe had come off.

  Then there was whatsisname in that upside-down boat. He’s my new hero for eschewing counselling, saying he’d rather go to the pub for a couple of pints, but that still doesn’t explain what he was doing down there in the first place, attempting to get a sailing boat through seas that could smash Manhattan.

  And what about Branson? Richard, my dear chap, you have it all. Why risk life and limb trying to get a helium balloon round the world when you have a fleet of 747s which are so much more appropriate?

  And the same goes for his American competitor, Steve Fossett. Now I met this guy last year, and he’s done everything; swum the Channel, raced twice at Le Mans, climbed six of the world’s seven highest mountains and sailed across the Pacific faster than anyone else.

  But he has $600 million in the bank. Can’t he just learn to play the piano?

  While driving to work the other day I was thinking about all this, wondering what drives people to go further and faster, to boldly go where no one has wanted to go before. And then I turned on to the M40 at junction 15 and cursed slightly. It had been 31 minutes since I left home and that’s a very average time indeed. On the way home, I’d try and do better.

  Aaaaaaargh. It hit me like a juggernaut. In my own small way, I’m no better.

  When you do the same journey, day in and day out, you start to set yourself little targets – can I be in Shipston by twenty past? Damn, I’m late and now I’ve got a minute to make up before I get to Halford.

  The only rules of engagement are that I don’t exceed the speed limits in villages but that’s it. In between the built-up areas, I drive like I’ve accidentally set fire to my hair and tried to put it out with scalding hot water.

  I stir the gear lever like I’m trying to beat an egg and stamp on the pedals as though they’re funnel web spiders. I know this is dangerous, but there is a feeling of elation when you arrive at a predetermined point in the fastest ever time.

  I’ve tried pointing out to myself that it doesn’t matter; that Chris Akabussi and Sarah Green won’t be waiting with The Record Breakers team. I’ve tried considering the cost, telling myself that when you really give an XJR some stick it uses a pint of petrol every 3000 yards.

  At full moo, the fuel injectors begin to look like a collection of firemen’s hoses, but it doesn’t matter. And nor does the pointlessness of it all.

  In my Ferrari, in the middle of the night, I’ve done the trip in 29 minutes. But yesterday I was in a diesel-powered, left-hand drive Renault Espace. I didn’t have the power to get past lorries, but this didn’t matter because I couldn’t see past them in the first place. And the time: 30 minutes, 22 seconds.

  The most important thing is that every day we need challenges. For some, that means chatting up colleagues at work or making the ultimate ratatouille. Others though need to balloon round the world or walk to Mars, or drive faster than anyone else.

  Richard Noble is working right now on a new car which, later this year, should break the sound barrier on land, achieving a speed in excess of 700mph.

  It is powered by two jet engines, which are mounted right up at the front to make the car-nose heavy like an arrow. Driver Andy Green is going to light those afterburners and sit there in what is basically a controlled explosion on wheels, hoping that he’ll get a three-line entry in The Guinness Book of Records.

  He knows, too, that just a few weeks after his attempt it may well be beaten by an American outfit headed by Craig Breedlove, and that his fifteen minutes of fame will be just that.

  But he’s going to try for it anyway, and in so doing he’s going to make our lives seem just that little bit more puny.

  Certainly, he will make my efforts to get to the M40 quickly look ever so inconsequential, which is why I’m going to pack it in and do something constructive. Tonight, I’m going to see how many cocktail sausages I can get up my nose.

  Bursting bladders on Boxing Day

  Christmas is a religious festival where Christians celebrate the birth of their spiritual leader by getting together with their families, giving one another socks and arguing. There is usually finger pointing over the turkey, and after lunch warring factions gather in different parts of the house, whispering about how they never want to see one another again. Mostly though, families can keep smiling through gritted teeth, never actually saying ‘Auntie, I hope this cracker blows your hand off’. On Boxing Day, everyone climbs into their cars and heads for home.

  This is when it starts to get difficult. I have driven up the side of cliff faces in Iceland, and I have survived the Bombay to Pune highway in India, but for sheer lunatic driving you can’t beat the M1 on Boxing Day. Husband is sitting there in his brand-new woolly pully, telling his wife that he never wants to go to her parents again. After 15 years, he has just admitted that her mother is a fat, interfering cow who, he hopes, contracts BSE very soon. She is crying and accusing him of not making an effort: ‘You know Daddy hates it when you call the Queen a lesbian.’ The upshot is that he is not paying the slightest bit of attention to the road and hasn’t noticed that visibility is down to two inches. He is still doing 90, relying on the glow from his new jumper for guidance.

  No kidding. Last year I was crawling down the inside lane doing 30mph, and there was a constant stream of over-burdened Volvos screaming past doing 90. And then, south of Northampton when the fog lifted, I was making up lost time, going past the Volvos; and they had the audacity to indu
lge in some major-league finger wagging. Well, they would have, except the row by this time had gone nuclear. She was on the mobile to the solicitor and he was admitting to eight affairs.

  Even if there was a lull in the fighting up front, it would be filled with squawking from the back. Daughter had just broken the son’s train who, in return, vomited on her new doll. Further back still, the boot was loaded to the point where the car weighed more than an Intercity 125.

  I find it little short of amazing that we can’t drive while drunk, because alcohol impairs our judgement, and yet we are at liberty to drive around while getting divorced. You are also allowed to drive while wanting a pee. When I go past a sign saying ‘services 30 miles’ and I need to go, I will admit here and now that I will let my speed creep up to 130 and I will overtake on whichever side of the road I see fit. It becomes all-consuming to the exclusion even of life preservation. And when I finally make it, I will screech to a stop in a disabled parking bay. I do not think I am alone in this.

  And I am certainly not the only person ever to have driven while suffering from hay fever. Last summer, I drove an 850bhp Nissan Skyline GTR even though I was virtually blind, a condition that became complete when I sneezed every four seconds. Here’s a fact: if you have a three-second sneeze at 60mph, you are blinded for a staggering 264 feet. I will also admit to driving around while enraged by something on the radio and yes, I’ve turned round to check my daughter is OK on the back seat. I have also driven with a splitting headache. Only the other day I had to pull on to the hard shoulder of the M40, where I fainted.

  In fact, the days when I climb into a car feeling refreshed and ready to cope with diesel spills and people in hats are pretty few and far between. And what about old people? If good driving is all about awareness and speed of reaction, then they should surely be taken off the roads. A 17-year-old youth just over the legal drink limit is going to be better able to deal with an emergency than the average, sober 70-year-old. But there are no laws about driving while under the influence of Anthony Eden, or having a hay fever attack, or with a bursting bladder.