Born to Be Riled Read online

  This, however, does mean I had a chance to check out the handling. And yes, I’ll admit that for an off-roader it steers and rides and corners with a surprising degree of comfort and agility. In saloon car terms, it’s right up there with, say, a Lada Samara.

  Now, of course, all these drawbacks are to be expected in a car that’s been designed to drive through swollen rivers and up sheer cliff faces. But the Toyota, sadly, can’t do either of those things. Indeed, with its road tyres, even a gently undulating grassy field proved too much.

  I stabbed away at the centre differential locking button like a dying man trying to restart the engine on his crippled submarine, but it was to no avail. With insufficient grip, and even less torque, I was merely digging a hole that eventually would have taken me back to England. I’m afraid that despite a high ground clearance, the Rav4 is about as much use in backcountry New Zealand as an aqualung made of cheese.

  Toyota has simply tried too hard. By trying to make an off-road ‘car’, they’ve ended up with something that’s no good at anything.

  Now this applies equally well to Suzuki’s Vitara, but at least this makes up for its numerous shortfalls by being handsome in a hairdressery sort of way.

  I’m forced to say the same applies with the three-door Rav4 too, but I had a five-door version, which is a terrible, terrible mutation that looks like it was styled by a World War Two plastic surgeon.

  And the interior was done by someone who obviously works in a poorly lit room. The dash is so bland that my colleagues resorted to drawing extra dials and switches on it with chalk. And because we couldn’t overtake anything, and therefore each journey took an age, we ended up with six boost gauges, a rev counter, an eight track, a CD autochanger and, if memory serves, a fart counter too.

  Worse than the tedious innards, though, is that, unlike any other off-roader, it doesn’t have a high driving position, so you can’t sneer at other drivers. Not that there’s much to sneer about in a car with almost no redeeming features.

  Certainly, you can’t sneer about the price. The five-door Rav4 is an almost unbelievable £17,000, making it the most preposterously overpriced piece of under-powered, nausea-inducing nonsense ever to hit Britain’s roads.

  Hard words, but just to make sure Toyota and I don’t have to do pugilism again, I’ve now swapped it for one of their Land Cruisers – a huge diesel automatic, and I love it. Sure, it won’t go round corners, but each time it ploughs off the road it just ploughs through whatever it hits.

  It knows its place in the world. It doesn’t try to be something it’s not, and concentrates instead on simply being big. If the Rav4 is ‘jus’ in a Travelodge, the Land Cruiser is gravy in a transport café.

  Cuddle the cat and battle the Boche

  Some time between the seventh and eighth grappa, Tiff climbed back into his chair and announced that he wanted to buy a BMW M5. At first, we thought he was a little more tired and emotional than usual, but his arguments seemed rational. ‘Its engine is so good and I love its looks and it feels so right and you can pick one up for £15,000 or so,’ he said, before falling off his chair again. Mr Editor Blick and I didn’t notice though, because we were deep in conspiratorial mutterings. We’ve got to stop him. We’ve got to demonstrate that the supercharged Jaguar is better.

  The next day, Count Quentula was out parking cars for his village fête when I called with the news. ‘Tiff wants a Bee Em,’ I said. ‘Oh Christ,’ said Quentin. ‘The poor deluded fool. I’d better let him have a go in my S Class.’ And therein lies the problem. At this level in the market, people have nailed their colours to the mast and almost nothing will shake them loose. Tiff likes BMWs. Quentin likes Mercs. And I like Jags. When I start banging on about my XJR, Tiff will look up from his 24th grappa and ask if I’d like another gin and tonic. ‘And how are the Masons these days?’ When Tiff is in mid-soliloquy about the smoothness of a BMW 6, Quentin will interrupt to ask if he’s run over any old ladies yet.

  And when the Count tells us about the unburstability of a 500, Tiff and I wonder how we managed to miss his 50th birthday. With cars like this it doesn’t matter what they look like, or how fast they go, or whether they do 12 or 200 miles to the gallon. It’s an image thing, pure and simple.

  The data is confused, but some figures suggest that up to 90 per cent of Britain’s executives never change marques. If they start out in business with a C Class, they are in Merc’s web and there is no escape. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, a great many bosses did the unthinkable and deserted Jaguar’s leaking ship. But the big cat was in their soul, and now the cars are made properly again many are coming back to the fold. This, of course, means that if BMW wants to maintain its healthy market share, the new 5 Series only needs to be as good as the old one. Tiff will want one no matter what. Thus, as one magazine has called the new boy ‘close to perfect’, you could accuse the Hun of overkill.

  Certainly, I can’t remember driving any other car which does quite so many things quite so well. The £30,000 528 I tested was truly fast and yet eerily efficient. It has room in the back for a small tennis tournament and yet it handles with an aplomb that leaves you breathless. Then there are the details, the best of which is the interior lighting. You get the usual red instruments, which BMW says provides a restful get-you-home environment, and I’d have to agree. But in the new 5 Series they’ve gone further, because next to the mirror are two tiny red spotlights, providing a stylish red glow around the centre console. It gives the whole dash an exquisite 3D effect and, in addition, you can find your phone and fags.

  For the Tiffs of this world, for all BMW drivers, this car is better than close to perfect. It’s a solid 10. If it had been crap you’d have loved it, but it’s brilliant, so I dare say you’ll want to spend your evenings in the garage with it and a bucket of KY jelly. Me? I couldn’t wait to see the back of it. And Quentin is hardly jumping up and down, clutching his privates, as he waits for a go. Dynamically, it is superior to anything for the same sort of money made by Jaguar or Mercedes. But we don’t care. When I overtake someone in the Jag, you can feel the warmth of approval. People point and coo; they’re talking about how good it looks and how quality is better these days. Middle England wants a Jag. Now try the same overtaking manoeuvre in a 528 and feel the hate. There goes another pushy yuppie, hoping to hit a tree before his ticker gives out. Gaps that open for Jag Man are closed when you’re in a BMW. People don’t like them.

  I tried this argument on Tiff but got nowhere. ‘Look,’ he said, pouring another grappa. ‘You can go faster in a BMW than you can in a Jag or a Merc.’ And then he fell off his chair again.

  Secret crash testing revealed

  When you read a road test report in any newspaper or magazine, you will learn how a car handles at its very limits of adhesion.

  The reporter will tell you that on a twisting mountain road in the South of France he hurled the new model into a series of fast sweeping bends, and felt the front tyres fighting for grip under acceleration, and the back swaying this way and that under braking.

  Amazing. The guy has flown out there, climbed into a car that he’s never even seen before, and within hours he’s taking it right to the outer reaches of its performance envelope… without crashing.

  Formula One drivers test their cars week in and week out. They’re on first-name terms with every nut and bolt. They could drive each corner blindfolded. And yet even the great Michael Schumacher is capable of flying off the track backwards from time to time. So what’s going on here?

  Well a motoring journalist must try to convince his readers that he is, in fact, a great deal more talented than Michael Schumacher, and that the only reason he isn’t out there in an F1 Ferrari is that he’s too fat – or in my case, tall and fat.

  So, if we crash, – and we do, a lot – then it is important to keep the fact hidden from our readers.

  Did you, for instance, ever hear about the chap who missed a signpost while driving a £30,000 Mercedes G Wagen a
longside a river in Scotland? I was following him at the time and remember well the moment when it stopped bouncing along the bottom and began to move in a serene and graceful way… like it was floating. Which it was.

  It bobbed along for some time while the public relations man hopped about on the bank wondering what on earth to do. Either he could get the ghillie to pull it out with his Land Rover, in which case the pictures would appear in every newspaper the next day. Or he could let it sink so no one would have anything to point their cameras at.

  He let it sink.

  Then there was the guy who stuffed a Ford RS200 into one of Scotland’s more pointy parts. He claims he went off the road in this £50,000, mid-engined supercar to spare the life of a £40 sheep which had wandered into his path.

  So what about Quentin Willson, my colleague on Top Gear, who, while going the wrong way round the first corner at Silverstone in a £60,000 De Tomaso Pantera, got two wheels on the grass? He hit the barrier, bounced into the pit wall and would have hit the barrier again but there was nothing left by then.

  And surely, no one can have forgotten about the Guardian’s man who changed into first while doing 90 or so in the then new Jaguar XJ220. They had to take the engine back to Coventry in a Hoover bag.

  But the only reason we heard about this is because it was reported by the man from the Mail who, just weeks later, quietly crashed a £200,000 Bentley Azure.

  I’m in the hall of shame too. A few years ago I rammed a Porsche 928 under an Armco barrier just outside Cwmbran, and then peeled the bonnet off like it was the lid of a sardine tin while reversing it out again.

  Now I am a man who, at school, could worm his way out of all kinds of trouble by coming up with preposterous excuses, usually involving tigers, but after crashing the Porsche I had to stand up like a man, and admit to its owners that I’d been a fool. Not in print though. And definitely not on television.

  Only this week, I had a minor ‘off’ in a new type of ultra-racy Vauxhall Vectra. I think I may have bent a steering arm, so that it now drives like a crab, but will you see how I did it on Top Gear this Thursday? No chance.

  Now here’s my point. Why don’t we report these accidents? They’re big news. I mean, if you have a prang your car is off the road for weeks while the insurance company squirms and wriggles. The subsequent repairs will send your premiums into the stratosphere and badly affect the secondhand value of your vehicle.

  And then there’s motor racing. You don’t care about deft overtaking manoeuvres or whiz-bang pit stops. No, you like the crashes and the fireballs. That’s why you all slow down to gawp at mangled metal on the motorway.

  So perhaps then, it’s time for us motoring journalists to swallow our pride and understand that the size of a car’s ashtray is maybe not that important. People are more interested in how we managed to leave the road at 100mph, backwards.

  The trouble is that when we crash it’s like Barry Norman spilling his popcorn. Or A.A. Gill dropping some butter on the carpet. We just ring the manufacturer and a tow truck comes. We fill in an accident report form and nothing more is said. We don’t think of it as a big deal.

  I once tore the front end from a Daihatsu Charade GTti after plonking it in a ditch at 80mph. And the press officer merely shrugged it off saying, ‘Don’t worry. We make one every 23 seconds.’

  Well, good for you matey, but when I’m sitting here struggling to think of anything to say about the latest dull car that’s parked outside, I’ve just realized that a good crash can fill several column inches.

  That’s is why I’m going out right now to ram a Toyota Corolla into a tree.

  Diesel man on the couch

  A policeman once told me that if there is room to overtake someone on the inside, then there was room for that person to have pulled over. Wise words, but don’t bother using them in court. Undertake someone, and in the eyes of the law you’re a mugger with a crack habit.

  Now in the normal course of events this doesn’t really matter, because all three lanes of every motorway are full and you just drive along at whatever speed the traffic happens to be doing.

  The trouble is that this lulls people into a sort of never-never land where your heart is beating and your eyes are open but you are not really awake. A leprechaun could jump on to your bonnet and make a wigwam out of your windscreen wipers but you wouldn’t even blink.

  Consequently, you don’t really notice that it’s getting late and that the traffic has thinned out. You are in a deep, deep coma.

  But then, suddenly, your rear-view mirror melts as it is assaulted by a 400 gigawatt burst of light. You come to realize that someone is behind and you pull over feeling a bit sheepish… unless you are driving a diesel.

  This is the first trend I’ve ever spotted. We’ve had Essex Man and New Man, and only a couple of weeks ago the Freight Transport Association came up with Van Man, a 19-year-old plumber who genuinely believes his Astramax can break the sound barrier.

  Well now, I’d like to introduce you to Diesel Man. Diesel Man is less well defined than the others in that he could be 17 or 70, blue-collar or middle management. Strangely, Diesel Man might even be a woman.

  He’s not easy to spot in ordinary life because he behaves just like you do. He’s ordinary. He blends… right up to the point when he climbs into his diesel-powered car. And then he is more bitter and twisted than the lemon you put in your gin and tonic last night.

  In the past, it was hard for Diesel Man to fall into a catatonic state while driving up the motorway because of the engine noise, but these days diesels are pretty silent at speed, so he nods off as surely as you and I.

  However, when he becomes aware that another car is keen to come by, he reacts in an unusual fashion. He drops a cog to get that hideously inefficient engine into the upper echelons of its miserable power band, and floors the throttle.

  From behind, it’s hard to tell he’s done this because, obviously, there’s no discernible change in pace. Put your foot down in a diesel at 70mph and it can take ten or twelve minutes for you to be doing 71.

  However, there will be a puff of carcinogenic smoke from the exhaust, and that’s the sign. Diesel Man is going to prove that his car is just as fast as yours.

  Psychologically, it’s easy to see what’s happening here. His boss has heard that diesel engines are more economical than their petrol-powered counterparts, and that because they tend to be less powerful, accidents happen infrequently. So he decides that his staff, from now on, will have diesels.

  Now we all know that you can call a man’s baby ugly and he won’t mind. We know that you can take a man’s wife to bed and it’ll all be forgotten in a week or so. But laugh at a man’s wheels and you’re in serious trouble.

  Diesel Man is well aware of his car’s shortfalls. He knows it’s pitifully slow and that it makes the most Godawful din when he starts it up in the morning. He also knows that he doesn’t benefit one jot from the lower running costs. Basically, he knows the car is a worthless pile of junk, but is he going to admit this in public? Hell no.

  To admit that his diesel is a step down is tantamount to admitting that he has taken some kind of demotion. So he’s going to prove, no matter what the cost, that his diesel is superior in every way to a petrol-powered car.

  And it’s the same story with private buyers who’ve been enticed by the promise of 45mpg only to discover that the downsides easily outweigh the few pence that are saved each week. But are they going to say so? Only after they’ve owned up to being hung like a maggot.

  So what’s to be done? How do we get past? Well you might argue that the speed limit is 70mph on the motorway, and it is. You may say that all I’m doing here is encouraging people to break the law, but we all know the score. The speed limit is 70, so we can all do 85.

  Except we can’t, because Diesel Man is having an ego crisis right in front of us.

  There is, I suspect, only one solution. Car manufacturers must refrain from putting any form of diesel log
o on the back of a car. The BMW tds, Citroen 1.9D, the Rover SDi. Diesel man knows we can see this little ‘D’ and suspects we may be laughing at him. That’s why he puts his foot down.

  But if the ‘D’ were replaced by an innocuous ‘p’ or ‘z’ or whatever, he could simply get out of our way, happy that we’ll sail by unaware of the aberration under his bonnet.

  Or he could, of course, go out there and remove the ‘D’ himself, but I’ve just thought of a much better idea. Grow up.

  Stuck on the charisma bypass

  The new Maserati Quattroporte is, in many ways, a breath of fresh air. Here, at last, is a car that’s truly, madly bad. Armed with a ridiculous price tag, it wades into battle with a slightly bent peashooter and adaptive suspension that doesn’t work. It is ugly. It has an engine that sounds like it’s trying to mix cement. The leatherwork is shoddy. It is badly equipped and it has a clock shaped like women’s bits. You wouldn’t want to buy it, but at least you can discuss it, with much finger-pointing and shouting, over a beer. That automatically makes it better than some of the dross I drove last week. My God, there are some boring cars out there.

  Bring the Hyundai Lantra Estate up in a pub and it would have the same effect as putting a Mogadon in everyone’s drinks. We all know someone like this car – someone who tries to disguise his innate and inbred ability to redefine tedium by wearing a stripy orange and brown tank top. The car is quiet, it will rarely break down and I’m sure it would buy its girlfriend – a librarian – chocolates on her birthday. At work, it would have a sign on its desk saying: ‘You don’t have to be mad to work here – but it helps.’ What a wag. What a git.

  Then there’s the Rover 400 Saloon, a Honda Civic with delusions of grandeur. It’s someone who’s made a few bob and thinks that by shopping at Hackett and wearing brogues he’ll be accepted by the county set. Volkswagen has cocked up too, with its new Polo saloon. What a heap of steaming manure this is. The hatchback is a charming and funky little device with cool graphics, a wild range of colours and lots of street cred. But by putting a boot on, the designers have put the boot in.