I know you got soul: machines with that certain something Read online

  And then, after the Yom Kippur War and the subsequent oil crisis, the number dwindled from sixteen to just two. The national carriers of the countries involved. So although the engineers surmounted all the technical problems, no outsider wanted to buy their creation.

  And to make matters worse, the Americans, spiteful because their supersonic plane had come to nought, invented all sorts of reasons why it should not be allowed in their air space. Farmers even argued that it would knock over their cows.

  In the end just fourteen Concordes were made, the last going to Air France for just £1, and the only place you could fly to from London was Bahrain. Absurd. The greatest technological achievement of all time and no one could find a use for it.

  Eventually the Americans caved in, and later still British Airways even worked out how their white elephant could be turned into a cash cow. Passengers were asked how much they thought their ticket had cost – each had PAs and assistants to deal with travel agents so they didn’t know – and amazingly most guessed way above the actual price. So BA simply matched the cost to the expectation.

  It seemed that Concorde’s future was assured. Compared to normal planes, which bounce around the world’s airports like they’re on speed, BA’s flagship had a very small workload. There were very few landings and take-offs. And very little time spent in the air so there was quite literally no end in sight. Concorde would keep going until another visionary kick-started a project to build a replacement.

  But then one of them crashed.

  There had been near misses before. Tyres had burst, sending chunks of rubber into the wings. And on one notable occasion a BA plane had damn nearly run out of fuel coming in to land at Heathrow. It actually conked out while taxiing to the terminal building.

  None of these incidents had really made the news. After the fuel scare BA’s publicity department said that the plane was at a different angle on the ground than it is in the air and that actually there was enough left in the tanks to keep the engines running for 20 minutes.

  As a result it made a small story in just one newspaper. But, in fact, while it had enough fuel for 20 minutes’ taxiing, there was only enough left for 90 seconds of flight.

  The pilot, it turned out, had refused to slow down or refuel at Shannon when both his co-pilot and engineer realised something had gone wrong. He was sacked even before he could bash his hat back into shape.

  The crash in Paris, though, made headlines everywhere and not just because of the casualties, who were mostly German. No, for the first time since the Titanic we were actually mourning the loss of the machine itself.

  As the weeks wore on scientists realised a burst tyre had punctured one of the fuel tanks and that, somehow, the fuel on board had caught fire. They took steps to make sure it couldn’t happen again but the writing was already on the wall. And what little confidence was left went west after the World Trade Center thing.

  Richard Branson made a few noises about taking the planes off BA’s hands and making them work with Virgin logos on the tail fin, but this was ridiculous. The French had already announced there would be no airworthiness certificates any more, and Beardy knew that even if there were, BA would never relinquish their flagships. He was turning the slow death of Concorde into a PR stunt. And I’ll never forgive him for that.

  Concorde, you see, represented the greatness not just of the British and French boffins who’d made it against all the odds but also the sheer wondrous genius of the human race. This plane served as a twice-daily reminder that nothing was beyond us. Given time, and money, we could do absolutely anything.

  Which is why, as I walked off the plane for the last time, I remember thinking, ‘This is one small step for a man. But a giant leap backwards for mankind.’

  You see, unlike any other machine that is mothballed or donated to a museum, Concorde has not been replaced with something better or faster or more convenient.

  This, and I’m trying not to exaggerate, is a bit like discovering fire and then snuffing it out because someone got burned. Or finding America and not bothering to go back in case one of the ships sinks. Not since the Romans left Britain in AD 410 has mankind shied away from technological or social advance, until now. And that is the main reason, I think, why there was so much shock at Concorde’s passing. Because it represented a sea change in the way we are.

  We went to the moon and now we’re on our way to Mars. We invented the steam engine and immediately replaced it with internal combustion. We went to Mach 1 and then we went to Mach 2. We went across the Atlantic in three hours… and now we can’t any more.

  And then there’s the fate of the machine itself. For more than twenty years it was woken in the morning and flown to New York. And then one day no one came to replenish its tanks or vacuum its carpets. There was a big party and the next day… nothing. Imagine doing that to your dog. Putting it in a kennel one night and never going back.

  It’s a machine, so it can’t possibly know about the crash or the problems of getting an airworthiness certificate. It was built to do a job and it did that job, faultlessly, for year after year. So why, it must be thinking, do they not want me any more?

  Of course, we’ll still be able to go and see the old girl in a museum. That’ll be strange though. Going to a museum to see the future. Except, of course, Concorde isn’t the future. It’s the last, tumultuous, nail-biting chapter of the past.

  When the car came along, we didn’t shoot our horses. They became playthings, toys for huntsmen and twelve-year-olds at gymkhanas. And it’s the same story with air travel.

  Now we have the internet and video conferencing, big business can buy and sell its countries and its companies without ever leaving the swivel chair. There’s no need to fly to America.

  So the only reason for using a plane is because you want to go on holiday. And given the choice of going to Florida at Mach 2 or for £2, most would opt for the cheaper option.

  Concorde, then, had to die not because it was too fast but because, in the electronic age, it was too slow.

  Rolls-Royce

  As I write a car is sitting outside my window, waiting to be tested. I do not know where it is made or what it is called. I think it might be a Kia but it could be a Daewoo.

  Whatever it is, you would find more character in a glass of water and more heart in an office rubber plant. And there’s a very good reason for this.

  In order for a car to have personality, an X factor, the company that makes it must be able to take guidance and inspiration from one man, the man who started the company in the first place.

  This did not happen with the car outside my window, which was undoubtedly built in a jungle clearing by a company that makes cars to make money. No one began Proton or Hyundai or Daewoo because they’d harboured a dream of making something extraordinary or special. These are just enormous engineering and construction conglomerates that have been told by their respective governments to make cars so that the locals can get off their oxen and get modern.

  We see the same sort of thing in Japan. There never was a Mr Toyota who, since he was a small boy, yearned for the day when he could build a small family hatchback that never broke down. And you can scour the history books until the sky turns green but you’ll not find any mention of a young Timmy Datsun who stayed up until ten o’clock, even on school nights, devising his plan for a car with two milometers.

  Subarus are made by a romantic-sounding outfit called Fuji Heavy Industries. At night I bet the chairman sometimes forgets he has a car division. It’ll be just another entry in his plofit and ross accounts.

  The only Japanese cars with even a trace of humanity are Hondas, and there’s a very good reason for that. There was a Mr Honda and he did have a vision when he was a small boy. Even today that vision still steers the engineers, and as a result there’s a very definite correlation between the S2000 sports car and those early motorbikes. It’s solely because of this link with the past that I like Hondas more than any other Japanese c
ars.

  Of course, in Europe most car firms were started by a visionary. Lotus was kick-started by Colin Chapman, who liked things light and frothy. Jaguar was the brainchild of Sir William Lyons, who liked comfort and speed, with a low, low price. Enzo Ferrari wanted to make cars solely to support his beloved race team.

  Most of these guys, and others like them, are remembered by sound-bite quotes. Ettore Bugatti, for instance, once said, ‘Nothing is too beautiful or too expensive.’ Enzo Ferrari came up with ‘the customer is not always right’. And Colin Chapman summed up his philosophy thus: ‘Simplify and add lightness.’

  Mind you, he also said, ‘You would never catch me driving a race car that I have built.’ Which probably explains why Lotus came to be known as an acronym for Lots Of Trouble, Usually Serious.

  These men are all now dead, or in South America, but their DNA is still evident in the cars that are being made today. The Lotus Elise is light and breaks down a lot. The new Bugatti Veyron will be astoundingly expensive and I think the paddle-shift gearbox in a Ferrari 575 is silly. But what do I know.

  Unfortunately, however, time does have a nasty habit of blurring the idealism that gave rise to these companies. I’m not sure, for instance, that Herr Porsche would get much of a hard-on for the Cayenne. And how would William Lyons react, I wonder, if he knew Jaguar’s current board was chasing euros by offering a front-wheel drive, diesel-powered estate car? Sure, it may help Jaguar out of a small hole now, but by losing sight of the goal, the vision, it will drive them into a bigger one later. I grew up, for instance, wanting an E-type. But my son is not growing up yearning for the day when he can buy an X-type diesel.

  There is, however, one car company out there that has never lost sight of its role in the market place. Rolls-Royce.

  Sir Henry Royce, who founded the company back in 1904, really was a one-man quote machine. ‘Strive for perfection in everything you do.’ ‘Accept nothing as nearly right or good enough.’ ‘The quality remains long after the price is forgotten.’ ‘Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.’

  You get the picture. And so did BMW. When they bought the company they could have fitted a new body to one of their 7 series. That’s what Mercedes did to create the Maybach. But instead of wandering around the BMW spare-parts division saying, ‘What do we want?’ the engineers fired up their computers and asked, ‘What do we need?’

  Plainly they looked at what Henry Royce and Charles Rolls were trying to achieve a hundred years ago, and thought, ‘Zis is vot ve must do also.’ And as a result the Phantom is quite simply the best car in the world.

  Obviously, it is not the easiest car in the world to park and nor, thanks to a top speed of 150 mph, is it the fastest. I should also draw your attention at this point to the handling, which is not what you’d call sporty. Unless, of course, your everyday transport is a hovercraft.

  In my experience it is not the best-built car in the world either. It’s not handmade – that’s another way of saying the door will fall off – but it is hand-finished, and that’s the next worst thing.

  I heard, even before the car was launched, that on an advertising photo shoot the flying lady refused to come out from her cavity in the radiator grille. On Top Gear the same thing happened. And then, when I drove a Phantom to Hull, I came out of my hotel in the morning to find the statuette had hibernated and wouldn’t come out for love nor money.

  I rang a man at Rolls who did his best to sound surprised. ‘The Spirit is stuck down?’ he said, with an almost pantomime level of incredulity. ‘That’s never happened before.’ Yeah right.

  Inside the car BMW made a decision you might not like. Instead of festooning the cabin with a myriad of knobs and buttons, they are all hidden away in cubbyholes. You get a gear lever that allows you to go forwards and backwards, and that’s it. You get a version of the BMW i-Drive computer with most of the functions removed. And most of the time the computer and satellite-navigation screen are hidden behind a perfectly normal, analogue clock.

  As a result it’s no more daunting in there than in a Georgian drawing room. You sit on a supremely comfortable chair – it’d be even better if it were a wingback, I’m surprised it’s not – overlooking acres of leather and wood. You’re never tempted, as you are in the Maybach, to push a button just to find out what it does. And then having to spend the rest of the journey trying to find which button undoes whatever it is the first button did.

  This makes for a hugely relaxing drive. So relaxing, in fact, that you sometimes forget that you’re in a car.

  I did. I was trundling up a motorway the other day, doing 60 mph, in a long snake of other cars, also doing 60. Only, unlike any of the other drivers, I could not feel the road passing by through vibrations in the wheel and I could not hear the engine, big and V12-ish though it was. I have had long soaks in the bath that were more stressful. I have been on tropical beaches that are more noisy.

  After a while I became so detached from reality that I put on my indicator and tried to overtake the car in front. Sounds fine except for one thing. I was already in the outside lane. I came within an inch of hitting the central crash barrier and to this day I wonder what on earth the chap in the car behind felt when he saw a three-ton, £250,000 Rolls-Royce indicate, to show the driver wasn’t asleep, and then drive off the road.

  I’d like to think he nodded sagely, turned to his passenger and said, ‘My, to have detached the driver so completely from reality that must be a well-engineered car.’ But I suspect he probably said, ‘What a twat.’

  That’s the thing about driving a Phantom. You could pull over and give someone the entire contents of your wallet, and they’d look at you like you’d just given them the entire contents of your stomach. Stop at a junction to wave someone out and instead of a cheery wave you get a sneery V sign. On the pavement you are a normal person with ears and a spleen. In a Rolls you are the bastard love child of Fred West and Harold Shipman.

  I quite like that. I like it because it shows cars, despite the best endeavours of Kia and Hyundai and Daewoo, are still able to raise the blood pressure a bit. It’s good that nothing more than a mass-produced collection of iron ore, rubber, sand, cow skin and petrochemical by-products can still raise a bit of bile.

  I also like it because from inside you really don’t care. It’s like walking into a fighty football supporters’ pub in a suit of armour. There’s a sense of ‘and what are you going to do about it exactly’.

  This really is a vast car. And, because the Laws of Automotive Styling say that the tyres must be exactly half the height of the car itself, they come up to my thigh. Then you have the radiator grille, which is bigger than my first flat, and the bonnet on which you could quite easily have a game of cricket. Certainly you could have a very major crash in a Phantom and simply not know.

  There’s also a sense of imperiousness, a sense that you really are driving round in Queen Victoria. It’s the effortless power and the sense of empire. Yes, the leather may come from Bavarian cows, and all the components may arrive at the underground factory having already been assembled in Germany, but for all we know Elgar’s quill was bought in Munich. It didn’t stop his music from being as English as the Malvern Hills.

  I loved my time with the Rolls as much as everyone else hated it, and me, for having one.

  Riva

  It’s not easy to decide which of man’s creations is the most beautiful. It may be a painting, or a garden, or a building or perhaps one of Jordan’s breasts.

  Once, on a glorious summer’s morning, I saw the Humber Bridge rising out of some dawn mist and thought it might well be the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. But then there’s the SR-71 spy plane and the Aston Martin DB7 and the Lamborghini Miura. The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao isn’t too shabby either.

  However, after a long walk round the garden I’ve decided that the most jaw-dropping, eye-watering, hand-biting man-made spectacle of all time is the 1965 Riva Aquarama speedboat.

  Ther
e’s something about the angle of its prow and the positioning of that wraparound windscreen: it was actually based on the panoramic cinema screens that were popular at the time and this is the reason why the boat was called the ‘Aquarama’.

  Then you have the leatherwork in white and turquoise that seems to go so perfectly with the deeply polished mahogany hull, and the whole thing is finished off with a tail that tapers and flares just so.

  Now, that the most beautiful man-made creation should have come from Italy is no surprise. There’s a passion for aesthetics in Italy that you simply don’t find anywhere else. But what about the most beautifully made creation? Is it the 1995 Honda Civic or maybe the Great Wall of China? Perhaps it’s one of David Linley’s wardrobes or a Brunel steamship? We shouldn’t forget the Whitworth rifle either.

  Well, I’ve just had another long walk round the garden and I’ve decided that the most perfectly crafted of all man’s achievements, with the greatest attention to detail and quality, is, in fact, the 1965 Riva Aquarama. Oh, and it’ll do 50 mph. All things considered then, quite a boat.

  Riva began to make boats on the spectacular shores of Lake Iseo in northern Italy way back at the beginning of the nineteenth century. To begin with the products were simple, robust ferries really, but pretty quickly, this being Italy, they turned their attention to the notion of going quickly.