What Could Possibly Go Wrong. . . Read online

  To make matters worse, it’s not especially nice to drive. The ride’s not bad but the steering is nervous, the dashboard is bonkers and you feel like you’re sitting on it rather than inside it. I arrived everywhere late, exasperated, looking silly and with a lightning bolt of pain in my left shin.

  On the upside, the Countryman is available with four-wheel drive. It’s a simple system that would be flummoxed by the weather we had recently but would get you up and down a farm track easily enough. The thing is, though, that the model I tested – a Cooper S – costs more than £22,000. And that makes it about £3,000 more than the similarly powered Skoda Yeti.

  Don’t be a snob about this, because the Mini isn’t a Mini and the Skoda isn’t really a Skoda. It’s just a Volkswagen. More pointedly, the Mini is terrible and the Yeti is surprisingly good.

  And on that note, can I just wish you all a very happy and exciting new year.

  2 January 2011

  No nasty surprises in this gooey confection

  Audi A7 Sportback 3.0 TDI quattro SE

  Well, there we are. ‘Public transport’ was a very interesting social experiment, but after the debacle of last year, it’s probably in everyone’s best interests if we all agree it simply doesn’t work.

  Let us take the trains as a prime example. As we know, they all grind to a halt whenever it is too warm or too cold or too autumnal, but of course the problem is much bigger than that. A railway locomotive is extremely expensive. I don’t know how much it would cost to buy one, but I’m guessing that it would be several hundred pounds.

  Then you have the rolling stock – and I do know that each carriage costs more than £1m – and the mile upon mile of track that need to be linked and monitored and governed. Just maintaining it costs £2 billion a year. The upshot of all this is very simple. Divide the total cost of the railway network by the number of people who want to use it, and the average price of a ticket should be about £4m. Soon, if what we’re hearing is correct, it will be.

  I realize, of course, that in theory a high-speed train linking the north and the south of Britain is a fine idea. But since it needs to cross at least five Tory constituencies, it will never happen. And nobody would be able to afford to go on it, even if it did.

  Then we have air travel. In principle this should work quite well, but the concept has unfortunately been hijacked by busybodies who now insist on taking photographs of your gentleman sausage and confiscating your toiletries every time you want to go somewhere. This doesn’t work. And it doubly doesn’t work when planes are now grounded by everything from a bit of weather to a volcanic burp near the Arctic circle.

  This leaves us with buses, and oh dear. They really don’t work at all because they are simply too full of diseases and knives. No, really. The next time a bus goes by, have a look inside, and I guarantee that the passenger – there’s never more than one – will not be the sort of person you would allow within 500 feet of your front door.

  I accept that in rural areas the elderly and the infirm need to get to the post office, but why send a supertanker round to their village five times a day? Nobody needs to go shopping that often. Why not send a small Transit van round once a week? Or, better still, why not give those who cannot drive an internet and let them do it all online?

  So, we’re all agreed that whether you want a pint of milk from the shops or a holiday in the south of France, the car is better, safer, cheaper, faster, more comfortable and less annoying to others. Plus, nobody pats your breasts before you set off and you don’t emerge at the other end of the journey with deep vein thrombosis, diphtheria, a knife in your eye and no luggage.

  Of course, there are many annoying things about using the roads. Interfering governments have decided, for instance, that the amount of tax you pay should depend on the composition of the gas coming from your tailpipe. This means that cars will soon have to have two motors. One to move you about and one to assist on hills. Even Ferrari is going down the stupid hybrid road.

  Then there are the speed limits. For some reason our government thinks that motorway travel should be undertaken at no more than 70 mph, because that was a safe speed when your dad’s Ford Anglia had drum brakes. I know. Ridiculous. But there we are.

  There are countless other problems, too, but despite everything, the car is still good. The car still works. There is still no alternative. It’s just a question of deciding which one to buy. There was a time when Audi made cars only for German cement salesmen, but in recent years it has decided to make a car for absolutely everyone in the world. There’s the Q5, the Q7, the R8, the A1, the A3, the A4, the A5, the A6, the A8 and now the A7.

  I’ll let you into a little secret at this point. They are all the same. Oh, they may look a bit different, and some are bigger than others, but in essence they are all made from the same components.

  Think of it this way. Cakes, buns, Yorkshire pudding and pancakes all look and taste different but they’re all made from the same thing. That’s how it is with Audis. Flour and eggs mixed up in different ways to create twenty-one different cars.

  At first you think Audi may have actually tried something radical with the A7 because it has an all-new platform. But then you learn that this platform will be used in the next A6. It’s the same story with the engines and the four-wheel-drive system and all of the interior fixtures and fittings.

  However, the engineers can make a difference by fiddling with the steering and the suspension setup, and I must say that in the A7 they have. This does not feel like an Audi. It feels better. The ride is beautifully judged, the handling is lovely and the steering is spot-on. It’s not a sports cake but it’s not a Yorkshire pudding either. It’s just right, in fact, for the fiftysomething chap who wants a stylish hatchback that doesn’t break his spine every time he goes over a catseye. Although, when I say stylish … it isn’t, really. The back looks as though it’s melted and the front is just sort of Audi-ish. Mind you, it must be said that it does have an enormous boot and loads of room in the nicely trimmed cabin for four. Not five, though. There is no centre rear seatbelt.

  Apart from this oversight – which is bound to have been the result of a marketing meeting at which someone stood up und said, ‘Zer is no such sing as ein sporty car mitt five seats’ – the only problem is the positioning of the accelerator pedal. The car may be able to keep going when the weather would rather it didn’t, thanks to four-wheel drive. But if you are wearing the sort of shoes that enabled you to get through the snow to the car in the first place, you will end up pressing the brake pedal every time you want to go faster.

  Despite this, and the melted rear, the A7 struck me as a good car. A bit heavy, perhaps, but good nevertheless. Until I checked out the prices. A top model dressed up to the nines will set you back a massive £91,500. The model I drove, a 3-litre turbodiesel with a seven-speed double-clutch gearbox and four-wheel drive, is the best part of £50,000. And I’m sorry, but it simply doesn’t feel worth this much.

  Yes, it’s big and striking and practical and – we’re told – extremely safe, but underneath, it’s just eggs and flour. And for £50,000 you could do better. The Mercedes CLS springs to mind. So, too, does the Jaguar XJ.

  It’s nice to have the choice, though. Because that’s what you didn’t ever get with the failed experiment that was public transport.

  9 January 2011

  Oh yes, take me now, Lady Marmalade

  Citroën DS3 Racing

  Over the past few years, the sort of people who find recycling exciting have predicted the end of the internal combustion engine and said that 2011 will herald the bright new dawn of silent, zero-emission electric motoring, where no one dies and town centres actually look like the models architects make when applying for planning permission.

  There’s no doubt, of course, that many car manufacturers are working hard on hybrids – which are normal, petrol-engine cars that have a second, electric motor to keep the rule makers in Brussels happy. But pure electric cars? I d
on’t see their Blu-ray/VHS/Sky moment until someone commercializes a hydrogen-based system for recharging the batteries. And that’s not going to happen in 2011. Or 2012. Or any time in the foreseeable future.

  What I do see happening in 2011 is car makers peeping from behind the terrifying double-dip curtain of financial uncertainty and presenting us with a flurry of machinery that will keep the disciples of internal combustion as happy as if they’d landed the role of ‘chauffeur’ in a French porn film.

  Aston Martin, for instance, will present two new cars this year. One, called the Cygnet, is a 1.3-litre version of the Toyota iQ. Engineered solely to keep the average fuel consumption figures of the Aston range down – and therefore the Euro law makers happy – it will be treated as a joke. The other will not.

  It’s the One-77, which is made from carbon fibre, has a hand-built V12 and boasts a top speed of 220mph or more, making it by far the fastest production car Aston has made. The only trouble is that it will cost £1.2m, which is a lot.

  Lamborghini is also planning a limited-edition, mega-money car for 2011 and, because it doesn’t have to worry about average fuel consumption figures – Lambo is owned by Volkswagen, which makes the Polo – it will be a replacement for the Murciélago.

  That, however, will be overshadowed by the new McLaren. Named MP4-12C – or OCD for short – it will have a twin-turbocharged 3.8-litre V8 that develops 592 horsepower. So, with a price tag of just £168,500 – about half what McLaren charged for its last car and around a fifth of the price of the one before that – it will be less expensive and more powerful than the Ferrari 458. I can’t imagine it will be better but who knows.

  You want more evidence that the economy’s recovering and batteries are on the back burner? Well, there’s going to be a convertible version of the epic Mercedes SLS and a long-wheelbase option for the Rolls-Royce Ghost. Then we have the new Porsche 911, which will be exactly the same as every other 911, and a hardcore derivative of the car most Formula One drivers use when their sponsors and engine suppliers aren’t looking – the Nissan GT-R.

  In the real world, BMW is working on yet another version of the Mini – it’ll be a two-door coupé. There will also be a handsome-looking new 6-series and a £40,000 M version of what BMW calls the 135 coupé, even though it’s actually a saloon.

  Never mind the muddle, though; this is one of the cars I’m most looking forward to driving, partly because I reckon the standard car is already the best model in the BMW line-up and partly because, with a twin-turbo, 335-horsepower straight six and a straightforward front-engine, rear-drive, no-styling, no-nonsense approach, it will be a genuine successor to the simple M cars of old.

  I’m also looking forward to the new Mercedes SLK, although I’m a bit alarmed that industry insiders are saying it’ll be a more hardcore experience than the ‘soft’ outgoing model. Having owned an SLK 55, which I sold because it was way too uncomfortable, I am a bit worried that the new car might not have any suspension at all.

  Strangely, though, in this sea of wholesome goodness, the car I’ve been anticipating with the most eagerness is Citroën’s DS3 Racing. I realize that this is like booking a table at the Wolseley in London and then looking forward most of all to the bread rolls. But the fact is this: when the sun is shining, I like a simple two-seater convertible most of all, but when it isn’t – and this is Britain, after all – the type of car that I most enjoy driving is a hot hatchback. And the DS3 Racing is about as hot as hot hatches get right now.

  You might argue that the optional paint job, with checks on the roof and all sorts of slogans and symbols that would only make sense if they were splashed on the deck of a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, is a bit stupid. But I disagree. They’re a laugh. I even like the warning above the petrol filler cap. ‘Caution. Attention’, it says. And why not?

  Inside, it’s just as bonkers, with a bright orange dash, a carbon-fibre steering wheel and epic seats that would be more at home, you feel, in an F-22 Raptor.

  After a period in which car makers have looked backwards for inspiration – I’m thinking of the new Beetle, the new Mini, the new Chevrolet Camaro, the new Ford Mustang and the new Fiat 500 – it comes as a refreshing change to find Citroën has decided to face the other way, while taking inspiration from both the US navy and Airfix. Mind you, I suppose that if Citroën had looked backwards, we’d have ended up with a reborn 2CV. And no one this side of the Guardian wants that.

  I realize, of course, that looks and style are a matter of taste and that some of you may find the Racing garish and idiotic. But without wishing to sound childish, this is my review and I really like it.

  However, it would all be for nothing if its body were writing cheques its engine could not cash. Well, let’s get one thing straight from the off. It’s not, as the name would suggest, a racing car. It’s just a DS3 with a few racing-style bits and bobs added into the mix. That said, it’s powered by a 204-horsepower version of the turbocharged 1.6-litre used by BMW until recently in the Mini, so it’ll do 146mph. And thanks to a lower ride height, a wider track and firmer dampers than the basic DS3, it handles crisply, too.

  Yes, there’s a fair bit of torque steer and I will admit that the Renault Clio 200 Cup is a tad more dynamic. But the Citroën is more comfortable and less noisy and, of course, every time you see your reflection in a shop window, you will feel like you’re on the bridge of the USS Dwight D Eisenhower. Whereas when you see a reflection of yourself in a Renault, it’s just a reminder that you will soon break down.

  In short, I loved the DS3 Racing as much as I thought I would. I loved driving it. I loved looking at it. I love the feeling now that it’s parked outside my house and I can use it for a trip to town this afternoon. It is a car that’s excellent to drive but, more importantly, it’s a car that makes me feel happy. And, of course, because it’s a hot hatch, you get all the fun as well as a big boot, folding rear seats and space inside for five.

  Issues? Well, the adjustment on the seat is so crude that you either drive sitting bolt upright or flat on your back, and I must say, for a whopping £23,100, I would have expected a few more toys. When you are paying BMW 3-series money for a small Citroën, the least you would expect is satnav.

  The worst thing, though, is that to bypass costly legal tests, Citroën has declared the Racing a ‘low-volume’ car and will make only 1,000. Just 200 will come to Britain. On the upside, there is a loophole in the law that allows Citroën to make a modification to the engine that no one will notice and that lets the company make 1,000 more. Get your name down early, but don’t be surprised to find you’re behind me in the queue.

  16 January 2011

  It’s hardly British but learn to haggle

  Mitsubishi Outlander 2.2 DI-D GX4, 7 seats

  Alarming news from among the potted plants at your local plate-glass car dealership. It seems that six out of ten people who buy a new set of wheels these days don’t bother to haggle over the price.

  I should explain that I’m one of them. Mostly, if I’m honest, it’s because I have to pay the full sticker price or the Daily Mail will run a story saying that I’m on the take and cannot be trusted. But you do not have the Mail breathing down your neck every time you eat food or go to the lavatory, and so you really should try to beat down the man with the cheap suit and the boy-band hair.

  If you pay cash, even a Ferrari salesman will give you free door mats. Whereas with something like Citroën, he’ll probably give you a 100 per cent discount, £1,000 cashback, 0 per cent finance for 300 years and an evening with his girlfriend and one of her better-looking friends.

  I realize, of course, that you are not an Egyptian market trader and that you find haggling completely revolting. You don’t try for a discount when you are buying a stamp or a box of cornflakes, so why would you try for one when you are buying a car? It would be ghastly. If you are English, you would rather vomit on a salesman than negotiate with him face to face over money. But come on. The whole process of buyi
ng a car is so unpleasant, a bit of toing and froing over price is nothing.

  You’ve already dealt with the balloons. This is just one example of what the car dealer thinks of you. He reckons that you are so moronic that if he hangs a few colourful balloons outside his showroom, you will think there is some kind of ‘do’ on, so you’ll be unable to drive by.

  Then there’s the decor. A car showroom, even the fancy ones on Park Lane in London, has all the visual appeal of a railway station’s lavatories. You want to get out as soon as possible. But you can’t because the man with boy-band hair is on his way over with the handshake of a dead haddock and a silly earring. And he’s got lots of impertinent questions about where you live and what you do and your credit rating. As a general rule, it should also be noted he knows less about the cars he’s selling than you do about the moons of Jupiter.

  Then there’s the worst bit. When he grabs a form and steps outside to tell you what the car you wish to part exchange is worth. In short, it’s worth about an eighth of what you thought. This is because the man from Take That has found a scratch, and it’s grey and grey’s not very popular at the moment. Except for the fact that 75 per cent of all cars sold in Britain are one shade of grey or another.

  Then, of course, it’s time to sit down and choose some options for the car you’re buying. And this is a terrifying place to be because when you are spending £25,000 on the car, £200 sounds like nothing. So yes, you decide you’ll spend £200 on a DVD player and another £200 on metallic paint and another £200 on a sunroof, and pretty soon you notice Jason Orange has grown a third leg. By the time you’ve finished, the money you’re spending would be enough to clear up a medium-sized oil spill.