Round the Bend Read online

  Worse, some drivers think an urban one-way street actually means you can travel on it in only one direction. Rubbish. If nothing is coming, then it’s idiotic to drive for miles just to satisfy some residents’ committee’s over-inflated sense of self-importance.

  There is a similar problem with speed limits. Of course, they are a good idea. Absolutely. Definitely. But when it’s one in the morning, a driver who puts his licence ahead of your need to get home as quickly as possible is just annoying.

  Seriously, being driven by anyone – even Jackie Stewart – is as horrendous as having someone else make love to your wife. ‘No. No. No. Not like that, you idiot. You have to be more delicate. What in God’s name are you doing now, man? You can’t park it there …’

  The worst thing about having a driver, though, is the sense of guilt. If you ask him to pick you up at midnight, you should – if you have a heart – feel duty-bound to leave at the appointed hour. Which is a damn nuisance if, at 11.45, you meet Miss Iceland, who announces at 11.55 she’s forgotten to put on any pants.

  In short, it doesn’t matter how tired I am or how convenient it might be to have someone run me home; I always prefer to drive myself.

  Unfortunately, this is becoming increasingly fraught with difficulties. Quite apart from the sheer expense, you have the speed cameras, the problems with parking, the sleeping policemen and the wide-awake ones in their vans. Then, in every major city, there are Communists who believe what they hear about the environment and call you a murderer.

  I genuinely believe that soon there will be a sea change in our attitude to car ownership. That soon the number of families who own one will start to fall dramatically, and that the few who do continue to plunge along in the wake of Mr Toad will drive and dream about machinery that’s far removed from the Ferraris and Range Rovers of today.

  And so, the Toyota iQ. First, the good things. It is 2½ inches shorter than the original Mini, but because the differential is mounted in front of the engine the cabin is big enough for four seats.

  Then there’s the business with carbon dioxide. The three-cylinder 1-litre petrol engine produces just 99 somethings of CO2 and as a result it falls into the tax-free category; unheard of in a car that runs on unleaded. More important, it should do 70mpg if driven carefully.

  Better than all of this, though, is the way it looks. In white, with the tinted windows, it’s like a Stormtrooper’s helmet. I liked that. And I loved the enormous array of equipment, too. It’s hard to think of a single toy fitted to my Mercedes that isn’t in the little iQ.

  Now for the bad things. Yes, there may be space in the back for two seats. But very few people are small enough to actually sit on them. The boot is pitiful as well.

  Then there’s the price. The entry-level model costs a whopping £9,495. Add an automatic gearbox and the price shoots up by another thousand. And, finally, there is the performance. Or rather there isn’t. To keep those emissions down, the oomph has had to be abandoned, so that it takes a dreary 14 seconds to get from 0 to 60. Quite why it needs traction control I have no idea. And why you would ever need the button that turns it off is even more baffling.

  So, some swings and some roundabouts. As a long-distance car, obviously, it’s about as much use as a horse, but as a station car or an urban runaround, especially if your children have no legs, it’s good. I prefer the cheaper Fiat 500 because I prefer the looks, but, of course, that’ll be less reliable. Either way, these cars are the future. Small. Cheap to run. Good-looking. And surprisingly well kitted out with toys. They really do make Mondeos and Volvos, and so on, look awfully wasteful and unnecessary.

  It’s a brave new world and we have to get used to it. A thousand cc is the new black. No g in the corners is the future, and that’s that. I suppose it isn’t the end of the world. Certainly, I’d rather drive an iQ than be driven by Albert in his Cayenne.

  I should make it plain that none of the observations about drivers in this column refers to Paul Grant, who is brilliant.

  8 March 2009

  Perfect, the car for all seasons

  Range Rover TDV8 Vogue SE

  When you stop and think about it, there’s no real point to this newspaper’s travel section. Or any of the few remaining high street travel agents. Or indeed the BBC’s Holiday programme – wait a minute, that’s already gone. Because, when it comes to taking a vacation, we only really need France.

  It has beaches on the Atlantic coast where you can surf, and more on the south coast where you can spend all day pretending not to look at breasts. It has mountains for skiing and hiking. It has the best cheese in the world, the best mustard in the world and the best wine in the world.

  I could go on, so I will. It has the best weather in the world, the best scenery in the world and it’s even replete with funny-looking little locals who sit outside their houses in baggy clothes. But, unlike poor people in, say, India or Brazil, they don’t pester you for money, or try to sell you paper napkins and hot dogs at the traffic lights.

  You could go to Arizona to see the Grand Canyon, but what’s the point? France has canyons too. You could go to Russia for the culture, but why? The popes never lived in Moscow. There are no Roman viaducts in St Petersburg. You are simply wasting jet fuel.

  James May once said that France only exists so we can drive more easily to Italy but this, I’m afraid, proves the man is mad. Because France has everything anyone could ever want from a holiday destination and, of course, it’s right next door.

  There is a similar answer to the question of food. Every night, someone comes on the television to explain how to make a lemon sauce for your halibut and how jalapeño peppers go very well with pineapple. But I’m afraid Gordon, Ainsley, Jamie, Marco, Raymond, Nigella, Delia and the countless others I’ve forgotten are wasting their breath, because we all know that what we want is bacon and eggs.

  You can have it for breakfast, lunch and supper. It works with ketchup just as well as it works with wine. You can make it in five minutes, even if you are eight. And it’s impossible to get the recipe wrong.

  Indeed, I have decided there is a simple answer to every choice we face in the world today. Brand of television? Sony. Music? The Stones. Pin-up? Carla Bruni. Religion? Buddhism. Phone? iPhone. Newspaper? The Sunday Times.

  And that brings us on to sport. Rugby is too complicated. Cricket is too dreary. Golf is for Freemasons from the Order of St Onyx. The fact is that you can’t beat football. It’s easy to understand. It flows nicely. And there’s always a local team you can support. What more do you want?

  Sadly, since I’m talking myself out of a job here, it turns out there is an answer to cars as well. Over the past thirty years or so, I have road-tested thousands of models, driven hundreds of thousands of miles and written millions of words on the subject. But all the while, the answer to absolutely everyone’s motoring problems has been right under my nose. The Range Rover.

  This is the automotive equivalent of France, the Sony Bravia, the Sunday Times and Mick Jagger. It is the answer.

  Let us imagine for a moment that you would like to have a Rolls-Royce Phantom because you want to bathe in that glorious art deco cabin full of timber and hide. Well, a Range Rover offers exactly the same sense of wellbeing for a quarter of the price.

  Plus, a Range Rover allows you to look down on the chap in a Roller, and over the car in front, which means you have more warning of any impending unpleasantness. Of course, the figures suggest that if you do have an accident, you are no better off in a Range Rover than you are in a Renault Laguna. But if I were to give you the choice of which car you’d most like to be in when you hit a tree …

  And it’s not like you are left wanting for toys either. You can even have something called a VentureCam – a wireless hand-held camera that feeds its picture to the sat nav screen on the dash. The idea is that you hang it out of the window while driving off-road so you can see what the terrain directly ahead of the wheels is like.

  However, s
ince its docking port is in the passenger footwell, it can also be used for looking up your wife’s skirt. And trust me, you aren’t offered that facility in any other car I’ve driven.

  You want to go to a point-to-point? Well, there is nothing to beat a Range Rover, which can not only deal with the muddy entrance but also comes with a handy drop-down tailgate on which you can perch while enjoying a glass of sloe gin and some cake.

  Thinking of driving to the slopes for a bit of late skiing this Easter? Well, sure, there are many luxury cars that can eat up those autoroute miles. But none do so more elegantly than a Vogue – providing you avoid the 20-inch wheels, which look good but spoil the ride a bit – and none will be quite so accomplished once you’re in the mountains, on the snow and ice.

  You might imagine that in Knightsbridge, a Range Rover is as cumbersome as a pair of wellies and that, as a result, it is most definitely not the answer for the city dweller. Wrong, I’m afraid. Other off-road cars are indeed too large and unwieldy to make much sense in urban areas but the Range Rover – dicky throttle response in the diesel aside – never feels like it’s too big or unmanageable. And let’s be honest, when you put money in a meter, you rent an entire parking bay, so you may as well use all of it.

  The Range Rover is often called a dual-purpose vehicle, but it’s so much more than that. It has the anatomical properties, and abilities, of Kali, which means it can glide, hurtle, waft or lug depending on your mood. You shoot? Get a green one. You ski? Go for blue. You deal drugs? Make it black and have the Sport. The Range Rover, quite simply, answers every motoring question that’s ever been posed.

  When the snow came back in February, schools were closed because people couldn’t get there. My kids could, though. Because I’ve just bought a 15,000-mile TDV8 Vogue SE on a 57 plate. It cost a smidgen over £30,000. That’s less than half price. And you can halve that again if you go older. Or go petrol. It’s almost cheaper than walking.

  And it’s better for the environment, too. Yes, you could buy a Toyota Prius, but let’s be honest, the nickel for its batteries is mined in Canada, and shipped – not on a sailing boat, I might add – to Norway or some other intermediate location where it’s processed and then shipped on again to Japan where it is put in the car, along with an electric motor and a normal engine. The finished product is then shipped halfway back round the world again before it arrives in a dealer near you. You may think of it, if you like, as an Israeli strawberry.

  A Range Rover, on the other hand, is made in the Midlands, which means, if you buy one, it only has to come down the road. You may think of it, then, as an organic, farm-fresh product, sourced and grown locally. And I know how important that is to shoppers these days.

  Without wishing to sound pompous, my heart swells with pride that humankind can make such a wonderful, graceful, dignified and beautiful thing. And while patriotism may be the last refuge of a scoundrel, I’m proud, too, that this car was conceived by the Germans, who are basically British but with a bit less humour.

  Often, over the years, I’ve been asked by passers-by in the street to name the best car in the world. I’ve never known quite what to say because my mind has swum with all the options. The fact is, though, there aren’t any options at all. There’s just one island of brilliance in a sea of also-rans.

  15 March 2009

  Flawed but fun

  Alfa MiTo 1.4 TB 155bhp Veloce

  I suppose that in the days when your fishmonger knew your name and what sort of cod you liked on a Friday, ‘brand loyalty’ made sense. Now we live in a world of supermarkets and corporations, it is the most ridiculous thing on all of God’s green earth. No matter how many loyalty cards you have in your wallet.

  That said, I am the worst offender. Even though I know Virgin is the best airline, I always try to fly BA. Even though I know HSBC is in fairly good shape, I bank at Barclays. Even though I know the new style of Levi’s reveals my butt crack when I bend over, I would still never buy a pair of Wranglers.

  And this brings me neatly onto the question of watches. For some time now, I’ve been on the hunt for a new one, but the choice is tricky. I couldn’t have a Breitling because I don’t own an Audi. I couldn’t have a Calvin Klein because they are pants, I couldn’t have a Gucci because I’m not a footballist’s wife, I couldn’t have a TW Steel because my wrist isn’t big enough to sport something that can be seen from space, I couldn’t have a Tissot because I’m not eight and the only thing in the world worse than a fake Rolex is a real one.

  Have you noticed something odd about Rolexes? Especially the modern ones that wind automatically when you move your wrist about? A great many owners wear them on their right hand. I jump to no conclusions here but you can feel free.

  Mostly, though, I cannot wear any of these watches because I am an Omega man. I have worn a Seamaster for years, not because James Bond has one and not because Neil Armstrong wore something by the same maker on the moon, but because on the day I went away to school my parents gave me a Genève Dynamic.

  The trouble is that for the past few years Omega has been the Pillsbury Dough of Swiss watches. The Terry and June. Omegas were dreary. They were boring to behold. They were Vectras in a world of Ferraris and Lamborghinis. The De Ville Prestige, for example, was plainly designed by someone who had a black-and-white telly.

  This filled me with despair. I wanted a watch. For the same reasons that I bank at Barclays and wear Levi’s, it had to be an Omega, and it just wasn’t coming up with the goods. It was like Leeds United. Once the home of Peter Lorimer and Gary Sprake but now an also-ran bunch of unimaginative clod-hopping no-hopers.

  And then one day, in Hong Kong, I saw it. A new Omega. It’s called the Railmaster and it is a thing of unparalleled beauty. There is no button that owners think will call for help if they find themselves in a crashing helicopter on Kilimanjaro, it is not waterproof to 8,000 metres, there is no stopwatch, there is no swivelling bezel to tell you how much air you have left in your tanks, and you even have to wind it up every morning or it will stop. Plainly, this is a watch for the sedentary soul. The man with no hang glider or mini sub in his garage. I bought it in an instant.

  And so it goes with Alfa Romeo. My loyalty to the brand began when I had an old GTV6. It let the air out of its tyres most nights. It would weld its twin-plate clutch to the flywheel if you didn’t drive it for a day or two. And once, it dumped its gear linkage onto the propshaft when I was doing about 60mph. The noise that resulted was extraordinary: a bit like Brian Blessed being raped.

  Even the design was silly. It was a hatchback, but the rear seat couldn’t be folded down because someone who’d had too much wine had put the petrol tank between the cabin and the boot. And the driving position had to be experienced to be believed. The only way you could get comfortable was if you had arms that were 6 feet long, a compressed spine and feet attached directly to your knees.

  You might expect me to say that I forgave it all these trespasses because it was so glorious to drive. But it wasn’t. In fact, not since the Alfasud has there been an Alfa which is demonstrably better than the competition. And now, of course, Alfa is just a division of Fiat.

  However … I have argued many times that owning an Alfa is a portal through which all petrolheads must pass if they genuinely want to know what it is that differentiates a car from a toaster or a washing machine.

  Because Alfas have flaws, they feel human, as if they have a soul and a temper. Each one – except the Arna, obviously – is like the tortured hero of a Russian novel, a car of extraordinary depths, a car you can never truly fathom, especially when it is four in the morning and it is enveloped in a cloud of steam, yet again, on the North Circular.

  They are like cocaine. The unimaginable highs are always matched by immense, brooding lows. Massive electrical storms that inevitably follow a glorious sultry evening.

  For years I have longed for the day when Alfa could put all of this humanity in a car that was good to drive as well. And I rea
lly thought the new MiTo might just be the answer; the Railmaster moment, when Alfa stopped being like Leeds United, stopped living on its reputation from the 1970 cup final and put a corker in the back of the net.

  It isn’t. It may come with a clever electronic package that enables you to choose what sort of response you’d like from the engine, but it doesn’t matter which option you select: the whole package is let down by a cunning new electric power-steering system that feels, I imagine, like fondling a pair of silicone breasts. There’s no escape from the fact that you are playing with two bags full of jelly.

  Then there’s the clever new suspension, in which there are coilover springs inside the shock absorbers. Sounds intriguing but so far as I could work out, the main result is a harsh ride.

  There are other issues, too. The sloping roof means headroom in the back is poor and the boot is small. The steering wheel is connected to the dash by what looks like a set of Victorian bellows, and the whole horn assembly felt like it was about to come off.

  Of course, I loved it. I found myself ignoring the defects and concentrating on the way there’s a choice of what material you’d like to surround the headlights. I loved the crackly, almost flat-four exhaust note, I loved the 155bhp turbocharged engine (from a Fiat), I loved the interior, which feels like it belongs in a much more expensive car. But the thing I love most of all about this car is that, at parties, when people ask what you’re driving, you can say, ‘An Alfa.’

  Men will imagine you are a grand-prix racer from the fifties. Women will think that you are a bit like the Daniel Day Lewis character in A Room with a View. A bit interesting. Like you might prefer poetry to Nuts. It’s the only brand in the world of sub-supercar motoring that can do this.