Round the Bend Read online

  And then, after ten laps, we were whizzed in luggzury 4x4s to another track, where we did ten laps in some Renault Clio touring cars, and then it was Porsche 911s and then it was a funny sort of miniature Le Mans racer. And then we were dipped into Nomex, asked to put on some driving slippers and slotted into the single-seaters.

  The instructor asked if I’d ever driven such a thing before. ‘Of course I have,’ I replied indignantly. ‘I am a presenter on Top Gear and so I have driven everything.’ But then I started to think. And realized that I hadn’t. That’s a bit like Jonathan Ross realizing one day he’s never seen Brief Encounter.

  Obviously, it wasn’t a Formula One car, but it wasn’t a puny Formula Ford either. It had slick tyres, a 3-litre Jaguar V6, a power-to-weight ratio of 500bhp per ton, a top speed of 170 and easily enough room in the cockpit for anyone up to 6 feet 3 inches. I’m taller than that but I’ve been cramped before in exotic cars so I wasn’t even remotely worried about the drive that lay ahead. I should have been.

  You hear motor sports commentators talking about the problems of cold tyres and you see all those mechanics draping the rubberwear with electric blankies to keep them warm and you think, ‘Oh, don’t be so silly. And stop weaving around like that. Cold tyres can’t possibly make any difference.’

  That’s why I went barrelling into the first corner only to discover I had no grip at all. I’m not talking about the rear end being a bit skittish. Or the front washing out. I’m talking about the steering wheel being completely and utterly redundant. So into the grass I went.

  Happily, because the track is in Bedford, you could spin for a thousand miles in any direction and not hit anything, so soon I was off again, imagining that I’d made a mistake of some sort. But no.

  I crawled round the second corner because everyone else was facing in the wrong direction and made it all the way to the third, where I braked carefully, came down the sequential box, turned in gingerly and – whoa – spun again.

  I simply do not know how those F1 boys get round the first lap at all. And, what’s more, I don’t really have much of a clue about how they do the second, either.

  Because, having slithered and spun round the first lap, you slow right down because you simply don’t trust the tyres to work. And that means they don’t get hot.

  It’s catch-22. Go fast enough to warm them up and you spin. Go slow and you have to play the snail until the chequered flag comes down. After several laps, however, of eyebrow-matting concentration, I hit a pigeon. Which was a bit uncomfortable. For it.

  Stopping was no easier. Brake at what you think is the right place and you will stop dead about 400 yards before the corner. A car this light has no real mass and, consequently, stops with a panache no road car can match. So you start to get cocky, braking later and later until, eventually, you will lock the fronts. When this happens in a normal car on normal tyres, there is much wailing and screeching. But in the single-seater, on slicks, there is no noise at all. For a while, you sit there, thinking all is well. Then you notice the smoke, and then you realize that you are heading straight for the pit wall at about a million.

  Over the years, I have driven many cars, some of them very fast. And in my mind, this had prepared me for life in a proper racing car on proper racing tyres on a proper racing track. It hadn’t, though. It’s like spending your life hiring out donkeys on a beach and then imagining you could win the Grand National.

  And then there’s the question of g. F1 racing drivers talk about how they suffer from the effects of this, and I always feel compelled to drive to their houses and punch them in the face. Because the g they are talking about is lateral. And lateral g is for nancy boys.

  In essence, the effects of g are felt in the form of blood moving around inside your body. In a fighter plane it moves up to your head in times of negative g – which makes you feel light-headed and sick – and down in times of positive g, which causes you to lose your peripheral vision and then die.

  In a racing car it can move only laterally – from side to side. So it’s not all in your head or all in your feet. It just sloshes from shoulder to shoulder. Which is no big deal … I’ve always thought.

  You see, eventually I did start to push the single-seater, and it was a revelation. Because you can see the front tyres and because they have so much grip when they are warm, you can place the car precisely where you want it to be at speeds you would imagine were simply impossible. All these years, I’ve scoffed at racing drivers for dismissing all road cars as rubbish, but I began to see their point. I may have even whooped occasionally like an American. And then my neck started to hurt. And then the muscles in it turned to fat. And then, after a couple of laps, I couldn’t hold my head up at all. When I got out of the car, it looked as though I’d been hanged. Lateral g, then, is unpleasant.

  Which brings me to the BMW Z4. To a racing driver, who is used to slick tyres and fish-sharp reflexes, it’s wallowy and slithery and horrid. But, to me, it’s brilliant. Mostly, because you can drive for more than ten minutes without your head coming off.

  I also liked the styling, the ride – provided you stay out of the sport settings – the engine’s urgency, the fluidity of the responses and the elegance of the interior. Though, that said, this is not a car you can drive in cuff links. Because the centre console is set up for left-hand drive, every time you change gear your silver dog turd, or whatever, will hit the iDrive knob, which in extreme circumstances can cause the cabin to be filled with rap noises.

  However, I’ve thought quite hard about this and can confidently say that the Z4, with its folding metal roof and softer feel, is now the best of the medium-sized sports cars. Certainly, I prefer it to the Boxster and the Mercedes SLK.

  However, if it’s a real driving experience you want, forget the ultimate driving machine. Because, as I now realize, it isn’t.

  21 June 2009

  Strip poker in the …

  Ford Focus RS

  Would the Duke of Edinburgh ever buy a bright orange pair of trousers? Would your fourteen-year-old daughter wear a calf-length tweed skirt and a hand-knitted cardigan? Can you imagine Sir Ranulph Fiennes in a mankini?

  The fact is this. A very, very small number of people choose to buy and wear an item of clothing because of the quality of its stitching or the way it hangs, even when hailing a cab. But mostly, people only wear what they think suits them.

  People drive what they think suits them as well. A harassed woman, for instance, knows that her bird’s-nest hair and nightie go well with a Volvo XC90. A woman with expensive hair on her head and none at all between her legs realizes that she can have nothing but a Range Rover. Red cheeks and overalls work with Mitsubishi’s pick-up trucks. Lacy tops look right in a Peugeot. And the Audi and the Montblanc pen fit together as beautifully as the ladder and the Vauxhall Astra.

  Naturally, this brings me on to the Ford Focus RS. Who does it suit? What person did Ford’s marketing department have in mind when it said, ‘Yes. Let’s give it a wing the size of Tommy Sopwith’s and wheel arches big enough to provide shelter for a herd of cows. And yes, again. Let’s sell it with a choice of just three colours: lime green, Rooney blue and toilet white.’

  Can you think of anyone who would wish to own such a thing? We know that Rio Ferdinand has a strange taste in shorts and that David Beckham is not averse to going out at night in a skirt. They would probably love a lime-green Ford with a Boeing appendage on the back. But top-flight footballers earn as much as £150,000 a week and will not therefore be interested in a £26,000 Ford.

  I am aware, too, that small boys like cars such as this. But when they grow old enough to drive, they are also old enough to know it’s a bit onyx; a bit Cheshire, a bit vulgar.

  We know that Jonathan Ross has a pair of yellow training shoes. We also know he has a pink Ford Thunderbird. But would he want an RS? No. Nor would Stephen Fry, Susan Boyle, David Attenborough, Konnie Huq, Kirsty Young, Ian Hislop, Brian Ferry, Mick Jagger or Harry Potter.r />
  No one would, because these days we know the rules. In the UK the Daily Mail regularly informs us that that anyone who earns more than £40,000 should be made to stand in the street and rub off their own face with a cheese grater.

  That’s why those who do buy Ferraris increasingly ask for them to be grey, and it’s why the ivory-white Mercedes SL is not an everyday sighting. Because this is showing off. And showing off is bad.

  There is no question, then, that if you want a smallish, fastish hatchback you are better off with a VW Golf GTI, which looks just like the diesel and, consequently, will not be smeared with dog dirt by the Mail’s Paul Dacre every morning. And that normally would be the end of that.

  But it isn’t, because underneath the vivid paintwork and behind the wall of crackling, sash-window-rattling noise coming out of the Ford’s twin exhaust tunnels lie the sort of fun and games that the Golf GTI simply can’t deliver. The Volkswagen is a game of chess. The Focus is a game of strip poker.

  Under the bonnet, beneath the snow-shoe heating ducts, there is a 2.5-litre five-cylinder Volvo engine. That does not sound like a particularly enticing starting point but you only have to look at how delightful it became in the Ford Focus ST to know that silk purses can be made from sows’ udders.

  And for the RS it has been given new pistons, a new management system, a new turbo – a new everything, really, so that the end result is a whopping 300bhp. That’s nearly a hundred more than you get from the Golf. And that’s before we get to the 325 torques: 119 more than you get from the Golf.

  No one has ever put a 300bhp engine in a front-wheel-drive car before. Not that long ago, most car companies argued that 175 was the maximum. Any more and you’d be in a world of lost traction, torque steer, burning rubber, pain, misery and death.

  To get round this problem on the last Focus RS, which delivered only 220bhp, a front differential was fitted. This didn’t work at all. Put your foot down hard, the steering wheel would lock in your hands and you would spear into the nearest tree.

  On the new RS, there’s a new type of diff allied to a new type of suspension set-up called the RevoKnuckle. It is extremely boring and it doesn’t work properly either. You still get torque steer and the wheel doesn’t half feel weird in the bends.

  However, there is no doubt that you can go round corners in the RS at a speed that can boggle your mind, and then use g-forces to squeeze it out of your left ear. What’s more, you can put one of the driven wheels into a puddle while cornering and the little hatch will still not deviate from the line you’ve chosen. Around Ford’s test track, we are told the RS is actually faster than the 5-litre GT.

  Do not imagine, however, that it’s some kind of stripped-out racer with all the interior fixtures and fittings removed and replaced with air. Instead of scaffolding in the back and carbon fibre, you get a voice-activated command centre that handles the satellite navigation and the stereo, a sunglasses holder, air-conditioning, a million acres of leather and plenty of dials telling you all the things you don’t really need to know.

  It is as luxurious in there as it is in a top-flight Mercedes. And about as comfortable. No, really – despite the tyres, which sit on the wheels like a coat of paint, it rides nicely. Which is a good thing because the bucket seats, finished in the same colour as the exterior for added vulgarity, offer lots in the way of lateral support, but not much protection from bumps for the buttocks.

  I loved this car in the same way that I love nearly all fast Fords. Once, in the dim and distant past, I even ran an Escort Cosworth, which was no shrinking violet either. But something has changed since then. Maybe it’s me, or maybe it’s the world. I don’t know. But I do know I could not ever drive an RS on a day-to-day basis. It would sit outside my house about as well as a ceramic collie.

  You may be different. You may not want the Golf because you want people to see how well the tanning salon business is doing. You may like to signal your arrival at parties with a Colonel Bogey air horn. You may choose to wear your hat back to front, and your trousers in such a way that we can see your pants. You may admire Wayne and Coleen. If so, you will love the RS.

  Me, though: I just wish they did a Cotswold version. Exactly the same but in olive green and with seats made from the Duke of Edinburgh.

  28 June 2009

  Hey, Hans – don’t squeeze my bulls

  Lamborghini Murciélago LP 670-4 SV

  Last weekend, the restored Vulcan bomber, the only one in the world now flying, lumbered slowly and noisily over my house. And I damn nearly wet myself with excitement. I ran around the garden, clutching at my private parts with one hand, pointing with the other and screaming at the top of my lungs for the children to put down their Facebooks so they could see it too.

  I bet things were a good deal less exciting in the cockpit, though. I bet it was hot and squashed in there and, if we’re honest, a bit frightening as well.

  I have never been on the flight deck of a big Brit bomber but I have sat at the pointy end of a Blackbird SR-71 and I imagine it’s about the same. Because there are so many dials and knobs, you are constantly reminded that you are in something that’s made from about a million different parts. All of which are operating at the very limit of what 1950s technology allowed. But you can’t crap yourself, because there simply isn’t enough room.

  In my own small earthling way, I sort of know what this feels like because I have driven a Lamborghini Countach.

  When it came along in the early seventies, your dad was pottering about in a Ford Cortina or maybe a Morris Marina and then, one day, a company he couldn’t pronounce unveiled a car the likes of which the world had never seen.

  I once wondered, on television, how New Yorkers must have felt when Brunel’s propeller-driven liner, the SS Great Britain, steamed into their harbour. Because there they were, with their horses and their coracles, when into their midst came a metal ship that had no obvious means of propulsion. They must have felt very backward. Almost as backward as they felt in 1977 when Concorde screamed into JFK for the first time.

  Well, that’s what I felt like as a fourteen-year-old boy when I first saw a Countach. I couldn’t believe any of it. Not the noise. Not the lowness – it was only 42 inches tall. Not the vast rear wing. Not the monstrous size of the tyres. And certainly not the claims that it would do 170mph. At the time, you must remember, the world was a slower place, so 170 was about Mach 6.

  It was many years before I actually got to drive one, and, oh my God … as disappointments go, this was like getting your girlfriend’s kit off for the first time and discovering she had an Adam’s apple.

  The steering wasn’t heavy. An elephant is heavy. A school is heavy. An American is heavy. The Lambo’s steering was in another league. Sometimes, you’d try to turn the wheel to go round a corner and, for a fleeting moment, you actually thought the whole system had jammed.

  And then there was the clutch. If they’d set the pedal in concrete, it would have been easier to depress. And all the while, you were rammed into a space that was tiny and very, very hot. I’m sure you’ve all seen The Bridge on the River Kwai hundreds of times, which means I’m also sure you remember the box in which Alec Guinness was made to live. Well, imagine being in there, on a sweaty day, while doing a full SAS workout, at 170mph. That’s what it was like in a Countach.

  Parking, however, was even worse because you could not see out of the back, at all. The window would only wind down an inch. The car was wider than the owner of a Cheshire tanning salon and, to complicate everything even more, you could be assured you would be trying to get kerbside while under the scrutiny of a very sizeable audience.

  You might have imagined as you took delivery of your new Lamborghini that you would spend the rest of your life drowning in girls. ’Fraid not. Because you didn’t step out of a Countach; you crawled out, sweating, exhausted and dehydrated to the point of death. Sex? It was the absolute last thing on your mind.

  In 1990, Lamborghini replaced the Counta
ch with the Diablo. It was much less striking to behold, principally because the Countach had been there and done that. But it was even faster. And that was a bad thing, because now you were in a hot, cramped box, with heavy controls, doing 200mph. Death was always a very real possibility. Often you’d have embraced it.

  By the twenty-first century, every other supercar maker had got round this problem. Their cars had light steering, Nissany pedals, air-conditioning and so on. But not Lambo. It was sticking to the original recipe: make it mad and paint it orange. Which is why the Murciélago, which came along in 2001, was as much of a bastard as its predecessors.

  I spent some time last week with the latest – and possibly the last – incarnation of this insane raging bull. It’s called, rather snappily, the LP (for longitudinally positioned engine) 670-4 (to denote the horsepower in metric terms and the number of driven wheels) SV (meaning SuperVeloce). My, the Italians are a romantic bunch.

  In English, what they’ve done is upped the power from the 6.5-litre V12 by 30. That’s not much. But they’ve also lightened the car by 220lb. That’s a lot. And the result is extraordinary.

  When you fire up a modern-day Ferrari, it is almost as though you are stepping into the innards of a PlayStation game. You sense the technology. You feel the wiring working. You can almost hear the electrons monitoring this and covering that. It’s a wonderful feeling, even though you can’t help wondering if half the stuff is there only for marketing reasons – ‘We have an F1 team you know …’

  In the Murciélago, it’s just pure unadulterated violence. The grip from the four-wheel-drive system as you leave the line is so immense that you usually leave half the clutch behind. But you’ve no time to think about that because you are already doing 100. And by the time you register that, you’re doing 150. And still, there’s no let-up.