Round the Bend Read online

  And, anyway, if you are so bothered about achieving maximum economy from your car, why would you buy a 2.2-ton, 295-horsepower, 124mph off-roader? Wouldn’t you be better off with, say, a Mini?

  Obviously, the Lexus can handle more stuff, but it can’t handle anything like as much as you might expect. Put a fridge-freezer in the boot, close the tailgate and that stupidly sloping rear window is going to end up in a million pieces all over the road.

  I’ve just been on a family holiday and our Range Rover was barely able to handle the requirements of five people. In a Lexus 450, you’d have to leave one of the suitcases, or children, at home. Or go to a nudist camp.

  To drive, I have to say the 450 is pretty awful. Quite apart from the ride, which is part pillow, part oak, there is an electric power steering system that is as vague as an Indian railway timetable.

  If you have your head screwed on the right way round, then, this car makes very little sense at all. However, I must say the hybrid drive system does, apparently, produce some astonishing results.

  There are three motors. Up front you have a 3.5-litre V6, which is helped along when you need some more power by a 165-horsepower electric motor. At the back there’s a smaller electric motor that drives the rear wheels, making it four-wheel drive when things get sticky. As a piece of engineering, it’s fabulous, and the results, if they are to be believed, are fairly amazing, too. Because here is a large, five-seat car that has the power of a Ford Focus RS, but the fuel economy of a 1.4-litre Fiesta. Seriously. They claim it will do 44mpg. And all the while, somehow, it produces very few carbon dioxides.

  And that’s really it. That’s the nub. To buy this car you have to believe in man-made global warming. You have to honestly believe that by buying a hybrid and driving it home as slowly as possible, you will put out all the world’s forest fires.

  If, however, you just want a big, comfy car, then take those fuel-economy claims with a pinch of salt and buy something else.

  6 September 2009

  The perfect supercar

  Lamborghini Gallardo LP560-4 Spyder

  I can always spot those of a Guardian disposition. No matter how well disguised as a normal person they may be, they always reveal their true colours at some point by asking, scoffingly, why on earth we feature such expensive fast cars on Top Gear when the roads are so congested.

  Sometimes, I just roll my eyes, and sometimes, I set them on fire. But, occasionally, I adopt my special calm voice and explain that while the road from Islington to the headquarters of Channel 4 News may be a bit jammed up on a Tuesday morning, the road from Thwaite to Hawes in North Yorkshire usually isn’t.

  Nor is the road past my house. And nor were any of the roads we featured in the final and much misunderstood item in the last Top Gear show. In what was supposed to be a lament to the possible passing of the fast, petrol-powered car, an Aston Martin V12 Vantage was seen thundering along on mile after mile of completely deserted blacktop.

  This was filmed partly in Wales, partly in the Cotswolds and partly in Hertfordshire. You see my point. Even in the southeast of England, even in a home county, you can still find a road, lots of roads, in fact, where you can enjoy your 500-horsepower sports car.

  I found another last weekend. Though it was undoubtedly paid for by you and me, it’s in Spain, linking the crime-caper coast with the charming hilltop town of Ronda thirty-five miles away. Sadly, I’d had rather too many wines to drive the Lamborghini Gallardo LP 560-4 Spyder that was parked outside. Indeed, had it not been painted metallic pea green, I might not have been able to find it. But, happily, I had a chauffeur, a man who has no concept of alcohol. Or why ducks float. Or Tuesday.

  Strangely, even though I work with him all the time, I had never been in a car with the Stig. And had I not been a bit tipsy, I might not have got into a car with him that night either. Sober, you’d think about the road that lay ahead, with its cliff faces and its precipitous drops and Ronnie Biggs coming the other way, and you’d elect to crawl on your hands and knees rather than get into a car with a man who has two speeds: stationary and absolutely flat out. I’m glad I did, though, because Jesus, his driving is sublime.

  Not once did the car pitch or lurch. There was never a shimmy from the rear or a squeal from the tyres. We just went up that brilliant road with the roof down and me looking at the stars flying by as though we were on the Starship Enterprise’s observation deck. It was, I think, the most enjoyable drive of my life: to be in a car that good, with its V10 bark echoing off the limestone and a bit of Steely Dan on the stereo, doing about a million with a man who truly knows what he’s doing at the wheel.

  This is what those of a Guardian disposition don’t understand: that a car can be a tool but it can also be so much more. It can be a heart-starter, it can be a drug, it can be a piece of art, it can stir your soul and it can get you from Marbella to Ronda before the bar closes.

  The new Lamborghini Gallardo does all of those things at least as well as any other car money can buy.

  I am aware, of course, that soon Ferrari will launch its new 458, the first truly pretty car it has made since the 355. But even this is only a match for the sheer aesthetic rightness of the Gallardo, one of the most perfectly proportioned supercars the world has ever seen.

  And boy, the Ferrari will have to be good – very, very good – to be a better driving experience. I spent several days at the remarkable Ascari track with it, and it is fantastic. You can turn into any corner at pretty well any speed you like and the grip from the four-wheel-drive system beggars belief. Floor the throttle mid-bend and all you ever seem to get is more and more grip.

  The downside is that you have a less flamboyant time than you would in a car with rear-wheel drive. The upside is that when you are in public, overtaking another Dozy Dutchman in a Datsun, you know that you can floor it, use the monstrous power to get past and not worry too much about braking for the next bend because you will get round.

  Then there’s the new 5.2-litre engine. It’s magnificent and even that doesn’t do it justice. The power is immediate, the torque immense and the speed it delivers mesmerizing. I particularly like the way the exhaust makes a derisory snorting noise when you lift off. It’s as if it’s saying, ‘Why are you slowing down?’

  There’s more. In the past, a Lamborghini was more brittle than a pressed wild flower. One gust of wind and it’d turn to dust. Not any more. I pounded that Gallardo, and its big sister, the Murciélago SV, round that track in blazing forty-degree heat for day after day and neither of them made even a murmur of complaint. They felt as robust as Audis. Which, of course, is only right and proper, since, technically, that’s what they are.

  In the past, you’d look at the whole engine cover sliding upwards to let the roof fold away and you’d think, ‘Well, that’s going to break.’ But now, the whole mechanism feels like it’s made from bronze. It’s the same story with the system that allows you to connect your iPod to the central command centre and select playlists as you drive along. Yes, it’s all wired up by an Italian. But a German was looking over his shoulder, so it works.

  The only real technical problem – apart from the minor fact that a lot of Gallardos seem to catch fire – is the gearbox. If you order a manual, the clutch pedal is so close to the transmission tunnel there is nowhere to put your left foot when you are driving. This is extremely boring. So you must select the flappy paddles. However, because the rest of the car’s so good, this is a price worth paying.

  But … here we go. I’ve owned supercars in the past, a Ferrari 355, the old 5-litre Gallardo Spyder and a Ford GT. But, and this will bring a smile to the Guardianistas’ endlessly thin lips, they really don’t work on a day-to-day basis.

  You quickly grow tired of being looked at when you are stationary. You can’t see what’s coming at oblique junctions. Your hands are always dirty from lifting the bonnet, under which there’s a boot that’s never quite big enough for the things you’ve bought. And while the noise is sublime
when you are in the mood, it is annoying when you are not.

  Running a supercar as your day-to-day transport is like hacking out on Desert Orchid, or moving to one of those all-glass modern houses, or being married to Jordan, or living entirely on haute cuisine. They aren’t really designed for real life. They’re designed for dreaming, and that’s why I wrote that Aston Martin piece for Top Gear. It’s why I selected Brian Eno’s track ‘An Ending’ as the score. It’s why the director, Nigel Simpkiss, spent so much time and effort on the pictures. We wanted to highlight the dangers of what the anti-speed lobby and the pressure groups and the government’s eco fools are doing. It’s one thing removing our freedom to live the life we want to live. But now they are waging war on our freedom to dream.

  I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again here. I don’t really want a Lamborghini Gallardo. But I don’t want to live in a world where it doesn’t exist.

  23 August 2009

  … a great car, but who will buy it?

  Ferrari California

  Not that long ago, Ferrari named one of its cars after the town in which it was made. So we ended up with the Ferrari Maranello. And now, the company has announced its new entry-level model will be called the Italia.

  These are good names. But then Ferrari is lucky because the founder of the company had a cool name and he lived in a cool country where even football chants sound like poetry. Say, ‘You’re going to get your effing head kicked in,’ in Italian and it sounds as though you are lamenting the untimely demise of your much-loved mother.

  In Britain we have no such luxury. Let us imagine, for a moment, that the founder of Lotus had adopted a similar model-naming policy to Ferrari. Would you drive a car called the Chapman Norwich? No. Neither would I. Or a Lyons Coventry. Or a Henry East Midlands. Or a Herbert Birmingham. Mind you, I wouldn’t want a Gottlieb Stuttgart either. Or an Adolf Wolfsburg.

  Occasionally, Ferrari names its cars after the people who’ve styled them. Recently we had the Scaglietti, and that makes me go all weak at the knees, but again, it wouldn’t work here. Or the newest Range Rover would be called the Gerry. And Aston’s DB9 would be the Ian.

  Sometimes, though, Ferrari names its cars after other places in the world. We had the Superamerica and the Daytona and now we’ve got the California. California is a brilliant name. Elsewhere in the world, all the leaves are brown and the sky is grey. But in California the sun always shines. You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave. I like California. I got engaged there.

  I can’t understand why more car firms don’t use evocative place names when dreaming up handles for their cars. Ford did it with the Cortina, of course, but actually it wasn’t named after the ski resort. It was named after a cafe on the King’s Road in London.

  It’s not as if we’re short. I’d drive a Vancouver or a London. I’d drive a Calcutta or a Buenos Aires. I was going to say I’d drive a Wellington but, much though I love the place, I actually wouldn’t. Or a Nice.

  Strangely, however, when a car is named after a famous place, it’s always bloody Monte Carlo. We’ve had the Lancia Montecarlo, the Chevrolet Monte Carlo, the Ford Comète Monte Carlo, the Dodge Monaco and the Renault 5 Monaco. Why? Seriously, why name your car after a dreary, boring, rain-sodden tax haven full of prostitutes and arms dealers? Get an atlas, all of you, and let’s have a Chevy Buttermere.

  Or, better still, let’s get back to the California. We’re often told that a car looks better in the flesh than it does in pictures and I’ve always scoffed at this. I look horrible in pictures because I look horrible in the flesh. It’s not Nikon that gives me yellow teeth and a beach-ball belly. However, I can report that when it comes to the California, the camera really does lie. The images you’re looking at this morning in no way do the car justice. Roof up or down, it is absolutely beautiful.

  Now for the tricky bit. Ferrari says that this, its first-ever front-engined V8, has been aimed at women. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh. And then aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh some more.

  How can you possibly target half the world’s population? Are the people at Ferrari saying they’ve made it soft and cuddly? Because if they have, my wife will hate it. Or have they given it pink seats and a tampon dispenser, in which case the other half of the population will run a mile?

  You can design a film for women. It’ll have Hugh Grant in it. And you can design knickers for women. But a car? You might as well design a car for homosexuals. What sort? A big bull dyke or Graham Norton?

  So far as I can tell, the only big difference between the California and all the supposedly male Ferraris is the traction control, which comes with three settings rather than five. This is a good thing. It’s still not a perfect thing, though, or there’d be only two: on and off.

  No matter. The California feels like a Ferrari. It feels digital rather than analogue. It feel dizzyingly light and agile. It feels like no other car made today. Comparing it to a Lambo or an Audi R8 is like comparing lightning to soil.

  The steering is incredibly light. American light. And yet there is a feel there, and a fluency that you will find in no other road-going car.

  The engine may be the same size as the unit found in the middle of an F430, but the bore is wider and the stroke is shorter. It sounds like the recipe for a screamer, but it isn’t. It feels lazy and torquey. The speed’s still there, though. It gets from 0 to 60 just as quickly as the 430.

  There is, however, a fly in the silicone. It comes with a flappy-paddle gearbox. Now this may be a double-clutch affair such as you get in a VW Golf, but it’s still not right. I’d rather have a conventional automatic.

  This aside, though, the California is an amazing car to drive. Quiet and comfortable when you want it to be. Vicious and snarling when you don’t. But there are some warts.

  First, as you drive along, you can’t help but notice the bonnet flaps about in the wind. The last time I saw this from the driver’s seat of a car, I was in a Montego. Then, at the back, you have a boot lid that weighs nine million tons. If this car really is aimed at women, I dread to think who they had in mind. Fatima Whitbread, perhaps.

  And then we have the electronics. It is possible to connect your telephone via Bluetooth to the onboard computer, but every time you try to make a call, the voice-activated system will ignore your instructions and ring Steve Curtis, the powerboat champion. I do not know why.

  Then there are the speedometers. For reasons that are unclear, there are two – one dial and one digital – which give different readouts. This makes life particularly worrying when you are going past a Gatso camera. But, then, this is the price you must pay if you decide to buy a car from the bespoke tailors of the motoring world. Ferrari does not employ an army whose job for four years is to calibrate the speedos. It probably doesn’t employ anyone who realizes they’ve fitted two by mistake.

  Of course, a specialist car, such as the 599 or F430, will spend most of its life in a pair of woolly pyjamas in your heated garage, so who cares if the phone will ring only Steve Curtis. But the California is designed to be used. And I fear that if you come to it from a Mercedes SL, its little Italian ways will drive you a bit mad.

  There’s another problem, too. It’s a biggie. Would I really buy the Ferrari and not the Aston Martin DBS convertible?

  That’s as tough as decisions get. The Aston has a stupid Volvo sat nav, a price tag from the Comedy Store, buttons that could be operated only by Edward Scissorhands and a fly-off handbrake that won’t. But, amazingly, it is slightly better to drive than the Ferrari, and, staggeringly, even better-looking.

  I think that if I were in the market for a comfortable two-plus-two GT car, I would buy the Aston. But I just know I’d spend my entire time with it wishing I’d gone for the Ferrari. And, to make matters worse, if I bought the Ferrari, I’d wish I had the Aston.

  And all the time, in either, as you endlessly got lost, got caught speeding and rang various powerboat champions, you’d have this nagging doubt that looks, style a
nd soaring exhaust notes were not, in the real world, a match for the ruthless efficiency of a Gottlieb Stuttgart Sporty Light.

  13 September 2009

  Excuse me while I park my aircraft carrier

  Ford Flex 3.5L EcoBoost AWD

  As we know, there is absolutely nothing you ever encounter on holiday that works very well as a part of your everyday life. The sunshine, for instance. If we had an uninterrupted blue dome sitting over Britain 365 days a year, we’d spend all day at the beach and never do any work. This would turn us all into Australians, and pretty soon we’d only be known on the world stage for our large prawns.

  Buying a foreign holiday home won’t work either because, as Daisy Waugh pointed out recently in this paper, it doesn’t really matter how well you speak the local lingo; one day, just after your swimming pool has exploded, you will be in the local hardware store when you realize you don’t know the word for pliers.

  Do you know how to say ‘jump leads’ in French? A friend of mine once spent a good half-hour in a chandler’s in Cannes pretending to be a dog by barking. Then he pointed to an imaginary lead around his neck and jumped up and down, which was very imaginative but wrong. The words he needed were ‘batterie connecteur’. You didn’t know that, did you? You would have gone round to a neighbour’s house and pretended to be a dog as well, and then your neighbours would have clocked you as mad.

  Beer’s another problem. Back in 1984, I spent some time wandering around China, where, so far as I could tell, it was always 120°F and raining. This made me very thirsty so I spent most days drinking gallons of the local brew, which is called Tsingtao. It was delicious. I loved it. And then I tried some when I got home and I decided that actually it was exactly the same as drinking watered-down mouse pee.