Clarkson on Cars Read online

  The machine, which is genuinely powered by its blades, is connected to a central command post by a wire and flies round in circles with a hook dangling underneath poised to pick up empty matchboxes and old Coke cans.

  Such precision flying requires 100 per cent Chuck Yeagerish concentration so, when I’m airborne, little thought is given to burnt suppers or indeed any of the rigours encountered in daily life.

  What lunchtime? What meeting? What Citroen press release?

  Mobile Phones

  ‘Yes darling. I’ll pick you up at eight… No this time I promise… Well, I know, but last night was different… Yes, well the night before was different too… No, standing around on Fulham Broadway isn’t much fun… OK listen, if I’m late tonight, I’ll buy you dinner at San Lorenzo. Bye.’

  Gulp. I’ve got an appointment in Twickenham at six.

  San Lorenzo costs twenty quid a head and that’s without going bonkers on the port and brandy. Then there’s the taxi and they don’t take credit cards so I’ll have to get some money out and the banks are closed.

  Now, my autobank’s a dodgy little blighter. Sometimes it enjoys Gettyish generosity and will plunge wads of Harold Melvins into the recipient maulers but on other days, for no apparent reason, it’s tighter than a Scotsman on holiday in Yorkshire and won’t hand over so much as a damn penny.

  ‘I wouldn’t mind if the green screen was polite and said something like, ‘Sorry old chap but your overdraft’s a little excessive and it’d be more than my job’s worth to hand over the cash at the moment.’

  But ‘insufficient funds available’ is so terse; so final. And the queue behind, already exasperated by my inability to remember my code number on the first attempt, is reduced to a giggling mess as I shrug nonchalantly and, fighting back the tears of humiliation, stroll away as if it doesn’t matter.

  But with the threat of an £80 experience among the stars at San Lorenzo hanging wearily about my person, there is no alternative and I find myself approaching the damn thing, dripping like ageing cheese in an old sock.

  Inevitably there’s a queue. Inevitably a gang of screeching Hoorays fall in line astern of me. Inevitably I programme in the wrong number twice and inevitably I’m told, to the accompaniment of a crescendo of shrieks from the Ruperts, that I’m a miserable pauper.

  Boarding the tube at Sloane Square, I consider my predicament and weigh up the consequences of a late arrival at Fulham Broadway. They are too dire to contemplate. Eighty quid is a lot of money for a pauper. Oh God, please help.

  Now I bet you didn’t know that God works in Volkswagen’s press office. Because after my return to the den of iniquity that afternoon, Charles, who is VW’s effervescent delivery driver, wandered in brandishing the keys to a 16-valve Scirocco I was due to test that week.

  And joy of joys, nestling in that sombre but tasteful interior was nigh on two grand’s worth of Panasonic Vodaphone. Better still, VW would pick up the tab for any calls I made.

  If the meeting in Twickenham dragged on and I found myself in the kind of snarl-up only the A316 can muster, it was a simple question of ringing the beloved and thus avoiding an £80 outlay that would mean I’d have to live on a diet of small Macs and stickleback and chips for the forthcoming decade.

  Sure enough, the meeting did go on and on, despite endless tutting and continual references to Omega’s finest. And sure enough every Cherry this side of Chernobyl was on the 316, misjudging approach speeds and getting confused by roundabouts.

  At ten to eight I realised there wasn’t a hope in hell of getting to the Broadway on time and resorted to the Vodaphone. ‘Hello sweetheart… no, don’t shout at me… no, listen… I wa… Becau… No, I’m using a car phone and if this Nissan gets out of my way I’ll be with you in about twenty minutes.’

  That simple message cost VW 10p and saved me eighty quid.

  This phone-in-the-car business was definitely worth looking into. I had at my disposal a Panasonic EBC1044 with hands-free facility which retails for £1774 excluding VAT. On top of this outlay you are faced with a £50 connection charge and a monthly fee of £25.

  Calls made between 7.30 a.m. and 7.30 p.m. from Monday to Friday cost 25p per minute but at all other times the cost is a mere 10p per minute.

  Any one of VW’s 350 dealers can fit the hardware, which is broken down thus: £1375 for the handset and a complicated-looking box which was in the boot, £290 for the hands-free facility, £28.95 for the mounting kit and a whopping £79.95 for an aerial which would have to be replaced every time Chelsea played at home.

  Hands free, for those of you who’ve just returned from a sightseeing trip on Voyager Two, is a wonderful innovation which allows a driver to hold a conversation without taking his paws from the wheel.

  You simply dial up the number you wish or, if it’s logged in the set’s memory, press the appropriate code number, and hey presto, the job’s done. A couple of seconds later you’ll hear the ringing tone from a speaker located near your right ankle. The microphone into which you speak is attached to the sun visor.

  Trouble is, those without cars are unwise in the ways of modern automotive technology and, on one occasion, I noticed a few raised eyebrows from the incumbents of a bus queue as I sat in a traffic jam shouting at my sun visor.

  Because the Scirocco GTX 16v is a left hooker, they were that much closer and consequently their surprise turned into uncontrollable mirth as I went on to tell the visor I would meet it in the pub in ten minutes.

  Then there was the instance when I called a friend to ask about the availability of tickets for a ball I was due to attend.

  He said that I could bring along anyone I liked except ‘that balding so-and-so’ – a mutual friend.

  Unfortunately, the gentleman in question was in the car at the time and heard every word.

  I did notice that the unit’s performance is impaired to a notable degree when the hands-free facility is employed, so that the vocal chords of both conversationalists have to be strained to be audible.

  It’s actually worse for the driver because whenever I used the device, I was invariably alongside a 3,000,000-hp Volvo tractor unit.

  And drivers of 3,000,000-hp tractor units don’t like squirts in bright-red Sciroccos with telephones, so they rev their engine up to a point where the pistons are moving faster than a Beirut window shopper and it’s making more noise than Pete Townsend on a Gibson pile driver.

  This effectively blots out conversation to the point that on many occasions I had to resort to the dangerous and potentially illegal practice of using the handset like a normal phone.

  Anyway, after saving the day with regards to dinner at San Lorenzo, I figured a call to dear old mother, who’s utterly bemused by anything electronic, would be in order.

  I did, however, make the mistake of giving her the unit’s number, which meant she rang at all the wrong times to find out a) where I was and b) how fast I was going.

  Three days later I found myself using every reserve of concentration as I tried to overtake a speedily driven 200 Turbo Quattro on a delightful stretch of A road in Hampshire – a manoeuvre made even more difficult by my seating position and the Scirocco’s 139 bhp against his 182.

  Quite the last thing I needed was a telephone call from the dear old soul up North and the resultant lecture on the dangers of driving too fast. I still think she believes I was doing 100 mph with one hand on a phone. Hands free is a difficult facility to explain when the Quattro up front is gaining ground and the sun roof’s open.

  Besides, the Audi had a £79.95 aerial poking through the rear windscreen and I was busy plotting a means of finding out his number so I could call him up to say something dastardly like ‘Your rear tyres are on fire’

  When I finally lost him I let my mind drift into scenes where the car phone could be even more useful than for warning womenfolk you’re going to be late. Like if I saw a bank robbery and gave chase to the villains. I could call up the police and tell them what they were up t
o. I could be a hero. I’d be on the front page of the Sun.

  I know the manufacturers of these phones harp on about lost business and sales reps and traffic jams, but half the value is encased in their fun and snob value. Otherwise why is it everyone begins their conversation by saying, ‘I’m on the car phone’?

  And why is it everyone who rode shotgun in the Scirocco that week ignored the technical sophistication of its 16-valve engine, ignored the fact it was left-hand drive, ignored the admiring glances from GTi pilots and said ‘Ooh, it’s got a phone’?

  I could have picked them up in Thrust Two or the space shuttle. They wouldn’t have been bothered so long as they could play with a device that when placed on a hall windowsill is readily available courtesy of the DHSS.

  Two grand is a lot of dosh for someone whose autobank regularly says ‘insufficient funds available’, but if I spent a great deal of my time in one car rather than a very little of it in several, I’d be hugely tempted to invest.

  Last Year’s Model

  Yesterday, a great many things went wrong. The girl at Suzuki said I couldn’t drive a new Swift until next year and she’d call back when she knew precisely when.

  This, past experience has taught me, actually means get lost toerag.

  Moments later, I had the most awful row with two security guards at Earls Court because they wouldn’t let me back a BMW twenty yards down a ramp. Sadly, the issue became personal as I enquired of them why it is that small people in peaked caps are always so damned intransigent and they, of me, why BMW drivers are always so ??$*!ing pushy.

  Eventually a bossy woman with a loud and hectoring demean-our came but I couldn’t understand what she was saying to me because she was holding one of those walkie-talkie affairs that seem to emit nothing but white noise punctuated with people saying ‘Roger’ a lot.

  I finally managed to squeeze past the music teacher lookalike and her SS sidekicks when a charming man stepped from his Volvo Estate to ask them why it is that the working class always vote Labour. I didn’t actually see what bearing his line of questioning had on the issue but his suicide antics diverted the heat for just long enough for me to win my battle.

  Sadly though, my war with the day was far from over. My Fiat test car ignited warning light after warning light until its interior began to resemble a Jean Michel Jarre concert, my doctor warned once again that if I didn’t have a week off, my eczema would envelop the last vestiges of skin and Barry Reynolds rang up from Ford to say the Cosworth I was due to get next week would, in fact, be an XR2.

  Now, I have many weak spots – my face is perhaps the most apparent – but I do pride myself on an ability to maintain an even strain when the adversity is piling up.

  Some people, I know, reach for the paraquat if the sponge cake doesn’t rise correctly. Others weep for weeks upon finding out their son’s motorcycle isn’t taxed. But I do none of these things, not least because I don’t know how to make a sponge cake and don’t have a son.

  What I do in times of crisis is try to put my predicament in perspective. As I sat on the phone listening to Mr Reynolds explaining why the Cosworth would not be winging its way to Fulham, I merely thought about that time when my sister ripped the last page from the Famous Five book I was reading and I was smacked for beating her up. And those dreadful tea-time visits to Aunt May’s – a sizeable woman who always sat with her bandaged legs wide apart and began all her toothless monologues with ‘Do you remember when…’

  I even summoned up from the memory bank’s deepest recess that incident when a load of town boys stole my school cap and put something a dog had done in my satchel.

  Still though, the pain of not getting a Cosworth hurt – it hurt in the same way a Sherman tank would hurt if it ran over your legs. What I needed was to recall something so terrible, a moment that produced so much anguish, that not having a Cosworth would become joyous in comparison. I thought about the red mullet I’d eaten on the BMW 7-Series launch and how sad it was that I’d never again enjoy this, the best piece of food created by any chef anywhere, ever before.

  But the pain didn’t go away until I remembered that moment on 10 October 1969 when I crashed my brand-new Buick Riviera into the coffee table and one of its four gleaming headlights dropped from the grille.

  This was the pride of my Dinky/Corgi fleet because it sported mirrors in the front and rear windows which, when covered up, dimmed the head and tail lamps.

  It cost 5/6d and was the envy of everyone at school. Once, Gary Needham offered to swap his Mercedes Pullman with the dirty front windscreen for it, but I refused. He even offered to throw in his Batmobile but I already had one of those even though Robin’s window was broken after my sister trod on it. I beat her up for that too.

  She also lost the little yellow pellets you could fire from the boot-mounted mortars and I was the school laughing stock because I had to resort to matchsticks instead.

  I’ve still got my entire collection and am told the earlier variety with detachable rubber wheels will one day be worth a few bob.

  But I somehow doubt the ones I Humbrolised with all the finesse of a charging rhino will ever be worth more than the 5/6d I paid for them. The paint seemed to go everywhere except on the bodywork and because I usually did the red stripe down the side before the green job was dry, it all ran. If anyone out there will offer me 30p for a sludge-coloured Citroen DS Safari with a fingerprint on the bonnet I’d be willing to consider a trade.

  The best Citroen I ever had was a Citroen Pallas coupe finished in a metallic cherry red. That is still in perfect condition as are all the models I bought when rubber wheels were being phased out to be replaced by the plastic variety. There’s an Alfa Pininfarina and another white Alfa with a gold spoiler and no roof. Looks like something from Thunderbirds but at least it enables me to trace the roots of my current love affair with the GTV6.

  I suppose my trips to Youngsters in the high street every Saturday ceased in the 1970s when die cast went out of fashion and Dinky died. An Esso oil tanker was, I believe, my last purchase.

  I was once given a plastic kit of the MR2 by Toyota which I tried fashioning into something resembling a car but the disaster which ensued convinced me that model-making is an avenue I should not pursue. The finished article is a bloodstained mess that visitors to my house think is an aubergine.

  In recent years my preoccupation with cars has centred around the variety that are too big for my sister to tread on.

  However, as she is now a solicitor and presumably responsible enough not to smash up her brother’s belongings, I have recently begun wondering whether a foray into the world of toy cars might be a good plan.

  On a recent trip to Sicily I noticed every shop window was full of die-cast toy cars made by Burago. They’re a good deal bigger than my Dinky and Corgi collection and, even allowing for inflation, they’re a good deal more expensive too but I swear on my Buick’s lost headlight, they really are superb. And you can buy them here.

  Foolishly, I went all the way to Hamleys to check on prices only to discover that my local filling station sells them. In case you’re interested, set aside around a tenner for the best examples.

  There’s a massive range encompassing all kinds of models and all kinds of sizes but having scrutinized the line-up, considered my age and the use to which I would put them, I reckon those which are produced to a scale of 1/18 are best.

  For sure, an eleven-year-old who has a penchant for Hum-brolising his toy prior to racing it through a sandpit would be better off with the tinier, and therefore cheaper variety but the bigger ones are so beautifully crafted, they don’t look out of place among the Lladro and leather-bound Britannicas on your bookcase.

  Without question, the best of them all is the Testarossa which is mounted on a lovely piece of wood. Now, I don’t like the look of full-size Testarossas with their Vauxhall Astra front ends, their silly door mirrors and boot scrapers down the side but in model form, they look superb.

  The
bonnet, boot and doors open to reveal faithfully scaled-down copies of the car’s innards – even the tyre treads are accurate. Another masterpiece is the 250GTO which comes with chromed bonnet catches and the E-type – a proper one from 1961 – can’t be ignored either. Others are the Mercedes SSKL, the Bugatti Type 59, the Jaguar SS100, the 250 Testarossa, the Alfa Romeo 2300 Spider, the Mercedes SSK, the Lancia Aurelia Spyder, the Bugatti Grand Prix, the Mercedes 300SL and the Alfa Romeo 8C 2300 Monza, drool drool drool.

  There’s also a model of the Rolls-Royce Camargue though I swear that if you painted it pink, it would look just the same as the car Parker used to chauffeur for Lady Penelope. Also, the windscreen wipers look like a pair of silver telegraph poles sprouting from the bonnet.

  Burago’s best sellers are now sitting in moist soil at home receiving a daily dosage of Fison’s Make It Grow fertiliser.

  Watch It

  I suppose if one were to weigh up all the pros and cons, one would probably decide that it is a good idea to wear trousers while out shopping on a Saturday morning.

  If one were to peruse the pots, pans and Pyrex in Boots, for instance, wearing nothing below the belt except socks, shoes and underpants, one would feel silly and, well, really rather naked.

  Builders spend six months of the year with no shirts on and people from Islington wander around in bare feet, but no one aside from pupils at a strange public school in North Yorkshire, women, and Scotsmen would dream of venturing from the confines of a homestead without strides.

  Bearing this argument in mind, it would be all too easy to assume that trousers are the most important item in my wardrobe but believe me, they’re not.

  I would rather go to a Buckingham Palace garden party clad only in a pair of day-glo ‘Willie Hamilton for Prime Minister’ Y-fronts than spend so much as ten seconds of my day without a watch.