Born to Be Riled Read online

  If the makers of Blue Nun were to convince the entire nation, within the space of two years, that their sickly interpretation of wine is better than Chablis, I wouldn’t be surprised.

  Given enough money, it can be done. I know this because in just 18 months Volvo has turned itself from a music hall joke into a serious and credible BMW rival.

  It all began, gently at first, with the introduction of the 850, a surprisingly nice car to drive but you’d never know it, what with those Etch-a-Sketch lines and that badge.

  Never mind that the top models had a creamy 2.5 litre, five-cylinder 20-valve engine and a truly sophisticated rear suspension, it was still bought by old people who indicated left a lot and turned on their high-intensity rear fog lights during June, in readiness for autumn.

  The rest of us were still safe. We could still spot a Volvo coming the other way and get out of its way. Motorcyclists could see one approaching a main road and know, for an absolute certainty, it wasn’t going to stop.

  Then Volvo gave us the T5. And before everyone woke up to the fact that this was a really nice car to drive, and seriously fast too, Volvo had entered the world’s most prestigious racing series for saloon cars. Only they’d entered an estate.

  There was turmoil in the motoring world. ‘No,’ we said to them politely, ‘It’s not the British Towing Car Championships. Please pull out. It will be embarrassing.’

  And it was. In the first year, they lost spectacularly. And as the Swedish tidal wave cruised round in the middle of the field, the crowd pointed and made bovine lowing noises.

  The trouble is that in the car parks at these events you started to notice, among the Sierra Cosworths and BMWs, a growing number of the aforementioned T5s, finished in black, and lowered, and sitting on 17 inch gunmetal grey alloys.

  They looked very good and the cognoscenti were impressed, in a confused, what’s happening here, sort of way.

  Then all hell broke loose. Volvo started its second year in the Touring Car Championship with a brace of saloons that actually won some races. And they bought every single advertising slot on ITV so that we could see stunt men and photographers and meteorologists whizzing around in their Volvos.

  Never slow to leap onto a bandwagon, I got hold of a T5 for my wife, and pretty soon everyone who’d ever had a Volvo was saying that they’d been right all along and that they knew I’d come round to their way of thinking in the end.

  Things by now were out of control because to run alongside the T5, Volvo brought out an even meaner T5R. And now there is, simply, the 850R. Or as my wife calls it, the R2D2. Or as I call it, Terminator 2.

  You’ll have to think up your own name because it just says Volvo on the back. However, no one is fooled for long, thanks to the rear wing, the vivid red finish, the six-spoke gunmetal grey alloys and the chin spoiler that grazes the road.

  Inside, there’s powered, heated Suedette seats and all the fruit. There is also a wooden dashboard, the likes of which I have never seen before. You see, it’s made from what looks like polished pine and it is absurd.

  It’s useful, though, because there’s no way you’d climb inside and think of the car as ordinary in any way. OK, so it starts with a key and the clutch pedal is on the left, but once you’ve let it up a bit you’re at the controls of a wheeled neutron bomb.

  The huge turbo means the 2.3 litre motor now develops 250bhp, and that, translated into bald figures, equals a 0 to 60 time of six point something seconds and a top speed of 160mph. In a Volvo.

  It will cost about £32,000 whether you have the saloon or the estate, manual or automatic transmission, and while that’s a lot, I have to say, you do get a lot of car for the money.

  What surprises is the sophistication. Instead of being bad and loud, it’s all quite subdued. You even get traction control which does its best to mediate as the explosion of power fights with the front-wheel drive.

  Saab once said you can’t put more than 170bhp through the front wheels. But Volvo has anyway and they’ve ended up with a car that you drive like your trousers are on fire.

  There’s a Terminator 2 outside my house right now, and as it’s three in the morning I’m sorely tempted to take it for another drive. I love looking at the body language of those in front as they struggle to see what on earth is behind. It’s a Volvo Jim, but not as we know it.

  And it isn’t either. It flows through the bends and while the ride is firm on those unbelievably low-profile tyres, it’s never jarring. It’s just like a BMW really, only faster.

  And there you have it: an entire piece about Volvo where the word ‘safety’ didn’t crop up once. Mine’s a Neirsteiner.

  Drink driving do-gooders are over the limit

  How very heartening it is to see that the government is to step up its fight against the bubonic plague. Even though they admit that it was wiped out by the Great Fire in 1666, they still feel that more funds and more hospitals are needed to combat this dreadful disease. It’s also good to note that, at last, they are to prevent the Royal Navy from using press gangs to recruit new sailors. ‘They have offices in most town’s high streets and I don’t know why they won’t use them,’ said a spokesman last week.

  Other recent announcements from Whitehall couldn’t have come a moment too soon. Kings will no longer be allowed to behead people they don’t like very much, Wessex is to get its own legislature and the campaign against drink driving is to be moved up a gear. What?

  There is now lamb chop all over my television because there I was, eating supper, when the Roads Minister, Robert Key – who looks like he’s seen rather too many lamb chops in his time – came on the news to talk about his war on people who drink and drive. All seven of them.

  In 1982, 43,341 people were breathalysed and 31.1 per cent of them were over the limit. Something needed to be done, and something was. In 1992, 108,856 people were breathalysed and under 8 per cent were found to be positive. In other words, the government has won its battle.

  But Mr Key says 610 people died in drink-related accidents last year and that his fight goes on. Well, my dear chap, most of those were wobbly pedestrians who fell in front of sober drivers and, short of adopting a Muslim attitude to drink, you aren’t going to do much about that sort of thing, are you?

  Apparently, yes. In America, dinner party hosts are being sued by their friends for failing to provide soft drinks and, while that is unlikely to catch on here, Mr Key does ask that we encourage sobriety when we have people round. Now look, I spend most of my time these days sitting around dinner tables not being allowed to smoke or eat meat – and now Key says that I can’t have a glass of wine either. Bet he never bans food.

  His next point is that young people often find it difficult to say no to a drink because of social pressure. The last time someone was this wrong, he was called Neville Chamberlain and he had a piece of paper in his hand.

  It is, in fact, old people who are far and away the worst offenders. And the reason they get away with it is because, at night, the police tend to stop youngsters in hot hatchbacks rather than rosy-cheeked farmers in Jags.

  Key has proved that he is not in the real world and that he should be fed to the lions. But he has yet more to say. It seems he wants to lower the legal limit, arguing that one pint affects a person’s ability to drive. Sure does, fatty, but so does being old. A 17-year-old with one pint in his triangular torso has faster reactions than a sober pensioner, so why not ban old people from driving? Or people with a cold, or those who need to go to the loo, because I sure as hell can’t concentrate when I’m bursting for a pee and you haven’t provided any service stations. And anyway, what do you lower the legal limit to? Nought? And when does someone have no alcohol in their blood? Five hours after a pint? Five days? No one would ever dare drive again.

  We’ve had a long line of idiots in the Transport Ministry but this one tops the lot. And weighs the most as well.

  Car of the Century

  As the motor car edges towards its 100th bir
thday in Britain next year, it seems like a good time to ask the question: what is the best car ever?

  Top Gear magazine recently surveyed everyone in the know and found opinions varied somewhat. The Mini, the Model T Ford, and various old Mercs, Alfa Romeos and Ferraris were popular choices. Gareth Hunt even suggested the winner should be a Humber. Damon Hill went for the Renault Laguna.

  But actually he’s probably nearer the mark, because new cars are bound to be better than old ones. The Renault Laguna, though dull and tedious, is faster, safer, kinder to the environment and blessed with better cornering prowess than a Bugatti Royale.

  Bernd Pischetsreider, BMW head honcho, said the best car ever was the old BMW 507 Roadster. Well hey, if it’s so good matey, how come you don’t start making it again?

  Here’s the thing. Every month, one car firm or another invents a new way of fitting a new piece of techno wizardry into one of its products. And usually, it makes the car better.

  Sure, there have been some daft ideas like rear-facing video cameras instead of mirrors. Er, what happens when the lens gets dirty? And I still don’t know why the old Nissan Bluebird had two trip switches, despite a number of letters from various people in cardigans.

  Look at aerodynamics for instance. Only 12 years ago, Audi gave us the 100 which had a drag co-efficient of just .30. It had flush-fitting glass and was rounded like a blancmange. Today, we have the E Class Mercedes which slips through the air even more neatly, despite its wavy and weird front end.

  This means that even the larger-engined versions can sip petrol through their fuel injectors at the rate of one gallon every 33 miles. That would have been impossible even 10 years ago.

  Then there’s power. There was a time when people cooed over Ferraris that developed 200 horsepower, whereas today 2.0 litre Escorts can manage that. It’s almost impossible to buy a car that won’t do a hundred. (If you really want one, various Mercedes diesels make a pretty good stab at it.)

  Then there’s the environment. The Volkswagen Beetle could kill a rain forest at 400 paces whereas today’s Golf trundles around with tulips coming out of its exhaust. The gas coming out of a Saab is actually cleaner than the air that went in. That’s true, that is.

  And we mustn’t forget safety. If Marc Bolan had hit his tree in a modern car, T-Rex would be at the top of the charts today with ‘Fax Sam’. If James Dean had been in a 928 Porsche, we’d all be at the cinema this evening watching Rebel With a Pension.

  I can remember being hawked around motor shows when I was a boy, clutching my crotch with excitement because my father was thinking of buying a Peugeot 604 that had electric windows.

  Today, you can buy a Ford Fiesta for £10,000 that has air conditioning, a CD player, a heated front windscreen and anti-lock brakes. Traction control is commonplace and BMW is even fitting televisions now. Mercedes – that name keeps cropping up – will sell you windscreen wipers that come on automatically when it rains.

  Cars today are quieter and more comfortable too, but more importantly, they’re cheaper. In the 1960s, only the very upper echelons of the middle classes could afford a medium-sized Vauxhall, whereas today the Astra is yours for half what a petrol pump attendant makes in an hour.

  I therefore mock and taunt anyone who says that the best car ever is some hopeless old classic with drum brakes.

  The best car ever absolutely must have been introduced within the last year or so, because then it will incorporate all the advances we’ve seen recently.

  This means the best car ever is out there now, in a showroom. But which one is it?

  I’m tempted to say the new Ford Fiesta because here we have a car that does everything you could reasonably expect, and a whole lot more than you could have expected in 1972.

  But I think it’s more likely to be a Mercedes. These cars are built like no others, with an integrity that would leave the people at Sellafield gasping. I think you could buy an E Class today and never tire of it. Everything that is sensible is on that car. There’s no waste, no silly frills, no nonsense. It just gets out there and does the job, exquisitely well.

  And therein lies the problem. The greatest car ever should get out there and do the job, but it should do more besides, which is why I have to say it’s the Ferrari 355.

  This car is as much a piece of sculpture as a lump of engineering. You could derive as much pleasure from putting it in your sitting room, where the piano used to be, and looking at it as you could from going for a drive.

  But if you get out there, you will have a V8 with five valves per cylinder. You will rev it to 9000rpm between gear changes. And all the time you will know you have airbags and catalytic converters and anti-lock brakes and all the other stuff that a great car should and must have.

  There’s one other thing too. No car can truly be great unless it’s a Ferrari.

  The Sunny sets

  The question I am asked most frequently is this: what’s the worst car you’ve ever driven?

  The FSO Polonez, a Polish built Fiat cast-off with styling from the pupils at Form IVb at High Wycombe primary school, is an obvious contender.

  But then there’s the Mahindra Jeep, an Indian-built four-wheel drive vehicle, and the Vauxhall Nova. Oh heavens, I nearly forgot the Lada Samara. And the Volvo 343, which was only safe because it could never achieve a high enough speed to cause injury. And the Morris Marina, which usually did the decent thing and disintegrated before leaving the dealership.

  Wait… The worst car I’ve ever driven is the Nissan Sunny. Pick any one of the countless different models from the seven generations of Sunnies which have come and gone in the last 29 years, and it will be worse than anything you have ever driven before.

  My colleague on Top Gear, Quentin Willson – the second-hand car dealer – once part exchanged a Sunny 120Y for a packet of Benson and Hedges, and still maintains he was ripped off.

  Here’s the problem. In the 1970s Red Robbo was running things in the Midlands, and on the rare days when anyone turned up for work at a car factory, the machines which left the factory gates were outstandingly unreliable.

  Then, all of a sudden Datsun brought out the Sunny 120Y and it was the answer. It may have been ugly beyond the ken of mortal man and it may have handled like Bambi but it didn’t break down.

  This, to the overheated, stranded British motorist was like an epidural to a pregnant woman. You know it’s a bit dangerous. You know it’s not good for you. But when you’re lying there bathed in sweat and shouting a lot, you don’t give a damn. You would sell your soul to the devil to have that needle rammed in your spine.

  It’s a commonly held belief that Japan is not an innovative country, and that they can only copy the USA and Europe, but that is not so. Japan taught the world that it is possible to make a reliable car.

  And pretty soon, everyone else was making reliable cars too, which made the Sunny look a little bit hopeless.

  However, people kept on buying them. Ford and Rover stood on Ben Nevis telling everyone that their cars were now clever, and practical and well equipped and good-looking… and reliable, but no one was listening.

  Mr Sunny Driver had been late for an appointment in 1974 when his Allegro broke down and there was no way he’d EVER buy a European car again.

  Nissan, as Datsun is now called, did everything in its power to make him change his mind with an endless succession of Sunnies that just got worse and worse. When I started testing cars in 1984, I absolutely couldn’t believe how bad the Sunny was.

  On a roundabout under the A3 in Surrey, it just careered into the kerb for no real reason. And when I got out to inspect the damage I remember feeling dumbstruck at just how ugly the car was.

  Nissan was not to be deterred. They teamed up with Alfa Romeo – who at the time were still nailing their cars together with spit and Kleenex – to create the ARNA, a Nissan Sunny which was built in Italy, so you got the worst of both worlds.

  Then came the ZX Coupé. Ah, now here was a car that perhaps echoed
the old 240Z, a stylish two-door fastback that might just cut some ice outside Shitters Disco on a Friday night.

  Er, no. Here was the most angular piece of design since Etch-a-Sketch went west. It had a feeble engine too, and to make sure you knew it would be a slow, evil-handling piece of junk it wore a Sunny badge.

  Now Nissan has come up with some spectacular names in its history – Cedric tops the list – but you just can’t call a two-door coupé a Sunny. You can call it a Thunderstorm or a Lightning or even a Rainbow, if you like a meteorological theme, but Sunny means the car has no cred. You might as well call it the Drizzle. You should have done actually – it would have been more honest.

  By this time, I’d stopped testing the Sunny lest any late-night revellers in South London should mistake me for a minicab driver, but I had one last stab, about a year ago.

  I was fooled into thinking that the 100NX was not a Sunny at all, but a new little sports coupé to rival the Honda CRX and the Toyota MR2. It wasn’t and it didn’t.

  It looked like a buttock but the worst thing was its engine – a miserable little 1600cc unit that developed just 101 horsepower. The top speed of 121mph wasn’t so bad, but it took a startling 11.2 seconds to lumber itself from 0 to 60mph.

  I’ve been in faster lawnmowers. This was, to the world of cars, what Sloggis are to the world of underwear. My daughter corners better and she’s only 14 months old.

  It was the worst car I’ve ever driven and that is why I shed no tears at the news that the Sunny is no more. It is dead. Nissan have done the decent thing and pulled the plug. No flowers please.

  STOP PRESS I’ve just seen the new Almera. Can we have the Sunny back please?

  Who’s getting their noses in the trough?

  There’s been a debate for some time now about whether films mirror real life or whether it’s the other way round. For the vast majority of the cinema-going public, films are all about escapism. They’re like drugs – fine when you’re in there, but sooner or later the honeymoon ends and you have to go back to the real world.