Round the Bend Read online

  I like a hot hatch to deceive. I like to hurtle round a corner with blood spurting from my ears, and the engine doing 16 million revolutions a minute, imagining that I’m doing 5,000mph. Whereas in fact I’m doing about six.

  That doesn’t happen in the Renault. It’s not stodgy. It’s not an overcooked cauliflower, but neither is it a freshly picked radish. It just isn’t as exciting as the rear diffuser and preposterous roof-mounted spoiler would have you believe. And as a further droplet of wee in the soup, it has electric power steering, which is cheap to engineer but not quite as feelsome and lively as it should be.

  Then there’s the interior. It’s not terrible. It’s not built with that usual French soggy dishcloth integrity. But really, it should have air-conditioning as standard.

  I’m not saying the Clio Cup is a waste of wiring and metal. I like the way it looks and I like the seats a lot. I especially like the fact it costs less than £15,000. But it’s one of those cars that gives off the distinct impression it could be a little bit better.

  I’d trade some of the power for a bit more whizz. Which, funnily enough, is what I’d do with the traffic wombles as well.

  2 March 2008

  No, princess, you may not have my Fiat

  Fiat 500 1.2 Pop

  If you are a northern businessman whose solutions-system company has just been bought for thirty-thirteen million pounds, there are any number of people on hand with advice on how best to spend all your newly acquired loot. I find, however, that the best person to consult on these matters is the former mustachioed pop star Peter Sarstedt.

  Today, Peter fills his time writing songs about global warming, which is rather wearisome, but back in 1969 he wrote the definitive guide on how life should be led if Mammon were suddenly to vomit untold riches into your bank account. It was a song called ‘Where Do You Go to My Lovely?’

  In it, he explains who should make your clothes, what you should wear in your hair, whose records you should buy, what sort of brandy you should drink and even what you should do if the Aga Khan were to send you a racehorse for Christmas: ‘keep it, just for fun, for a laugh. Aha-haha’.

  Left to your own devices, you may choose to go on your summer vacation somewhere terrible, such as Greece. But if you listen to the wise words of old Pete, you know it should be Juan-les-Pins. Similarly, if you were to buy a bolt-hole in Paris, as somewhere to keep your old Rolling Stones records, you might go for an apartment on the rue Saint-Honoré. Pah. Peter says you should be on the Boulevard Saint-Michel. And he’s right.

  He even has some sensible advice on where you should be when the snow falls. The travel agent will tell you all about the sheer size of Val d’Isère or the wide-open China Bowl in Vail. He’ll talk about the ski-in, ski-out facilities at the Park Hyatt in Beaver Creek or maybe tempt you with the joys of somewhere small and friendly, such as La Clusaz. Nonsense. You should go, as Peter suggests, with ‘the others of the jet set’ to St Moritz.

  St Moritz is the most bonkers town in all of the world. Superficially, it looks like any other ski resort, which means it resembles the outskirts of Warsaw in 1956, but the people: wow. I have never seen so much expensive hair in all my life. Sure, the Russians have more oil in their barnets than you’d find in a Kazakhstan well. And their wives are as orange as the interior of the average Lamborghini. But mostly, the whole place is crammed with people so bewitchingly beautiful that even Keira Knightley would feel like a zoo animal.

  Then there are the titles. One chap introduced me to his companion and I’d nearly died of old age by the time he’d finished. ‘This is Princess di Contessa, di Sant’ Agata, de Baroness, Dowager de Luxembourg, Principessa … it went on for about a week. Until he said, ‘And this is Jeremy Clarkson,’ and for the first time in my life I felt about six inches tall.

  Mind you, if you set foot in any of the shops, you are made to feel smaller still because it is immediately apparent you are not Bill Gates, which means it’s immediately apparent you cannot afford to buy a single thing they have on offer. It’s all Hermès and Armani. God knows where the locals buy a box of Winalot or some bog roll.

  Of course, you can buy a watch. Some even cost as little as £32,000. Mostly, though, they are much more than that because they all have 16 dials, a Swiss midget in the back winding all the cogs, 400 Kohinoors in the bezel, a device that summons an SAS extraction team if you get kidnapped and a facility for converting dollars into euros, which, at the touch of a button, can also convert your business rivals into pig food. Usually, they are bigger than a ride-on lawnmower.

  Strangely, however, for what is certainly the watch capital of the world, nobody gets anywhere on time. When someone says they’ll be there at eight, what they mean is, ‘I will be there either at two in the morning or, more likely, not at all.’ Probably, this is because the jet set has no real concept of time. They don’t have to catch a plane because they have their own and it’ll wait. They don’t have to be at a meeting in the City at four because they don’t have jobs. They don’t even have to boil an egg, because they have an egg manager. I even met one who employed his own projectionist. And you know what? I loved it. I’ve always been fascinated by the jet set and if I had the chance to come back as anyone, at any time in history, I wouldn’t want to be Warren Beatty on the set of Shampoo in 1975 or even a hippie on the corner of Haight and Ashbury in 1967. Nope. I’d want to be Gianni Agnelli on a Riva speedboat in Juan-les-Pins in 1959.

  Back then, easy travel had just become an option for the super-rich, which meant they could breakfast in Turin, lunch in St Tropez, fit in a cocktail in St Moritz and be at the opera in Milan by 10pm. They were making it up as they went along, sorting out the rules that were then enshrined by Peter Sarstedt. But strangely, they never really sorted out what sort of car you should drive. You see the problem in St Moritz today. It’s a mess. One chap turned up in a brand-new Rolls-Royce Phantom drophead in white, and, oh dear – that didn’t work at all. He’d driven it all the way from England and teamed his paintwork with the mountain backdrop. But it looked, I’m afraid, ridiculous.

  I had a Mercedes M-class. It had the AMG 6.2-litre V8 under the bonnet, four exhausts and a restrained but good-looking body. I like this car very much but in St Moritz it was wrong as well. Certainly, the four-wheel-drive system was superfluous because this is Switzerland and any snow that falls on the road is immediately arrested.

  I noticed that the Russians were partial to the Range Rover in the same way they are partial to onyx television cabinets and that most of the old guard, the ones with Scrabble high-score titles, had normal Vogues. But this struck me as a cop-out. Something they’d done because they couldn’t think of what else to buy.

  Every one of the big hotels, the Kulm, the Palace and the Carlton, had an Audi R8 parked outside, among the Maybachs and Phantoms that they use as taxis, but nobody was looking. And that’s because everyone’s attention had been grabbed by a car that fitted into the place more perfectly than even Princess Caroline. The new Fiat 500. They were everywhere and everyone wanted one. There’s been a trend in recent years for bringing back old designs. VW started it when it reintroduced the Beetle; then Ford gave us the new GT, BMW relaunched the Mini and now it’s Fiat’s turn with this homage to its little people’s car from fifty years ago. It’s the most successful comeback of them all.

  First of all, it’s cheap. Really cheap. The base, 1.2-litre model I drove when I came home is just £7,900. And that makes it a staggering £3,700 less than the cheapest Mini. It is bigger inside than a Mini too and, best of all, it looks better. It looks fantastic.

  The looks are so wonderful, in fact, that you probably won’t care about the drawbacks. But there are a few. The headlights are hopeless, you really can’t see what’s coming from the left at oblique junctions, the engine is defeated by hills, and the ride, thanks to the short wheelbase, is awfully bouncy. Intolerably so, occasionally. This was the genius of the Mini. BMW gave it chic, want-one looks but underneath it was, and
is, a proper car. One you can use everywhere, every day. The Fiat, on the other hand, is only an A to B car, and only then if B isn’t too far away.

  But, my God, you come away from an experience behind the wheel absolutely loving it. It’s cheeky and non-threatening without being pathetic. It’s practical without being boring. It’s well priced as well. And there’s something else.

  It was born in the backstreets of Naples and, thanks to a burning ambition, it’s shaken off its lowly born tags. Now it’s mixing it with the others of the jet set in St Moritz. Ring any bells?

  9 March 2008

  A mainstay of the car-washing classes

  Renault Laguna Sport Tourer Dynamique 2.0

  Last weekend, I was driving through one of those junior-executive, Tory-stronghold housing estates – the sort where they have wife-swapping parties every Thursday at No 22 and everyone has baggy-knicker curtains. And I was staggered because just about every single man was out on his drive washing the car.

  What a meaningless way of passing the time. You don’t wash your vacuum cleaner or your television set, you have a machine to wash the dishes and you employ a man to clean your windows. So how much do you have to hate the sight of your wife and children before you think, ‘I’d rather go outside into the cold and spend a couple of hours burnishing my wheel nuts’?

  I am aware, of course, that many men do hate the sight of their wife and children. Doctors even have a name for these people: ‘anglers’. But even the concept of sitting in the drizzle by a canal for six hours and then throwing everything you catch back into the water is not as daft as washing a car.

  First of all, it’s very hard work. You have to do all the exercises favoured by homosexuals in gyms. Bending over, stretching, rubbing. But at least when homosexuals finish, they have glistening, toned bodies that make them look good. You? You’re just going to put your back out. And the more you clean, the more you’ll notice is dirty. If you’re not careful you’ll end up polishing the inside of the tyre valves and then not wanting to use your car if it’s raining.

  This behaviour is called ‘being a concours enthusiast’ and it’s very dangerous. Many ‘concours enthusiasts’ go on to be murderers.

  And have you ever actually tried those cleaning products that are available in supermarkets? There are any number of sprays, creams, waxes, shampoos. It’s like being in Richard Hammond’s bathroom cabinet. Except, so far as I can tell, they don’t actually do anything. ‘Simply spray onto the glass,’ it says on the tin, ‘then, after two minutes, wipe down with a clean cloth.’ Rubbish. You can never trust any instruction that begins with the word ‘simply’.

  I’ll give you a little hint here. When your windscreen is completely covered in dead flies, the best way of seeing where you are going is to buy a new car.

  Why are you washing the car in the first place? A car will not get smelly armpits or a cheesy groin. Bathing it will not increase its life expectancy or decrease the chances of a breakdown. All it does really is demonstrate to others that you have a tiny mind and an empty life. I want you to think carefully about this. Can you picture in your mind George Clooney washing a car? Quite.

  The Germans have realized that it rots the mind and that’s why it is illegal in most towns to wash your car on a Sunday. There is simply no place for such useless nonsense in an industrial powerhouse.

  Oh, and here’s another thing. Washing a car is the only time you ever get up close and personal with all of its panels. Which means you will find a million depressing little dings and scratches that you would never have spotted had you left it caked in grime.

  Mind you, cleaning out the interior is even more silly because I can absolutely guarantee you will remove something that next week you will need. Everything I have ever bought is in my car. People say it’s a skip and disgusting, and refuse to get in there. That’s one advantage. Another is that last week, I needed a headache pill and it was simply a case of rummaging under the seat until I found one. Because it’s so full of junk, I always have everything I could conceivably need. A Biro, a refreshing drink, lots of loose change, all sorts of maps, an iron lung, and so on. I kid you not. There’s even a wetsuit in there.

  Finally, we must discuss the chamois leather. And here, I have two more tips. Number one: if it is imitation chamois or a leather made from another sort of animal, it will not work. And number two: if it is a real chamois hide that has been crafted by walnut-faced men of the mountains, it will not work either.

  You have to feel very sorry for the goat antelopes whose skin is used to make these things. No, really. Had they been native to Africa, they’d have been eaten by lions. Had they been horses or cows, they’d have been turned into burgers. And had they been native to Spain, the locals would have dreamt up some bizarre torture that would have involved them being flung off a tower by a man in pink satin trousers.

  But no. They had everything going for them. They were cute and tasteless and they lived in Alpine meadows with nothing to disturb them except nuns singing. They even had a kindly Swiss man who came into their field once a day to play with their tits. Life was blissful. And then, one day, the world got it into its head that their skin could be used to clean cars. And that was it for Johnny Chamois. Now, and for no reason, the poor buggers are on the endangered list in some places.

  Only the other day, I set off in my car on one of those crisp winter mornings when the sun is low in the sky and, because I never wash my car, I really and truly could not see where I was going. The inside of the windscreen was caked in gunk and, for reasons I couldn’t fully understand, iced over just as thoroughly as the outside.

  So, breaking with the tradition of a lifetime, I went to a petrol station and bought a scraper. Sadly, because it had been made in China, it was about as good at getting ice off a windscreen as the back of a dog. So, having made the situation much worse, I bought a chamois leather. What this did was remove all the moisture, mix it with the dirt … and put it back again. Honestly, I may as well have tried to clean the windscreen with a muddy stone.

  I’m running out of space so I’d better move on to the car I’ve been driving this past week. It is a mainstay of the car-washing classes. A Tory-stronghold car. A car designed for the Barratt junior executive who dreams one day of going on his own. ‘The bank’s with me. John’s with me …’ In my mind, everyone who has a Renault Laguna is a wife swapper.

  I liked the old model very much for reasons that are now lost in the mists of time and I wish I could say the same of the new one. I tried the hatch version a few months ago, and honestly, when I sat down to write the road test I couldn’t remember anything about it. Except, perhaps, that it might have been brown. Fearing that you might need more information than this, I’ve just tried the Sport Tourer estate and that was definitely brown, and quite ugly.

  Ooh. I’ve just remembered why I liked the old one. It was the first car ever to be awarded a Euro NCAP five-star safety rating, and of course the new model is similarly blessed. But most cars are, these days. That’s no reason for choosing the Renault over anything else.

  In fact, I struggle to think why you might even want to buy a five-seat estate like this. For the same money every month you could have an Audi or a BMW. Or, if you are mad, you could have one of the smaller four-wheel-drive cars. The list of other things that would be better is long and includes rickets.

  If, however, you are determined to have something boring and brown, buy a Vauxhall Zafira or a Ford S-Max. At least that way, you get two extra seats thrown into the mix. But if you absolutely insist on a boring brown car with only five seats, I’d go for the Ford Mondeo. It’s more spacious and though I doubt you’ll care, nicer to drive. Certainly, I found the new Laguna’s steering a bit clattery. I also felt the trim was rubbish and that some of the softness I usually like in French cars had been replaced by an unnecessary German firmness.

  To conclude, then, this is a car I’d rather wash than drive. And it doesn’t get worse than that.

&n
bsp; 16 March 2008

  Lovely to drive, awful to live with

  Porsche Cayenne GTS

  If you were to find yourself on the fearsome Nürburgring with a pressing reason to complete a lap in about nine minutes, the new Porsche Cayenne GTS would do nicely. It really is extremely fast. Similarly, if you were to become involved in a life or death battle with fifty tons of fire-breathing Challenger tank on the Bovington proving ground, I feel certain that this, the biggest Porsche of them all, would handle the punishment without falling into a million pieces.

  However, if – and this seems more likely – you live in London and you want a car that can take five people in comfort, then the GTS is completely hopeless. No, really. It doesn’t work and on top of that, it isn’t welcome.

  In the olden days, when I lived in London, many of the more idiotic boroughs erected signs explaining that you were entering a nuclear-free zone. I never knew why this was necessary because, so far as I could tell, these boroughs were also free from dinosaurs and spacemen. So why single out the absence of atom bombs?

  Of course, today, dizzy anti-nuclear campaigners have become eco-mentalists and so, for the most part, the anti-nuke signs have been replaced with a million new ones which explain that you are entering a low-emission zone. Plainly, this isn’t true. The Yorkshire Dales are a low-emission zone. So is the middle of the Sahara desert. But London? I think not.

  Quite apart from the shops and businesses, you have all the low-emission signs that had to be mined, smelted, fashioned, painted and then distributed on every road in every suburb by an army of council vans. Compared with the emissions generated by this huge undertaking, a Porsche Cayenne simply isn’t a problem at all.

  But that’s by the by. The city doesn’t want it, you’re going to be made to pay £1,000 a year in road tax and £125 a week if you drive into London, and even if you get there there’ll be the biggest problem of them all. It’s just too big.