Clarkson on Cars Read online

  With nothing around the left wrist, my whole arm feels like one of those Birds Angel Cream Delight blancmange thingies you see floating around in telly ads.

  Take my watch off and I begin to get some idea of what Alan Shepard must have felt like when he became the first American to do something the English hadn’t done before.

  Not knowing what the time is makes me more miserable than missing a premium-bond jackpot by one digit. More angry than I was the other night when I discovered the reason why I’d been stationary on the M1 for three hours was because some buffoon with his bottom hanging out had dumped a pile of gravel in the outside lane and gone home.

  And right now, I am miserable because the watch I was given on my first day away at school has developed a tendency to stop every few minutes and my replacement, a twenty-first birthday present, is so exquisite I daren’t wear it for the everyday hustle and bustle one encounters when waging war with a wayward word processor.

  And anyway, its strap’s broken.

  This has therefore meant that as I sit here writing, I do not know what time it is. It’s dark so that means it’s way past six o’clock. If it’s later than eight, it means I’ve missed my weekly game of snooker. If it’s later than ten, I’m not being paid enough.

  Today, I’ve been out and about trying to find a stand-in timepiece.

  The local watch emporium does some very natty lines but somehow, I don’t see myself in a pink see-through number. Nor am I particularly interested in those chromium washing machine sized things that tell you what the chairman of Suzuki had for breakfast that morning.

  Being of a weedy disposition, I would imagine I’d be allergic to metal straps so the watch of my dreams has to have a hide strap – none of this namby-pamby plastic for me. I like people who disembowel lizards.

  I want a circular face with two hands, numbers and the date. That’s it. No alarm bells if you forget to wake up. No Mickey Mouse noises. No colour-coded laser-optic workings.

  Everything in the shop either fitted the bill perfectly but was far, far too expensive, or was correctly priced but made by somebody called Swatch or Crutch or something.

  There was even one horrid white thing with the legend ‘TURBO’ writ large all over it. To call an aftershave ‘TURBO’ is fair enough. To call a vacuum cleaner ‘TURBO’ is fairer enough still, but a TURBO watch is plain ridiculous.

  Turbo in my book means nasty lag and torque steer, which are unwelcome in a car let alone a watch. I mean how useful is a timepiece if the hands dawdle their way past midday with all the alacrity of a damp log and then explode through the afternoon like an F-14 on combat power with excess torque making the minute hand go backwards?

  If I were going to write something about cars on a watch, I’d be inclined to go for the economy angle. Surely no one buys a watch because it goes fast, but there must be people around who would like the idea of one that needs winding infrequently on account of its aerodynamic cogs or whatever.

  Yes, when Omega come to me for the name of a new watch, I shall suggest ‘spoiler’ or ‘thin tyres’ or maybe ‘fuel cut off on the overrun’.

  After a good deal of huffing and puffing I stormed out of the shop. It’s not that I object to having things written on the strap or face but I can’t abide some of the words dreamed up by blue-spectacled berks in marketing departments.

  One of the finest watches I have ever clapped eyes on was designed to commemorate the launch of the Mark Two Golf and given by Volkswagen to every journalist in Britain from the newest trainee on the Rotherham Advertiser to Ian Hislop.

  Sadly, at the time, my worth in the eyes of the powers that be at VAG amounted to little more than it would if I were a scuba diver for the Galapagos Islands Turtle Preservation Society, so I did without. Which a) was a shame and b) explains why I called them VAG and not Volkswagen Audi as they now prefer.

  Thinking that the same designer who came up with the GTi timepiece might still hold sway in VW’s good offices, I made enquiries about other watches they market.

  Evidently there’s just one, for those who have a Quattro or those who want us to think they have a Quattro, but it’s awful. The sort of thing a second-division footballer would covert. You can’t see the watch for all the dials and I’d like to bet its weight is somewhere in the region of eight tons. Besides, it costs £345 plus VAT.

  Equally exorbitant is the Ferrari Formula collection which is made up of a wide and delightful selection. Leaving aside those with allergenic straps, you’re left with the Marine Collection with their racy two-tone straps or the City Collection with an ease of style that reminds me of Anthony Hopkins’s performance in Pravda.

  They’re perfect in every respect except one. I can’t abide Ferraris. I don’t like the way they look, the noise they make, or the people who drive them. What I’d like to know is how on earth can the same people who sanctioned the aesthetic abortion called the Testarossa possibly be responsible for a collection of watches that are an equal of Kim Basinger in the beauty stakes.

  It all came to nought though because they had Ferrari written on them and things with Ferrari written on them are pricey.

  Things, at this stage, were beginning to get desperate. BMW don’t do watches at all and I didn’t dare ring Jaguar because they were too busy being smug about their new XJ6 – even though the one I drove was of marginal merit. The boot clanged. The steering was too light. The glovebox didn’t fit properly and I didn’t like the dashboard. Here speaks the only man in Britain who prefers, by a mile, the new 7-Series BMW.

  I know it’s possible to buy Aston Martin or Lamborghini or Rolls-Royce watches but quite frankly it’s also possible to go bankrupt. And wearing one of those is just another way of saying in the most ostentatious way possible, ‘Hey everyone, I’m very rich.’

  Which I’m not.

  And this is why the watch I have finally decided to buy only costs £30.

  It doesn’t meet one single criterion I’d laid down except price, but I was so taken with the idea, I don’t care that it’s plastic or that its face looks like Joseph’s dreamcoat or that it is made by the Swatch empire.

  Marketed by Alfa Romeo and sold through their dealer network – all seven of them – it has a navy-blue plastic strap, a navy-blue surround and a great big Alfa Romeo cross and serpent on the face.

  It doesn’t sport any numbers and in the words of the girl at Alfa, the winder is gold but it isn’t gold.

  It’s got a date hole, it’s got heaps of character and because it bears the Alfa badge, it says to those who see it, ‘I’m someone who appreciates Italian style but not to the extent that I’m going to pay £4 billion for it.’

  Those prepared to read even further between the lines will notice that it tells people I’m also the kinda guy who hasn’t lost sight of his youth, who has a devil may care attitude to institutionalisation. Well that’s what some idiot with blue spectacles told me last night. I reckon the most important things it tells people are the time and that I like Alfa Romeos.

  The chairman of Suzuki can have black pudding and treacle in the morning, the Dow-Jones index can collapse and the sugar-beet price in Albania can go through the roof but I will have no way of knowing.

  And I will not care.

  JMC NO

  The bungalow itself warranted little merit. The bay windows played host to a selection of bull’s-eye glass, carriage lamps illuminated the neo-Georgian front door and gnomes with fishing rods frolicked among the horribly organised front garden.

  There is little doubt that I would not enjoy the company of whoever had chosen this mish-mash of tasteless addenda. People with carriage lamps are people who have children called Janet. And children called Janet aren’t allowed to eat sweets between meals or wear jeans.

  Ordinarily, I would not concern myself with this sort of house or the people who occupy it, but in this instance I am sorely tempted to write them a letter explaining why they are the most ghastly individuals this side of anyone who indulges in
tactical voting to oust the Conservatives.

  You see, nailed to their teak gatepost is one of those polished tree-trunk slices with the legend ‘Olcote’ picked out in Olde Worlde York Tea Shoppe script.

  That’s bad enough but to make matters much, much worse, I have learned that this quaint mnemonic stands for Our Little Corner Of The Earth.

  Point one: if your house is numbered, don’t mess up the postman’s schedule by giving it a name. And point two: if you insist on making everyone wait two weeks for their letters, at least give it a name with some credibility.

  If you have an awful bungalow with a ning-nong illuminated doorbell, you should call it ‘The Foul Little Bungalow That’s Equipped With Every Nasty Piece Of DIY Kit I Could Find At Alabama Homecare’.

  You should never call it ‘Olcote’. I can think of some pretty unsavoury corners of the Earth to which I would despatch people who do: Beirut for those who do it by accident, West Thurrock for persistent offenders and Basrah for those who see nothing wrong with it.

  Out there it would be a case of calling your AK47-pock-marked shack ‘Olcote Babama’. This, for the uninitiated, stands for Our Little Corner Of The Earth’s Been Annihilated By A Mig Again. And given half a chance, I’d be the pilot.

  It’s all to do with taking the art of personalisation to extremes. You can make your house more comfortable by fitting central heating and thick carpets or you can distinguish it from those up the road by painting it day-glo lime green. These moves are fine; they make life more comfortable, more aesthetically pleasing. More of a statement.

  But do tell, what are the advantages of changing your address from 22 Laburnum Drive to Sunny View, Laburnum Drive? Do you really think you should command any more respect from people who are writing to you simply because Sunny View might conjure up the mental picture of a Baronial Hall perched atop a cowslip-thronged hillside meadow, whereas number 22 sounds like it’s just part of a vast neo-Georgian estate?

  It’s the same with motor cars. Speaking personally, I don’t much care for after market add-ons like spoilers and floodlights and rear speakers the size of Wales but if such paraphernalia are your bag, then go ahead.

  Similarly, if it riles you to spy 2000 other guys driving around in identical Ford Sapphires every day, go on, get the spray can out and give it one of those paint jobs which hippies lavish on their ageing Bedford vans.

  But, for heaven’s sake, stop there. Do not invest in a personalised number plate or else the next fully operational jet fighter that whistles toward your frolicking gnomes will have me at the helm and my fingers on the Sidewinder release mechanism.

  I do not understand what appeal a cherished registration plate has unless it says something funny like DEV 1L, or ORG45M, or PEN15.

  I have spent, oh, it must be close on fifteen minutes now, desperately trying to think of one reason why I should spend many hundreds, if not thousands, of pounds just so those within the vicinity of my battered CRX would know my initials are shared with Mr Christ.

  If I were so intent on relaying this information to all and sundry, why couldn’t I simply put up big notices in the windows? Or buy one of those electioneering loud hailers?

  I was once forced to spend a week behind the wheel of an FSO which sported a registration plate that said FSO5. This was more embarrassing than the time when I spent an hour damning the dreadful Shake ‘n’ Vac advert on television only to discover I was sitting opposite the copywriter who’d written it.

  You see, FSO5 is probably worth well into four-figure territory and I could see the drivers of neighbouring cars howling with Pythonesque laughter at me, the buffoon they thought had spent so much on a number plate, he couldn’t afford anything better than a Polonez.

  Worse are the idiots who spend a fortune on numbers like 316BMW for their BMW316s.

  We all know it’s a 316 because the badge says so and anyway, had the buffoon not bought the number plate, he could probably have afforded a 325i.

  While I object in the strongest possible sense to those who simply buy their initials or those of their car and to hell with what number comes in tandem, I have been amused in the past by various stories and sightings.

  There’s the tale of a chap who lost a retina in World War II and now drives round in a car which bears the registration number, 1 EYE.

  Then there’s a friend of Beloved, called Tammy, who has TAM1 69. I’ve been dying to meet her but, so far, various endeavours have ended with stern words and threats of no morning coffee for six weeks.

  According to the autonumerologist’s bible, called Car Numbers, Jimmy Tarbuck owns COM1C but unless he drives a black Mini which is parked in a very seedy part of Fulham every night, I suspect an error has been made.

  Other celebrities to own cherished plates are Max Bygraves who, it is said, turned down a £30,000 offer from Mercedes Benz for MB1, Kevin Keegan with KK A1, Jimmy White with 1 CUE, Bernard Manning with BJM 1 and Petula Clarke with PET 1.

  Notice any similarity between these characters? Well I’ll tell you. They are the staple diet of TV Times profiles and ITV quiz shows which have purple and orange backdrops, question masters in brown suits and lots of inane innuendo about bottoms.

  In short, they are working-class heroes, the televisual nouveau riche, beloved by the kind who live in gaudy bungalows called Olcote.

  And don’t think I’ve been through the book looking for people of this ilk. I searched in vain for mention of gentlemen like David Attenborough and Michael Palin but I fear they are not the sort to advertise their arrival.

  They are the sort who would invest in a cherished plate only if it were likely to shock or amuse. And there’s plenty of scope. Michael Palin would, I’m sure, shy away from PAL 1N but if you offered him TAX1 or TUR8O, I’m sure he’d take the plunge. I know I would.

  The thing is that when the registration system changed from suffixes to prefixes in 1983, the chances of any more cherished plates emerging from the DVLC evaporated.

  In a bid to cut the pressure on staff who were forever being pestered by dealers for decent combinations, they no longer issue plates bearing any number less than 21. So it’s tough luck to all you Dianas and Nigels out there who were waiting with bated breath.

  However, it is still possible to buy numbers that were issued when civil servants didn’t mind spending a few minutes each day acting the role of their job title.

  If you wish to buy a registration number, it must be from a vehicle that is currently taxed or has been taxed within the past six months.

  No longer is it any good to find some old wreck in a farmyard with the plate you’ve always wanted. And anyway, in 1983, the Swansea computer erased all knowledge of any car which hadn’t been taxed within the previous two years.

  Providing, however, the donor and recipient vehicles meet with the approval of those inscrutable chappies at your local vehicle-licensing office, all you have to do is obtain a V317 form from your LVLO, fill it in, hand it, along with the two requisite tax discs and registration documents to the inscrutable chappie, give him £80 and head off back to your little corner of the earth.

  Alternatively, you can ring up one of the endless cherished-number-plate dealers in the Sunday Times’ Look Business Personal Finance News, section 24, and tell him what you’re after.

  They keep details of what’s on offer and who wants what and are normally able to help, providing your request isn’t too parochial.

  However, if you wish to take the plunge, I should do so in a hurry because when I win the football pools, I shall buy up every number I consider tasteless and throw them into the Marianas Trench.

  Then, I shall bomb all numbered houses with names and if there’s anything left in the kitty, I will erect kart tracks on every cricket pitch in Christendom.

  Big Bikes

  I do not hold with the decision to hold Britain’s première motor race at Silverstone for five years on the trot, because it is a very boring circuit indeed, but at least if you’re important, like
me, you can camp out in the middle and run into nice people who say even nicer things, like why don’t you come and have a spot of lunch?

  The big hassle is that if you wish to run into a lot of these people you must be in several places all at the same time.

  Which in turn means you have to forge expeditions that make Ranulph Fiennes’s Transglobe jaunt look like a Saturday cycle ride to the shops.

  The last time I spent a few days at Silverstone I had a motorcycle at my disposal which, in theory, is the ideal tool for the job but (and this may come as a surprise to those of you who know me as a devil-may-care kinda guy who thinks nothing of hanging upside down in stunt planes) I do not know how to ride things with two wheels.

  I had a go but after I’d engaged the clutch and applied full throttle, I found myself spinning round in a rather noisy circle.

  This, I learned later, was because I’d forgotten to release the front brake. I also learned that the onlookers would have been immensely impressed with the stunt had they not caught a glimpse of my countenance, which, instead of bearing a proud and cocky grin, registered only abject terror.

  And that was the end of my brief encounter with motorcycles, which, I have decided, should be left to those with acne, no imagination and a penchant for wearing rubber clothes.

  Not being someone who readily goes back on his word, I found myself facing something of a dilemma as the Grand Prix weekend loomed ever nearer. Was I, a) to forget my vow and get a motorcycle; b) get a push bike and risk a cardiac arrest; or c) should I rely on shoe leather, which would mean a range limitation of no more than one or two feet in any direction as a result of acute, inherent and irreversible laziness?

  The answer, as is always the case in such cheap games, was in fact, d) none of these.

  Suzuki and Honda came to the rescue with a brace of four-wheeled motorbikes which seemed to offer the perfect blend of nippiness (sorry), fresh-air thrills and car-like safety.