Clarkson on Cars Page 9

  In 1971, it seems the château propriétaires were blessed with the right combination of fog, sun and Spanish MENSA candidates because experts claim that was Barsac’s best ever year.

  However, it isn’t just the Noble Rot, the climate and the correct time of picking that count toward perfection. As any local down there will tell you, the soil upon which the vineyards rest is paramount too. Any deeper and apparently the wine would be too vigorous. Any more clay and it would presumably taste like a potter’s wheel.

  When the harvest is gathered in, the wine undergoes a procedure familiar to any amateur enthusiast. The grapes are crushed very slowly a few times and the resultant slush is allowed to ferment for three or so weeks in barrels made from new oak. Flavour from the wood seeps into the wine and compensates for the lack of tannin given out by the skins which are removed in the production of white wine. After this period is over, locals claim they can tell whether they have a vintage on their hands or not.

  When the wine’s alcohol content reaches 14.5 per cent, the wine makers decide if fermentation should be stopped and small quantities of sulphur dioxide are added to stop the yeast’s activity on the wine – whatever it may be.

  Bottling takes place when the wine has been in the casket for three years but in order that it should reach its peak of fitness, you should wait until its tenth birthday before imbibing.

  An interesting(?) little booklet called The Sweet Wines of Bordeaux says that by this time, its‘oily characteristics, breeding and body should be most evident’. But, it goes on to add that if you decide to hang on, it is vital to check the cork every 20 years. Quite frankly, I have more important things on my mind than remembering to check my corks.

  And where pray, in the middle of London, am I to find a place that meets the apparently critical storage conditions set out by the booklet: a cool dark place away from noise, vibration and smell where the bottles can be laid horizontally?

  So there you have it. Barsac. A fussy little wine made from grapes, a fungoid growth, sulphur dioxide and essence of oak tree.

  No wonder it’s supposed to taste so good alongside a pâté that is produced by corking a goose’s bottom and force feeding it with grain until its liver is about to explode.

  Auto Football

  Until a couple of weeks ago, I did not understand what it is about a ball that people find so fascinating.

  Every Saturday in the winter, thousands and thousands of people turn out to watch men in little shorts playing football, a game that is not exciting. In the summer, many tens of people watch cricket, which is not only unexciting but terribly confusing as well.

  I have never played cricket; at school, however, I spent two afternoons every week playing football because it was the law. Only once did I manage to score a goal and that was only because their goalkeeper, a chap after my own heart, had wandered off to talk to his girlfriend.

  I have spent ten years trying to fathom out the reason why people watch sport and I think I now have the answer. They would like to be doing what the people they’re watching are doing. People who go to football matches would like to think they could have been good enough to play professionally.

  The reason I won’t go is because I know for a fact that I could never have done it, even on an amateur basis. Octopi and football do not happy bedfellows make.

  At last however, I have found a derivation of football that I do want to play and that I therefore would go and watch regularly if it were played here.

  It’s called autofussball and it’s a cross between figure-of-eight stock-car racing, football and Thai boxing. The first thing you need is a pitch which can be of any size and of any surface. Any old car park will do. A stubble field would be even better.

  The second thing you need are some old cars. My recommendation is to go for something large with a small engine mounted some considerable distance from the inner wings. A Ford Zephyr? The third thing you need is a 3-foot-diameter, fluorescent ball. And the fourth thing you need is some team-mates, who can come from any walk of life, though I would recommend you find people who walk up and down Oxford Street wearing a sandwich board, talking at length about how they’ve made a spaceship out of lavatory paper.

  There are only two complicated rules. If you touch the ball with your hand, your opponents are allowed to take a penalty which they will miss because it is damnably hard.

  The ball is placed 20 feet in front of the goal and the car must be raced at it backwards. Just before impact, the car must execute a J-turn, swiping the ball with its front wing as it spins and, hopefully, getting it in between the posts.

  It never happens like that, so touching the ball with your hand is just fine.

  The other rule is that defence of the goal-mouth is only permitted if an attacker is within 20 feet and in possession of the ball. If you use your car to block the goal when the attacker is outside the 20-foot marker, he is entitled to take a penalty which he will miss. Blocking the goal, therefore, is always worthwhile.

  The only other thing to remember is that you will not be driving home in the car you use to play.

  Now, this game is not some kind of fanciful figment of my imagination. I saw it being played in Stuttgart and I have never enjoyed being a spectator so much.

  To prepare the cars, steel plates are welded to the bumpers and the windows are kicked out. The drivers do not wear crash helmets or seatbelts. When asked why, they spoke in German about their Andrex Apollos.

  At face value, it looked like the red team, with their brace of Opel Asconas and a VW Beetle complete with a stoved-in bonnet for carrying the ball, had to be deemed hot favourites. The white team, believing nimbleness counted for more than strength, had rolled up with an Audi 50, a Renault 5 that wouldn’t start and a Nova.

  Things looked even more gloomy after five minutes when one of the red Asconas expired and was replaced by a massive Granada estate.

  And I must confess that I felt the white team had had it when the Renault, having been bumped into life, coughed up blood the first time it went near the ball and retired.

  But I was reckoning without the genius of the Audi driver who, single-handedly, scored sixteen goals before the Granada completely removed just about all its vital organs, by which I mean its engine, transmission and both front wheels.

  The Granada, after this savagery, was then accidentally rammed and destroyed by the Beetle which suffered almost no damage whatsoever. Indeed, some fifteen minutes before the final whistle was due, it was the only car left running. That made life really rather easy for its driver who drifted back and forth scoring a goal every 30 seconds or so.

  Now remember, this is the Germans I’m talking about here, a race that has almost no sense of humour, a race I can best sum up by the response of a girl in the Avis hire-car centre who was trying to sell me the idea of an Audi 80.

  ‘Look,’ I said, ‘my briefcase has more space in it than an Audi 80.’

  She studied my briefcase for a while before saying, ‘No. It hasn’t.’

  Imagine, therefore, what could become of autofussball if it could be developed by the race that brought you the hovercraft and afternoon tea. Imagine, too, if Murray Walker were allowed to commentate.

  The Best Man

  I am having to practise the art of being boring. I have not been in the pub for a week, I care more for the well-being of my Royal Worcester collection than I do my Alfa and I am now an expert on the subject of vacuum cleaners.

  Four inches have been hacked from my hair and when I went shopping for clothes the other day, it was to Hacketts and not Jean Machine.

  Good Lord, as I write it is 2 p.m. on a Sunday, a time when normally I’d be in the White Horse, discussing the week’s deals and conquests.

  But no more. In exactly thirteen days’ time, I will be standing at the top of an aisle promising all sorts of things to Beloved and listening to a man with his shirt on back to front talking about how marriage is an honourable institution.

  From that
moment on, I will be dull. I may even grow a beard.

  The last few months have been hell on earth. Family feuds have been commonplace, the caterer said she wouldn’t do asparagus rolls, the vicar said his church wouldn’t accommodate the 230 people we invited, folk who hadn’t been asked but thought they should have been are now ignoring me, and the whole engagement foundered on rocky ground when Beloved said she wanted the wedding list to be at GTC and I wanted it at HR Owen.

  Then there was the marquee which was initially ordered with a brown lining, and the honeymoon which couldn’t be spent in Thailand because of the weather, the Maldives because of political unrest, Tahiti because it’s too far away, Africa because it’s full of creepie-crawlies, Europe because it’s awash with journalists on car launches or America because it’s full of Americans.

  But the worst bit of it all was getting the right cars for the right bits in the wedding ceremony.

  This little job was entrusted to me. Any car in the world is just a phone call away, they said.

  Wrong. The man at Bentley trotted out a ridiculous excuse which, when decoded, spelt out a message indicating that I should go forth and do what I will be spending my honeymoon doing anyway.

  The small but perfectly formed chap at BMW was offering a 750, but as he’d be there on the day I figured it prudent to turn him down.

  Jaguar, then. Oh yes, they’d be delighted to help with whatever I wanted but Beloved stamped her size seven down – she’s tall you see – saying she’d rather roll up at church in a Nissan. It was starting to look like she might have to.

  I liked the idea of a Countach, especially as it would mean leaving father-in-law at home, but protocol put the mockers on this brainwave.

  I also toyed with the notion of asking to borrow Mitsubishi’s hot-air balloon in the hope that the wind was blowing the wrong way and he’d end up in Tunisia. Only joking.

  Finally came Range Rover. Yes, Beloved agreed this was a good idea. Yes, said Land Rover, they would be delighted to help.

  ‘Would a black one do?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘How about green?’

  ‘Yes, that would be super.’

  ‘It’s an SE.’

  ‘Ooh good.’

  Then Beloved entered the equation again, arguing that green was unlucky.

  ‘What other colours have you got?’

  ‘Er… brown.’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Silver?’

  ‘Yes, yes, silver would be fine.’

  ‘It’s not an SE.’

  By this stage, I didn’t give a toss so long as it was capable of moving an 18-foot father-in-law, a chauffeur and Beloved in a big dress 200 yards from the house to the church.

  Then father-in-law found out and said he wouldn’t go in a Range Rover and why couldn’t we use his Volvo? Using the technique I’d learned from the man at Bentley, I managed to swing him round.

  This left me with the problem of finding something to ‘go away in’.

  I didn’t particularly want people to smear lipsticked profanities all over the Alfa, even if it does play second fiddle to the porcelain. Nor did I relish making it work with an exhaust full of shaving foam and a kipper on the manifold.

  Just in case I had to use it, and it decided to play silly sods at the critical moment, I took the precaution of booking a 75 V6. Just in case.

  So, reserves in place, the hard work began.

  Various circuses said they were a little reticent about lending me an elephant. And I failed to find anyone who owns a camel, let alone someone who would let my friends tie some balloons to its testicles.

  Someone suggested a horse and cart would be a good wheeze, but he is the sort of person who has a velour, button-backed sofa which he calls a settee. So I ignored him. And his advice.

  A tractor? What if it’s raining? A steam engine? How does it get there? A good old vintage Rolls-Royce? Naff, very naff.

  Then the best man stepped into the fray. He absolutely refuses to tell me what he has fixed up, saying only that it will make everyone laugh.

  I am therefore frightened. I just know that it will be a Nissan Sunny ZX with side stripes. If so, his colleagues will wonder why he’s turned up at work with his head on back to front.

  Racing Jaguars

  The pundits are predicting doom ‘n’ gloom time in Coventry. There is to be an XR3i Sovereign and a Daimler Granada. There will be a medium-sized Jaguar with Ford running gear and a Scorpio chassis. John Egan will be replaced by Donald E. Dieselburger junior, and the XJ-S will get tartan seats.

  Quite aside from product juggling and the Americanisation of Jaguar’s board, the economic ramifications must be taken into account as well. Unemployment is to double. Sterling will crash, the stock market will take on bearish dimensions and the government will fall.

  I, however, know how to prevent all this. If Ford would appoint me as chairman of Jaguar, I would put Mercedes and BMW out of business in ten minutes. A quarter of an hour after that, Toyota would pull the plug on Lexus and Nissan would scrap Infiniti.

  Let’s just say you’re a Gieves-and-Hawkes-suited BZW banker. You live in Barnes, are 40 and have a wife and two children aged six and four. Horrid huh? Anyway, protocol dictates that you must have a sober saloon, though the years haven’t advanced so much that it has to be a Volvo. Of course, you have a BMW.

  But it’s time for a change. You’ve heard about Jaguar’s sometimes successful efforts in Group C racing. You know there is a JaguarSport division and you keep reading in financial pages about D- and E-types selling for millions.

  Yes, you reckon, Jaguar are making sporty cars once more. So you tool down to Follets in your 735i and you take a test drive. And you are horrified because Jaguar don’t make sporty cars at all. Jaguar are to motordom what Dunlopillo are to bedding. You make a mental note that, when you are 50, you will come back to Jaguar. But for now, those Teuton Futon people at BMW will do just fine.

  The first new car to emerge from Coventry under my dictatorship will be a standard, manual, 4-litre XJ6 but it will have big BBS wheels, firmed up and lowered suspension, toughened up and speed-related power steering, sports seats, and ever so slightly flared wheel arches. And all its chrome will be flushed down the lavatory.

  It will sell for exactly the same price as the standard 4-litre saloon and it will have an appeal among 40-year-old BZW bankers from Barnes.

  The JaguarSport idea is very clever but not clever enough. They should be a wholly owned Jaguar thing. They should not allow automatic cars out of their gates. And they should not make cars that have cream steering wheels. Cream steering wheels, like white socks and beards, are for riff-raff. BZW bankers do not wear white socks. BZW bankers do not like cream steering wheels.

  And if an American wants a car with a cream steering wheel, he can buy a Lincoln.

  BMW obviously don’t know that I am to be chairman of Jaguar because they recently took me around their Motorsport division, and now I have seen their mistakes.

  I will not build my JaguarSport factory on an industrial estate next door to an odour-eater factory. And I will not be so stupid as to build it in Daimlerstrasse either. When I am looking for people to work in it, I will not insist they all look exactly like Ian Botham. And I will allow them to spill oil on the floor.

  I will also make sure that every car which wears a JaguarSport motif is a proper JaguarSport car. Only the M5 and the M3 convertible are ‘handmade’ in Daimlerstrasse. The M3 saloon and the M635 coupe are ‘line’ cars.

  In addition, I will not allow Jaguars to wear JaguarSport badgingjust because they have a spoiler designed by a JaguarSport tea-boy.

  Most importantly of all, anyone caught driving around with the equivalent of an ‘M’ badge on the back of their automatic XJ6 2.9 will be visited in the night by my secret service department who will wear leather coats and tall boots.

  Believe you me, these rules will ensure that JaguarSport cars are very exclusive indeed.

 
The tricky bit is making them better than the astonishingly good M5 with which they would have to compete. Even on this point though, I have an answer. You don’t get the best out of a workforce if you promise them sweeties when they get things right. You get the best out of a workforce if you promise to beat them up when they get things wrong. Having Dachau eleven kilometres down the road helps.

  When all is said and done, I will have the current range of cars selling to the pensioners for whom they were designed. In addition, I will have a range that appeals to everyone else.

  They will make money too; lots of it. Enough to pay for the racing programme, anyway. And they will help back up the pictures being painted by the Group C cars, the current XJ-Rs and the D-Types that are dominating all Jaguar stories in the newspapers.

  If Jaguar can stand on their own two (or four) feet, shrugging off competition from Japan, Germany and America like you or I would shrug off a mild itch, Ford will not feel the need to start meddling. If, however, Jaguar plunge along their current course, being so vulnerable that a 0.5 cent shift in the dollar/pound exchange rate can screw the whole thing up, then expect to see Ford Fiesta XJ6s in your local showrooms soon.

  If that is too awful to bear, simply buy a share or two and vote for me when the time comes.

  Non-Sleeker Celica

  Any chance of staying awake evaporated when the man said what sounded like, ‘We have used organic rice to create neutral sexiness.’ Until that point, I had been grappling with waves of boredom, pulling faces like rock guitarists do when they hit the highest note possible on a Gibson Les Paul.

  But it was hopeless. I wouldn’t have been all that interested even if it had been presented in a recognisable language. In a version of Engrish where all the ‘l’s are pronounced ‘r’s, sleep was a merciful relief.