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  If you really want to say at parties you drive a 500, there’s a better plan. Buy a Škoda Yeti, then simply remove the badge and screw a Fiat logo to the boot instead.

  5 July 2015

  Put a forged Monet in the boot and you’d have a real bounder’s Jag

  Jaguar XE

  No one has yet said to me: ‘I’m thinking of buying a new Jaguar. What do you reckon?’ People ask me about BMWs and Mercedes and Range Rovers all the time, but Jags? No. It’s as though they’ve dropped off the businessman’s radar completely.

  We keep being told Jaguar is building another factory and taking on another billion or so employees, and that’s true. It is. But only so it can build more Range Rovers. Jag sales are – how can I put this kindly? – a bit Betamax.

  The problem is simple, really. Why would you buy a big XJ when for the same sort of money you could have a BMW 7-series or an S-class Mercedes or one of those Audis that take Cara Delevingne to film premieres? Answer? Anyone? Anyone?

  In the days of Terry-Thomas and of John Steed in The Avengers, Jags were rather caddish and wonderful. They were driven by charmers and chancers who always had a dodgy Monet in the boot and a ‘spot of bother’ with the mortgage company, so ‘Would it be OK if I crashed at your place for a few nights, old boy?’

  I know Jaguar worried about the Arthur Daley connection, but that was foolish, because people liked Arthur Daley. Even today, people like a loveable rogue – someone who can charm his way into a woman’s knickers even though he always leaves his wallet at home ‘by mistake’. It’s why we’re always happy to have a drive tarmacked by someone who we know has nicked the ingredients from the council. It’s why we buy rugs if we think they’ve fallen off the back of a lorry.

  Jaguar should have worked hard to develop this market. The cars themselves should have been sold from behind the railway arches and fitted as standard with a cubbyhole for shooters in the boot. But instead it went with vodka-bar lighting and rorty oversteer handling, and the moment was lost. It’s a pity.

  As soon as you step into the new XE, you feel the disappointment. There in the middle of the steering wheel is the Jaguar badge, which suggests you should be waist-deep in Wilton carpet, looking at your own raffish reflection in the highly polished walnut dashboard. But no. It’s just a car in there. So, as with all vehicles in this price bracket, it feels as if you’re sitting in a man’s washbag.

  There’s more, I’m afraid. There’s less space in the back than in the BMW 3-series and C-class Mercedes, and you get a smaller boot. And while clever new petrol engines are on the way, they haven’t arrived yet. So the 2-litre turbo in my test car is an old Ford unit that first saw the light of day in the Mondeo. There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s refined and economical, but you’d always know as you bimbled about that the heart of the machine was from the wrong side of the tracks.

  It’s all a bit lacklustre, really, until you get to the eight-speed automatic gearbox, which isn’t lacklustre at all. It’s dreadful. You might imagine that, no matter what the situation, an eight-speed box would always have the right ratio to ensure you had the punch to get-up-and-go. I’m afraid not.

  Quite the reverse, in fact. It has been programmed to make sure that the engine is using as little fuel as possible at all times. This is to keep the EU emissions Nazis happy. So when you put your foot down to exploit a gap at a roundabout, the gearbox immediately forms a committee to decide how best to balance your request for power with its mission priority, which is: save the polar bear.

  As a result, not much happens. So you ask for more power, which causes the committee to have a bit of a panicky wobble. Now it’s like the Terminator in that scene in the new film when it has been told to kill John Connor and save him. It hasn’t a clue what to do, so it just gives you random gears in no particular order until finally you mash the pedal to the metal, at which point it has a temper tantrum and throws a saucepan at your head.

  Happily, there is a solution. You keep the gear selector in the Sport position, which tells the on-board computer that you literally couldn’t give a pig’s arse about the polar bear. You just want to be able to pull on to a roundabout without being T-boned by an oncoming lorry.

  Maybe these issues will be addressed when the latest petrol engines come on stream next year. But that doesn’t really help if you’re looking for a new car now.

  This might, though. I was on the M40 – a road I know so well that I’ve given all the cat’s eyes names – when I suddenly realized that the XE is extremely comfortable. Oh, there are buttons that ruin that by making it bumpier, but in Normal mode it is fabulous.

  And it’s not just the ride either. It has a refinement that is far beyond anything you could reasonably expect in this area of the market. In short, it feels noticeably more expensive than its German rivals. Even when you’re going round Hammersmith roundabout, in west London, which is basically a ploughed field these days, it feels as though you’re on a magic carpet.

  Maybe this is down to the integral-link rear suspension, which is heavier than the set-up everyone else uses but is better at its job. Or maybe the all-new platform, which one day will be used to make the Range Rover Evoque, is just inherently excellent. Or maybe it’s a combination of things. But the XE feels like a £100,000 car. It drives well too.

  And then it gets better because it is also extremely good-looking. It doesn’t stand up and shout, ‘Look at me,’ but when you do, you will be mesmerized by its beauty. It’s a minx with windscreen wipers.

  I have no doubt at all that if you leave this car’s gearbox in Sport mode, switching back to ‘D’ only when you’re on a motorway, it’s a better buy than anything BMW, Audi or Mercedes will sell you for the same money. It’s definitely the one I’d choose.

  There is just one thing, though, before I close. In the fullness of time, Jaguar will launch a fast XE. It’ll have a V8, and everyone will rush around clutching their tinkles, saying that it’s as good as a BMW M3. But no one will actually buy it, because if you want an M3, you’ll buy one, not something that’s just pretending.

  So how’s this for a plan? Jaguar should launch a Terry-Thomas special edition with lots of wood and tweed and possibly a decanter in the centre armrest. Sell it with a mildly forged Monet in the boot and the number of a good lawyer programmed into the phone.

  Because anyone who’s old enough to be able to afford a Jaguar will want that from his car, not an ability to leave 300 yards of black stripes down the road every time he sets off.

  12 July 2015

  Sven and Thor’s safety car now comes with insomnia control

  Volvo XC90

  At the turn of the century Volvo’s engineers hit on an amazing idea. Sitting in the sauna one day, as naked as the day he was born, Thor turned to Sven and said: ‘Sven. After you have whipped me with some twigs and I have leapt for no reason into a freezing-cold lake, why don’t we design a big family car that might actually suit a big family?’

  Land Rover had tried this with the seven-seat Discovery. But of course Land Rover was run back then by people who were only interested in how a car performed on a very muddy slope in Wales. They didn’t understand children. Many, I suspect, weren’t even quite sure where they came from.

  As a result, the Discovery had seats in the boot that could be accessed only by someone with a degree in engineering. Certainly, they could not be folded down unless you were some kind of Indian god with six arms. And to make matters worse, there was no space in the boot for even the thinnest dog.

  Sven and Thor had had a better idea. Their car would not be particularly good on a muddy slope in Wales. And it would not be able to spin its wheels when leaving the traffic lights. Nürburgring lap times? They weren’t interested at all.

  However, it would have the cool, raised splendour of a big 4×4 and it would have buttons that could be operated by someone wearing gloves. The seats could be moved about and folded away easily, even by a harassed mum who had six bags of shopping and a
child who’d run off to jump in puddles.

  They called their new car the XC90 and, in 2002, showed it off to the public at an American motor show. Nobody paid it much attention. Why would they, when the rest of the hall was full of cars that could growl and generate so much G in the bends that your face would come off? At a motor show, nobody is interested in harassed mums or seats that can be folded down with one hand.

  Despite the wall of silence that greeted the new car, Sven and Thor went ahead and put it on sale. They obviously weren’t expecting much. Because they’d geared up to make only about forty-two in the first year.

  But the world went mad for the XC90. It soon became Volvo’s bestselling model and, because demand way outstripped supply, second-hand values were off the charts. It won award after award as people began to realize that the Swedes had pretty much reinvented the wheel. A 4×4 for people who don’t answer to the name of Ranulph or Sir Stirling.

  I first saw an XC90 at the Donington Park racetrack. I can’t remember why it, or I, was there, but as the father of three young children I knew straight away that I had to have one. And a few years later I bought a second. And then a third. And then a couple of months ago a fourth.

  This may strike you as odd, because why would you buy one of the last of the old models when you knew a new one was due to be launched in a matter of weeks? Simple. Back when the original XC90 was launched, Volvo was owned by Ford. It was a big player with deep pockets. But today Volvo is owned by a Chinese operation called Geely and, from what I can gather, its pockets are now a bit more like those flaps you get in a pair of Levi’s. To put it simply, I figured the new car would have been designed on a bit of a shoestring.

  When the second-generation XC90 was brought round to my gaff recently, I thought I’d made the right decision. It’s not really much of a looker any more. The deeply sculpted sides are now more slabby and, my God, it’s big. Really big.

  But the bigness pays dividends on the inside, where you now get a boot and seating for seven adults. Not five adults and a lot of moaning from the teenagers who have been put in the very back.

  And there’s more, because, ooh, it’s a nice place to sit. The dials, the textures, the air-cooled subwoofer and the sheer design of everything is absolutely wonderful.

  It’s so simple too. There are only eight buttons on the dash – not counting the diamond-cut starter button – because everything is controlled by what isn’t an iPad but sure as hell looks like one.

  There is a bit of a drawback, though. Have you seen a child’s iPad after he’s had some sticky buns for tea? Well, that’s what the screen in the Volvo looked like after I’d played with it for five minutes. Oh, and the satnav idea where you pinch the screen to zoom? That doesn’t work at all. But these are niggles compared with the feature that had driven me mad before I’d even reversed out of my drive …

  The problem is that, back in 2012, Sven and Thor had another idea. They said that, by 2020, no one should be killed or injured in a new Volvo. That’s obviously preposterous, because what if you drove one off Beachy Head? No safety feature is going to save you then.

  But, having made the claim, they are now working flat-out to realize it, and as a result the XC90 is festooned with systems that become hysterical if they think you are about to bump into even a rose bush.

  Manoeuvring this car in a tight spot is like being at a rave. You have flashing lights, sirens and whistles, and there’s no point diving into the iPad thingy to turn everything off because that’s smeared with fingerprints and is invisible.

  Later, on the motorway, the car did its best to stop me changing lanes – by which I mean it took control of the steering – and it applied the brakes if it thought I was too close to the car in front.

  Every fibre of my being was stretched to a teeth-bared grimace by all this, but then I started to think: ‘Hang on – just go with the flow. Let it do its thing and you are less likely to have a crash.’ And when you start to think that way, the new XC90 starts to make sense.

  It becomes quite relaxing. Very relaxing, in fact. Because the 2-litre engine is now far quieter than it was in the old model, and the ride – mostly – is pretty good too. It’s so soothing, you could nod off. And you’d be fine because it’d wake you up if anything was going wrong.

  In the course of a week I drove this car around my farm, around London when the Tubes were on strike and on various motorways, and after seven days I was pretty much in a coma.

  So, yes, I made a mistake by buying the old one. This new car is very good; so good, in fact, that it’d be ideal for those who find the current offerings from Land Rover a bit – how can I put this? – pratty.

  26 July 2015

  You did have one excuse not to buy a 3-series. Not any more

  BMW 3-Series 320d xDrive SE

  I have been much amused in recent weeks by various earnest BBC news reporters telling us that people these days decide which car to buy on the basis of how much damage it will cause to the environment.

  Of course, this is entirely true inside the BBC, which is why many of the staff go to work on fold-away bicycles. But in the actual world, where women shave their armpits and see Jeremy Corbyn as a humorous throwback, people couldn’t give a stuff about emissions or any of that PC nonsense. You could use slave labour to build a car that ran on a mixture of cyanide and potassium and, if it had free mud flaps and a five-year warranty, you’d sell it by the shipload.

  Value for money matters. Fuel economy matters, too, along with comfort, zest and reliability. What comes out of the poo chute is irrelevant. And so, too, weirdly, is styling.

  It’s odd. Nobody would choose to have ugly children and nobody would deliberately fill their house with furniture that they found displeasing to the eye. And yet, every year, thousands and thousands of people buy a car that has the aesthetic appeal of a gaping wound.

  I don’t think there’s been a time in automotive history when the market has been so awash with ugly cars. Skinny-wheeled, ungainly monstrosities crammed with unnecessary styling features and roof lines that seem to have been designed so people in the back can wear stovepipe hats.

  I look at the Citroën Cactus and wonder: ‘What’s that all about? Why’s it got bubble wrap down the side?’ But, plainly, lots of people think differently because the damn things are everywhere. It’s the same with that new Lexus NX. Why did they allow a four-year-old with a space-laser fixation to do the styling?

  Then you have the Mini Countryman and, oh, I nearly forgot, the new Jeep Cherokee. That’s astonishing. Because what they’ve done is taken the old Pontiac Aztec and blended it with a wide-mouthed frog.

  However, there are a few manufacturers that are swimming against the ugly tide. Kia is one. And BMW is another. Of course, the German giant can sell you an X3 that is terrible, but its saloons and coupés are magnificent, their lines spoilt only by the curse of familiarity. The 5-series in particular is a masterpiece.

  And the 3-series that I was using last week is not far behind. You look at it and you think: ‘Why on earth would someone choose to buy an Audi or a Mercedes or a Lexus instead?’

  One of the reasons, of course, is that, in winter, BMWs are famously hopeless. In fact, the main reason the country grinds to a halt every time there’s a light dusting of snow or a mild frost is that every road in the land is blocked by a BMW, its big fat rear wheels spinning uselessly and its panicking driver filling in insurance forms, knowing that, although the accident hasn’t happened yet, it will.

  Well, with the BMW I’ve been driving, those days are gone, because it has four-wheel drive. Such a car has been available on the Continent for almost a decade, but until recently BMW’s designers never really saw the point of engineering all-wheel drive into right-hand-drive models. They probably thought that in Britain, where the weather is rarely very bad, we could cope. Yeah, right.

  We are told this winter will be very bad and, doubtless, if it is, the BBC will blame Volkswagen. But in your sparkly new
320d with xDrive you’ll be fine.

  There are, however, some downsides on the days when it’s not snowing. First of all, there’s a premium to pay. That’s reasonable. There are a lot of extra cogs and stuff. But the premium is £1,500, and that’s what economists call ‘a lot’.

  There’s more. The space between the centre console and the wheel arch is quite tight, which means that every time you want to go faster you hit the brake and come to a halt.

  More importantly, the fuel consumption is hit hard. The four-wheel-drive car does 5.3 fewer miles to the gallon than its rear-drive sister. And it’s slower. I suppose, in case someone from the BBC is reading this – highly unlikely, I know – I should also mention that it produces ten more carbon dioxides.

  So, there’s a heavy price to pay for the ability to get out of your drive on that chilly February morning when you wake to find Jack Frost has been round in the night. And in all probability, you won’t be going anywhere anyway, because your neighbour will have slithered into a lamppost in his two-wheel-drive 3-series and blocked the road.

  Really, then, it’s up to you whether you choose xDrive or not. Only you know whether you need it enough to make the penalties worthwhile.

  Either way, you do get a lovely car. Wheel-arch intrusion aside, the driving position is sublime and the thickness and texture of the steering wheel are perfect.

  In the early days, BMW’s iDrive command and control system was a jumble of unintelligible submenus and nonsense, but today it’s the standard-bearer of common sense and logic, twin features that you find throughout the car. Rear-seat space, the size of the boot, the way everything operates and the ride: it’s all how it would be if you’d designed it yourself.

  Naturally, I do have a couple of niggles. The steering – electric these days, rather than hydraulic – is a bit 50p-piecey, if you know what I mean. It doesn’t have the fluidity that used to be a hallmark of BMW when it billed itself as the maker of the ultimate driving machine. And the parking sensors are stupidly pessimistic. ‘You’re going to crash! You’re going to crash!!!!’ they wail hysterically when you are still yards from the car behind.