Really?

by Jeremy Clarkson

  I tried the 2-litre version, which was excellent, but I’m told by others whose opinion I respect that the cheaper 1.5-litre is even better. Only one thing made me a bit cross. The satnav was, I presume, designed by the electronics nerds who weren’t allowed to practise their dark arts on the suspension. So as a sort of payback they’ve designed a system that makes you lost. Do I deduct a star for that? Not really, because being lost in an MX-5 means you spend more time driving it, and that’s no hardship.

  The only thing I didn’t like about the old model was a lack of personality. I drove one all the way from northern Iraq through Turkey, Syria and Jordan to Israel once, and it didn’t really worm its way into my heart. The new one, though, thanks to the styling changes that make it look more serious? It probably would.

  So, yeah, by not really changing much of anything at all, and by avoiding the latest trends for more complicated electronics, Mazda has once again come up with a full-on five-star gem.

  22 May 2016

  Gary, son of God, v the bean-counters

  Ford Focus RS

  Journalists who were invited by Ford to sample the new Focus RS at its official launch in Spain have been saying that it’s certainly the greatest car yet made and that possibly it’s even more than that. Quietly, using nuance and subtle phrase-making, they’ve been hinting that perhaps it’s the new baby Jesus.

  They speak of a £31,000 car that can go round corners at a million miles an hour and a five-door family hatchback that comes with a Drift mode. They say it is capable of immense speed and great comfort, and after a thousand words the reader is starting to get the picture: nobody has yet let on what form the Second Coming might take, so who’s to say God’s new emissary won’t arrive on earth with windscreen wipers?

  Hype, however, is a dangerous thing. I was told by critics that 12 Years a Slave was an absolutely tremendous film, and it wasn’t. They did the same with Dallas Buyers Club, and halfway through I found myself thinking: ‘This is just a very long advertisement for whatever slimming pills Matthew McConaughey has been taking.’

  I didn’t even agree with their assessment of the new Batman v Superman film. They said it was terrible, and it just isn’t. It’s way worse than that.

  Hype, then, is a nuisance for film makers. Because instead of leaving the cinema thinking, ‘That was very enjoyable,’ audiences tend to leave thinking, ‘That wasn’t as good as the critics said.’ And on that note we arrive back at the Ford Focus RS.

  I may have touched on this before, but it bears repeating here for those who can’t remember – namely, people such as me who are in their fifties. Ford has been running an advertising campaign recently urging people to ‘unlearn’ what they know about the brand. The company is of course talking to the Mondeo Man generation. But there’s a dangerous downside to this. Because when it asks people of my age to ‘unlearn’ all they know about Ford, that means forgetting about the Escort Mexico and the Lotus Cortina and the Essex-engined 3-litre Capri and the RS200 and the GT40 and the Sierra RS Cosworth and the Cortina 1600E and the XR3i. It means forgetting that Ford has made more truly great cars in its history than any other company. Including Ferrari.

  In the early 1990s I had an Escort RS Cosworth, and that car would go into anyone’s list of all-time greats. It wasn’t so much the wallop from its turbocharged engine or the grip from its four-wheel-drive system or even the preposterousness of its enormous rear spoiler that made this car so endearing; no, it was more the fact it was a working-class hero, a blue-collar bruiser that could mix it with the bluebloods. A Ford that could keep up with, and then overtake, supercars that cost five or six times more.

  After the Cossie was dropped, though, Ford rather lost its way. With the exception of the GT and the wonderful Fiesta ST, it stopped making great cars and began to believe good was good enough.

  But it isn’t. Every car firm needs to make the occasional loss-leading halo. Manufacturers need to accept that not one of the designers or engineers they employ joined up so they could work on the new rear-light cluster for a hatchback. They joined up so they could get their teeth into something that would cause the world to stagger.

  Oh, Ford had a couple of attempts with the Focus over the years. It put a powerful engine under the bonnet and told us four-wheel drive was unnecessary because it had developed a differential or a new type of knuckle joint in the suspension that would keep the torque steer at bay. But the cars failed to ignite any passion in the enthusiast, because we knew the real reason they didn’t have four-wheel drive. It would mean redesigning the whole underside of the vehicle, and that would mean new tooling at the factory. And that would be too expensive.

  Well, with the new Focus RS, Ford has bitten the bullet. It has locked the accountants in a cupboard and bought the tooling. It has fitted four-wheel drive, and you know after about 100 yards that it has created something very special. Even at James May speeds, on a roundabout in Hounslow, this car feels cleverer than is normal. It feels like a Nissan GT-R.

  That’s because it’s not just an off-the-shelf four-wheel-drive system. It’s one of the most advanced active asymmetrical systems fitted to any car at any price. Somewhere in a cupboard an accountant is screaming.

  The engine is less amazing. It’s a so-called 2.3-litre EcoBoost unit, lifted from Ford’s hire-spec Mustang in America and beefed up in Europe so you get 345 brake horsepower. That isn’t as much as you get from the hot Mercedes-AMG A 45, but, remember, that thing is a lot more expensive.

  And, anyway, 345bhp is enough to provide a meaty shove in the back when you accelerate and a growly forty-a-day rumble from under the bonnet. Put it in Sport mode and you get some spitting from the exhaust as well. If this car could talk, you suspect, it would sound like John Terry.

  Interestingly, given the sophistication of the four-wheel-drive system, you get a straightforward six-speed manual. Old skool. And a proper handbrake lever that you can use to do bird-pulling skid turns in a car park.

  Put all of this lot together and what you get is, as the critics have been saying, something really quite inspirational. A genuine half-price GT-R. However, whereas the critics on the launch went off to play with the Drift mode, which allows even those with fingers of butter and fists of ham to power-slide round corners, I started to think about what else you get with this car.

  Even in Normal mode there’s a choppy vertical bouncing motion that is a bit annoying. You also get seats that are mounted on the car rather than in it – they’re far too high. Then there’s a range of only 250 miles and wipers that judder. Oh, and there’s a slot for your iPhone in the dash, which is great. But if you accelerate hard, it shoots out and goes on to the floor.

  Furthermore, only one colour is available as standard. It’s a matt grey that Ford calls Stealth. Yeah, right. There is nothing stealthy about this car. It’s so loud and so festooned with spoilers that many potential customers will say, ‘No, thanks,’ and buy the much more subtle Volkswagen Golf R instead.

  That might be a wise decision, because while the Golf doesn’t have a Drift feature or quite such fearsome cornering ability, it won’t throw your phone on the floor every time you accelerate and it won’t cause your friends to call you Gary.

  I like to think, then, that what I’ve provided here is a balanced review of the baby Jesus. I’ve explained that it has a few flaws and that you may be better off with something else.

  Because, that way, your test drive in an RS won’t be burdened with hype, and you’ll emerge from the driver’s seat after ten minutes thinking: ‘I have got to get me one of these.’

  29 May 2016

  Ahh, sauerkraut sushi soup. Looks delicious

  Infiniti Q30

  Once, when I worked for the BBC’s Midlands division, I was invited to the opening of what was billed in the promotional pamphlet as ‘Birmingham’s biggest restaurant’.

  And I remember thinking: ‘Hmmm. I’ve heard of people saying they’d like to go out in the evening for an Italian or a C
hinese. I’ve heard people say they’d like to eat somewhere intimate or cosy. But I have never heard anyone say, “What I fancy tonight is eating out in a restaurant that’s really big.”’

  All of which brings me to the Infiniti Q30. Which is going to be at the top of anyone’s list if they’re after a Mercedes A-class that is built in Britain, badged as an upmarket Nissan and fitted with the diesel engine from a Renault.

  I’m not sure, however, I’ve met anyone who has this list of criteria when they’re choosing a new vehicle. A safe car, yes. Or a fast car. Or a car that’s green. But never has anyone ever said to me: ‘Jeremy. I want a Mercedes, but I’d like it to be a bit more Japanesey with a clattery French heart. Oh, and can it be built in Sunderland?’

  The Infiniti sounds a complete mess: a car that’s been hurled together by the marketing and accounting departments from various companies in Yokohama, Stuttgart and Paris. And that works about as well as a starter made from sauerkraut, a few bits of sushi and some powerful bouillabaisse. But who knows? Maybe it’s brilliant.

  Or maybe it isn’t … The Infiniti brand has not been what you’d call a runaway success. It was designed as a halo for Nissan in the same way as Lexus is a halo for Toyota and Acura is a halo for Honda in many parts, and while the idea is sound, the cars have always been ho-hum and have been sold only to people in America who were too interested in food and the baby Jesus to notice that their shiny new set of wheels was a tarted-up, half-arsed Datsun.

  To try to boost the name a little bit, Nissan got its partners at Renault to slap the Infiniti brand on the Red Bull Formula One car – Renault made its engine – but that was desperate and tragic. A car company advertising itself on the side of a car … that it hadn’t designed in any way.

  I really did think that, after this, Infiniti had been quietly shelved, but no. I came out of the office last week, and there in the car park was the all-new Q30. So I decided to see what it was like.

  The first problem was trying to decide what it was. One magazine calls it an ‘active hatch’, but I don’t know what that means. And, anyway, it’s not really a hatchback at all, and even though it has the option of four-wheel drive, it’s not an off-roader or a crossover or an estate car either. What I can tell you is that it sits on the chassis from an A-class. And I think it’s fair to say that the worst thing about the A-class is … drum roll … its chassis.

  I’m sure Infiniti has done its best to iron out the inherent problems, and for the most part it rides and handles quite well. But sometimes you run over a smallish pothole, and then you think: ‘No, wait – it doesn’t.’

  It’s the same story with the 2.2-litre diesel engine. It moves you along and it doesn’t appear to have an alarming thirst for fuel, so that’s fine. But it sounds like a canal boat when it’s cold. It’s so loud that it has to be fitted with noise-cancelling technology.

  I think that’s what the engine does, in fact: turn diesel into sound. Because it sure as hell doesn’t turn it into large lumps of power. Every time I pulled out to overtake a caravan, I had to pull in again because there wasn’t quite enough grunt. So, all things considered, that’s not fine either.

  The interior is a different story. In the back it’s a bit cramped and hard to get through the door if you’re bigger than an ant. But up front the picture is much more rosy. The seats are tremendously comfortable and the quality of the materials is exemplary. I know a fair bit about stitching, having sewn up Paddington Bears for ten years, and I can tell you that the cottonwork on the dash of the Q30 is up there in Elizabeth Keckley’sfn1 league.

  The Wearsiders and their neighbours from up north may be hopeless at football these days but they really can put a car together.

  This is no good either. Because who is sitting at home thinking: ‘I don’t care what my next car is like, just as long as it has a tasteful interior that has been stitched together by former dockers’?

  But there is one thing that does cause people to lose any sense of reason and buy something that is not safe, fast, economical, green or any of the things that really matter, and that’s styling.

  You don’t have to be a motoring ignoramus to fall foul of this one. You go into town, see a car you like the look of, come home, search for it on the internet, find you can afford it and buy it without stopping for a moment to wonder if it’s in any way suitable.

  On that basis the Q30 is going to be a quiet success, because, ooh, it’s a looker. This is a car that is needlessly curvy and fitted with all sorts of styling touches that are in no way necessary. And yet it doesn’t look fake or idiotic at all. It looks – and there’s no other word – fantastic.

  All of the alternatives are dreary and bland to behold, except the Range Rover Evoque, which is a bit common these days. The Q30 is not dreary or bland and, with only fourteen dealers in the UK, it’s never going to be common either.

  Which gives you a bit of a choice to make. You can drive a genuinely interesting-looking car that isn’t really very good at all. Or you can buy a good car that is a bit boring to behold. I guess you have to ask yourself a question: do you want a mistress or a wife?

  5 June 2016

  I need a screensaver – and this ain’t it

  Vauxhall Astra SRi

  I’ve just had the editor on the phone, wondering why I haven’t responded to his emails and whether I’m going to send him my road-test report on the Vauxhall Astra SRi – because I’m way past the deadline.

  I’m not procrastinating, I promise. I really do have a twofold problem. First of all, I can’t think of anything interesting to say about the Astra, and, second, I have spent the past two days with a mobile telephone that works perfectly, except the screen, which doesn’t work at all.

  I spent most of yesterday morning holding down various buttons for various periods of time until I realized that, of course, it’s electronic, which means its problems can be resolved by turning it off and then on again.

  But this made everything worse, because when an iPhone has been turned off, you can’t use a thumbprint to bring it to life: you must put in your passcode. Which I couldn’t do because the screen wasn’t working.

  I decided that all would be well if I plugged it into its home laptop and ordered a system restore.

  How foolish of me. The computer said it could perform the task only if I unlocked the screen. Which I couldn’t do.

  That meant I had to find someone else with an iPhone 6 and copy his screen on to a piece of tracing paper, which I then laid over my own, dead screen. Clever, eh? Sadly not, because the screen needs direct human contact. It won’t work if there’s a tracing-paper interface.

  So I broke out a ruler and marked where the numbers would be, using sugar granules. This simple act of genius worked. The computer hooked up with the phone, and I was about to press the Restore button when the friend whose iPhone I’d borrowed to use as a map said: ‘You know if you do that you’ll lose everything on your phone, don’t you?’

  Actually, I’d only lose everything since the last backup, which I noticed had been in February. So that’s the number of everyone I’ve met since then and all the pictures I took in India and Jordan and Namibia and the ones of my daughter doing her first triathlon.

  And all the while the incoming-email buzzer was sounding and I knew it’d be the editor, wondering why I hadn’t sent him news of the Vauxhall. ‘Because there are more important things in life,’ I seethed inwardly. ‘Such as killing everyone at Apple with a shovel.’

  There was another problem I had with the Vauxhall. I’d driven it only once, from Holland Park to Chiswick, in rush hour. I was supposed to have taken it to the country at the weekend, but on Friday night Richard Hammond announced that he didn’t like the colour of the Aston Martin Vanquish Volante he was supposed to be driving and went home in his own car.

  I did like the colour – it was a sort of pearly metallic white – and I much preferred the idea of tooling around in a convertible Aston for the weekend to bumbling about in
a mildly speedy Vauxhall. It was unprofessional, I know, but …

  While I was in the Aston I decided I’d write about that instead, about how useless its satnav is and how you can get your right foot stuck under the brake pedal, which makes slowing down a bit tricky, and how the steering judders at low speeds and how annoying it was to have a convertible on a beautiful sunny day and not be able to take the roof down because I’m fat and fifty-six and I’d look stupid.

  I was going to put all this in my column. But then I discovered I’d already reviewed the Vanquish Volante and had said much the same sort of thing. So I’d have to cobble together some thoughts on the Vauxhall. Which was hard because a) I didn’t have any and b) on my laptop screen iTunes had just flashed up a message saying it had suffered a ‘catastrophic’ failure and was closing, which meant the sync with my phone wasn’t working.

  This happened six times. And on the seventh attempt at syncing I decided I didn’t want to kill everyone at Apple with a shovel. I wanted to use a cocktail stick.

  However, the seventh attempt was at least successful. The sync was done. So finally I could restore my phone to see if that would bring the screen back to life. However, being a cautious soul, I thought I’d just check everything had been transferred, and guess what. It hadn’t. So I had to start all over again, and I couldn’t because iTunes announced once again that it had stopped working and would be closing.

  It’s incredible how all-consuming this sort of problem becomes. I knew I must write my column on the Vauxhall. I knew I must send out a tweet saying our Amazon show’s big tent was to be transported round the world by our new sponsor, DHL, and I knew I must sort out the kitchen cabinets for my cottage. And yet all those things were still sitting in the in-tray because getting my phone to work properly had become even more important than taking my next breath.