What you will notice in the SQ7 is that when you go round a corner it doesn’t seem to roll very much. This is a big car that sits on stilts, so you’d expect its door handles to be scraping along the asphalt when you give it the beans, and yet they aren’t.
This is because of yet more engineering. An electric motor and a three-stage planetary gearbox are used to operate an anti-roll system. It’s designed to disengage when you’re off road, so you don’t get jolted too much, and then engage when you’re on the road, going quickly. And when it does, it effectively props up the side of the car that should be leaning over. This is technology that was tried, and then banned, in Formula One.
I’d love to say it does all its cleverness without affecting the ride comfort, but that would be a lie. You do feel the bumps – a bit – but again I admire the way the engineers have been allowed to experiment with the boundaries. They could have just painted some snazzy stripes down the side and fitted big tyres, but they’ve gone further, and I like that. The SQ7 even has mild four-wheel steering.
I could go on and on about other innovations – Audi has come up with a new way of combining lightness with strength in the construction, so you get better economy from a car that doesn’t fall to pieces when it hits a tree – but it’s probably time now to move inside, where you get two rows of seats, plus a temporary row that rises electrically from the boot floor. You’re never going to get your grandmother back there, but children will be fine.
Move further forward and you start to get to the bits that annoy May. As we know, James is a man who enjoys mending Bakelite telephones, so obviously he is going to be irritated by what he’d call unnecessary blue downlighting and what Audi calls ‘horizontal’ design.
I have no idea what horizontal design is, or why it’s better than vertical design, but I do like the finished product. The Audi, slightly bumpy ride aside, is a nice place to be. And even though it is burdened with a million new engineering solutions, it’s not like the cockpit of an experimental spaceship. It’s simple and straightforward, and you’re never left looking at a button, thinking: ‘What the bloody hell does that thing do?’
You press a button, engage a driving mode on the surprisingly old-fashioned torque converter automatic gearbox and drive about. It’s as demanding as taking a bath.
So it’s fast, strong, safe, clever, innovative, interesting, spacious, very well made and, so far as I can see, completely pointless.
I’ve tried all week to imagine the sort of person who might want to buy such a thing – and I can’t. I know people who like to drive fast cars, and certainly they will enjoy the bassy and slightly rough sound of that big diesel V8. But nobody who enjoys a car such as that will want it to have seven seats.
Then there are people who do need the practicality of seven seats for the school run. Yes, the Audi’s anti-roll system will stop them being carsick, and that’s good, but who needs 663 torques and half a billion horsepowers to get a bunch of kids to the playground?
It’s the same story with the off-road abilities. Yes, the Audi can hoist itself up to give good ground clearance and it has four-wheel drive. But it sits on performance tyres, so if you try to get it to your peg on a shoot, it’ll get stuck. So it isn’t an off-road car at all, really.
This is the trouble. It’s not an off-roader. It’s not a sports car. It’s not a sumptuous long-distance luxury car and it certainly isn’t a looker. The only element likely to raise a pensive eyebrow is the price. It’s less than £71,000, which is good value for this much engineering. It’s actually £12,380 cheaper than a slower and less practical V8 Range Rover.
The trouble is, £71,000 is a lot for a car that you neither need nor want.
13 November 2016
Torque of the town, but quiet as a mouse
Bentley Mulsanne Speed
People who live near a busy road often moan about traffic noise, and they have my sympathy. I’d rather listen to a wounded hare than a motorway. And I’d rather live in Svalbard than near a busy roundabout.
There are many reasons why traffic makes such a din. Motorbikes are a big source, and so far as I can tell from my vantage point in west London, they’re getting even louder. When I come to power, the banishment of these hideous and ugly machines from the roads will be near the top of my ‘to do’ list.
Buses are noisy too, and I think it would make sense to get rid of them as well. This would force poor people to use bicycles instead, and that would cause them to be less fat. Which would mean there’d be less of a drain on the National Health Service. Speaking of which – ambulances. Do they really need sirens that can be heard twenty miles away?
With cars it’s a different story. With the exception of some found in extremely expensive supercars that you never really encounter, modern-day engines and exhaust systems are pretty much silent.
Bob Seger once sang about being on tour – ‘You can listen to the engine moanin’ out his one-note song’ – but he’s wide of the mark. Because in fact between 75 per cent and 90 per cent of the noise made by a car on a motorway comes from the tyres.
It’s not just the sound of the rubber gripping the road; it’s the sound of the air in the tread pattern being compressed, and it’s all amplified because a tyre is basically a big echo chamber.
And that brings us to the Bentley Mulsanne Speed. It was delivered to my office by two earnest chaps, who were at pains to point out the various interesting features. But the one that stopped me in my tracks was the Dunlop rubber, which, they said, had been tuned for quietness.
They weren’t kidding. At 70mph this car is as near as makes no difference silent. It’s a huge thing, with the aerodynamic properties – and weight – of a house, but it barges its way through, and over, the elements with all the aural fuss of a butterfly alighting on a buddleia petal.
It’s not just quiet for the occupants. It’s quiet for everyone. So quiet that after just thirty miles on the M4 I made a mental note to make sure that when I take control of No. 10 those tyres become compulsory for all cars. They’re brilliant.
And so, for exactly the same reason, is the 6.75-litre V8 engine in this automotive leviathan. Amazingly, it was designed before I was born. And, on paper, you can tell. Words such as ‘single camshaft’ and ‘pushrod’ are from a time of rationing and diphtheria.
Eighteen years ago, when Volkswagen took control of Bentley, it said this venerable old V8 would have to be discontinued in the near future because it simply couldn’t be tuned to meet various emission regulations. But it was wrong.
It has fitted a couple of Mitsubishi turbochargers to provide forced induction and added a system that shuts down half the cylinders when they’re not needed to save fuel. And you’d imagine that all this tweakery would cause it to become feeble and weak. But it doesn’t.
The numbers are incredible: you get 530 brake horsepower and, at just 1750rpm, a truly colossal 811 torques. There are bulldozers with less than that – 811lb/ft is planetary force. It’s hysterical force. And you’d imagine that its creation would cause an almighty din. But astonishingly it doesn’t.
If you really stab the throttle deep into the inch-thick carpet, there is a barely discernible hum. But at all other times it’s as silent as a sleeping nun.
So this is a quiet car. And no matter what setting you choose for the air suspension, it’s a comfortable car too. It’s also good-looking. The aggressive new front end is especially impressive.
And it is extremely well equipped with all manner of things that you didn’t even know were possible. The rear touchscreens, for instance, rise silently from the back of the front seats. And then there’s the 2,200-watt stereo. That’s not a misprint. The manufacturer has fitted this completely silent car with a sound system that could blow your head clean off.
However, it’s precisely because of all this equipment and all these toys that I would buy a Rolls-Royce Ghost instead.
Someone at Bentley obviously believes that luxury can be measured in the nu
mber of buttons. They think that a house is palatial if you can run a bath from the garage and open the front gate using your television remote. And that is probably true – if you are a footballer. But I’m not.
I have criticized Bentleys in the past for being a bit ‘last week’ when it comes to electronics. The Continental GT Speed, for example, doesn’t have a USB port, and that, in this day and age, is obviously nuts.
The problem is that with the Mulsanne Speed Bentley’s gone berserk. So you now have two satellite navigation screens in the front that can be operated from the dash or the steering wheel or by touching the screen itself or by using your voice.
Eventually, I’m sure, you could machete your way through the operational complexity that results, but I suspect it would take many years.
Happily, there is a USB port. But it’s in a little drawer that can’t be shut if you’re using it. Then there’s the charging point, under the central armrest, which also can’t be shut if it’s in use.
You get the sense that asking Bentley to fit modern-day electronics is a bit like asking David Linley to reprogramme your iPhone. Or Bill Gates to make a chest of drawers.
The result is daunting. You sit there, behind the wheel, confronted by hundreds and hundreds of buttons and switches, and you can’t help thinking how much better this car would be if only it were less complicated.
And maybe a tiny bit smaller. On the A40 in west London, where there are narrow lanes to ‘protect the workforce’ – that’s never there – I was recently unable to pass a coach for miles. Which was a bore.
It’s annoying. I like the idea of a Bentley more than the idea of a Rolls-Royce. My grandfather had a Bentley R Type, and it was the first car I drove. I like the idea too of telling people I drive an ‘MFB’.
But I never once drove this car as a Bentley could and should be driven. I never felt obliged to put the suspension in its Sport setting and unleash all those torques. I just wafted about in it. And if I want a large and luxurious car in which to waft, I’d rather have the simpler, airier, more tasteful Ghost.
Because when you sink into one of those, you say: ‘Aaaah.’ Whereas when you sink into the Mulsanne Speed, you think: ‘Oh, for God’s sake. Where’s the button that shuts the bloody satnav woman up?’
20 November 2016
Drop this one in the bin, please, robot
Honda Jazz 1.3 i-VTec Ex Navi
Not that long ago we all used to look forward to the car ads on commercial television. We had Paula Hamilton ditching her fur coat but keeping the Volkswagen Golf GTI. We had burning cornfields, and Geoffrey Palmer dolefully talking about beating the Germans to the beach, and dancing robots and Gene Kelly, and Škodas made from cake, and ‘Isn’t it nice when things just work?’
Car ads were almost always better than the programmes they funded. They were cleverer. They made you want a certain type of vehicle when you had been told almost nothing about it. But then, all of a sudden, everything changed.
Today even BMW, which only used to say it made the ‘ultimate driving machine’, fills its commercials with all the finance deals that are available. It really is a case of: ‘Here’s 14 feet of car which you can have for £9.99 a week with 2 per cent APR and the value of your house could go up as well as down.’
It saddens me that cars have gone the way of takeaway food. Nobody cares about the quality or the health benefits or the company’s history any more. Just how much you can get for how little.
I think the last truly great car commercial was Honda’s ‘The Power of Dreams’ ad. Filmed in New Zealand, Argentina and Japan, it featured a magnificent-looking chap with a huge moustache and sideburns setting out from his beachside caravan on a small Honda motorcycle, and then, to the backdrop of Andy Williams crooning ‘The Impossible Dream’, he is seen singing along as he flies through the scenery in just about every important product Honda has made. Racing bikes, Formula One cars, speedboats, sports cars, touring bikes, quads – the lot. It is a true epic, and you’re left at the end thinking: ‘I have got to have one.’
It was updated several years later, with an extended ending in which we saw Mr Moustache at the controls of a Honda jet, and in the hydrogen fuel-cell car and then arriving at a house on the coast to find the Honda robot had got the hot tub ready. It was brilliant.
But I can’t help wondering: if Honda updates it again, what the bloody hell will it feature to say that the dream goes on? The current F1 campaign? Not sure that’s completely on message, as the only impossible dream is finishing anywhere other than nearly last. So what about the cars? Er …
I once described Hondas as Alfa Romeos that start, because, really, that’s what they were. This is a company that did reliable better than anyone, but it never did dull. Everything it made was a bit weird, a bit odd. A bit fabulous. The Jazz I was using last week, however, is none of those things.
Finished in what Honda calls Brilliant Sporty Blue and what everyone else calls ‘blue’, it was the version called the Ex Navi. I’m not sure that name works here, because ex-navvies in my experience are something completely different.
Priced £16,755, it came with a driver’s seat pocket, electric windows and a cigarette-lighter socket. But no actual cigarette lighter. On the outside, Honda lists the highlights as fog lights and wheels. There is absolutely nothing to make you think: ‘Wow.’
Until you put your foot down, hard, in second gear. You’ll certainly say, ‘Wow,’ at this point because nothing of any consequence happens. This is a small car with a 101bhp 1.3-litre i-VTec engine. It should be quite peppy, and yet somehow it is the complete opposite.
If you’re not really concentrating when you are driving the Jazz, you may find that your forward progress is being undone by tectonic drift. You set off to go to the shops and end up, three thousand years later, drifting backwards into Norway.
You may imagine the engine is tuned this way so that it’s kind to your wallet and Johnny Polar Bear, but I’m afraid not. Compared with various other engines of this size that are available from rival manufacturers, it’s uneconomical and produces quite a lot of carbon dioxides.
One of the extraordinary things is that it doesn’t produce its peak torque until it’s turning at 5000rpm. So to get the best out of it, you have to rev the nuts off it at all times.
I used to love Honda’s engines. They were always so sweet and willing. They were like small but very well-trained Jack Russells. But the engine in that Jazz? The only dog to which it can be likened is one that’s dead.
At this point I’d like to tell you about the handling, but I can’t because the car won’t go quickly enough for any deficiencies to be uncovered. And if we’re honest, the average Jazz driver doesn’t care two hoots about understeer or lift-off oversteer; they’re happy just so long as there’s somewhere to store their bingo pencils.
On that front, it’s not bad. There are four doors, which means Peggy and Maureen will be able to get into and out of the back easily.
And there’s a boot that’s big enough for two tartan shopping trolleys. But then we get to the infotainment centre, which is good and clear and clever if you are nine. But completely baffling if you grew up with rationing.
My mother used to say that all she ever wanted from a car was a heater and Classic FM. She had a first-generation Jazz and loved it because it had both things. But in this new one I guarantee she’d be flummoxed on the radio front. Partly this is because if you don’t touch the screen in exactly the right place it does nothing at all.
There’s more, I’m afraid. It’s not a good-looking car. The wheels are 16-inchers but they look lost in the arches, and there are some swooping styling details that are unnecessary and odd.
The only good things, really, are the quality of the materials in the cabin and the space in the back, which is much greater than you’d expect from a car of this type.
If the other people in your bridge four are extremely fat, this might be enough to convince you the Jazz is a worthwhile
buy, but if they aren’t, you’d be better off with a Ford Fiesta or a Volkswagen Polo or a Škoda Fabia. Or an Uber app.
I can’t believe I’m saying that. I can’t believe Honda has sunk this low. Six years ago it was making cars and television commercials that made you dizzy with desire. And now it’s making cars with engines that turn a lot of fuel into nothing at all.
As I said at the beginning, Honda used to ask in its commercials: ‘Isn’t it nice when things just work?’
To which the answer is: ‘Yes. It was.’
4 December 2016
It’s dressed to thrill with nowhere to go
Honda Civic Type R
In one of the upcoming Grand Tour television programmes I have a bit of a rant, saying that the world’s car makers seem to have shifted into neutral and to be simply biding their time making dreary boxes until they are consumed by Uber.
I single out the Renault Kadjar SUV, which I hate very much, and I say that it will never be a poster on a young boy’s bedroom wall and that no one will ever dream of the day they can buy one. I argue loudly that it is just some car, on which Renault can make a couple of quid from the finance deals.
I fear, however, I may have been a trifle hasty, because I’ve come to realize car makers are swimming against a tide that will eventually consume them, no matter what rabbits they pull from the hat.
There have always been people who say, ‘I’m not interested in cars’, but today it’s not just the occasional old lady with a twin set, pearls and a Mrs Queen haircut. It’s pretty much everyone, especially if they are under twenty-five.
I sit down at a party and immediately I’m told by everyone at the table that they do not wish to talk about cars. It’s annoying. Because I can’t imagine many of them are very interested in accountancy, but they never say to an accountant when he sits down: ‘We don’t want to talk about Ebit and CGT.’
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