Worst of all is the fuel gauge. I don’t have OCD, as anyone who has seen my desk will testify, but the needle isn’t centred, so it always looks cock-eyed. And that drove me mad.
You are left, once you’ve lived with an NSX for a few days, with a sense that the engineers have beavered away at the difficulties of making a high-performance hybrid and then just garnished it with parts from the factory floor. Everything you touch and look at feels either low rent or annoying.
On a recent television programme my colleague James May said he liked the NSX because he found it interesting. Later he told me that the car’s lack of apparent acceleration has something to do with Newton metres per inch and that the linear nature of electric motor delivery … I’m afraid I nodded off at this point.
He is right, though. This car is interesting. And it is pretty. But that, I’m afraid, is the full extent of its repertoire.
12 February 2017
Whatever you ask, this isn’t the answer
Seat Ateca
Whenever someone leans across a dinner table and asks me what car they should buy, I always say ‘a Ferrari F40’.
Then they look a bit exasperated and explain they need something sensible, so I say ‘a 1986 Lada Riva shooting brake’. This normally does the trick and they go back to talking about something that is more interesting, such as accountancy or ornithology.
However, at dinner the other day, the man opposite really was quite insistent. He didn’t want a Ferrari F40 or a 1986 Lada Riva shooting brake and demanded that I came up with another alternative. ‘A Bugatti EB 110,’ I said, hoping that would shut him up. But it didn’t.
‘Come on,’ he said, ‘I’m being serious.’ So I told him to buy a Cadillac Escalade.
I hate being asked about cars as much as doctors hate being asked about ailments. They can’t possibly determine, when they’ve had two bottles of agreeable red, what’s wrong with someone who’s fully clothed and on the opposite side of the table, any more than I can tell someone what car to buy when I don’t know what they need it for and how much they have to spend and if they have any prejudice towards the French or the Japanese.
‘Are you a racist?’ I asked the man on the opposite side of the table. And, before he could answer, ‘Is your wife extremely fat?’ These are the things that matter when it comes to choosing a car. There’s more too. If your children are prone to explosive car sickness, you don’t want cloth seats. And if you have only one arm, you don’t want a flappy paddle gearbox.
I went through a full range of weird questions with Mr Persistent, including, ‘Will you be having sex on the back seat with your secretary?’ and then told him the best car he could possibly buy was a Vauxhall Astra van.
It turned out, however, that he actually wanted an Audi Q5. ‘Well, get one of those, then.’
‘Are they any good?’ he asked. ‘No,’ I replied.
I don’t like the Audi Q5 or any car of that type because they seem too pointless. You get the same amount of interior space as you would in a normal hatchback but because of the extra weight and tallness, you get less performance and terrible fuel economy. It’s not swings and roundabouts here. It’s swings and falling off the roundabout into a pile of dog-dirt-encrusted broken glass.
I explained all this to my dinner companion but he was most insistent. He said he liked a car that gave him a commanding view of the road and didn’t have any truck with my argument that a hatchback and a cushion would do the trick. So I told him to buy the Q5 and started talking to the woman on my right.
‘What car should I buy?’ she asked … I then went to the lavatory and drank all the Domestos.
The trouble is that, these days, absolutely everyone wants a hatchback on stilts. They all want a commanding view of the road. And they don’t realize that soon it won’t be commanding at all, because everyone will be at the same height. Which means cars will have to keep on getting taller and taller until you need a ladder to get inside. And instead of airbags, you’ll have a parachute.
The other problem is that crossover mini SUVs, or whatever it is they’re called, are all extremely dreary to drive. And look at. And be near. I really genuinely hate them and, as a result, I was not looking forward to spending an entire week with something called a Seat Ateca.
I mean, quite apart from anything else, you just know Ateca is one of those names that’s been plucked by the marketing department from a bag of Scrabble tiles, because trademark infringement problems mean that every other actual word has been registered. This means you end up with a name that sounds like it could be an insurance company or an antifungal cream.
Everybody wanted a Cortina. It may have been named after a small café on the King’s Road, but it sounded exotic. Nobody wants an Ateca in their life. Unless they’ve got thrush.
Seat claims Ateca is a town in Spain and that it’s named it after that. But this doesn’t wash. Because if you’re going to name it after a town in Spain, why not pick one we’ve heard of? It’d be like Rolls-Royce launching a car called the Pontefract.
Anyway, it arrived, and in essence it’s a Volkswagen Tiguan, which means that when all is said and done, it’s a jacked-up Golf. Same basic platform. Similar range of engines. Only slower and less economical and more expensive and less fun to drive and no more practical.
Actually, because this is a Golf designed by Spaniards and built in the Czech Republic, it’s cheaper than its sister car, the Tiguan, which is a Golf that was designed by Germans and that is built in Germany, Russia or Mexico, depending on which model you choose. I don’t get that thinking either.
Whatever, it has doors so that you can get inside, and a boot lid that is operated by electricity so that you have to stand in the rain to make sure it closes properly.
Inside, there are some chairs so that you can sit down, but it should be noted that all of them seem to be fitted much lower than you’d expect. As you peer over the dashboard at the road ahead, it feels as if you’re moving around in a wheelie bin. And I don’t get the thinking here either. Because if you want a car with a commanding driving position, why would you buy one with seats that are so low?
Other things. Well, it’s quite quiet, which is nice. But then it was also a bit bumpy, which wasn’t. And the boot was big enough for a footstool I’d bought.
My test car had a 1.4-litre Golf engine, which provided no discernible performance at all. Put your foot down in sixth gear, at 70mph on the motorway, and absolutely nothing happens. My kitchen table is faster. Economy, however, is what you would expect – around 50mpg – and it produces 123 carbon dioxides. But these are Volkswagen figures, so they probably mean very little.
On the face of it, then, you’d struggle to think of a single reason why you’d buy this car rather than one of the many alternatives. But my car was fitted with orange wheels and matching door mirrors. And that’d clinch it for me.
On normal wheels, it’s just another way of wasting £24,440, but those snazzy rims, teamed with some plastic roo bars, give the Ateca a visual leg-up. And as a result it’d be my choice if I were being forced at gunpoint to buy a car like this. But I’m not, which is why I would buy a Ferrari F40. Which is much better.
19 February 2017
Take a seat in Sarah Lund’s mood room
Volvo V90
According to my television colleague James May, buying a Volvo is like going to the dentist’s. It’s something you have to do one day, so you might as well get it over with.
This was certainly the case in the olden days, where James lives, because back then Volvos were bought by people in hats, whose unpredictability was their only predictability. If they were indicating left, the only thing you knew for sure was that they were not about to turn left. Since then, though, much has happened. Volvo went motor racing with a brace of absurd but amusing estate cars in the British touring car championship. Then it came up with the XC90, which is still by far and away the most sensible family car of them all. And then there was a spot of fi
nancial bother that resulted in the company becoming the northern division of a giant Chinese corporation.
This higgledy-piggledy spell of unjoined-up thinking played havoc with the brand. Gone were the days when you were a bad driver so you bought a Volvo because at least you’d escape fairly unscathed from the accident you were going to have. Also gone was the motor racing. Even the estate favoured by antiques dealers went west. Which meant you bought a Volvo because … actually, there wasn’t a single reason.
But then, one day, Volvo decided to start sponsoring drama on what it calls ‘Sky Atlontic’. They made some gloomy, cool, blue-hued films, and sometimes they were better than the show that followed. The message was clear. Volvo was for people who wanted peace and quiet; people who preferred their television detectives to wear a jumper rather than a Swat outfit. And once this had been established, they had to set about making some cars to fit the image they’d created.
It’s an odd way of doing things, but no matter, because the first of the Sky Atlontic cars is now with us. It’s called the V90 and, ooh, it’s good-looking. Really, really good-looking.
Then you step inside and, frankly, you’re going to get straight back out again and sign on the dotted line. Because this side of a Rolls-Royce Phantom you will find no finer car interior. The combination of wood, aluminium and leather is sublime, and the way it all works is even better.
Just about everything is controlled by what is, to all intents and purposes, an upended iPad. This means there are very few buttons or knobs on the dash, which makes it a) cheaper to produce and b) more calm and relaxing. It’s like being inside Sarah Lund’s mood room.
My sister once asked why it always feels, in any car, as if you’re sitting inside a man’s wash bag, and she has a point. They’re normally black and dark and enlivened only by some red stripes. Well, the Volvo’s not like that at all. It’s light and airy, and as a result it’s a lovely and delightful place to sit.
However, at some point you’re going to stop sitting there, feeling at one with the world, and start the engine, and straight away things are going to unravel. There will be a petrol hybrid in the fullness of time, but for now you have a choice of a 2-litre diesel or another 2-litre diesel.
The 2-litre diesel in my test car was the more powerful of the two and it was fitted with two turbochargers along with a compressed air cylinder that shoots air into the engine when you demand more power. This sounds very clever and it certainly reduces turbo lag. But there’s no getting round the fact that this is a very big car and it’s being moved about by a 2-litre diesel.
An engine of this size works fine in a Golf or a small leaf blower. But it really doesn’t work at all in the V90. It clatters when it is cold and constantly sounds as though it’s working its arse off, even when you’re trundling down the motorway. Couple this to a dim-witted eight-speed automatic that occasionally suffers from dementia and can’t remember what it’s supposed to be doing, and you have a car that is not remotely exciting, or even pleasant to drive.
This is not necessarily a bad thing. Some people won’t notice the drone, or the gearbox taking five minutes to remember it’s not a carrot. And they will be delighted by the small engine’s mouse-like thirst for fuel and the tiny number of carbon dioxides coming out of the tailpipe.
They will also be delighted by the many and varied safety features that make the Volvo about as uncrashable as is technically possible these days.
And they are going to like the comfort as well. It’s not a soft-riding car, but the body movement is very well controlled. They’re also going to like the four-wheel-drive system, which is fitted as standard to the more powerful diesel version that I tried.
But they are going to be disappointed by the burglar alarm. My office backs on to a Volvo dealership staffed by trained Volvo technicians. And they set an alarm off at least twenty times a day. Which means that there must be a fault. Either that or the trained technicians are, in fact, morons.
They will be disappointed again when they try to put something big in the boot. Because there’s no getting round the fact that there’s a price to pay for those lovely lines, and the price is: even a Škoda Superb has more interior space. So do the equivalent offerings from Audi, Mercedes and BMW.
Though when I say ‘equivalent’, what I mean is ‘cheaper’. I was staggered to notice that the car I tested, with a few options fitted, cost £56,480. That, for a 2-litre diesel, is ridiculous.
And it will seem especially ridiculous when you wake one day to find that, because you bought a diesel-powered car, either you are banned from the town centre or you are being made to pay more for your parking space.
Draconian anti-diesel measures are in place or are being planned in cities such as Paris, Madrid and Athens, and you can be fairly sure the gullible lunatics who run Britain will be leaping on to the bandwagon as soon as they realize just how much money can be made from milking the motorists who did as they were told a few years ago and bought a diesel because they thought it would be kinder to the polar bear.
One day we will learn to ignore the messages of doom from climate ‘scientists’, but until that happens, I certainly wouldn’t buy a car powered by the dirty work of Dr Diesel. Which means I wouldn’t buy the Volvo. When the petrol hybrid comes along, it may be a different story, but if the 2-litre diesel is £56,000, the hybrid will probably cost more than a stealth bomber. Which means I probably wouldn’t buy that either.
26 February 2017
The Renault Scénic would be a steal – but it’s plastic
Renault Scénic Dynamique
In the olden days, cars were made from steel, and that’s only right and proper. Steel is as manly as Tarzan’s scrotum. Horny-handed sons of toil mine the iron ore using dynamite and huge excavators, and then this is turned into steel in giant foundries that are hot, dangerous and noisy. A steel foundry is the exact opposite of Jane Austen.
Today we live in different times. Cars can no longer be manly, because it is now offensive to be in possession of a penis. Or to let it do your thinking. This means cars must be kind to the environment and economical and cheap and safe, and that means they must be made from plastic.
There was a time when we laughed at plastic cars. The Reliant Robin was plastic, and so was its big sister, the Scimitar, which was driven by Princess Anne. It is obligatory to mention this, in the same way as when someone sees a swan, he must point out it can break a man’s arm.
The British firm TVR never really made it into the big league because, while its cars were fast and pretty and gruntsomely male, we all knew that behind the bellow and the leather the bodies were made from GRP. Which is plastic. Like a canoe. Or a lavatory seat.
Today, however, you will find plastic panels on almost every car made. And it’s easy to see why. It’s light, which means less fuel is needed to cart it around, and that means fewer emissions. What’s more, it’s cheaper than steel, which means greater profits for the car manufacturer, which means your pension fund is healthier. And on top of that, you never hear of plastics companies going on strike and throwing stuff at policemen, whereas steelworkers are always outside the plant, round a brazier, shouting. Which is bad for the just-in-time production techniques used at every car factory in the world.
The trouble is that you can always tell when a panel on a car is plastic. And I don’t mean when you tap it; I mean when you look at it. There’s something about the way it’s curved or creased, and there’s something too about the way it looks when painted. All of this stirs your limbic system, which says, ‘That’s crap.’
There was a white Toyota hybrid of some kind outside the office yesterday and its back end was a futuristic blend of shapes and creases that could never have been achieved if it had been made from steel. It put me in mind of a Star Wars Stormtrooper, and those Stormtrooper suits, you just know, are made from plastic and could therefore not withstand a pebble from David’s sling, let alone a blast of green from a space laser gun. And that’s Toyota�
��s problem. Your eyes tell you it looks great. But your soul is saying, ‘It’s rubbish.’
And that brings me on to the snappily named Renault Scénic Dynamique S Nav dCi 110. Pop into your dealership, and within about five minutes, no matter how gormless and cheaply suited the salesman might be, you are going to be slack-jawed in amazement and ready to sell your children for the chance to own such a thing.
It’s got a head-up display, for crying out loud. And I don’t mean a system like those you find in high-end BMWs and the F/A-18 Hornet, where the information you need is projected on to the windscreen. I mean a system where a panel rises electrically from the top of the dash. You’re going to be seriously excited when you first see this in operation.
Then there’s a massive glass sunroof with an electric blind, an 8.7in touchscreen, DAB radio, leather upholstery, cruise control and a system that wakes you up if you’re getting drowsy, along with more systems that keep you in the correct lane and ensure your lights dip automatically when a car is coming the other way. It can even recognize road signs.
You can change the colour of the interior lighting, and you get blacked-out windows in the back in case you need to give Puff Snoop a lift to a gig. And all this stuff is provided as standard for £25,445. Which, on the face of it, makes this car the bargain of the century.
Then you’re going to step out of the cabin to take in the exterior styling, and you’re going to like that too. As a general rule I loathe cars of this type and I’ve loathed the Scénic more than all the others. But this … this is very, very attractive.
Really? Page 28
