Much has been done to get the weight as low as possible. Suppliers were told to shed as much as possible from every component if they didn’t want to wake up in bed with a horse’s head. But this car still weighs more than 1.6 tons. And you sense it.
You also sense the size, and the mere fact that I didn’t end up in a hedge is testimony to some brilliant engineering. The lightness of the controls, the four-wheel steering system, the dazzling speed of the double-clutch gear changes … Ferrari has had to employ every trick in the book to make its Torrey Canyon feel like a speedboat.
I did not drive the car in the rain, or Scotland, but I can tell you that somehow Ferrari’s managed it. It’s managed to get 789bhp from the massive, gravelly 6.5-litre naturally aspirated V12, through the gearbox and perfectly normal Pirelli P Zero tyres and on to the road in such a way that a perfectly ordinary driver with no astronaut training can keep it pointing in vaguely the right direction.
That cannot have been easy. And it will be even harder when the time comes to design a replacement, because that will have to be bigger and more powerful still. Which takes me back to my point that at some stage Ferrari is going to have to start all over again, with a car that’s small and light.
Or will it? Because is that what Ferrari’s customers want? It’s what Ferrari’s fanbase wants: a pure-bred Italian sports car. But the fanbase only reads about cars in magazines. The customers? The people who write the cheques? Hmmm. I’m not sure.
There are undoubtedly those who want the last word in precision driving. They go to track days and they think that I am the Antichrist for not taking stuff as seriously as they do. They will not want a Superfast, because for what they do, the Lotus Elise is better.
Then you have the people who want a Ferrari to impress everyone at the lodge. They don’t want a Superfast either, because the Mondial does what they need for a tenth of the price.
The main clientele for the Superfast is the chaps who arrive in London every August with an Antonov full of purple-metal-flake Lambos and G-class wagons. They want the biggest, the brashest, the fastest and the noisiest, and for them a Superfast is ideal.
They need to know that in the right hands, on the right track, it can do what the Ferrari badge suggests it can do. But that’s only because they want bragging rights during a hubble-bubble pit stop. They will never actually go faster than about 9mph.
I believe this will one day be a problem for Ferrari, which seems to be focused at the moment on the customers with the big money, the people who will buy the really expensive cars and load them up with all the expensive extras.
The trouble is that this tarnishes the brand. Because the rest of us stop thinking of a Ferrari as something with Gilles Villeneuve at the wheel and start thinking of it as something that’s a bit sad. And that drives us into the arms of Lamborghini and Porsche and Aston Martin.
Let me put it this way. Do you dream about driving round and round Harrods in your car at 4 a.m.? Or do you dream about taking it along the Amalfi coast at 4 p.m., with Alicia Vikander in the passenger seat saying she can’t find her bikini anywhere? Because for that, a ‘humble’ 488 would be better. And my small, nimble Ferrari would be better still.
As a thing, the Superfast is as brilliant as an Astute-class attack sub. Which is to say, very brilliant indeed. But it is too big and too powerful and too flashily expensive for those who simply want a very nice grand tourer.
20 May 2018
Fast and furry – a fighter jet for pet lovers
Audi RS 4 Avant
In the early 1990s on a television show watched each week by millions of people I tested the Ford Escort and said it was a joyless example of ‘that’ll do’ engineering from a company that should know better. And it went on to become Britain’s bestselling car.
Later I said the new Toyota Corolla was a characterless white good like a fridge freezer. That went on to become the world’s bestselling car.
Then along came the Renault A610. ‘Oooh,’ I swooned. ‘This is a magnificent car. Well priced, good-looking, unusual and fast.’ And in Britain, in the following 12 months, the total number shifted by Renault was … drum roll … six.
I’m still at it. Two years ago I drove the Alfa Romeo Giulia Quattroformaggi and told anyone who’d listen that it was the Second Coming. Wheeled lightning. Thor’s hammer with Italian trimmings. A car that could and would kick every other sports saloon into a ditch. And so far I haven’t seen a single one.
I suspect lots of people would like such a thing on their drive. It has a Ferrari engine. It was designed by a Ferrari engineer. It makes the most glorious array of noises and it goes like a 500-horsepower bastard. There must be thousands who lie awake at night fantasising about owning such a car, but when push comes to shove, they buy something else. Usually a hot Audi of some kind.
The latest hot Audi came to my house this month, and I had to admit it looked very good. It was the RS 4 Avant. But why, I wondered, would anyone choose it instead of the Alfa? That’d be like thinking of taking your summer holiday in Tuscany and then deciding to go to Dortmund instead. Because if the bog were to go wrong, it’d be easier to find a reliable plumber.
Yes, Alfa Romeos were very unreliable. It’s fair to say that on, for instance, a GTV 6 every single part is a known fault. But judging Alfa on what it did in the 1980s is like not buying a Volkswagen because it made vehicles for the German army during the war. It’s time to move on. To give Alfa another chance. Or is it …?
The Audi RS 4 has not been consistently good. The 2006 version was a marvellous thing with a lusty V8 and he-man flared wheelarches. But the next attempt was a bit of a dog. And a fat dog at that. Much of the magic was lost in a cloying sea of blubber.
That’s what Audi has tried to address. This is a car that’s been sent to the Mayr clinic and then forced to run home: 15kg has been shaved from the body, 12kg from the axles, 3.5kg from the steering system, 12.5kg from the four-wheel-drive system and 1kg from the rear differential.
Then there’s the engine. That’s 31kg lighter, which sounds great. But to achieve this, two of the cylinders have been replaced by a brace of centrally mounted turbochargers. Yup. The naturally aspirated V8 is gone, along with its burbling soundtrack. And in its place is a lighter, fizzier, more polar-bear-friendly blown V6.
Is that a good thing? No, of course not. Unless you are Al Gore. That said, it’s one hell of a power plant. The oomph it delivers, especially in the mid range, is strong enough to detach hair. And because it, along with everything else, is so much less fat, the speed that results makes you laugh out loud, nervously.
I can’t understand why Audi charges £1,450 to lift the top speed from 155mph to 174mph. And then demands £1,200 for a sports exhaust system and £950 for better steering. It’s as though it’s saying, ‘We’ve made a crap car, but don’t worry. If you give us all your money, we’ll make it halfway decent.’
Except ‘halfway decent’ doesn’t begin to cover how well the RS 4 goes and stops and corners. The steering has been criticized for feeling dead, but this was by a road tester who also claimed he could feel the electronics shifting power between the axles. He’s obviously superhuman. I couldn’t find anything wrong with the steering. No matter what driving mode I selected, it, along with everything else, felt giddy and brilliant. And, best of all, this was the first fast Audi I’d driven in years that didn’t have squeaky brakes.
And what was doubly hilarious was that I was driving a five-door estate. Which meant my dog could have enjoyed the fighter-jet G-force as well. And then been sick, probably.
The boot, however, is not terribly big. I learnt this while moving two fire pits from my Golf, into which they’d fitted perfectly well, to the Audi. Into which they also fitted. But only by tearing the roof lining to shreds.
Further forwards, it’s all very well screwed together and clever. You can, for instance, turn the entire instrument binnacle into a satnav map. The downside of being in something this clever is that
you spend a lot of time pushing buttons and twiddling knobs and then swearing under your breath because it won’t do what you want.
Comfort? Well, in full get-out-of-my-way racing mode, there isn’t any. The car bounces alarmingly if you go for this setup. But in the mode everyone will always use it’s not bad. Except in the back. If you’re sitting there, it’s so jiggly that any text you send is gibberish.
I’m picking nits because this is one of those cars that are hard to fault. I was expecting much of the RS 4’s heart to have been lost with the V8, but the V6 is better. And you have that four-wheel-drive system, which allows you to drift, and then go to Val-d’Isère and drive through one. It’s a very capable car.
For sure, it is better than the current M3, which is not BMW’s finest hour, but is it better than the Alfa?
No. Of course not. The Quattroformaggi is so much more charismatic. It’d come into your life like a new puppy. You’d want to take care of it and let it sit by the fire on chilly evenings. And if it did a little oil wee in the night, you’d tickle it behind its ears and understand. It is a car with a soul.
And plainly that’s not what you want from a car, so you’ll buy the Audi instead. And you won’t regret it because, crikey, it’s good. Really, really good.
27 May 2018
Stuff the price tag: it’s love at first touch
Range Rover Velar
Understanding Land Rover’s range of cars used to be quite simple. If you got muddy for a living, either by rearing sheep or shooting people with machine-guns, you had a Defender. If you were a duke, you had a Range Rover, and if you were a murderer, like Kenneth Noye, you had a Discovery.
But then one day the bosses realized something important. People prefer working in IT to getting muddy, there are only twenty-four non-royal dukes in Britain and most of the murderers are in jail. So they decided to branch out.
And then they kept on branching out, so now we’ve reached the point where it is simply impossible to work out which model is for what. You have what I call the proper Range Rover, which is now driven by everyone I know and everyone they’ve ever met as well. It’s brilliant. There’s also the long-wheelbase version, which is for those who like not being able to fit their car into a parking space.
Slightly below this auspicious duo, there’s the Range Rover Sport, and lower down still you have the Evoque and the weird Evoque convertible. What that’s for, I have no idea. Clay pigeon shooting on the move, maybe.
After this, things get really complicated, because you have the Discovery, which I think is for people who want their car to look as though it’s had a stroke, or those who hate their children. It really does have the most uncomfortable back seats I’ve experienced. And then there’s the Discovery Commercial, which is for people who don’t want any back seats at all, and the Discovery Sport, which is smaller than the normal Discovery and is for … er, I have no idea.
You might imagine that when you have a line-up of four-wheel-drive vehicles as extensive as that, covering every price bracket from less than £30,000 to more than £160,000, there’d be no possibility of squeezing another one in. But Land Rover has.
It has called the car the Range Rover Velar, which is stupid because it means people like me are going to call it the Velour. And while that’s a fabulous seat fabric, it’s a terrible name with some terrible pleblon connotations. Also, it seems to serve no purpose. I mean, saying that you want something between an Evoque and whatever the next biggest Land Rover is these days is like saying your shoe size is 12¼.
I was going to be petulant and simply ignore the Velar, but then I saw one. I was strolling down the Embankment in London, ignoring the velvet Ferraris and lime green Lamborghinis, when it came crawling past, and it stopped me dead in my tracks because, stylistically, it’s up there with the Ford Escort Mk 2. That is emphatically not an insult.
Familiarity bred indifference to that particular Escort, but if you actually looked at one while wearing a beret and sitting at an easel, you’d conclude that, while it may have been as unspecial as a Coca-Cola bottle, it was every bit as good-looking.
The Velar pulls off the same trick. Yes, it’s just a five-door SUV, but look at its lines, look at its detailing, look at its proportions and its stance. And then you’ll be forced to agree that it is one of the five best-looking cars ever made.
It’s so good-looking that, while I was considering a replacement for my Volkswagen Golf GTI the other day, it wouldn’t leave my head. So I asked Land Rover if I could borrow one for a few days. Of course, being from Coventry, the company adopted a communistical approach and made me get into the queue behind the motoring correspondents from the Welsh Pig Breeders’ Gazette and The Pontefract Bugle, but fairly soon it arrived in Byron Blue, the very colour I wanted. And, God, it looked good.
Inside, it looked even better. The seats had been made from some kind of recycled material that’s kind to polar bears, and that’s lovely. But what I cared about most of all was how they looked and how soft they felt. I wanted to rub my face into them. Until I remembered that the previous week the car had been driven by a pig breeder from Wales. So I didn’t.
Instead I climbed aboard and touched stuff. You want to touch everything because it’s all just so beautiful – the two displays, the knobs, the air vents – and then you look up and the roof is all glass and you want to touch that too. Getting back into an ordinary car afterwards is like stepping from the cockpit of a modern-day Boeing 787 Dreamliner into the nose of a Halifax bomber. That interior? I have never seen better.
I was sold, so I fired up Land Rover’s configurator. First of all, I selected the 3-litre supercharged petrol engine. I know this makes no sense and diesel would be much more economical. But, having said that diesel was good, the government now says diesel is bad and that if you use it, you must give Theresa May all your money.
With the power plant selected, it was time to choose some wheels. The car I’d been sent was sitting on 21in rims, which made it as comfortable as riding a skateboard down a flight of stairs. You can go bigger, amazingly, and you can go for 18in castors. But I settled on 20in, which would allow some give in the side walls and some grip if I were in a hurry.
Inside, I went for the system that lets me choose what colour ambient lighting I’d like, privacy glass and a ‘suedecloth’ steering wheel. Oh, and extra power sockets. Underneath, I decided on the active rear locking differential. I am a farmer at weekends, and I figured I might need that.
I didn’t bother with the rear-seat entertainment, on the basis that people have phones and iPads. And I skipped over the various things that would allow me to fix bikes to the roof and canoes to the tailgate. In fact, I skipped over most of the options, and yet, when I’d finished, the price was just shy of £80,000. I’ll say that again. Eighty thousand pounds.
Anyone who pays that much for the Velour is completely mad. And in fact Land Rover has just updated the model, so you can’t order it as I configured it, though you might find one on a dealer’s forecourt.
And yet we all pay hundreds of pounds for an iPhone, because it’s so tactile and nice to use. And people pay millions for a few swirls of paint. And that’s the trick Land Rover has pulled off with the Velour. You want one no matter what the price, because after you lock it, you’ll never tire of turning round for one last look before you go through the front door.
3 June 2018
Lads, let’s leave it in the Italian sewers
Mini 1499 GT
When the Mini 1499 GT arrived at my office with its snazzy stripes, big black wheels and John Player Special Union Jack door mirrors, I was very excited. I knew nothing about what BMW had done to create this tremendous-looking car; only that it was tickling the small boy that still lives in my creaking outer shell of fat and hopelessness.
Plainly this car had been designed to hark back to the old Mini 1275 GT, which was not well received by the pipe-smoking motoring helmsmen of the time. They didn’t like the single carburettor tha
t was being used to feed the engine, whereas back then I didn’t know what a single carburettor was. I just liked the way it looked. And I’d always liked Minis because of how well they handled the sewers of Turin.
Yes, the Cooper was probably a better car, because it had all the things the helmsmen wanted. But it didn’t have stripes on the side. And the 1275 GT did, so that was that.
And so it goes today. Apart from the idiotic Countryman, I’ve always liked the ‘new’ Mini as well. I know it’s not very small – it has a longer wheelbase than the old Land Rover Discovery – and I know that some of the styling is a bit knowing. But, my God, it’s a lovely thing to drive and to sit in. It doesn’t matter whether you go for the basic model or the full-works nutter bastard: it is joyful on country roads, economical, fun to use and practical.
The only slight drawback is the cruising speed. All cars have a speed at which the components settle into a harmonious rhythm. In a Porsche 911 it’s only about 50mph, for some reason, but the speed at which a Mini will settle if you leave it to its own devices, while you sit there daydreaming, is a licence-losing 110mph. You really do have to pay attention.
I was very ready to pay attention to the 1499 GT, because it hits all the sweet spots that used to be important when my love affair with cars was blossoming. Apart from the aforementioned exterior changes, it has big, deep, rally-style front seats, stiffened suspension and a John Cooper shirt-button steering wheel.
Then I got to the really juicy bit: the engine. Because here I found what appeared to be the cleverest bit of the car’s make-up. It’s the same engine as you get in the base-level Mini One, a three-cylinder 1.5-litre turbo. This gives 101bhp, which is roughly what you get from a food blender, and an unknowable top speed, because nobody has enough time in their lives to sit there while this big car with its tiny engine struggles to get there. Zero to 62mph takes more than ten seconds, which is tremendously fast if you are living in 1928, but a bit ho-hum in this day and age.
Really? Page 41
