Clarkson on Cars

by Jeremy Clarkson

  I can’t even agree with myself. Within the space of two years, I have had four all-time favourite cars – the Dodge Viper, the Aston Martin Vantage, the Escort Cosworth and the Ferrari 355.

  And now, there is a fifth. The Jaguar XJR.

  The first time I drove this remarkable new car, I was in Scotland and therefore hungry – food is never recognisable as such up there, so I tend not to eat much.

  It was also raining hard and 321 brake horsepower engines go together with streaming-wet country lanes about as well as haggis and chocolate. I knew it was a good car, a very good car, but it wasn’t until I had a go in it in England that I realised that good is too small a word. Senbleedingsational is better.

  It was getting on for midnight and the darkened and deserted M40 stretched out for a hundred miles. Bob Seger was in the boot and the stars were out.

  The exterior temperature gauge showed it was 11 degrees so there was no danger of ice, and the headlines that morning had talked of Home Office cutbacks so the chances of encountering a police patrol were even more remote.

  The big cat was impressive enough, thundering down the outside lane – quiet, unruffled and smooth as you would expect, but it was snarling rather than purring and the fat tyres were making pitter-patter noises; unusual in a Jaguar saloon.

  So even though it was late, I turned off to see what the monster could do on normal roads. What it can do is unscrew the top of your head and insert a small egg whisk in the resultant cavity. This car is astonishing.

  The steering is perfect, weighted so well that you can feel exactly what the front wheels are doing, and you know precisely what the back end is up to, almost as though it’s in telepathic contact.

  And if you choose to ignore the signals of impending doom, the traction control gently pushes the accelerator pedal upwards, against the pressure of your foot, first as a reminder that it’s time to back off, and then more urgently.

  It does this rather a lot because that six-cylinder, four-litre, supercharged engine is sublime. It may only do 14 mpg but as the rev counter surges round the dial, in an unending quest for the red zone, and the automatic gearbox blurs the changes, I must confess I’d have been happy with 9 mpg, or less. And yes, I do pay for my own petrol.

  Back in London, I recalled its ability to hurtle through tightening bends with almost no body roll at all, as it slithered down the Earls Court Road, ironing out all the bumps and ridges. Here is a car with leather seats, cruise, control, beautiful black wood trimmings and matching hide upholstery, which when you’re in the mood, can transform itself into a snarling beast with spiky teeth and a penchant for red meat served raw.

  Only the BMW M5 can perform this amazing feat even half as well, but it costs £52,000 and the Jaguar is only £45,000.

  Within a month, I’m quite sure, I shall have driven another car, on a better road, in finer weather and with faster music on the CD, but for now, the best car in the world is the Jaguar XJR.

  Stop Thief; Not Me

  So, the police are going to stop answering burglar alarms because nine out of ten times, they find, after a tyre-squealing journey, that the damn thing has gone off by accident.

  That, we hear, is a waste of man hours and thus, a waste of money. So, if economics now determines which crimes are investigated and which are not, then I would hope that we’ll see an end to radar traps. What’s the point of pointing a hairdryer at a stream of motorists all day when nine out of ten are doing nothing wrong?

  Actually, the point is simple. A constable is an inexpensive commodity whose time is more than paid for by the resultant fines. Motorists are easily caught, and are subjected to ridiculously heavy fines. Simple economics.

  So, the message here is simple. If you’re going to break the law, make sure you do something that requires an enormous amount of police time. Indiscriminate murder is good, as is fraud, but the best crime of all, these days, is to be a solicitor.

  First, you can sit around all day, fiddling your time sheets instead of actually helping your clients to buy a house. And then in the evenings, you can dream up slogans for your new adverts on the backs of buses.

  I saw one the other day and was so shocked, my trousers nearly caught fire. I don’t remember the exact wording (though I suspect the word ‘hereinuntoafter’ had crept in somewhere) but the gist was this: if you’ve been injured anywhere, give us a call and we’ll get you some compensation.

  What I should have done is run into the back of the bus and sued the idiotic lawyers who put the ad up there, saying that their stupidity made me lose concentration. And I’d have won.

  There have been more ridiculous cases recently. One man has won £300,000 damages after his car skidded on ice and hit a lorry. It seems he managed to convince a court that this was, in fact, the council’s fault for not putting enough grit on the roads.

  A traffic warden is currently suing her employers for lung damage caused by being on the street, breathing in exhaust fumes.

  And best of all, there’s a chap who fell asleep at the wheel and, in the ensuing crash, suffered severe facial injuries.

  Well, now call me old-fashioned, but I reckon that this is his fault. But no. He’s found someone to sue. The producers of the Radio Four play that moved him to the land of nod perhaps? No. In fact, he’s suing Ford for not fitting an airbag to his Sierra.

  If he wins, and on current form, he may well do just that, it’ll open the kind of floodgates not seen since Moses finished his river-bed walk. Common sense will take a back seat to the lure of huge, six-figure settlements. It’ll be like a cross between the National Lottery Instants game and Don’t Forget Your Toothbrush.

  ‘Lose a fingernail in your car’s door handle… and go to the Caribbean.’

  I’ll be in there too. If I am caught in a radar trap, I shall sue Jaguar for selling me a car that was capable of breaking the speed limit.

  The motor car will become a warning notice on wheels. Do not lean out of the window while the vehicle is in motion. Do not insert a tape in this stereo while driving. Do not speed. Do not attach the battery terminals to your testicles.

  I have argued for some time that everyone, at the age of sixteen, should be forced to sign a form which says that they are entirely responsible for their own actions. Trip over a paving stone and it’s your own fault. Skid on ice – well, you shouldn’t have been going so fast. Got poisoned while serving as a traffic warden – diddums.

  But this will never happen. The Americanisation of our legal system is underway and even Paul Condon’s fantastic decision to outlaw Freemasonry in the senior ranks of the Met police won’t help.

  There is a plot but, for once, the Freemasons are not responsible. This time, it’s the old boy city network.

  For sure, the old lady who sews her fingers together while working at a toy factory may walk out of court with a couple of hundred grand but you need to look behind the headlines to find the real winners.

  First, there will be the solicitors and barristers who will help themselves to a slice of everyone’s win.

  Then there’s the insurance companies who’ll rack up the premiums to ensure businesses and local authorities are sufficiently covered in case a monster damages claim comes their way.

  Life-insurance salesmen and stockbrokers will take up residence outside the High Court to catch the stream of people coming out with fat cheques in their damaged paws.

  These pinstriped scavengers can be stopped but it’s a brave government who’ll take the necessary steps.

  At the moment, a great many of the ludicrous actions are being paid for out of the public purse. Well, if legal aid were to be scrapped, completely, they’d never get there in the first place.

  And don’t worry about innocent men being wrongly convicted in criminal courts. We’ve already established that the police can’t afford to trace or arrest anyone these days, except errant motorists who all plead guilty anyway.

  If it is felt that legal aid is vital in a fair and just soci
ety then we must add a little twist to the American legal system where lawyers only take payment if they win the case.

  What we must do here is agree to hear the cases but insist that if the claimant loses, his entire legal team is shot.

  In the meantime, I’m going to bring an action against Volvo. Yesterday, I drove to Brands Hatch with the sunroof open and the resultant wind ruffled up my hair. It made me look foolish.

  Go West, Young Man

  Yesterday, I drove a car which, under my new system for measuring a car’s acceleration, ranks as terrifying.

  Under the old system, I would have said it gets from 0 to 60 mph in 3.8 seconds and that as a result, it’s the third-fastest-accelerating car in the world behind the McLaren F1 and the Bugatti EB 110.

  It’s called the Westfield S8 and though my drive was brief – just a few minutes – I have to say that never, not once, ever have I experienced anything quite like it.

  I have never driven a McLaren and after describing it in this newspaper as somewhat overpriced, I doubt I ever will, but I have had a go in the Bugatti, and the Lamborghini Diablo and all sorts of other supercars which, even by NASA’s standards, are fast.

  But they all have roofs. You sit there, entirely surrounded by metal, cosseted by creature comforts. They may be loud and proud but compared to that Westfield, they are Austin Maestros, shrinking violets, wallflowers with no dates for the prom.

  The Westfield has no roof to speak of, no doors, no windows, no stereo and not much space either. It is tiny and as a result it weighs less than a packet of fags, but under the bonnet is a 4.3-litre V8 engine which develops a massive 350 brake horsepower.

  This is 10 per cent more than you get in a Ferrari 348 and things get even more impressive when you talk about horsepower per ton. No road car on earth even gets close.

  It isn’t even a sophisticated engine either. With carburettors instead of fuel injection, you can see sheets of fuel vapour shooting out of huge grilles in the bonnet. Even on a dry day, you need the wipers to clear it from the windscreen. Smoking is not an option here.

  Ear defenders should be, though. Lift your foot from the throttle to change gear and the exhaust pops and bangs like the bowl of rice crispies from hell.

  And all this is going on with the top of your head and your right elbow in the slipstream. 40 mph feels like 400. Get above a hundred and you begin to believe you’d out-run the Enterprise.

  Every fibre in your body is begging the car to slow down but your right foot, down at the bottom of that cramped footwell, just won’t obey. I once fired a machine gun and despite the instructor’s advice to use short bursts, I became mesmerised and simply couldn’t take my finger off the trigger.

  Well, it’s the same deal in that S8. It gives you everything you could ever want from a wild ride. But you want more. To get a trip like this anywhere else you’d need to sell your house and spend all the money on acid.

  The Westfield is cheaper. Fully built, it only costs £25,000 though if you’re in any way mechanically competent, you could buy a kit for a lot less and build it yourself. Either way, on the basis of performance per pound (either sort), you simply can’t do better.

  Happily, it’s a neat-handling little car and the rear end does make a half decent fist of transmitting that truly amazing punch to the road. But it’s at this point I begin to wonder about the sanity of the thing.

  Obviously, you would never drive it on a wet road – you’d be soaked – but even on dry asphalt, if you apply a tiny bit too much power, the rear tyres wail like wounded hares, the back steps out of line and you have to be awake to catch the slide.

  Of course, you will be awake because of the noise and the hurricane but let’s just say you put on a bit too much opposite lock. Or that you don’t wind it off quickly enough. You would crash, and at this point, the Westfield would live up to its reputation as a four-wheeled motorbike. Put simply, I doubt you’d walk away from the accident.

  It is therefore absolutely vital that you know how to handle a car like this before you try driving it. It’s a well-known fact that most motorists believe they have better-than-average abilities – a statistical impossibility – but in this case ‘better than average’ simply isn’t good enough.

  You have to have the reactions of a supercomputer, the strength of some oxen and eyes that can read a number plate at six miles. And more than that, you need to have been trained, properly, not by some dimwit in a cardigan and a Nissan Micra, but by a proper racing driver at a proper racing school.

  Now don’t get me wrong here: I don’t believe there should be government legislation which forces people to take a special test before being allowed to drive a fast car – mainly because this government would probably draw the line at a 2.0-litre Mondeo.

  I don’t like nanny states. I hate the idea of being told what to do because I am able to make my own decisions. And I have done just that with the Westfield S8.

  I would never buy one because I am nowhere near good enough to drive it properly. At best, I’d kill myself but if lady luck was elsewhere that day, I might kill someone else too.

  Who Gives a Damn about the Countryside?

  Every morning, at exactly eight o’clock, my next-door neighbour starts up his Ducatti and sits there, with the throttle opened up, warming the engine before riding to work.

  It is a big motorcycle and its equally large engine causes my windows to rattle, the sparrows to fall out of the trees and our baby to wake up.

  Being a good Londoner, I haven’t said anything to him because, of course, I try not to speak to anyone.

  It is annoying though, mainly because it gives weight to the arguments of friends who visit from the countryside. ‘What was that din this morning? I don’t know how you can live in London. All that noise. Traffic hum blah blah planes blah marauding gangs blah blah burglar alarms.’

  Well, apart from Mr Ducatti, I have news for all you Vyella-shirted, ruddy-cheeked country dwellers. Residential London is a damn sight quieter than Nowhere on the Bloody Wold.

  It’s eleven o’clock in the morning here and I can hear absolutely nothing. I’ve just stuck my head outside the front door and it is as silent as snow falling on fur.

  Now let’s compare this to the countryside, a muddy place full of wasps and murderers.

  I film in it regularly and you simply wouldn’t believe what a deafening place rural Britain is. There are crow scarers, tractors, church bells, lawnmowers, children playing in the fields, corn dryers and, because there are few houses to act as sound breaks, you can even hear a Hoover four miles away.

  In London, we have no low-level RAF jets and because we’re richer than you lot, we have fewer diesel-powered cars. Half an hour in the Cotswolds or the Yorkshire Dales and my ears start to bleed.

  This has nothing to do with the story but I also want to know why country people always say London is dirty. Listen Mr and Mrs Yokel-Smythe, I can walk up and down Jermyn Street all day long and I won’t get any mud on my shoes.

  But it’s the noise thing that bothers me most and that’s why I simply can’t understand why so much fuss is being made out of these so-called Green Roads.

  At the time of writing, it seems likely that cars will be banned from unmade tracks because various red-socked, brown-beer drinking, walky types say it ruins them.

  Well look here weird beard, cars, already, are not allowed on the 250,000 miles of countryside footpaths in Britain and nor can they use the 80,000 miles of bridleways. Surely, that is enough. Why do you want to ban vehicles from the 5000 miles of tracks open to them? That’s like having your cake, eating it and then going back for more.

  And besides, I have driven down the Ridgeway in Berkshire – on which cars are allowed – and will tell you that tractors cause the biggest problems, not four-wheel-drive cars. It’s heavyweight farm machinery that chews up the turf and makes ruts.

  And you can’t ban this – how else do farmers get their veals from the fields to the airport?


  Then there are horses. Four-wheel-drive vehicles have brakes and can stop if your children emerge suddenly from a hedge but a quarter of a ton of muscle, doing 40 mph, cannot. Plus, I’d rather tread in a small rut than a pile of horse excrement.

  Now to be honest, I only ever drive on green lanes to test the performance of various four-wheel-drive cars and would never do it for pleasure. I must confess that I don’t understand why anyone would want to drive their car into the countryside just for fun.

  But if they want to spend all day bumping around in fields, that’s fine by me. The numbers are infinitesimal, the damage caused is minute – compared to open-cast mining say – and you certainly can’t hear them above the din of the corn dryers and church bells. On top of all this, the only people who mind are a bunch of militant walkers.

  Well look, I mind about golf. I don’t like the Freemasons who play it, I can’t abide the way it dominates television air time and those green splodges completely wreck the countryside. But if a bunch of bank managers want to don a pair of stupid strides on a Sunday morning and have a heart attack, so what?

  Everybody’s hobby bothers somebody but we must learn tolerance. Fishermen’s lines entangle swans, windsurfers hit fish, parachutists land on frogs and yes, four-wheel-drive cars do rearrange mud, but really, we can’t ban everything. Except neighbours with Ducattis.

  However, it is likely that the historical right of passage over green roads will be eroded in some way. Fresh-air freaks have convinced everyone they’re on the moral high ground and it’s a brave government who’ll tell them to get lost.

  It will be a sad day for personal freedom but as with all things, there is a speck of light in the darkness.

  If cars are banned from tracks in the woods, rallying will be a casualty. The world’s second-dullest sport will be outlawed. There’ll be a price on Tony Mason’s head. People will throw eggs at Gwyndaf Evans, and not only because he’s Welsh.