Clarkson on Cars

by Jeremy Clarkson

  This a scaled-down version of the SL which is likely to arrive in Britain next year wearing a price tag of around £25,000. For that you’ll get a supercharged engine, Batmobile humps on the boot lid and what is said to be serious sports handling. Mercedes never get things wrong, and I very much doubt if the SLK will break that tradition. It, among all the sports cars about to come out, is the one I find most tempting.

  But before I went as far as signing on the dotted line, I’d need to be assured that this global warming business is for real. If it really is true that the planet is heating up, then I shall buy a convertible.

  Odd, isn’t it? The car industry created global warming and now it’s delivering a wave of soft tops so that we can all enjoy it.

  Ugly Cars Got No Reason

  Until last week, any discussion about what is an ugly car and what is not would have provoked a lively and interesting debate.

  Until last week, if you’d asked a thousand people to name the most hideous car of all time, you’d have got a thousand different answers.

  Until last week, it would have been entirely possible to argue that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and that one man’s meat is another man’s diarrhoea. I, for instance, would label Princess Diana as one of the world’s great-looking women, whereas others I know think she is a big-nosed twit with a predilection for using twice as much peroxide as is really necessary.

  And the same goes with cars. Until last week, I’d have argued that the Ferrari Berlinetta Boxer was the best-looking car ever made and that the most recently departed Toyota Celica was the ugliest.

  Other people, with some justification, may say the boundaries are drawn by the E-Type Jaguar and the Reliant Robin, or the Lotus Esprit and the Lancia Dedra. One chap I know says he feels sick whenever he sees a Nissan Micra, which means he doesn’t get out much.

  But, now, Ford has ended all the debate. We can still bicker about superlatives at the top end of the scale, but at the bottom, we can draw a line. The new Granada is, without a question or shadow of doubt, the ugliest car ever made.

  If it was a film it would be Top Gun. If it was a woman, it would be Ena Sharpies. If it was an office block, it would be that chunk of concrete which now sits in the middle of the roundabout at Hammersmith.

  A Ford spokesman said, ‘We wanted a bold look and are happy that we have something which gives the car a real identity.’ Quite.

  I have spoken with a number of designers about it, and while all wish to remain anonymous, each agrees that Ford has gone mad. One said he saw the writing on the wall at this year’s Geneva motor show when their new concept car – the Ka – looked like a piece of ‘pink vomit’.

  Another said that a car is often likened by members of the public to a human or an animal’s face. Some cars look startled, some like they’re smiling. Some look cross, or evil or like the proudest lion in the jungle. ‘But,’ said our man, ‘the new Granada looks like someone’s just rammed a banana up its bottom.’

  The question that bugs me is that hundreds of senior Ford people must have been agonising over the shape for years and that none of them has had the wit to stick up his hand and say no. This, according to a senior British designer, is called the Emperor’s New Clothes theory.

  He explains that at Jaguar recently, various Ford designers were bamboozling executives with all sorts of weird and not-so-wonderful designs which were progressing along nicely until a kid on the production line stood up and said they were nasty. Then another hand went up, and another and another until the top brass were forced to agree that they too thought they were wrong.

  Nevertheless, if anyone ever dreams up a Right Stuff bravery award, it must go to the man at Ford who walked into a board meeting with those drawings and said, ‘This is it boys. This is the new Granada.’

  And they bought it, which means that now, Ford’s stunningly effective marketing team has what might fairly be termed a right old problem on its hands. And in order to take our minds off the shape, they’re telling us that this may very well be the last large Ford ever to be designed and built in Europe.

  Good. Even the Americans with their golfing trousers and their fondness for Formica could not make such a hash of it. Even they would not fit that oval nose and think it looked anything other than daft. Even they would not have chosen those headlights.

  And round at the back, even Ray Charles would have had something to say about the way the boot lid curls down, like it has melted. I have yet to see the interior but fear it will be no better.

  Ford has become a favourite uncle to the British, as ingrained in society as the BBC and fish and chips. Its cars are a more common sight out there than acne at a youth club dance.

  None are dynamically perfect but they’re all quite good at everything. There’s no reason NOT to buy a Ford and for that reason alone, I always advise people who don’t really care what they drive to buy whichever model they can afford. You can’t go wrong with a Fiesta, or an Escort, or a Probe, or a Mondeo or even, though this is stretching it a bit, a Maverick.

  But with the new Granada, it rather looks like the favourite uncle has gone a bit loopy. It’s like going round for tea one day and finding him engrossed in a spanking magazine.

  The new car will be launched at the Motorshow this autumn but if Ford has any sense at all, it will have had a face lift by then. Either that, or it will be the first new car ever to be supplied in a plain brown wrapper.

  Why are Van Drivers Mad?

  It was sad to see that Northern Foods is to sack a couple of thousand people and even worse to note that the whole future of doorstep milk deliveries now hangs in the balance.

  There’s something very British about a rosy-cheeked milkman whistling his way up your drive in the morning. He may have been up since four but he’s always smiling, bringing good cheer to the elderly and dispensing bonhomie to lonely housewives in their negligees.

  However, while it may be sad to see an end to this very British tradition, I shall be rejoicing. And so will every other commuter.

  Because milkmen adopt an entirely different persona as soon as they are behind the wheel of their floats.

  In recent months, this column has produced a stream of bile for motorists of one type or another but I’m the first to admit that, broadly speaking, most people are pretty good drivers… so long as they are in an ordinary, anonymous saloon.

  In his Sierra, a milkman is polite and charming but in his float, he begins to cackle the cackle of someone who is terminally deranged.

  As the round wears on and the punch from his battery pack begins to fade, the top speed of his float falls to a crawl. By 8.30, with the morning rush hour in full flood, only the most sophisticated global postioning satellite can tell he’s moving at all. On any sort of incline he isn’t.

  But he doesn’t care. And if he has a delivery to make at number 23, he will pull up directly outside number 23, and never mind that by doing so, he completely blocks the road.

  Impeded drivers blow their horns and swear but Milkie doesn’t seem to notice. He’s now in full whistle mode so there’s no way the people at number 23 can guess their milk has been brought to them by one of Lucifer’s disciples.

  And milkmen are not the worst offenders. That accolade goes to the Dustbinerie, a sinister bunch of men who, when back at base, slaughter goats and drink their blood.

  What I want to know is this – why do our dustbins have to be emptied first thing in the morning when half the population is asleep and the other half is trying to get to work?

  Why can’t they come and collect my rubbish in the middle of the day when their banging and crashing is not even slightly bothersome? And at midday, they can park their truck in the middle of the road for an hour, and no one will mind.

  Then there’s van drivers. What is it that makes all of these people believe their vehicle is three inches narrower than it really is? Or do they get a £5 bonus for every wing mirror they can break?

  There is no sight quite s
o terrifying as being on a narrow street with cars parked on either side and a van with three men in it coming the other way.

  You know he won’t slow down, which is bad enough, and you know that in a few seconds you won’t have a driver’s side door mirror, which is expensive, but worst of all, the van will be doing at least a hundred miles an hour. More, if it’s an Astramax.

  It’s hard to say which company breeds the biggest maniacs. Evening Standard delivery drivers are pretty suicidal but the title of biggest kamikaze murderers goes to those who pilot Royal Mail Sherpas.

  I’ve never seen an advertisement for post-office van drivers but I suspect that they insist on some Grand Prix experience. Either that or they trawl the schizophrenic wards of psychiatric hospitals.

  You see, like milkmen, and dustbinmen and, for that matter, plumbers and carpenters and other people with Take That haircuts and white socks, postmen are ordinary people when they’re not at work. They live amongst us, drive standard cars carefully and are courteous and charming.

  It’s when they climb into a van that things begin to go awry. And this is worrying when you start to think a little bit about school minibuses.

  As vans can obviously affect anyone who climbs inside, why should teachers be any different?

  Citroen has recognised this and has launched a safety initiative with RoSPA whereby teachers are taken on a one-day advanced driving course. They’ll be taught how to use safety equipment, how to check vehicle roadworthiness and how to drive defensively.

  On top of all this, the new fifteen-seater Citroen minibus designed for use on school runs is supplied with full three-point belts for every passenger and proper, individual, high back seats.

  Obviously, it will still be driven in a fashion that will lead passers-by to suspect the driver’s trousers are on fire but now, when it crashes and the teacher climbs out of the wreckage – and becomes a normal human being again – he will find that the children are well. And even if they’re not, that he is capable of tending to their injuries.

  A Christmas Tale

  Yet again, the Christmas lights were up round these parts back at the end of August. And Santa was to be found collecting catkins for the harvest festival.

  And once again, with the actual date almost upon us, church leaders up and down the land are trying to remind an audience that won’t listen that Christmas is more than getting hog-whimperingly drunk. It’s more even than having to think of something appropriate to say about your new socks.

  And it is certainly more than sitting in front of The Great Escape, after lunch, wondering why your tummy button, which for 30 years has been an ‘inny’, is now an ‘outy’.

  For those who think Christmas is all of these things, I should remind you that in fact it’s a religious festival which takes its name from the birth of someone called Jesus Christ who went on to do many good deeds: bringing people back from the dead, walking on water, turning water into wine; that sort of thing.

  While mulling this over the other day, I found myself wondering how things might have been if there had been cars kicking around back in the year dot. What would the key players have driven?

  Well Joseph, of course, was a carpenter, and so it’s a fairly safe bet that he’d have had a Vauxhall Astramax van.

  The Bishop of Durham would have us believe he was a bit gullible, which is why, I daresay, his van would have been propelled by a diesel engine. But that’s OK because the Astramax is the only vehicle made where your choice of engine has no effect at all on performance.

  Whether you have petrol, diesel or fuel made out of donkey droppings, the Astramax is faster than anything on the road. No matter what car I happen to be driving, I have learned that it’s best to pull over and let the guys in the Vauxhall van go by. I have seen these vehicles on the M1 doing 170 mph, which would make Joseph and Son very much the people to call on if your TV cabinet broke just before The Great Escape.

  The question is: would he have been using the van when Mary was obviously close to the big moment? Would he have had a car as well? I think he probably would. And I think it may have been a Nissan Bluebird.

  I don’t see Joseph as a very successful carpenter and have him clocked as the sort of bloke who, to make ends meet, might do a bit of mini-cabbing on the side. That’s why he’d have gone for the Bluebird which may well have been one of the nastiest cars in the world but which, when all was said and done, was reliable.

  Plus, I don’t see Joseph as the sort of man who would be all that bothered by a need for a flash set of wheels. If he was prepared to rest up for the night in a stable, we’re not talking about someone with a Golf GTi, are we?

  The shepherds, on the other hand, were almost certainly members of the local rally club. I know this because here we have a group of guys on a hillside, seeing angels in the night sky.

  That makes them drunk, and that makes them young farmers and all young farmers are in a rally club of one sort or another.

  At home, all these boogaloo dudes would have Escort RS 2000s and XR2S but as they were out and about, I figure they’d have been on quad bikes. This would also explain how they managed to reach the stable without being stopped and breathalysed by the police.

  The police, of course, in those days were Romans so they would have had Fiat Puntos, with police written in Latin on the doors.

  There is, as far as I know, no record of any police involvement at all during the nativity, but there were some wise men from the East. And the East, as we all know, means Arab land.

  Now these, we must presume, were rich people because they brought gold, and frankincense and myrrh – which I bet was bloody expensive. You can’t get it at all these days. Even in Boots.

  So, if they were Arabs and rich, we can assume there were some pretty tasty wheels on the streets of Bethlehem that night.

  I wonder what the innkeeper thought when he noticed that the people who he’d just despatched to the stable block had friends turning up in a Lamborghini Diablo, a Mercedes 600SEC and a Ferrari Testarossa.

  Serves the vindictive little twerp right. If only he hadn’t been so snobby – as all people with Granada Ghias are – he would have found Joseph and Mary a room, then all their rich, and drunk, mates would have filled his tills in his bar.

  I mean, if someone follows a star for thousands of miles, thinking it’s talking to him, you can bet he’s going to be in the mood for a party when it turns out he was right.

  And there’s nothing the Arabs like more than a good party. Except their cars, which is why I see them in the Ferrari, the Lambo and the S Class, all finished I suspect in white, with white leather, white carpets and white trimmings, except perhaps for the centre of the steering wheel which I see as gold. Don’t know why. Just do.

  So that then completes the scene at the birth itself. But what about various other biblical figures? Well, with the same certainty that Galileo would have had a car with a sunroof, I just know that Moses had an amphi-car.

  Herod would almost certainly have had a Porsche with a car phone. I can see him now, in a stripy shirt barking half-formed thoughts and orders into his Motorola. ‘I want everyone under the age of two killed.’ Only a Porsche driver could come up with that one.

  Caesar would have had a Lancia Thema, bullet-proofed I suppose. Well spear-proofed anyway – they didn’t have guns back then, did they?

  And what of the disciples? Well, call me old Mr Cynical Trousers but I’ve always had Peter clocked as a bit of a drip. He was always doing the moaning about there not being enough fishes, and how it was dangerous to try to walk on water. And let’s not forget about his behaviour, three times, before the cock crowed. No, he was a wetty and I can see him now, in a pair of pressed trousers and an apple-green, bri-nylon shirt, behind the wheel of a Mini.

  Darren was altogether more gutsy, and without any doubt at all had an Escort Cosworth. Thomas, I feel equally confident, had a Volvo of some type. We know he couldn’t make up his mind about things, and the sort of guy
who dithers about at road junctions almost always has something large and Swedish.

  And Judas? Well Judas is the easiest of the lot. Judas had a BMW. Fact.

  Greenslade – Music and Cars

  It is a commonly held belief that the average speed of traffic in London is 9 miles per hour.

  That makes for some great stories in the newspapers because 9 mph means we are now moving around more slowly than the Victorians. ‘Why not walk?’ scream those in open-toed sandals.

  Well, I can give you one very good reason. The average speed of traffic in London is not 9 mph. It is, according to my on-board trip computer, nearly 18 mph and I just can’t walk that fast.

  Yesterday, however, I rather wished it was 9 mph because then I would not have arrived in the West End twenty minutes before my appointment. I would not have been able to browse through the racks in Tower Records. And then I would not have wasted twenty quid.

  But because I averaged 18 mph, I did have time to do some browsing and now I have an album, recorded in 1973, by a band called Greenslade.

  It has a cover by Roger Dean, which should have been a warning, but it wasn’t enough. I recalled seeing Greenslade live and worse than that, I remembered enjoying the performance.

  So, when the subsequent meeting ended, I slipped the CD into my autochanger and sat back to let Dave Greenslade’s melodic synthesiser fill the leather and wood cockpit of the Jag.

  At first I thought something had gone terribly wrong with the stereo, but this proved not to be the case. In fact, something had gone terribly wrong with my memory. Greenslade’s first album may have been wild and different in 1973, but in the intervening 22 years we’ve had the Pistols and the Police and Madonna, so that now it sounds somewhere between awful and odd.