’Fraid not. Jaguar decided that anything Aston could do, it could do better. So the current XK rides around on suspension seemingly made from a blend of granite and chest freezers. Run over a pothole in that car and you shatter.
As a result of all this, I had high hopes for the Aston Martin Virage. It was billed as a cheaper, more comfortable version of the DBS. All the style. All the speed. All the lovely interior detailing. But none of the rock-hard, racetrack, carbon-fibre nonsense that no one either needs or wants.
Well, it may have an automatic gearbox but it’s still a bitch. You can tell when you run over a white line whether the paint was gloss or emulsion. You know when you run over a pheasant whether it was a cock or a hen. And you can’t just feel the suspension refusing to budge when it encounters a bit of gravel; you can hear it, too. Raging away with a series of clumps and bangs.
It is a huge missed opportunity. It could have been the only expensive car currently on sale designed for people who actually exist. But it is just as uncomfortable as all the others.
In almost every other way, however, it’s better. With new sills and a new front spoiler, it looks even more beautiful than the DBS. It looks more beautiful than the most beautiful thing you can think of. Especially in deep, dark, last-vestige-of-the-day navy blue. And doubly especially if you go for the convertible version.
What’s more, it’s £25,000 cheaper than the DBS and, really, it’s hard to see why, since the two cars have the same 6-litre V12 engine. It may have been mildly detuned in the Virage, but you still get 490 horsepower, and that’s enough to get you from rest to the wrong side of the national speed limit in 4.6 seconds. Provided you are in the right gear – and the auto box can be a bit dim-witted sometimes – this is a very, very fast car.
It’s even fast at stopping, thanks to carbon ceramic brakes, and, of course, because the suspension and the tyres are so hardcore, it is utterly thrilling to hustle. You’ve never actually seen an Aston being hustled, of course, but if that’s your bag, the Virage is the best of them all. After the V12 Vantage, perhaps.
Drawbacks? Well, behind the wheel it is a bit cramped, and the price you pay for all that design elegance is that the buttons are quite hard to find. And even harder to press if you are on a bumpy road at the time.
The worst thing, though, is the new satnav. Unlike the old system, which only told you where you’d been, this one only tells you to slow down. Constantly, with a series of bongs. If it even thinks there could be a speed camera nearby, off it goes, yelling and panicking.
It may well be, of course, that there’s a button for turning this feature off, but finding that would mean reading the instruction manual. And that’s not going to happen. I’m a man.
What’s more, when I told it I wanted it to go to London, its next question was, ‘What house number?’
We all need the same thing from a satnav system, so why do all car makers give us a choice about how the screen looks or what sort of voice we want? Choices mean submenus, and submenus are for people who live at home with their mums. Submenu people are the only people on earth who don’t actually need satnav because they never go further than the fridge.
So the Virage is a missed opportunity in this respect, too. And yet, I’m afraid I’m completely in love with it. It’s a hard car, and a hard car to operate, and there are those who say that the wheels are coming off Aston’s previously untarnished brand kudos. But get into a Virage in the morning and I guarantee you will feel good. Better than if you were getting into almost anything else.
At the raggedy edge, a Ferrari 458 is more rewarding to drive and a Mercedes SLS is more fun. But both those cars are a bit flamboyant. And that’s where the Aston scores. It isn’t.
15 May 2011
The old duffer trots out in boy-racer colours
Skoda Faiba vRS1.4 TSI DSG
In his first year in office the transport secretary, Philip Hammond, announced that he would scrap the M4 bus lane, stop funding speed cameras and raise the motorway limit to 80. What he should have done next is gone home and started a well-earned retirement. But, sadly, when you are the transport secretary you are expected to go to work every day. And, of course, when someone is at work they are duty-bound to do stuff and think of things. This is fine if you are a doctor or a telephone repair man but when you are transport secretary it’s hard to think of things that make any sense.
This is a problem when you are invited to speak on the Today programme. You can’t very well sit there and say you’ve not thought of any ideas, because people will think you have been lazy. So you have to come up with something. And that’s what Hammond did recently. He took a deep breath and said he was going to get the police to clamp down on boy racers.
Of course, this was an excellent thing to say because the people who listen to the Today programme do not have gel in their hair, or acne. Or an electric-blue Citroën with a huge exhaust pipe and no suspension.
Radio 4 people think that boy racers sit in the social mix between rapists and Hitler. So they will have leapt up from their Shackletons wingbacks, delirious with joy that Mr Hammond was finally going to make their life on the road a little less terrifying.
Sadly, however, if you examine the details of Hammond’s half-formed excursion into the world of middle England tub-thumping you see that it doesn’t make any sense at all. For instance, he says he’s going to get the police to clamp down on the lunatic fringe, to which I say this: what police?
The last time I saw a jam sandwich patrolling the motorway, it was a Ford Granada. Today you get Highways Agency traffic officers and the odd plod-dog van, but actual police? They’re all at the station, learning how to climb ladders.
Then we get to what Hammond thinks constitutes boy racing: tailgating and undertaking.
Quite what he has against undertakers, I don’t know. In my experience they drive very carefully. Unless, of course, he means people who overtake on the left. In which case he’s just plain wrong.
These days I undertake other cars as a matter of course. And I’m fifty-one, which means I’m not much of a boy. The problem is that in the olden days everyone on the road had at least a rudimentary grasp of lane discipline. But today – how can I put this without sounding as though I’m from the Daily Mail? – many of Britain’s motorists learnt the art of driving in more exotic parts. And they simply have no idea, as they trundle up the M40 at 50 mph in their £200 Toyota Camry, that they should keep left.
You can flash your lights, indicate, make hand gestures, huff, puff and die of a heart attack but it will make no difference. They don’t realize they’re doing anything wrong.
That’s why I glide by on the left. And if I am stopped by one of Hammond’s non-existent policemen, I shall explain that if I had the space to undertake, then the person around whom I drove must have had the space to pull over. He should therefore be prosecuted for driving without due care and attention.
Then there’s the issue of tailgating. This is done exclusively by people in Audis with Montblanc pens, Breitling watches, Oakley sunglasses, those shirts with horses on them and a fondness for squash. I don’t know what you’d call people such as this – ‘awful’ springs to mind – but they’re not boy racers.
So when Hammond says that he will be targeting undertakers and tailgaters, he’s actually targeting the victims of the middle-lane hogs, and people who play squash. Unless he really is talking about people who drive you to the church when you’re dead. In which case it truly is time for him to stop thinking of things and doing stuff.
Actual boy racers, I should imagine, are now getting very irritated because they’ll have seen the picture of the car I’m reviewing this morning, with its white roof and its big wheels, and they’ll be thinking, Get on with it, you imbecile.
So get on with it I shall. It’s a Skoda Fabia vRS, and the last version of this car was OK. I liked it a lot, even though it waded into battle with a diesel engine. And that’s a bit like competing in a 100-metre runni
ng race while wearing wellies. The new one has a 1.4-litre petrol engine that is supercharged and turbocharged. The result is 178 bhp, and the result of that is 0 to 60 in a little over seven seconds and a top speed of 139 mph. Or 140 if you buy the aerodynamically cleaner estate version.
Weirdly, the people at Skoda have sent me a comparison chart, which shows that in terms of performance the vRS is a little slower than the Clio Renaultsport 200 and the Vauxhall Corsa VXR. They’ve also sent me a laminated card saying that the No. 1 key feature of their car is that it has a three-point seatbelt. It’s almost as though they don’t want me to like it.
And that’s fortunate, because I don’t. There are some things, though, that are rather good. I like the styling especially. I’m not sure why, but it reminds me of a bemused and slightly cross second world war squadron leader. And I like the way it has a white roof.
But most of all I like the price. It’s £16,265 and, although Skoda doesn’t provide figures to show this, it is way cheaper than every one of its rivals. Even if you fit the useless satnav and blue teeth and climate control, it’s still £1,000 less than the Volkswagen Polo GTI. And that’s especially odd, because underneath it’s exactly the same car. Same engine. Same everything.
So what’s it like to drive? Well, the seats are comfy and the ride is surprisingly pliant, given that it’s running on wafer-thin low-profile tyres. But there’s a problem. This is a turbocharged and supercharged hot hatchback, so it should make you want to drive like you are on fire. It should encourage you to pass every other road user on whatever side takes your fancy and never brake for corners. Hot hatchbacks are supposed to fizz but the vRS doesn’t.
The double-clutch flappy-paddle gearbox is reluctant to change, and the steering is too low-geared. Couple this with the noisiest tyres in Christendom and what you mostly want to do in this car is slow down for a bit of peace and quiet. It is horribly noisy.
And, while I don’t mind the interior, I must say it’s a bit gloomy. Perhaps that’s why the vRS looks like a bemused squadron leader. Because it’s not really a hot hatch, so ‘why the bloody hell has someone painted me the colour of an Opal Fruit?’.
You are better off with a Fiat 500 or a Mini or a Citroën DS3 or a Twingo Renaultsport 133. These are the real boy-racer cars. The Skoda looks like it might be a laugh but actually it isn’t.
22 May 2011
What’s the Swedish-Chinese for I can’t see?
Volvo V60 T5 R-Design
Many years ago, I came up with a solution to drink-driving and because no one has thought to make it law, pubs are currently closing down at the rate of twenty-nine a week.
At present, we are told that if we are going out for a drink, we should use public transport, but this is not possible in the shires because there isn’t any. And if I were to call for a taxi at 11 p.m., it would not arrive until mid-September.
So, we bumpkins are told that if we are going out we should designate a driver, who must sit there, all night, staring into his Britvic, willing his heart to stop beating. Not drinking in a pub full of people who are is like being the only sane man in a lunatic asylum. Death is preferable.
My plan, then, was very simple, and completely workable. Whenever a driver feels a bit tipsy, he or she must clip a flashing green light to the roof of their car before setting off. Once in place, they would be limited to 10 mph, a speed at which they could not possibly be a danger to themselves or anyone else.
Besides, pedestrians and drivers coming the other way would see the green light and think, Uh oh, this bloke’s had a few. I’d better give him a wide berth.
Of course, anyone found to be drink-driving without a light on the roof of their car, or exceeding the 10 mph limp-home limit would face the consequences. Which would be execution.
There are many upsides to this idea: no one would ever wake up in the morning and wonder where the bloody hell they’d left their car; you would never have to use the hateful last bus; and in pubs, the lonely squeak of a barman polishing his glasses would be replaced by the joyful buffoonery of people having a nice time.
Everyone wins, except, of course, for your local minicab firm, whose drivers would be forced to sell their horrible, sick-stained Toyotas and get a proper job that doesn’t involve quite so much leching.
Anyway, I’ve now come up with another plan that, frankly, is even better. It’s this. Occasionally in life, all of us face an emergency that means we have to break the speed limits, and at the moment there is no system in force that allows us to be let off. Wife in labour? Child’s head stuck in railings? Mother had a stroke? Doesn’t matter. You still get three points and this is simply not fair.
Policemanists and ambulance drivers are allowed to drive fast in an emergency, so why not us too? You might think they are trained for this sort of thing and we’re not but the fact is, many aren’t. Constable Plod, whizzing about in his diesel Astra – he’s no more qualified to do 90 than Princess Anne.
Of course, I recognize that there are many scoundrels out there who would claim that every journey they make is an emergency. To stop this, everyone would simply download a free app that, when deployed, tells a central police computer that they are about to set off on a journey where speed is imperative. And this can only be used, say, once a year. You therefore wouldn’t dare waste it on something trivial.
The only problem with this scheme is that today it’s virtually impossible to make super-speedy progress on the motorway because the outside lane is a permanent home for the sanctimonious, the belligerent and the stupid.
The sanctimonious won’t let you past because they can’t see why anyone should drive fast in these days of global warming; the belligerent won’t let you past because it would suggest you are better than them; and the stupid don’t know you’re there. Usually because they are in a van. And they knocked the door mirror off in the yard at a builder’s merchant last week.
I was in a big hurry on the M40 last week and could not believe how many people just sat in the outside lane. But then nor could I believe what happened when they finally pulled over and I tried to get past.
I was in a Volvo V60 T5, and those of us who remember those epic Touring Car races from the early Nineties know what that means. T5 means, Yes, I’m in a Volvo and, yes, there’s a Georgian tallboy in the back, but underneath my tweed suit I’m wearing a crotchless leather G-string and I have a death tattoo on my back, and I am bloody well coming past.
A Volvo T5 is a Cotswold tea shoppe where they serenade the customers with a medley of hits from Wayne County & the Electric Chairs. It’s a Sex Pistol in a twin set, anarchy in the Home Counties. And the model I was driving came with the optional R-Design package, which includes bigger wheels and stiffer suspension. So, when I put my foot down to overtake the van that had finally pulled over, I was expecting an explosion of power and a surge of acceleration that bordered on the insane. But it never came.
Unlike previous T5s, this does not have a five-cylinder engine. It’s a turbocharged four, which means that the offbeat strum has gone. But so too has the lunacy. When you caress the throttle pedal, you can feel what seems like a big muscle tensing and you think that all is well, but when you really go for it, especially if you are in sixth gear at the time, nothing happens.
Later, on the lovely road between Banbury and Rugby, it was the same story. The car would float deliciously round a corner – it handles and rides very well indeed – but when I accelerated onto the straight? The tumescence was gone. Frankly, you may as well save a few quid and buy the diesel.
Or something else entirely. There are many good things about the V60. It is extremely comfortable, for a kick-off. And like all Volvos, it was plainly designed by someone who has a family. That’s why you can have raised seat bolsters – effectively, child booster cushions – in the back. Touches like that are what makes the XC90 the school-run king.
Load it with the safety options and it will also be festooned with warning lights that illuminate whenever the
car feels you may be in peril. You get a warning if a car is in your blind spot. You get another if you stray out of lane. And if you get too close to the car in front, the dash lights up like a Pink Floyd gig. Should it suspect you are about to hit a pedestrian, it will actually apply the brakes on your behalf.
This all sounds very noble and Volvoey, but there’s a very good reason why you need to be warned of impending doom. The V60 is a hard car to see out of. Because of the swooping and rather attractive bodywork, coupled with small windows, the all-round visibility is quite poor. And because of the sloping roofline, the boot isn’t as big as you might imagine.
I can’t quite work out how they got it so wrong. Maybe there’s a language problem between the Swedish engineers and the new Chinese owner. I can’t imagine there are many translators who can manage that combination.
But whatever, anyone after a performance car would be better off with the equivalent BMW 3-series, and anyone who just wants to lug around dogs and chests of drawers would be better off with … well, with what? It’s a good question.
Just recently, we have seen a raft of rather good-looking estate cars come onto the market. The Vauxhall Insignia and the Honda Accord stand out in particular. Boring choices, yes. But good, in these draconian times, for occasionally driving through the motoring rule book without being noticed.
29 May 2011
I love you now I’m all grown up, Helga
Porsche 911 GTS
I’d pretty much decided over the past year or so that I couldn’t abide Sebastian Vettel. All that finger-pointing when he won a race. And the hair. And the way he blamed his team-mate for the crash last year. Ghastly jumped-up little German prig.
But last weekend, there I was, enjoying a plate of scrambled egg in Monaco, when I looked up to see the man himself, running towards me like he’d just crossed a desert and I had the keys to a fridge full of cold beer. We chatted about his forthcoming appearance on Top Gear and he was utterly charming; delightful.
What Could Possibly Go Wrong. . . Page 7
