The day before, I’d bumped into Mark Webber and he was charming too. I reminded him that the first time we met, he’d been employed by Ford to chauffeur fat drunks in dinner jackets from a hotel to the Goodwood Festival of Speed. ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Don’t mock. I got eighty quid a day for doing that.’
In my brief visit to the principality, I met lots of people involved in Formula One. And they were all much the same. Michael Schumacher. Nick Fry. Martin Brundle. Christian Horner. Rubens Barrichello. All of them made the Duke of Cambridge look like a lout.
And then we get to Bernie Ecclestone. It was late, and I was wandering about the harbour, wondering whose party I was going to gatecrash next, when down the ramp of what appeared to be a floating city bounded the octogenarian. Without wishing to sound like Piers Morgan, he was all smiles, and after dispensing a good deal of bonhomie, he invited me for a drink on Flavio Briatore’s boat. You won’t believe this, but he turned out to be charming too. Well, I think he was charming. Flav doesn’t bother much with consonants. He just sort of makes a noise when it’s his turn to speak, but he did a lot of smiling and gave me a lot of wine.
So, behind the sponsorship and the nonsense and the backbiting, I have to report that the silly world of F1 is rammed full of people you’d like very much to have round for dinner.
Unfortunately, the people F1 attracts to its showcase Monaco event are not quite so charming. Let’s deal with the men first. There are two kinds, as I see it. There are those who have the money and they are all very greasy. And then there are those who ride around on the big shots’ backs, like oxpecker birds, picking at their fleas.
This is a mutually beneficial arrangement because the rhinos get to be surrounded by acolytes who agree with everything they say and laugh at their jokes until they are told to stop. And the oxpeckers scratch out a living by selling the rhinos superyacht insurance and hideous watches.
Occasionally, I would be grabbed by an oxpecker and made to meet his rhino and there is no small-talk manual in the world that covers this sort of encounter. The rhino has no clue who I am – he has someone to watch television for him – and the oxpecker is not really allowed to speak. And you can’t ask the rhino what he does for a living because you know full well he sells guns and arranges for people to be murdered. Besides, to prevent you from asking any questions at all, he spends the entire time in your company yawning. Billionaires yawn almost all the time.
I’m told that on one of the really big boats, there was a young man who is employed to sit around all day, getting a tan and staying fit. His job? He’s the owner’s heart donor.
Then you have the women. Mostly, they are prostitutes. I suspect that if you were so minded, you could come home with a veritable smorgasbord of sexually transmitted diseases. But not the billionaires. They have someone to make love for them.
If you were to drop an atom bomb on Monte Carlo during the grand prix weekend, you’d mourn the loss of the sport’s inner circle. But on the plus side, with the outer circle gone as well, there would be a measurable improvement in the planet’s quality of life.
Of course, you might imagine that if you were to drop an atom bomb on Monte Carlo at any time, you’d achieve the same result. But I’m afraid not. The billionaires don’t actually live there. They employ a man to go into their apartments once in a while to make phone calls and switch the lights off and on, so the tax authorities think they do.
All things considered, then, I was very pleased to leave Monaco to come home and watch the race on television. But I was not at all pleased to discover what car was waiting for me at the airport. A Porsche 911 GTS.
This is a reviewer’s nightmare. It’s like asking a restaurant critic to write about a McDonald’s burger that has exactly the same ingredients as all the others but in a slightly different arrangement. Some colleagues of mine recently worked out that there are currently 153 different options available across the twenty-strong 911 range and that, as a result, there are 9.6 trillion mildly different permutations of what is basically the same bloody car.
There is, however, one thing that sets the new GTS apart. The price. If you were to buy a standard Carrera S and equip it to the same level as the new model, it would cost around £95,000. But this car – including a few extras – is just £81,968. And thrown in for free is the much better-looking wide body from the Turbo and a bit of black paint here and there.
I suspect there’s a good reason for this unusual act of generosity. Next year we will see the arrival of a new 911 – which will be the same as all the others since Hitler first came up with the idea – and they need to get rid of all the parts before the production switchover. What you are buying, then, is not a new car. It’s the last version of the old one.
I’m told by enthusiasts of the breed that it is also possibly the best. They like the look, the rear-drive simplicity, the value and the Alcantara steering wheel. They say that it combines all the best things from the massive Porsche option list in one unbeatable package and that everyone should have one immediately.
My eyelids are starting to droop. Because if there’s one thing I hate more than writing about a Porsche 911, it’s driving one. I feel like such a plonker. Fifty years old. What am I saying? It’s one of two things, actually. I’m an enthusiastic motorist (in which case, give me a wide berth at parties) or I’m having a terrible midlife wobble (in which case, give me a wide berth at parties).
Plus, I’ve never really liked the way a 911 feels. I’ve always quietly respected Porsche’s attempts to marry thrill-a-minute driving with everyday usability, but I’ve always thought that it was chasing an impossible dream. The two things are mutually exclusive. To be fun, a car must be a bit mad. And the 911 isn’t.
So why did I enjoy my time with the GTS so much? And why did I also enjoy the GT3 version that I drove onto these pages not so long ago? The car hasn’t changed – at all – which means I have.
And that’s probably true. Yes, a Lamborghini or a Vauxhall VXR or a Mitsubishi Evo are all fantastically insane and I love them for that. But now I’m past fifty, I don’t really want flames coming out of the exhaust any more, and a ride that cripples my back.
You don’t drive a GTS. You dance with it. It is a beautiful experience, actually, and yet there are no histrionics. The satnav and the iPod connectivity all make sense. And it’s not huge or loud or uncomfortable. It’s as lovely as Sebastian Vettel, in fact.
So bear that in mind when you see a middle-aged man driving a Porsche. He’s not having a midlife crisis. He’s just grown up.
5 June 2011
Oh, miss, you turn me into a raging despot
Mercedes CLS 63 AMG
I wonder if we realize just how fast the age of electronic communication is taking over our lives, and shaping them and ruining them.
Unless you are a slipper and sherry enthusiast, you will be aware of a computer game called Call of Duty. The idea is simple. You run about shooting people in the face with a selection of large weapons. And then, if you believe the nonsense, you go out for a pizza and are overwhelmed by a sudden need to stamp on a tramp.
Of course, you can play by yourself or with friends. But, staggeringly, you can also play against unseen people in Canada or Israel or Siberia. It is incredible. And all the people you’re trying to kill are being operated by unseen tramp-stampers in sitting rooms and shops and offices all over the world. If you have a microphone, you can even speak to them as you play, whooping whenever you fire a 12-gauge shotgun directly into their testes.
Unfortunately, like nearly everything powered by ones and noughts, it sounds brilliant but it doesn’t quite work. You start the game. It tells you it’s searching for other people in the world. It finds some. It does some electronic wizardry. And then it says the connection has been lost. So you go through the process again. And then again. And then again. And then you have a game of Scrabble instead.
We see the same thing with wireless routers. Wonderful. A must-have accessory. But,
as I’ve said many times before, they work 10 per cent of the time and you spend the other 90 per cent of your life with your head in a cupboard, on the phone to a man in India.
The problem is, of course, that electronics companies always want to be first with a new idea. So the idea makes it onto the market before it’s completely ready. This is why nothing electronic ever quite works.
Satellite navigation is a prime example of this. In the early days it was hopeless and would try to send you through Leicester Square, which was pedestrianized by William Pitt. The system in my last car refused to acknowledge there was such a thing as the M40. And we were constantly reading stories about people who’d obeyed the electronic voice of reason and ended up in a river, with a crab in their nose. But that was probably their fault for being idiotic.
Today you’d imagine that all of the mapping issues had been resolved, and to a certain extent they have. But the back-room boys – the sort of chap who wears a black T-shirt, lives with his mum and doesn’t wash terribly often – are always shoehorning new submenus into the setup. And those are being rushed out as well.
Take the traffic warning technology. The idea is that the map informs you of hold-ups ahead so that you can plan a route around them. Very clever. It cuts congestion, saves fuel, spares your temper and keeps the polar bears happy.
But the system in the Mercedes CLS that I’ve been driving for the past week is forever getting its northbound and its southbound muddled up. Which means I spend an hour dribbling along a country lane, with my door mirrors in the blackberry bushes, avoiding a queue that’s going the other way.
What’s more, a stern-sounding woman interrupts Chris Evans to say in a weird voice that there is a queue ahead. She even gives you the average speed in the queue and adjusts your estimated time of arrival accordingly.
Because of one of her warnings last week, I realized that I would not make it to the restaurant I’d booked before it shut. So I called to cancel the reservation, phoned home to disappoint the children and plodded onwards towards the jam. WHICH WASN’T BLOODY THERE.
There’s more. One of the features provided is a list of all the restaurants in the area. It asks what sort of food you want and then takes you to the nearest eatery that is equipped to help. The trouble is that people only ever want Chinese, French, Italian or Indian. But it would be racist to limit the list to just four options. So, to keep everyone happy, it comes up with every single country in the world. If you have a modern Mercedes and you live in the highlands of Scotland, do please enter ‘Balkan’ and let me know what on earth it comes up with.
I was also amused by the other things it will help you find. Many are useful. Hospitals, police stations and so on. It will even help you locate the nearest mosque, which is clearly important if the sun is going down and you are a Muslim.
But then the black T-shirt brigade obviously thought, Uh-oh. We can’t list just mosques, because it looks as though we are favouring the children of Muhammad over those who support other teams. So, it will also find the nearest synagogue. But – black mark here – it does not seem to think that Methodist chapels are worthy of a mention.
Also, it could not find the Devils Dyke pub on Devils Dyke Road, just north of Brighton. And it will not let you enter a seven-character postcode. It ended up making me very angry. The command-and-control system in my old Mercedes is very good. This new one? It’s so clever, it’s actually a drooling vegetable.
And then we have the phone system. Until very recently Mercedes fitted an actual telephone that was hardwired into the car. What that did was work. Now the nerds in the back room have decided that Bluetooth is good enough. It isn’t. People speaking on Bluetooth sound like deep-sea divers, and that’s when they’re both in an anechoic chamber. Communicating with someone in a car on Bluetooth is like trying to communicate with a corpse.
Electronically, then, the Mercedes CLS has taken a couple of steps forwards and about five in the other direction.
It’s the same story with the shape. The original CLS is said to have been designed by a young stylist who wanted to see how a Jaguar would look if it were made by Mercedes. It was weird, but undeniably attractive.
From the front the new one is even better, but, as with other new Mercs, there’s a styling detail over the rear wheelarch that simply doesn’t work at all. Styling details need to be there for a reason – a hump in the bonnet hints at great power beneath, for instance – but this one is just fatuous. I pretty much hate it.
I also hate the gearbox. The old seven-speed auto has been replaced with the double-clutch flappy-paddle system found in the SLS. It’s electronic, so it works well, except when you are in town going slowly. Then it’s jerky and unwilling to respond when you want to exploit a gap in the traffic.
The rest of the car, though. Wow. It’s been festooned inside and out with lots of neat bits of jewellery that stop just short of being blingy and, in the case of the CLS I’ve been driving, add £27,000 to the £80,000 price tag.
And then there’s the engine. It’s AMG’s new twin-turbo V8 – with, on my test car, a performance upgrade to 550 bhp and 590 lb ft – and it’s much more muted than the old 6.2. Under big acceleration you still get some machinegun noises from the tailpipes, but it’s quieter, more civilized. I’d go so far as to call the driving experience imperious. When slower drivers see this coming, they get out of the way in a big hurry. You feel a bit like Idi Amin. Or was that just me?
Overall, however, I think that some of the original CLS’s appeal has been lost. And, as a result, if I wanted to buy a big, stylish four-door saloon, I’d just walk past this and go for the Maserati Quattroporte.
12 June 2011
From 0 to 40 winks in the blink of an eye
BMW 640i SE convertible
Have you actually stopped for a moment and looked – really looked – at the new BMW 5-series estate? All things considered, I would say that this is one of the most handsome cars ever made. It has all the BMW hallmarks: the body seems to have been stretched to the limits simply to cover the wheels, and there’s the traditional Hofmeister lean-forward kink in the rear pillar. It’s a tiny design detail that makes the car look as though it’s going a thousand miles an hour even when it’s in a golf club car park.
And yet the car doesn’t look old-fashioned. There’s something about the shape of the bonnet that makes it look as though it may be visiting us from the future.
It’s the same story on the inside. All cars of this type, if we’re honest, feel and look pretty much the same from behind the wheel. But not the Beemer. It’s all very minimalist and unusual. As if you’ve accidentally plonked yourself down in a Bang & Olufsen catalogue. And the 5-series estate is not alone. The new(ish) Z4 moons me with its beauty when I see one go by, and then there’s the limited-edition 1-series M coupé. It’s not a coupé, actually; it’s a saloon. Actually, it’s not even that. It looks like the box in which your washing machine was delivered, only to make sure you don’t throw it away by mistake, it has enormous wheelarches.
I love this car because what it says when you look at it is this: I am very fast and I don’t need to shout about it. It is very fast, too. Faster than a Cayman R. Faster than a Lotus Evora. Faster than you would believe possible. The 1-series M coupé is very probably my favourite car on the market right now. Or it may be the M3. I’m not sure. But it’s one of those two.
I can’t believe I just said those things. I’ve spent the past ten years laughing at the man who styled BMWs and the idiots who drove them. BMWs? They were nothing more than expensive and very hideous mounting brackets for your stupid personalized plate. Montblanc pens with windscreen wipers.
I was a Merc man. But Mercs these days are getting a bit too chintzy for my taste. And so are Jags. And the Lexus is still stuck at the back, in its hairy sports jacket, wanting to smoke its pipe. So now I’ve switched my hero worship from United to City. I’ve become a Beemer man.
I should say at this point that I don’t like a
ll BMWs. The X1 is very terrible, and so is the genital wart that is the X3. Then you have the X6, which is idiotic, and the little 120 diesel, which seems to be a bit boring. But the rest? Mmmm.
That’s why I almost skipped with delight to the door of the car of the new 640i convertible, and I was looking forward to driving it very much.
We see some of the current BMW good and the bad in the styling. Roof down, it’s excellent, but when you press the button to put the roof up, it seems a slightly tipsy man comes and erects a tent with which he’s not completely familiar above your head. Why the vertical rear window? It looks stupid.
There’s more silliness, too, in the name. There was a time when the numbers on the back told you the model and the engine size. So a 325 was a 3-series with a 2.5-litre engine, and a 750 was a 7-series with a 5-litre engine. Very sensible. Very German. But now the logic has gone, so the 640 I was testing was a 6-series with a turbocharged 3-litre engine.
It’s a new power plant that develops many horsepowers and big wads of torque. And it’s allied to an eight-speed gearbox that is fitted solely so the man who invented it can go to gearbox conventions and tell other gearbox enthusiasts that his box has more cogs than theirs. It shifts well enough, but eight speeds? In a car with this much torque? As the XJS proved all those years ago, three is all you need.
And three would suit this car far more because it is the laziest machine I’ve driven since the old Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow. It is not built for point-and-squirt hammer-time trips to the racetrack. Shock and awe? Lock and snore, more like. It even comes with a TV screen of such vastness, it’s unfair to call it a television. This is a home cinema.
What Could Possibly Go Wrong. . . Page 8
