This, then, is built to move you and your family, provided the children are both amputees, around in the greatest possible comfort. It is a car designed for Houston dentists. A fatboy car.
We should rejoice at the news. Too many expensive cars these days are ruined by low-profile tyres and ebony-hard suspension. Too many are honed on the Nürburgring. So, while they work on a track, where they will never be driven, they are bone-shakingly horrid on the road, where they will.
The BMW is soft. Squidgy. Comfy. The steering wheel is connected to the front wheels with a big soft bag full of melted chocolate, and the noise it makes at speed is the hum of a gardener who’s happy in his work.
I’m sure that if you were really determined, it could be made to whiz about at 155 mph in a fog of tyre smoke. But that would be like trying to make a teenager tidy its room. Possible but, ultimately, too much effort is required.
You don’t drive the 640. You waft along. It’s one of those cars that’s extremely happy to plod up the motorway at 65 mph, unless you aren’t concentrating, in which case it will slot some Barry White into the CD player and drop down to about 3 mph.
At the lights, the engine is so lazy that when you come to a halt it can’t even be bothered to keep going and falls asleep. The idea is that when you take your foot from the brake pedal it wakes up. And that sounds very green and polar-bear-friendly. But you wait till you’re trying to pull onto a fast and busy main road. It can be a bit hairy, spotting a gap and then thinking, Oh Christ. The engine’s nodded off.
Even the satnav is lazy. After you’ve given it the first four characters of a postcode, it can’t be bothered to listen any more and finds what it thinks is roughly the right road to nearly where you’re going. In some cars these days the satnav will suggest alternative routes to miss jams that lie ahead. Not the BMW. It can’t be bothered. It likes jams. It can have a nap.
I know a great many people who would absolutely love this car. People who have a few bob and want to park something a bit tasty on the drive, but who actually can’t abide driving and aren’t very good at it. The 640 would be perfect, because it isn’t really a car. It’s a bed.
When you climb into most BMWs, you feel as if you should be wearing racing bootees and a suit made from Nomex. In this one, the correct attire would be a pair of pyjamas.
19 June 2011
Oh, Shrek, squeeze me till it hurts
Nissan GT-R
Are you a serious car enthusiast? I mean, really serious? Do you drive round every corner as fast as the laws of physics will allow? Do you open the taps whenever you can to revel in the intoxicating, mesmerizing power of internal combustion? Does G-force tickle your G-spot? Do you talk about torque at parties? Are cars, for you, the light and the life and the meaning of everything? Right. Well why don’t you have a Nissan GT-R, then?
The GT-R is not designed to impress other people. There is no hand-stitched leather and no monogrammed luggage. It’s a Nissan, too – a Morphy Richards in a world where Dolce & Gabbana rules. Does it look good? No. Will it turn heads? No. But only because no one’s neck muscles can move that fast.
The GT-R is designed to examine carefully the scientific laws that govern movement and then systematically to break them. It is designed to go faster than you ever thought possible, possess more grip than is physically allowed, change gear more quickly than you can blink, and stop with such ferocity that you can actually feel your face coming off. No style. Just engineering.
It is made in a hermetically sealed factory, which is climatically controlled to ensure all the components are in the same state of thermal expansion when they go together. The tyres – this says a lot – are filled with nitrogen because the normal air used in humdrum cars such as Ferraris and Aston Martins is too unpredictable. It expands and contracts appreciably according to tyre temperature. Nitrogen does not.
Then you have the wheels. They are knurled to stop the tyres coming adrift during cornering. Does a Ferrari have that? No. It’s not necessary.
The new 2011 GT-R is built along exactly the same lines but now there’s more power, more grip, more downforce and even more speed. It’s still not designed to impress your passengers. It’s designed to hurt them.
Let’s begin with a standing-start full-bore acceleration run. You put the gearbox in race mode, and then you hold down the traction control button for a moment, put your left foot on the brake and mash your right foot into the carpet. When the revs have settled, and the 523-horsepower 3.8-litre twin-turbocharged engine is screaming its head off, you take your foot off the brake.
What happens next is extraordinary. There is no wheelspin. The clutch does not slip. One second you are stationary, and the next you are doing 100 mph. Imagine sitting in a deckchair in your garden on a summer’s day. It’s quiet and peaceful and you are enjoying the birdsong. Then you are hit from behind by a Boeing 747. That’s what the acceleration feels like in a GT-R. Absolutely unbefrigginglievable.
Of course, there are lightweight, low-riding track-day cars that, on paper, can get from 0 to 60 just as quickly. But they don’t get from 0 to 5 with anything like the savagery. And they run out of puff at 100. The GT-R does not. It just keeps on going, and when you get to the red line, you pull the paddle and instantly – not something that could be said of the previous model – the next gear is engaged. I have never experienced anything quite like it, if I’m honest. It’s wild. It’s relentless. It’s intoxicating. It’s amazing.
Certainly, you should never use the launch control in this car unless you are bracing your head against the headrest at the time. Because if you’re not, the whiplash could put you in hospital.
It’s the same story in the corners, where the steering wheel becomes nothing more than a handle to hold on to so as to prevent yourself from being flung out of the seat. I should like very much to see an X-ray photograph of someone’s heart when they are cornering a GT-R, because one thing’s for sure. The G-force is so severe, there’s no way it would be heart-shaped.
I was desperate after just a couple of laps of the Top Gear test track to turn off the traction control. This would let the car slide, which would a) be more fun and b) reduce the pressure on my neck. But it’s not wise to turn off the safety features, because if you spin a GT-R, you will break many complicated components.
So, the GT-R is very good. But I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that you’d still much prefer a Ferrari 599 or Aston Martin DBS. If that’s the case, I’m obviously not getting the message across. The Nissan will eat cars like this. Chew them up; spit them out. Bring whatever you like to the party. The GT-R will blitz it. It blitzes everything. It recently blitzed the Nürburgring in seven minutes and twenty-four seconds. Do you know anything else with number plates that could get round as fast? Because I don’t.
Of course, a Ferrari is a much nicer thing to own and to behold and to touch, but when it comes to the business of driving, or going from point A to point B as fast as possible, no Ferrari would see which way the GT-R went. Ferrari is Manchester United. The GT-R is Barcelona.
There are, however, some problems. First of all, it is extremely ugly. It tries to be unshowy in the same way as a bouncer tries to be unshowy when he slips into a dinner jacket. You can always see the tattoos and the neck like a birthday cake, so you know. You know with the GT-R, too, because of the scoops and the exhaust tailpipes, which are even fatter than before.
Inside, it’s worse. I can see what Nissan has tried to do. Keep it simple. But the slab of carbon fibre on the centre console is embarrassing, and the central command unit, which shows you the state of all the components and how many g you generated in the last bend? No. It’s all a bit too fast and furious for my taste. A bit too Jason Statham.
I wish Nissan had had the guts to truly hide its light under a bushel. As it did with the old Skyline. Not to pretend.
But, that said, the GT-R is a proper four-seater and it has a boot into which you could fit many things. It is also surprisi
ngly quiet and remarkably comfortable, even on a traditional potholed British road. Of course, there’s a harshness to the feel, a sound that hints at the racetrack, but there’s no volume. And I like that.
I also like the price. Yes, it’s rocketed up by about £10,000 to £69,950, and that’s a lot for a Nissan. But it’s much less than half what you’d have to pay for a slower, less electrifying Ferrari 458. And it’s not as though the salesman can mug you with a list of options, because I’ve been on the online configurator and there aren’t any.
The new GT-R is demonstrably better than the old one. It’s faster, and the gearbox is a significant improvement. This means it’s demonstrably better than what was a benchmark. Yes, it’s an ugly son of a bitch, and there are some stupid gimmicks, but this car is a genuine phenomenon.
You’re interested in cars. You love driving. You like engineering. You have to have a GT-R. It’s that simple.
26 June 2011
A world first – the Ferrari 4 × what for?
Ferrari FF
It was a normal Saturday morning and the roads were jammed with DIY enthusiasts on family trips to the local hardware store. This sort of scene is bad news if you’re in a hurry, because the sort of person who erects shelves himself is not going to drive to the shop at more than 4 mph and waste the money he’s saved.
Saturday morning is now, for me, the worst time on the roads. They’re a cocktail of the mean, the elderly and the frightened. Nobody’s quite sure where they’re going, and no one can concentrate because the kids in the back are explaining sulkily that they’d rather shoot space aliens than traipse around B&Q looking for self-tapping screws.
Happily, however, my jaunt to the Midlands last weekend wasn’t so bad because I was driving the new Ferrari FF. And all you do when a Hyundai or a Peugeot gets in the way is pull the left-hand gear-shifter paddle a couple of times and press the accelerator down – suddenly it isn’t in your way any more. In the FF you could easily overtake an Australian road train before you’d got out of your own drive.
The engine is a 6.3-litre direct injection V12 that develops a stratospheric 651 horsepower and 504 torques. And what that means is a car that gets from 0 to 62 mph in 3.7 seconds and then onwards, propelled seemingly by its own seismic shockwave, to a dizzying 208 mph.
Of course, there are other cars that can go this quickly, but none of them feels like a Ferrari. The paddles, for instance: when you pull them, they feel as if they aren’t actually connected to anything, which in reality, of course, is a fact. They aren’t. They work the gearbox in the same way as the light switch in your kitchen works the bulb. Only a little bit faster.
Then there’s the steering. As is the way in all modern Ferraris, it is disconcertingly light. Turning the wheel requires as much effort as dusting a polished work surface. So you imagine that there can’t possibly be any feel. But there is. You know all the time exactly what those front wheels are doing, how much grip is left and what you should be doing with the throttle as a result. Ferraris these days are like Vietnamese masseuses. Soft, but acupuncture accurate. And they handle – there’s no other word – beautifully.
They are like other cars in the same way as a Mac is like a PC. In other words, they are not like other cars at all. And just as a Mac has no right-click – which drives me insane – Ferraris have irritations, too. All of the controls are on the steering wheel. Indicators, lights, wipers, the horn, the starter button, radio tuning, volume, gear-shifting and the traction control switch. The lot.
The idea is that you never have to take your hands from where they should be, and in a meeting that makes sense. It makes sense in a grand prix, too, but on the Fosse Way what it means is that you indicate left when you want to go right because the wheel is upside down at the time you hit the button. And you turn the wipers on to say hello to friends going the other way.
It’s all a bit bonkers but it does add to the sense of occasion, as do the leather and the sense of space and the howl from the engine. A modern-day Ferrari feels very, very special.
However, even though the new FF feels this way, it is not like any Ferrari I’ve driven before. Chiefly because it’s the first Fezza to be fitted with four-wheel drive.
There’s a conventional way of doing this. You take drive from the engine to a centrally mounted transfer box, which then distributes power to front and rear axles. Naturally, Ferrari decided not to do this. It says that if you send the power down shafts below the engine to the front axle, the engine must sit up high, which is bad for the handling and bad for the styling, too.
So, instead, the FF sends its power to a rear-mounted gearbox and then to the rear wheels. But then, if sensors detect that those wheels do not have enough grip, two small two-speed gearboxes being driven by the crankshaft at the front of the engine are engaged and the front wheels are asked to join the party.
It’s an idea that was first tried by Ferrari in the Eighties, but back then the electronics necessary simply weren’t available. I’m surprised they’re available now. It sounds an almost fantastically complicated solution, and I wonder if it really will work.
I drove the FF pretty hard and at no time did I sense the front wheels were being driven. And even if they were, they are never allowed to take more than 30 per cent of the engine’s power. And none at all if you go past 130 mph. At this sort of speed the front-mounted two-speed gearboxes can’t cope and shut down. The words Heath and Robinson keep springing to mind here. Followed by a simple question. Has anyone at Ferrari ever driven a Nissan GT-R?
Ferrari says that the system will be of enormous benefit to those who wish to take their Ferrari skiing. And that may be so. But, as the owner of any Bentley Continental or even Range Rover will testify, you can drive as many wheels as you like; if you don’t fit snow tyres your journey will end in Moûtiers.
Of course, you may be wondering where on earth you would put your skiing clobber in a Ferrari. Aha. Well, not only is this the company’s first four-wheel-drive car, it’s also its first hatchback. It has fold-down rear seats, and you can fit more in the boot when they are up than you can in a Renault Scénic.
So, a very special, very fast car, with a dollop of practicality and a four-wheel-drive system that may not add much. But it doesn’t take anything away, either.
However, there are a couple of problems. First of all, the FF is as big as a medium-sized US state. On a normal British B-road you really do flinch when you pass traffic going the other way, and in a town it’s next to useless.
But worse than that is the styling. It looks fantastic from the front and wonderful, too, from the side, but I’m afraid its backside is hopeless. Bland. Dreary. Kia does a better job. You may think you could live with this but I guarantee that when the time came to sell, you’d struggle to find a like-minded soul. As a result, I expect the FF to drop in value like a hammer falling from a tower block. Be aware of that before you run amok with the comically expensive and lengthy options list. For instance, don’t have the boot lined with leather (£1,728) if you really are going to take your FF to St Moritz.
Overall, I liked this car. It was exciting when I was in the mood, but strangely docile and comfortable when I wasn’t. I like the way it feels different from everything else on the road, and I’m not bothered about the four-wheel-drive system either way. But that rear end? They really should have had a look at Pippa Middleton before they made merry with the ballpoints.
10 July 2011
Work harder, boy, or it will be you in here
VW Jetta 2.0 TDI Sport
I suppose I ought to come clean. The cars I review on these pages every Sunday are sometimes nothing like the cars you can actually buy. Every car company runs a fleet of press demonstrators, which motoring journalists can borrow for a week. We imagine, of course, that the cars on these fleets are plucked at random from the production lines, in the same way as a famous restaurant reviewer expects that the food he’s eating is exactly the same as the food everyone else is eating.* B
ut I fear that, sometimes, they are not.
Many years ago, when cars were judged only on acceleration times, Austin Rover made all sorts of wild claims about how its new Maestro turbo could get from a standstill to 60 mph in six seconds. And indeed the press-fleet cars supplied for testing could do just that. But only once. Because then they’d blow up, causing everyone to wonder if the wastegate valves hadn’t been welded slightly shut.
There were also tales about car makers stripping down cars that would be going to the press, and then rebuilding them, very carefully and at huge expense, by hand. And I must say that the Ferraris that turn up for performance testing always seem to be noticeably faster than the cars that are supplied for photographic purposes. That could be my imagination, though (he said, aware of the laws of libel).
But even if the car supplied for testing really does come from the production line, the experience is still a bit skewed. First of all, it’s delivered, fully taxed and insured, in an extremely clean state with a tankful of free fuel. That makes the reviewer feel very gooey about life in general and his job in particular. And when the tank is empty, a man comes with another car and takes the first one away. It’s all completely unrealistic, really.
And so are the cars. Most press-fleet managers will ensure that every demonstrator is fitted with every single optional extra. They will argue that this gives the reviewer a chance to sample all that’s available. Yes. But a layer of exciting buttons and knobs can also mask the dreariness of the product underneath. In the same way as a spicy sauce masks the fact that the curry you’ve ordered is full of dead cats.
So, in short, I spend half my life driving around in a £15,000 car that’s been hand-built at a cost of £250,000 and has been supplied with eighty quid’s worth of free fuel, free insurance, free tax and a range of optional extras that are worth twice what most people would pay for the entire car.
What Could Possibly Go Wrong. . . Page 9
