Not this week, though, because Volkswagen supplied a new Jetta in what can only be described as hire-car spec. I assumed that this was because the company was so proud of the actual car, it didn’t want to spoil the experience with lots of unnecessary electronic or cosmetic flimflam. I was wrong. Because this is the dreariest, most depressing car ever made in all of human history.
I am not saying this because it is an ordinary car of a type people buy. I am saying this because it really is the four-wheeled equivalent of drizzle.
In front of the gear lever are five switches, and in a standard car all of them are blanked off with plastic shrouds – little reminders that you didn’t work hard enough at school and that life’s not going as well as you’d hoped. If only you’d clinched that last deal, you could have bought the £440 parking-sensor pack. Then you’d have only four blanked-off buttons.
It’s much the same story with the central control system. Push the button marked ‘Media’ and a message flashes up saying, ‘No medium found.’ This is not a reference to Doris Stokes. It’s another gentle dig, another reminder that you couldn’t afford to fit an iPod connection. That your whole life is going down the khazi.
So you push the button marked ‘Nav’ and you get another baleful message saying that no navigation disc has been found. You couldn’t afford it, could you? You only got three Bs and Exeter said no. You ended up at a glorified poly and your life’s gone downhill from there.
It must have done for you to have ended up in a Jetta. As we know, it’s a Golf with a boot on the back instead of a hatchback, and what’s the point of that, exactly? There was a time, when Terry and June was on television and people doffed their caps to aldermen, that a saloon was perceived to be more upmarket than a hatch.
There are also places in the world, in Africa mainly, where a saloon marks you out as someone special. But here? Now? No. We have come to realize that a saloon is just a hatchback that’s less practical and more boring to behold.
The Jetta is extremely boring to look at. It’s boring to think about. This is the sort of car you would buy not realizing that you already had one. It is catastrophically dull. As dull as being dead.
It is not, however, dull or boring to drive. No. It is absolutely awful. First of all there’s the suspension, which is plainly tuned to work only on a billiard table. On a road it transmits news of every crease, ripple and pebble directly to your spine, and, to make matters worse, the seats appear to have been fashioned from ebony. They are rock hard.
The backrest, which is even less forgiving than the squab, seems to have just two positions. Bolt upright and fully reclined. Only once can I remember ever being so uncomfortable, and that’s when a doctor was examining my colon with what felt like the blunt end of a road cone.
Then there’s the air-conditioning. Or, rather, there isn’t. VW calls it semi-automatic air-con, and I’m sorry, but there’s no such thing. It doesn’t work. And as for the trip computer, it told me about oil temperature, which isn’t interesting, or it was a compass. And that’s not interesting either.
So what of the engine? Well, you’ve a choice of a 1.4-litre petrol, which comes in two states of tune, or a brace of diesels. I opted for the 2-litre, which, by diesel standards anyway, was reasonably quiet and refined. It was also reasonably powerful, clean and economical.
I must be similarly kind about the quality. The interior does appear to be well screwed together, but then the Jetta is made in Mexico – and Mexico, as I have recently learnt, is a byword for industrious attention to detail. On a personal note, I’d far rather have a VW built by Pablo in Central America than a VW built by some sloppy German who just wants to spend the day sleeping and being kidnapped.
Apparently, Volkswagen wants to sell 3,000 Jettas in the UK this year, which in the big scheme of things does not sound an ambitious target. But I cannot think of even three people who would be happy to live for more than a few seconds with this hateful, dreary, badly equipped, uncomfortable, forgettable piece of motoring-induced euthanasia.
Better alternatives include the Golf, the Passat, every other car ever made, walking, hopping and being stabbed.
17 July 2011
Too tame for the special flair service
Audi RS 3
God made a bit of a mistake when he was designing women. He made the birth canal so narrow that babies have to be born when they are nowhere near ready for life in the outside world.
A newborn horse can run about and feed itself five seconds after emerging from the back of its mum. And it’s the same story with dogs. My labrador gave birth to a litter of nine puppies while asleep, firing them out like a Thai hooker fires ping pong balls. And within moments they were up and about, being doggish.
A human baby, though, is not capable of anything. For week after interminable week, it can’t sit up, crawl, speak or operate even rudimentary electronic equipment, and sees absolutely nothing wrong with sitting in a puddle of its own excrement. Babies are useless. Stupid, mewling, puking noise trumpets that ruin life for anyone within half a mile.
Unless, of course, the baby is yours, in which case you rejoice in its ability to grip your finger with its tiny little hand and are keen to take it on as many aeroplanes as possible. Why is this? Why is your baby so perfect and wonderful when everyone else’s is as irritating as a microlight on a peaceful summer’s evening?
We see the same problem with literature. There is a book called Versailles: The View from Sweden. It’s excellent in a game of charades, but as a light read I should imagine it’s not excellent at all. Unless you could get a copy signed by the author. Then you’d love it.
I have a copy of Monty Python’s Big Red Book that is signed by all of the Pythons and as a result it is my most treasured possession. The one thing I would rescue if my house were to catch fire.
We see this specialness in other things too. There’s a little spot just below the village of Keld in the Yorkshire Dales. It has grass and some trees and a bit of sky, all the ingredients you would find on a roundabout in Milton Keynes. And yet the spot I’m talking about is special and a roundabout is not. Why? Dunno. It just is.
Then there’s the iPhone. As soon as I was shown some pictures and discovered you could enlarge them by moving your fingers apart on the screen, I had to have one. I treat it with great care and become very defensive when BlackBerry enthusiasts are critical.
It is just some wires and a bit of plastic. It’s not signed by Steve Jobs; I did not give birth to it and took no part in its creation. It is not unique and yet, to me, it is special. And that, in my view, is what makes the difference between a product that you want and a product that you need.
Specialness is particularly important when it comes to cars. Recently, on Top Gear, I drove something called the Eagle Speedster. It was a modern take on the old Jaguar E-type and in many ways it was a bit rubbish. There were no airbags or antilock brakes, and while the lowered, more steeply raked windscreen meant the car looked good, I couldn’t see where I was going. And yet, despite the shortfalls, it is the most special car I’ve driven. Do I need it? No. Do I want it? Yes. More than my left leg.
And now let us spool forwards to the Nissan Pixo. This is the cheapest new car on sale in Britain today and in many ways it is excellent. You do get power steering and antilock braking and I have no doubt that it will be a faithful and reliable servant for many years. And yet, despite all this, I want one about as much as I want a bout of herpes.
There is a similar issue with the new McLaren MP4-12C. It is a superb piece of engineering and, my God, it’s fast. But the excitement and joy and specialness that you get from a Ferrari or a Lamborghini is missing. You sense that it’s the brainchild not of a man called Horacio or Ferruccio or Enzo, but of a man called Ron.
So what about the Audi RS 3? A roundabout? Or my special place in Swaledale?
Well, fans say that because it has a turbocharged five-cylinder engine and four-wheel drive, it harks back to the original quattro,
which, in second-generation 20-valve guise, was one of the most special cars ever made. So it has good genes.
Good manners, too. Unlike the original quattro, the engine is not mounted several yards in front of the front axle, which means that the catastrophic understeer of yesteryear is gone. You just get normal understeer, which is dreary but not fatal.
The power’s good, though. And so’s the speed. And so is the noise and so is the seven-speed dual-clutch flappy-paddle gearbox. Provided you are at the Nürburgring and your family’s life depends on your lap time. If, however, you are not at the Nürburgring and your family is not being held hostage, you may find it a bit irritating.
It’s a problem with all these gearboxes. They’re good when you are travelling fast, but in town they jerk. You don’t get the creep of a normal automatic or the slip from a clutch pedal in a normal manual. I realize, of course, that flappy paddles mean better emissions, which is good news for polar bears, but for smooth driving, they’re pretty hopeless.
Now we must address comfort. There isn’t much, because, like the gearbox, the suspension is set up for fast lap times. It’s not as bad as in some cars but you do need to scour the road ahead carefully so that you don’t accidentally run over a pothole.
Inside, you are reminded that while the RS 3 is a new car, it’s based on a car that is not new at all. It feels old-fashioned. Boring. And it’s time I mentioned this: there’s a wee bit too much choice.
An example. Would you like the climate control to deliver 17.5 degrees or 18? And what would your passenger like? I’m sorry, but half-a-degree increments are plainly silly. You either want to be chilled or warmed. Two settings would do.
It’s the same story with the satnav. Yes, we like to be able to adjust the scale of the map. But in the Audi you twiddle the knob for 90 minutes and it zooms in from something like 900 metres to the centimetre to 875 metres to the centimetre. That’s not necessary.
Neither is the price. It’s just shy of £40,000, which is a lot for what, when all is said and done, is a fancy Golf. Yes, I know that it’s a limited-edition car and that, as a result, second-hand values will be good, but if I were spending that much on a car, I’d want it to feel and look and be a lot more special.
That’s a trick BMW has pulled off very well with the 1-series M coupé. It’s about the same size and price as the Audi and delivers the same sort of get-up-and-go. But while you emerge from every trip in the Beemer wearing an enormous grin, you emerge from the Audi smiling only because the trip is over.
24 July 2011
An asthmatic accountant in lumberjack clothing
Mazda CX-7
How you feel when you arrive somewhere in a car is more important than how you feel on the way. On the way, a car is just a tool, but when you get to your destination, and your hosts are waiting for you, and people you know are looking, that’s when the true value of your wheels shines through.
I went to a party the other night, and when I arrived, there were twelve Range Rovers already parked in the drive. Mine made it thirteen. This made me feel gooey and part of a club: like I’d read the social circles in which I move well and that I was keeping up. The drive to the party had been normal – a row about why it had taken my wife so long to get ready and some light rain – but the arrival was terrific.
However, then the fourteenth car arrived. It was my friend Alex. He screeched into the yard in a seven-year-old Renault Clio and that looked bad. He knew this. So to make up for the deficiency of the rust bucket, he didn’t just pull up and park. He kept his foot on the throttle, turned the wheel slightly and applied the handbrake. This was a cool thing to do, and it more than made up for the brownness of his wheels.
The fact is that, if you exclude the very cheap and the very expensive, all cars feel broadly similar to drive. A BMW and a Merc? Essentially, they are the same. A Renault and a Fiat? Same story. Look at the brakes on your car, then go and look at the brakes on your neighbour’s. Both sets are made by the same people in the same factory. And it’s a similar story with the power-steering system and the wiper motor and the shock absorbers.
Take the engine in your Mini Cooper S. You may think that it’s lovingly hand-crafted by gnarled old men in Oxfordshire and that BMW is fiercely protective of its secrets. Not so. You will find the same engine in the Peugeot RCZ and the Citroën DS3 Racing.
And then there’s the Fiat 500. Lovely little car, so cute and chic and perfect. Except that if you peel away the body, it’s exactly the same as both the Fiat Panda and the Ford Ka. Do you want a Ford Panda or a Fiat Ka? Why not? They will drive and feel and go just like the 500. But they will not feel even remotely similar when you arrive at your friend’s house because your friend will not come out and go, ‘Aaah.’ As they would if you pulled up in the Fifties throwback.
All of this means that brand image is critical. But even more important than that is the styling. And that brings me on to the Mazda CX-7.
There are now many crossover 4x4 family school-run SUV MPV, whatever you want to call them, vehicles, and for the most part they are all absolutely terrible. Pull up at anybody’s house in any one of them and I can pretty much guarantee that no one will open the door. I’d rather be friends publicly with Piers Morgan than friends with someone who has a crossover car.
Crossover cars are for fools. They offer no more space inside than a normal family hatchback but they are perceived by the idiots who buy them to be tougher. Why? They are made from the same grade of steel and the same quality of plastic and they have the same suspension components. You are fooled by the high-riding stance into thinking that they have been built to take on the Kalahari but they have not. All the tall stance means is worse handling and inferior fuel consumption.
The trouble is that crossover cars do look quite good, in a Tonka Toy sort of way. They look better than a Ford Focus. More interesting. They are like accountants underneath but they are wearing lumberjack shirts and Timberlands. It makes them stand out. And just about the best-looking of all of them is the four-wheel-drive Mazda CX-7.
I love the flared arches and the way its window line tapers. If you were in the market for a car like this, you might well see one in your local town and think, Mmmm. That’ll do nicely. I’m with you. I liked the old model quite a lot, but the new one has a few issues. Take a deep breath – we’re going in …
First of all, you would imagine that, being Japanese, it is built to outlast Scotland’s mountains. Well, you will be disappointed to note that when you slam the doors, they sort of clang, and that when the electric window goes up, it crashes into the door frame with such a thud you think the glass will break. Oh, and the offside wiper hit the A pillar on every sweep, which was deeply irritating. It was more relaxing to drive in the rain with the wipers turned off, seeing where I was going using nothing but the Force.
Then there’s the gear change. First, third and reverse are separated by a millimetre, so every time you set off you don’t really know whether you will go forwards, go backwards or stall.
And stall you will, because the turbocharged diesel engine is woeful. They say it will get from 0 to 60 in eleven seconds, which raises the question: sixty what? Certainly not miles per hour. There doesn’t even seem to be much in the way of torque, normally a pleasant by-product of diesel motoring. On even the slightest incline, you need to change down. Which normally means engaging reverse by mistake.
Mazda says the CX-7 produces less nitrous oxide than just about any other car made, which is lovely. But that’s like saying it produces very few eggs or rice pudding. All anyone cares about these days is carbon dioxide. That’s what the tax is based on, and on that front it produces a lot.
And don’t think you can get round all these problems by buying a petrol version with an automatic gearbox. Because there’s no such thing. It’s a diesel manual. Or something else.
I haven’t finished with the problems yet. The satnav screen is the size of a Third World postage stamp, the boot is even smaller
and there is only enough room in the rear for people who have lost their legs.
Now this might just be acceptable if the car were small. But it’s chuffing massive. So big that it would not fit into the parking space in my local underground car park. I even struggled to fit it into a standard London meter bay. And to make matters worse, you cannot see any of the corners from the driver’s seat.
So, big on the outside, small on the inside, badly made, ill-conceived, woefully slow, hard to drive and I wish that were an end to it. But no. It’s also uncomfortable.
The only good thing, apart from the alluring looks, is the price. Considering the equipment provided as standard, it’s not bad. But that, be assured of this, does not make it good value.
It’s strange. Because most cars these days are fundamentally the same, I thought the days of the truly bad car were a thing of the past. There are boring cars and ugly cars and slothful cars. But bad? Outside America, I haven’t driven one of those for years.
I have now, though. So if you must have a CX-7 for whatever reason, please remember to take a leaf out of my mate’s book. Arrive everywhere in it with a handbrake turn.
31 July 2011
Someone please check I haven’t left my spleen back there
BAC Mono
The biggest problem with really fast cars these days is that they are way too fast. I was made aware of this recently when driving the Lotus T125, a sort of quasi Formula One racer.
It is capable of accelerating so savagely that when you put your foot down, your head comes off. And it brakes with such ferocity that all your internal organs become detached and your face squelches into the front of your helmet.
Think of a corner that you encounter on the way to work. Any corner you like. And think of the speed you drive round it. Well, if you tried to do that corner at that speed in the Lotus, there would not be enough air passing over the wings to generate downforce. So you’d crash and be killed.
What Could Possibly Go Wrong. . . Page 10
