What Could Possibly Go Wrong. . .

by Jeremy Clarkson

  Then there’s weight. Even though the new car is bigger than the old one, it weighs about 40 kg less. That’s good for the ecos, and as a bonus it makes the whole package feel livelier. And it really does feel very lively indeed.

  It doesn’t tear your face off, and it doesn’t make much of a noise, but this car can make serious progress, blurring its way though the eight cogs in the optional automatic gearbox and humming a happy little tune to itself as you scythe past other traffic and arc through corners as if you were a world championship water-ski-ist. This car is more like a scientific instrument than a means of transport. It’s delightful.

  The gear lever is a bit annoying. It always bongs at you when you try to move it about, but the Sport/Normal selector is a joy. You simply press a button and then choose which bit of the car you’d like to be what. The best solution? Lots of speed and a nice comfy ride. Then it’s even better than delightful.

  However, there are one or two issues that need to be addressed. First of all, it looks pinched. In the past, all BMWs looked as if their body had been stretched to fit over the wheels. It’s what made them look purposeful. There was a sense the shell could barely contain the power that lay within.

  But the new car looks pinched – like an elephant on a unicycle. And it takes a very keen eye to tell the fast 328i from the cement salesman’s diesel. I’m all in favour of quiet restraint and hiding your light under a bushel when you are out and about. But BMW has gone too far with this new car. It’s a bit too Swedish.

  The interior is beautifully organized and well made, but the 328i I tested was fitted with a steering wheel that felt as if it was covered in sandpaper. Cheap doesn’t really begin to describe the pound-shop nature of this item. And it gets worse because my car was equipped with optional wood trim of such monumental terribleness, I longed for every journey to end so I could get out and not look at it any more.

  It looks exactly like the ‘wood’ used to make a Disneyland log canoe. In other words, it doesn’t look like wood at all. It looks like Fred Flintstone’s club. Like a giant Cadbury Flake. The sort of thing that no one, not even Wayne Rooney, would find appealing, attractive, interesting, tasteful, desirable, nice or real.

  Then there’s the problem with buying a 3-series. Go on, try it. Engage your internet, go to BMW’s website and try to make sense of what’s there. You can’t. Not till you’ve found your reading glasses, and then gone to Boots to buy a pair that is even more powerful. And even when you are able to read the microdot typeface, your computer won’t have the plug-in necessary to enjoy any of the site’s features. Not that you will understand what’s on offer anyway, because it’s either flowery rubbish or techno gobbledygook.

  Soon you will give up with the complexity and buy something else. Well, I would, and that’s a shame because whatever you buy will be worse.

  15 April 2012

  Click away, paparazzi, I’ve got nice clean Y-fronts

  Audi A8 3.0 TFSI

  Until quite recently it was pretty easy to run the public relations department of a car company. You organized foreign jollies for journalists, you got one of them to translate the vehicle’s publicity pack into something close to English and then you ran a fleet of press demonstrators.

  And your boss was happy if the journalist you flew out to St Tropez, and furnished with a fully fuelled car for the week, gave it a friendly notice in his paper. Even if the paper in question was the Welsh Pig Breeders’ Gazette.

  But then Audi employed a man called Jon Zammett as its head of PR, and he decided he wasn’t really that bothered about small puff pieces in provincial farming magazines. What Zammett wanted was to see Audi in Hello!.

  So on the quiet he began to furnish various celebrities with Audis. He has been so successful that now pretty well every star we put in Top Gear’s Reasonably Priced Car tells us that he has an Audi and that he’s very pleased with it. And it’s not just celebrities, either.

  Why do you think Zammett was invited to last year’s royal wedding? Why does he now appear on red-carpet party guest lists more than Jordan and Victoria Beckham combined? Simple. You have a face? You want wheels? He is a one-stop shop in a suit.

  It was a brilliant wheeze, a fairly low-cost plan that took Audi out of the oily rags and into the diamond-encrusted, pap-spattered glitter ball of celebrity. Frankly, the man’s a genius.

  Providing stars with cars was only part of his headline-grabbing antics. Because in the past celebrities were expected to make their own way from their sumptuous homes to the glittering gala do. This meant they would turn up in front of the flashguns in whatever their local chauffeur company happened to be running at the time – an S-class Mercedes, usually.

  Zammett realized this was a lost opportunity, and so at a secret location – in Warwickshire – he keeps a vast flotilla of Audi A8s and the contact details of a hundred or so former coppers who can be called upon at a moment’s notice to fire up the fleet and descend on the Empire in Leicester Square.

  Just go and check all those old copies of Hello! that you keep by the lavatory. Notice how the car from which a knees-together star with a Daz-white smile is climbing is always an Audi. Zammett did that.

  It’s had a marked effect on sales. After the collapse of Lehman Brothers, when every car firm had its back to the wall, Audi actually shifted more metal than ever before. One company chief said, ‘We note that there is a recession in full swing at the moment. But we have decided not to take part.’

  Last year in Britain alone Audi sold 113,797 cars. That’s almost 32,000 more than Mercedes and a staggering 73,000 more than it sold back in 1999.

  That’s the result of today’s strange obsession with celebrity. Or is it? Could it be that the new Audi A8 is simply better than its mighty rival the S-class?

  In terms of looks, no. If you take away the Audi’s grille, which looks like George Michael’s beard, it could be a Toyota or a Honda. That’s fine if you want to maintain a low profile, but if you want to cut a dash, you’d be better off with the Merc. That thing’s got serious presence.

  Value? It’s hard to say, really, because there are countless models and each is available with a vast array of options. The car I tested was a four-wheel-drive petrol-powered 3.0 TFSI, and that’s just shy of £60,000 – a tiny bit less than an entry-level S-class.

  So what about space? Well, I was recently chauffeured in an A8 to the ballet and I fell asleep in the back. So it’s fine. It’s also fine in the front. But then it would be. It’s a really, really big car.

  So now we must consider what it’s like to drive, and this is where Audis in recent years have come a cropper. The company’s engineers have never understood that road-worker Johnnys in Britain are not quite as thorough as their opposite numbers in Germany. Which means that big Audis in the past have always been way too firmly sprung. Or, to put it another way, uncomfortable.

  The new model is different because the driver is allowed to choose just how soft and gooey he wants the ride home to be. And we’re not talking here simply about the suspension. Oh no.

  You’ve various settings for that, including Comfort, Automatic and I-Want-to-Go-Around-the-Nürburgring. You have a similar variety of choices for the engine and gearbox, the steering, the differential, the lights and even the seatbelts. Why? This is a large car, designed for large people who just want to get home after a large lunch. If they’d wanted a bone-hard ride with electric performance, they’d have bought a BMW M3.

  In a bit of a huff, I put everything in Comfort mode and set off up the M40. It was utterly delightful. As relaxing as a happy ending. Smooth, quiet, soft – exactly how a big car should feel.

  But then I turned off the motorway, and oh dear. All of a sudden the suspension and the steering seemed to lose control of the bulk. It was like trying to drive home on a slightly decomposed hippo. So I dived back into the menu and chose the Dynamic setting, and suddenly everything was worse.

  Eventually I realized that it’s best to let the comput
er choose a setting to suit the conditions. But even here there’s an issue. Because the steering system constantly flicks from Dynamic to Comfort, you are never sure how much effort you should use to turn the wheel. Sometimes you think just a bit will be required, and then just as you spot a bus coming the other way, you realize it should have been a lot.

  There are other small irritations, too. The gear selector is too fiddly, the steering-wheel-mounted buttons feel cheap, the dash is made from wood (very 1986) and when you select reverse, the radio turns itself down. Is this so you can hear when your dog’s head bursts? Surely it’s too late then.

  Another point I should make at this stage. Don’t bother with the 3-litre petrol I drove. It’s quiet and refined, but in all honesty the diesel provides all the get-up-and-go, with less thirst. And a better resale value.

  It sounds here as though I have a downer on the new A8, but that’s not strictly accurate. Because when it’s bad, it’s not really very bad at all. And when it’s good, it’s fantastic. It is so quiet and so comfortable on the motorway, you can set the cruise control, sit back and use the on-board wi-fi to get on with some emails. Just remember that if you’ve selected the auto steering, it doesn’t actually mean it will steer automatically.

  I also loved the quality of the stereo and the DAB radio system that let me listen to Christian FM. This is much better than normal radio because you are not warned about traffic jams ahead. Only the fact that you will soon be engulfed by God’s fiery love.

  Truth be told, though, you get Christian radio in a Mercedes S-class as well. And with that car you will always have upmarket mini-cabbers queuing around the clock when the time comes to sell. It’s a more sensible buy.

  The trouble is that in a Merc you look like a fat man on his way to a meeting. In the Audi, thanks to the efforts of Mr Zammett, you look like Jude Law.

  29 April 2012

  Get a grip – it’s only a Roller

  Rolls-Royce Phantom II

  You can’t really relax when it’s your daughter’s eighteenth birthday party and your house is rammed to bursting point with a cocktail of rampaging testosterone and vodka. Certainly you can’t just go to bed, partly because of the worry that everyone is going to get pregnant, but mostly because of the noise.

  So I didn’t. I stayed up all night, totally forgetting that at eleven o’clock the next morning I was due at the Emirates stadium in the nuclear-free, vegan outreaches of north London. Happily, I had booked a driver. Unhappily, he turned up in the brand-new, second-generation Rolls-Royce Phantom.

  At first, all was well. Buoyed by a drink-fuelled contentment that nobody had cut their head off or given birth, I slumped into the vast rear seat in a Ready Brek glow of warm fuzziness.

  However, about twenty minutes later this had begun to wear off. And as we reached London, I started to worry that I might die. Ten minutes after that, I was worried I might not.

  There was a rolling tide of nausea in my head that manifested itself in waves of great pain and an all-over veneer of perspiration. I desperately wanted to go to sleep but the driver was unfamiliar with Islington – there isn’t much call for Rolls-Royce test drives there – so I needed to help him find the best route. ‘Can you drive as fast as possible,’ I asked, ‘into a lamppost?’

  Eventually we arrived and I discovered something interesting. When you step out of a Rolls-Royce into a mooching herd of football fans, they become united in a certain knowledge that you are an onanist. They voice this opinion loudly and often, and since you are going in the same direction as them, it doesn’t stop.

  I arrived at my host’s box in a blizzard of sweat, sickness and abuse, only to discover that one of the other guests was a motoring writer who once told his readers that my opinion was worthless because I was a multi-millionaire tax exile who lived on the Isle of Man.

  I’ve wanted for some time to hear him explain why the opinion of a ‘multi-millionaire’ is somehow less relevant than the opinion of, say, a schoolteacher, and how he got it into his head that I was a tax exile. But, sadly, when the moment arrived, I was otherwise engaged, trying to stop myself fainting.

  The match was dismal. There were no goals. And then I was faced with the problem of getting through the crowds to the waiting Rolls. And here’s a funny thing. As we all walked along, everyone was jolly friendly. There was some good-natured joshing about my support for Chelsea and a few questions about Richard Hammond’s teeth, and all was well …

  Until I stepped into the Rolls, whereupon I suddenly became an onanist again. So there I was, feeling like a skin bag full of sick, in the back of a Phantom that was going nowhere because of a vast horde of Islingtonites who were making hand gestures and chanting. Oh, and one thing you might like to know: if you push the button that draws a curtain over the back window, you make everything ten times worse.

  I’m not quite sure why, but today you can be a bank robber or a pugilist or a benefits cheat, and that’s fine. You can be a drug addict or a Peeping Tom. But woe betide anyone who is rich.

  Every day the Daily Mail finds someone on a high salary and mocks them mercilessly. David Cameron’s ability to lead is questioned simply because he’s perceived as being wealthy. Autocar reckons that because my DVDs have been big sellers, I’m no longer capable of rational thought.

  A far-left candidate in France’s presidential elections proposed a 100 per cent tax on all earnings above €360,000 (£300,000) a year, and I bet if such a scheme were introduced here, it would receive almost unanimous support. There’s a sense, and it’s completely wrong-headed, of course, that in these difficult economic times anyone who has a bob or two must have stolen it from a charity box or a nurse.

  And naturally there is no statement of wealth that even gets close to a Rolls-Royce Phantom. Which is why Arsenal’s whisper-quiet peace-and-love brigade turned into an army that would have warmed the heart of even Stalin. Top tip, then: if you’re going to buy this latest version of the Phantom, for God’s sake stay away from the mob.

  At first glance the new car seems to be pretty much identical to the old one. At the front the headlamps are slightly different and at the back there’s a chrome strip on the bumper. There are some new wheels as well but, really, it’s just a slight change of wardrobe rather than a full liposuction, boob enhancement and tummy tuck.

  It’s much the same story on the inside, too. A raft of tiny little cosmetic alterations that caused me to think, Oh no, I’m going to be sick. You, on the other hand, will sit there and wonder, I know the last Phantom was pretty bloody good but surely there was scope for a bit more improvement than this. Well, there has been improvement. It’s just that you can’t see it.

  Nine years ago, when the Phantom first slithered out of the factory in Goodwood, West Sussex, Rolls-Royce was at great pains to point out that, although the company was owned by BMW, the car shared only 15 per cent of its components with a 7-series. Never mind that one of the components was ‘the engine’; the manufacturer made a good point: the Phantom didn’t feel, look or drive anything like a Beemer.

  However, since the Phantom’s launch, BMW has developed a raft of electronic improvements that are now available on an £18,000 1-series. But not its £350,000 Roller.

  So. What to do? Go to all the trouble and expense of designing new electronics for the Rolls? Or simply use BMW items? That’s what the company has done. The swivelling headlamps. The 3-D satnav. The USB port. It’s a forest of BMW technology in there, and you know what? It’s sacrilege and it’s wrong – and I don’t actually care.

  Because even though there is now a rather worrying Dynamic option for those who wish to take their Rolls-Royce around the Nürburgring, the Phantom still feels, drives and looks like nothing else. It is a sublime experience, like getting into a warm bubble bath and then getting out and finding yourself somewhere else.

  The quality is unmatched. The eighteen cows, for instance, that donate their skin to make the seats in a single car are kept far away from barbed wir
e fences and anything else that might make them uneasy. And Rolls has developed a new colouring process in which the dye permeates the entire hide, ensuring it will never crack. You don’t get that attention to detail in even a palace.

  The carpets are thicker than anything you have at home, the wood veneer is peerless, the art deco light fittings are wondrous to behold, the V12 engine makes no noise at all, the ride comfort is straight from the pages of Aladdin, and while there are many gizmos, they’re all hidden away. We see this with the gear lever, which may have eight speeds at its disposal but offers you a choice of only forwards, backwards or neither.

  The new Phantom, then, is an intelligent and discreet step forward for what was – and still is – the only car in the world that completely detaches you from reality. Just remember, though, that if you go to the wrong place in it, it will detach otherwise normal people from their sanity.

  6 May 2012

  I know about your frilly knickers, Butch

  Mercedes SLK 55 AMG

  Ever since it minced into the marketplace sixteen years ago, Mercedes’ little SLK has been the world’s only transgender car. Even though it was born with an Adam’s apple, dressed in shorts and trained to use the urinals, it has always been as girlie as a pink bedroom full of soft toys.

  If I’d been running Mercedes-Benz, I’d have been quite pleased about this. I’d have accepted that the car was a ladyboy and changed its name immediately to the Fluffy Rabbit or E. L. James. I’d have offered it in a range of pastel colours and employed Stella McCartney to design a range of interior fabrics.

  But no. Mercedes could not accept that its child was a bit light in its loafers. So as it grew, the company fitted it with a massive V8 engine and changed its exhaust note from Barbra Streisand to Ted Nugent. This was unwise and unfair – like forcing Freddie Mercury to get a job as a scaffolder.