What Could Possibly Go Wrong. . .

by Jeremy Clarkson

  But there is an upside to this. Because it sits on tall, non-sporty tyres, it is extremely comfortable. And despite the diesel flowing through its arteries, it’s very quiet as well. And it is fitted as standard with every single thing you could dream of.

  I can think of hundreds of people – probably thousands – who would love a car such as this. People who are not bothered about handling or driving along as though they are on fire. People who just want a quiet, comfortable, gadget-laden cruiser. At an amazingly low price.

  But there is a problem that takes me right back to the gentlemen’s changing rooms. It’s a very showy car, very brash. And who would that suit?

  I have seen several people in American gangster movies who could pull it off, but here in Britain? Hmmm. A rapper, perhaps, but in my experience most like a bit of Bentley & Gabbana. They like a brand name, and Chrysler’s a bit Poundland. Beyond rap-land … I can’t think of anyone.

  It is, then, like the perfect pair of trousers. They are keenly priced and made ethically and well by adults in a clean factory with many fire escapes and wheelchair ramps. They are exactly what you need and they fit like a glove. Lovely. Except they are purple.

  14 October 2012

  Out with the flower power, in with the toothbrush moustache

  VW Beetle 1.4 TSI Sport

  Enzo Ferrari once described the E-type Jaguar as the most beautiful car ever made. And even today, fifty-one years after it first sent a fizz down everyone’s trousers, you can still turn more heads by driving down the street in an E-type than you could if you rode into town on the back of a diplodocus.

  The E-type has transcended fashion, and even Marilyn Monroe hasn’t been able to pull that one off. Back in the day she was considered to be the most beautiful woman in the world and she died before age wearied her. Today, though, most young boys would describe her as ‘a bit fat’.

  Buildings? Nope. I guarantee that all of those über-modern, über-cool houses you see on Grand Designs will, in twenty years’ time, look absolutely ridiculous. As stupid then as a 1970s house looks now. But a hundred years after that they will all be listed and revered and people will come from Japan to photograph them.

  Our taste changes constantly. Sunglasses have to be round. Then they don’t. Trousers are worn high. Then they are not. But through loon pants and punk and new Labour, the E-type has soldiered on, winning every single poll to find the best-looking car ever made. It was considered pretty at launch. It was still thought to be pretty when it went out of production. And it still causes people to swoon and faint today.

  So it must have at least crossed the mind of Jaguar’s board to make next year’s F-type look like some kind of modern interpretation. An E-type with a 21st-century twist. But no. It’s not curvy or small. It doesn’t have especially pronounced haunches or an oval radiator grille. As I see it, there is not one single detail that’s been carried over, not a single nod of acknowledgment. And I think that is very, very weird.

  The new car is good-looking, make no mistake about that. I don’t doubt it will be fast, and will oversteer so controllably that the helmsmen at Autocar magazine will be tempted to rub warm oils into the gentleman bag of its chassis engineer.

  We hear that in terms of size it fits neatly between the Porsche Boxster and the 911. We hear that prices will start at around £55,000, that there’s a choice of V6 or V8 power plant and that, while it will be launched as a convertible, a coupé is in the pipeline. It all sounds very well thought out and lovely.

  But what in the name of all that’s holy caused Jaguar’s board to say, ‘Yes. We have the legal and moral right to make it look like an E-type. But we won’t’?

  It’s not as though there isn’t a taste for retro designs right now. Fiat has the 500, which, in London at least, seems to have taken a 75 per cent share of the market. You also have the Mini, which is bought by everyone else. Ford has unveiled images of what it thinks a modern-day Cortina might look like, and then, of course, until recently we had the Chrysler PT Cruiser … which shows, I suppose, that things don’t always work out as well as the company hoped.

  Speaking of which. The Volkswagen Beetle. When I was first introduced to the reincarnated version, I was much taken by it. I thought it was a great idea to clothe the VW Golf in some Wehrmacht clobber and fit a vase. I even considered buying one.

  I’m glad I didn’t, because quite quickly it became clear VW had somehow missed the mark. Part of the problem is the Bug looked a bit too friendly. And friendly-looking cars – the Nissan Micra is another – always seem a bit gormless. Cars need to have at least a hint of aggression – and the Beetle didn’t.

  I thought VW would give up, but it hasn’t. It has come back with another Beetle, which is lower and more purposeful. It has spooky wheels, a menacing spoiler and a hint of the night about it. Think of it as Herbie’s bank-robber cousin.

  Inside, the flower-power vase is gone, and in its place you have a dash to match the colour you’ve chosen for the body, an odd glovebox, modern-day electronic equipment and the biggest fuel gauge ever fitted to any car in all of history. It’s the size of the moon. It’s so big you get the sense that you could drive for 3,000 miles in the red zone.

  So – drum roll – has it worked?

  Well, I hate to be a party pooper but I don’t think it has. It looks like a hippie in a Rambo suit. The Beetle may have been a by-product of war but it became a symbol of peace. And the new aggression? I don’t know. Imagine a CND symbol picked out in razor wire. A dove with machineguns.

  I suppose you could soften things up with some stickers. The Mini and the Fiat 500 are available with a great many adhesive options designed to conjure up images of Mary Quant or Rome on a sunny day. But what stickers would you put on a Beetle to put you in mind of its origins? Second thoughts, best leave the stickers out of it.

  And, anyway, there is no doubt some people like the design as it is. So let’s move on to see what it’s like as a car.

  Not bad, is the answer. There’s a 2-litre 197-brake-horsepower version on the market, but I tried the clever 1.4 Sport, which has good fuel economy and, thanks to two turbochargers, 158 bhp as well. You have to work the six-speed gearbox hard to get at the power but it’s nice to know it’s there if you can be bothered.

  The handling’s good, which is due in no small part to what is basically an electronic differential that tames the driven front wheels and allows you to drive like an ape, stamping on the throttle when really you shouldn’t.

  Mostly, though, it is a comfortable and quiet, easy and relaxing cruising machine with some genuinely nice touches. The big glass sunroof is one, and the optional Fender sound system is another, partly because it glows at night, partly because the sound is good but mostly because it’s a Fender. And who wouldn’t want that in their life?

  In essence it feels very like a Golf, and that’s not surprising because, of course, under the Hitler suit that’s what it is. You don’t get the practicality of a Golf – it’s quite cramped in the back – but at least the boot is bigger than it was on the last Beetle. You do, however, get a much higher standard of fit and finish, because the Golf is made in slovenly Germany, while the Beetle is made in Mexico – a byword for fastidious attention to detail, as we know.

  So. The nub. The price. The Beetle costs about the same as the VW Scirocco, which, of course, has the same engine. And that seems to be rather clever. You choose. Retro or modern? Maybe that’s what Jag should have done with its new car. F-type or G-spot?

  28 October 2012

  You can keep your schnapps, Heidi – I’ll have cider with Rosie

  Mercedes A 250 AMG

  When my dad announced that he’d become engaged to a girl from the next village, his parents were mortified. ‘What’s the matter with the girls from our village?’ they cried.

  Psychologists don’t call this limited-horizon thinking ‘Nissan Almera syndrome’, but they should. The Almera was just some car. White goods you bought by the pound or the
foot. It did nothing badly, but it did nothing well, either. It was for people who saw no need to eat fancy food or to holiday outside Britain. It was a bucket of beige, a non-car for those frightened of the exotic.

  Of course, it was not alone. There was also the Toyota Corolla. A fridge with windscreen wipers. A car for people who daren’t look at the sunset lest they become aroused. Chicken korma people.

  Happily today in Britain both the Almera and the Corolla are gone, buried with the ghosts of Terry and June in a cemetery on a bypass, under a perpetually grey sky, beneath a headstone that no one will ever visit. We’ve moved on. We all want Range Rover Evoques these days. Or mini MPVs or maybe a swashbuckling coupé. The meat-and-potato hatchback is dead.

  Except it isn’t. It’s lower than it used to be and more sleek. It’s replete with styling details to arouse the curiosity. It’s no longer the girl from down the street. It’s an internet bride, a brogue with scarlet laces. The Ford Escort has become the Focus, all independent rear suspension and tricksy diff. The Vauxhall Astra has stepped out of its mackintosh and slipped into a pair of open-crotch panties. Even the new Volkswagen Golf looks as if it knows where Tate Modern is.

  And now we get to the Mercedes A-class, the latest frumpy-dumpy hatch to have been force-fed a diet of vodka and Red Bull. The original had two floors, one a few inches above the other. With straight faces, Merc’s engineers explained that in the event of a crash, the engine would slide into the gap and thus would not turn the occupants into paste. And I don’t doubt this was true.

  So why does the new car not have such a feature? If it was such a bonzer idea, why drop it? Could it, I wonder – a bit rhetorically – have something to do with the fact that the real reason the original had two floors is that it had been conceived as an electric car and needed somewhere to store the battery?

  Happily Mercedes has now realized electric cars have no future and, as a result, one floor is enough. It has also realized that it can’t just sell a packing case with wheels any more. Today we live in a skinny latte world and instant coffee won’t do. A hatchback, therefore, has to have some zing.

  So the new A-class has all sorts of styling creases down the flanks, a titchy rear window and a massive bulbous nose with the grille from what appears to be a truck stuck on the front. It now looks like the sort of car they might have used on the moon base in Space 1999.

  And I tested the 250 AMG version, which has massive wheels as well. I want to tell you it looked a bit silly, a bit garish, a bit overstyled. But I can’t because, actually, it looked tremendous. Many others also thought so.

  Inside, it’s good, too, chiefly because it feels like a much bigger Mercedes. However, there were a couple of issues. I have new shoes. They are Dr Martens and I like them very much but they were too wide for the gap between the wheelarch and the brake pedal. This meant that every time I pressed the accelerator, I slowed down.

  And there’s more. When you push the driver’s seat fully back, your shoulder is adjacent to the B pillar. This means you can’t drive with your arm resting on the window ledge. I’m surprised by how annoying that was.

  There was another surprise as well. This is an AMG-badged car, and that is the same as a three-chilli warning on the menu at your local Indian restaurant. You expect, if you turn your foot sideways to press the throttle, to have your eyes moved round to the side of your head so you end up looking like a pigeon. But no.

  The turbocharged 2-litre engine spools up nicely enough and the rev counter charges towards the red zone, but the speedo confirms what your peripheral vision has been suggesting: you aren’t picking up speed at anything like the rate you were expecting.

  A quick glance at the technical specifications reveals the reason. There’s no shortage of power but most of it is used to move the excess weight. This is a heavy car. You feel that weight in the corners, too. No AMG Mercedes is built to generate 6 g on roundabouts – you need a BMW for that – but this one feels inert and out of its depth. So it’s not that fast in a straight line. And it’s not that exciting in the corners. And the gearbox isn’t much cop, either.

  Perhaps the AMG badge is to blame. Perhaps it’s writing cheques the car isn’t even designed to cash. Perhaps, beneath it all, it’s designed to be a quiet and unruffled cruiser. On a smooth road, that’s certainly the case. But introduce even the slightest ripple and you’d better be sitting on a cushion at the time because the ride in this car is terrible.

  I’m told that on standard wheels, with normal suspension, the new A-class is pretty good. But in the AMG trim it is – and I’m choosing my words carefully here – effing unpleasant. Fast Mercs in the recent past have got quite close to the line in terms of unacceptable stiffness. This one crosses it.

  But towering above the ride in the big bag of mistakes is the fuel tank. It may be large enough if the engine under the bonnet is a diesel, but when it’s a turbo nutter petrol bastard, you can’t even get from London to Sheffield and back without filling up. God knows what it will be like when the 350-bhp four-wheel-drive version arrives next year. That won’t be able to get from 0 to 62 mph without spluttering to a halt.

  The standard car, I don’t doubt for a moment, is all right. It’s certainly getting rave notices from all quarters. But this hot one? No. It’s surprisingly poor in too many areas.

  And it’s not like you’re short of alternatives. If you want a prestigious badge, Audi will sell you a fast A3 that won’t break your back or cause you to spend half your life putting petrol in the tank. But my recommendation is that you forget the badge and buy an Astra. I drove the VXR recently, and while it may have only three doors, I was extremely surprised by how good it was. And how comfortable.

  Strange, isn’t it? The Astra. It used to be a byword for everything we thought we’d left behind. But after a bit of a makeover, the girl from your own village is better than the generously breasted temptress from Stuttgart.

  4 November 2012

  A real stinker from Silvio, the lav attendant

  Chrysler Ypsilon

  Many years ago I saw a magnificently idiotic film in which Sylvester Stallone played the part of a tough cop who was cryonically frozen for a crime he had not committed. Then, at some point in the future, he was defrosted so that he could rush about punching people in the face.

  Every single thing about it was idiotic, especially the director’s vision of what the future might look like. People drove around in cars that were satellite-controlled to keep them at the speed limit. The radio stations only played silly little ditties from television commercials. It was illegal to swear or make fun of anyone because of their colour or their creed or the state of their mental health. It all seemed bonkers. And yet here we are in 2012 and it’s pretty much the Labour party manifesto.

  There was something else as well. Capitalism had run amok to the point where there was really only one company that controlled everything. I seem to recall it was Taco Bell. That isn’t in Ed Millipede’s head, of course. But it’s almost certainly coming anyway. In fact, in the car world you could be forgiven for thinking it’s already here.

  You might think when you buy a Seat that you are buying something with a bit of Spanish flair but, actually, you are buying a Volkswagen Golf. You may think when you buy a Skoda that you are buying 15 feet of sturdy Czech ingenuity. Nope. That’s a Golf too. Audi A3? Golf as well, I’m afraid.

  So what about an Aston Martin Cygnet? Surely, you’re thinking, that can’t be a Golf. You’re right. It isn’t. It’s actually a Toyota. The Subaru BRZ? That’s a Toyota also.

  I am particularly excited at the moment about the new Alfa Romeo 4C. Which is a Mazda MX-5. Then you have the Ford Ka, which is a Fiat Panda. The Fiat 500 is also a Panda. And the subject of this morning’s missive is a Panda as well, even though it doesn’t say so on the back. It doesn’t say Lancia, either, which is strange because that’s the company that made it. And that’s why I’ve been trying for two straight years to get my hands on one.

&nb
sp; I firmly believe that in the past hundred years Lancia has made more truly great cars than any other brand. Ford gets close. So does Ferrari. But Lancia edges it, thanks to the Stratos, the Fulvia, the 037 – the last two-wheel-drive car ever to win the world rally championship – the Delta Integrale and other, more elderly models with running boards that exist now only in the minds and garages of people who played the drums with Pink Floyd.

  Even when Lancia was not very good, it was still rather brilliant. The Gamma was a classic case in point. We all knew that on full left lock, a design fault meant the pistons could meet the valves in a head-on collision, causing the engine to explode. But we didn’t care because it was so very, very pretty to look at.

  Then you had the supercharged HPE. Made from steel so thin you could use it as tracing paper, and sold as an estate even though it was no such thing, this was a triumph of style over absolutely everything else that matters and I loved it.

  Some say that Lancias were unreliable and while this is almost certainly true, it’s hard to be sure because they had usually rusted away long before any of the mechanical components had the chance to malfunction. Fans didn’t mind, though, because of those bite-the-back-of-your-hand-and-faint looks.

  The trouble is that in the 1980s the Italians handed the styling department over to someone who plainly went to work with a box on his head. The result was a range of cars that oxidized and blew up. And didn’t look very nice in the process. With hindsight this was not a good idea. We can tolerate bad-tempered lunatic girlfriends if they are pretty. But not if they look like the Beta saloon. Or the Dedra.