by James May
If we're going to take cars seriously, we need serious cars. Some serious cars that spring to mind are the Bentley Arnage T, the Fiat Panda, the Vauxhall Astra VXR, the Lexus GS430 (no, really), the Citroen C6 and the Renault Grande Espace. In the arenas in which they compete, they do what they're supposed to do with conspicuous thoroughness, to the enduring satisfaction of the intelligent and informed owner.
It's the same with the 911 and the F430. They're superb cars that work brilliantly, and in this day and age that's what matters once again.
Viewers will remember that we had the 911 up against the BMW M6 and the Aston V8 on the Isle of Man a few weeks back. I was expecting to go for the Aston, but after a few hundred miles I realised that the 911 was still a better car. It's always difficult to explain what makes a 911 great; in fact, on first acquaintance it feels decidedly wonky. The driving position is still slightly odd and old-fashioned, and the engine is still ostensibly in the wrong place. But once it gets under your skin – and it will – it's there for good. Maybe there is something in heritage, bloodline and all that other guff that Porsche would put forward in the showroom.
There certainly is where Ferrari is concerned. There's more utter cock talked about Ferrari than about any other subject on earth, even football. But there is something about a small V8 Ferrari that cannot be found in any other car. It's not mystique or any of that nonsense. It's because it works, brilliantly.
When we took the F430, the Zonda and the Ford GT to France, I became unutterably convinced of this. The Fezza is the connoisseur's choice, the one that the true lover of cars and driving will appreciate the most. Surely it's no coincidence that the F430 is the product of a company that has been devoted to the supercar cause for decades?
You simply cannot fake this stuff. Other makers seem to imagine that they can leap straight into the realm occupied by Porsche and Ferrari with some ludicrous performance figures, seductive styling and a bit of savvy marketing. But some of us know better. Other cars may be more fashionable, but look beyond that and you will discover that the others aren't actually as good at being great cars.
But here's what really amazes me. The Porsche and the F430 no longer look ostentatious. Every other expensive sports coupe or supercar has become so bound up with bling and football that these two are now appearing to go quietly amidst all the fuss. The latest 911 is one of the most subtly beautiful yet, but remains workmanlike and discreet. The interior is superbly assembled yet is still, above all else, entirely functional, whereas the Aston's interior is disappointing in its details and smacks of flim-flam.
The F430 is clearly still a touch flamboyant, especially in spider form, but it is inoffensively styled. It's more like a perfectly turned ankle than a pumped-up cleavage. Compare it with the Zonda thing that Hammond was driving in France. It's covered with bits of carbon fibre, which is now the Burberry check of the supercar world. It's all tinsel and has nothing to do with the joy of driving.
Call me old-fashioned, but my first requirement of a cooker is not that it's brushed stainless steel; it's that it roasts joints.
TRACK DAYS, OR THE FUTILITY OF GOING NOWHERE
The other day, I and my two Top Gear colleagues had a bit of a race. The venue was Castle Combe circuit, the cars were three '70s Italian exotics, and we were deeply embroiled in one of our old-car challenges.
Laps were driven against the clock; there were points won for beating a certain time and points lost for being late. Usual sort of thing.
This much I can reveal. I was last, in an old Lamborghini, and I'm absolutely delighted. I've never been especially good at circuit driving, I have immense difficulty in driving fast and talking to the camera at the same time, and in any case I always end up caring about our old nails too deeply. These are noble and dignified reasons for defeat, and better than the lame snivelling about misfires and wonky brakes that we're used to hearing from the other two.
Better still, the Castle Combe experience helped me to resolve one of the great conundrums of my life as a motoring journalist. Perhaps uniquely amongst my contemporaries, I have never done a track day. And now I've decided that I'm never going to. Never.
For what, exactly, is the point? Apart from the sartorial horror of having to dress up in Nomex overalls and gaily coloured fireproof booties, a track day achieves nothing.
Some of you may be thinking that a track day would make me a better driver. But I'm afraid this is just a rumour put around by advanced driving instructors who run track days, rather in the way that bald men are more virile according to bald men. A race track is not like the real world. There are no pedestrian crossings or bus lanes and all the cars are going in the same direction. I have never driven down the old A40 – one of my favourite roads – to find that someone has thoughtfully placed some fluorescent bollards at the turn-in points for bends. Neither has the local council erected a sign saying BRAKE just before that sharp right-hander near Thame. These are things for me to enjoy working out for myself.
And then there's Frank Melling, Telegraph Motoring's voice of classic motorcycling. He has vowed to take me on a bike track day, but I've decided this is a poor idea as well. I'd probably fall off or end up with a bad dose of Old Bike Face, a skin condition brought on by slavish adherence to classic motorcycling principles and riding through winter in an open-face helmet.
And why would I want to be a better rider? As the marketing people might say, it would be off-message vis-à-vis my core brand values of being a bit useless. If I was any good at riding a motorcycle, all the fear and fun would go out of it. Likewise, if I was good at driving on a circuit, I would be completely redundant at Top Gear, where it's my job to be Captain Slow and come last whenever we have a race.
Another school of thought says that track days will reveal something about your car. This much at least appears to be true, since the old Lambo revealed a '70s Malteser. I had braked heavily and rather late for a sudden chicane, or some other track feature with no parallel on real roads and put there purely to annoy me, and saw the fluff-covered vintage confection shoot out from under the passenger's seat. But as I lifted off to turn in (or however these track types articulate the perfectly ordinary business of driving) it disappeared again. I haven't seen it since.
Elsewhere, the rear-view mirror fell off on a lefthander and hit me in the face, and my mobile phone disappeared down one of those crannies 'twixt seat and console designed to admit a mobile phone but not an adult hand. Remarkably, they knew how to do this even in 1975. And under the passenger seat of every car there is, somewhere on the seat-sliding mechanism, a huge blob of thick and filthy grease. This is found on brand-new cars and I can now confirm that it's still there 30 years later, awaiting the moment when someone has to retrieve his wallet after a track day.
Few things in life are more futile than a track day. It is an affront to the liberty and independence offered by the car – not to mention the awesome achievements of the world's tireless road-builders – to wantonly drive in such a way that you will, inevitably, end up exactly where you started one minute thirty-nine point two five seconds later and needing some new tyres.
Or, worse, wedged between some old ones and needing a whole new car.
CLASSIC CARS – YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED
The world is full of misty-eyed optimists. If it wasn't, there wouldn't be a classic car scene. As it is, there is a very big one, and a whole rack of WH Smith's devoted to throwing away money that could have been spent on something useful, such as a new car.
Don't get me wrong – I love old cars. They're fascinating, they're great material for pub debates, and they're endlessly amusing. But I am a man who has gone carpetless for love, while other people imagine they can enter lightly into a relationship with an old car without realising that these things are the Heather Mills of motoring.
Every now and then I receive a letter from a reader or viewer who is interested in buying a classic car and is seeking advice. There has also been a rash of articles in the moto
ring press recently, headbanging that old chestnut about buying a supercar for Mondeo money, which is becoming so fatuous that it's high time somebody pointed out what a nice Mondeo you could buy with all the money you'd lose on that Jensen Interceptor. Finally, it's almost summer, when people forget the horrors of poor demisting, sticky heater valves and damp starting, and imagine that a Maserati Bora can not only recapture a glorious age of driving freedom but can even be used outdoors.
So here, finally, are the basics: the definitive cut-out-'n'-keep guide to old-car ownership, an executive summary of pending woe that the eternally hopeful can keep in the glovebox. But not the glovebox of a '60s Alfa Spider, because it will go soggy.
Is it vital that you complete your journey?
If so, you need to think about alternative transport arrangements. The most popular solution is something known as a 'modern car'.
Old cars are old
I bought my Bentley T2 with the attitude: 'It may be old, but it's still a Bentley.' The truth is more like: 'It may be a Bentley, but it's still old.' Even the most exotic car is still made from car-making materials, and they wear out. I'm guessing that you no longer use any 30-year-old electro-mechanical devices around the home, and that they probably went in the bin during the '80s. How could anyone expect something built by Fiat in the '70s to still work properly? This is why the expression 'good condition for year' is so meaningless in classic car small ads. If the car in question is something like a Datsun 120Y, then the very fact that it hasn't been scrapped means it's in good condition for the year.
Old cars aren't very good
If they were, they would still be in production. Wonky handling, cussed carburettors and poor fuel consumption are not the real issues here, it's the little things that you hadn't realised were so good on your 2002 Ford Focus – the power of the headlights, the effectiveness of the windscreen wipers, the ergonomics of the seats and so on. Remember that the car is a relatively recent phenomenon, and that a '60s British sports car is, in the evolutionary scale of things, the equivalent of an unmodernised 12th-century farmhouse. It will probably smell similar, too.
Could you run a new one?
If not, you probably can't run an old one properly. The value of a Rolls-Royce undoubtedly goes down quite sharply with time, but a graph representing the burden of maintenance goes, if anything, the other way. This is especially true of exotica such as Aston Martins, Ferraris and Lamborghinis. There is no such thing as a 'cheap classic', not when you can buy a new Kia with a £l deposit.
Only ever buy a good one
If you have enough money to scrape on to the bottom rung of Ferrari 308 ownership – say £15,000 – buy something like a mint Triumph TR6 instead. Since all old cars are essentially rubbish (see above), you might at least have one in good condition. And sorting out a bad car will always cost at least twice as much as buying a good one in the first place. I know shabby is considered chic in some circles these days, but it only really works for overcoats.
Do you read tool catalogues on the lavatory?
If not, you are not a professional mechanic, so you will need to know one. Cultivate the friendship of a local specialist or a versatile under-the-arches repairer. Mine is a late-'60s Nigel with an impeccable service history and a head full of exploded diagrams of Bentley and Jaguar sub-assemblies. His toolbox is bigger than the T2.
A sobering thought
Of all the cars I have owned over the past four years, the cheapest to run, by a country mile, has been my brand-new Porsche.
ACHTUNG! BENTLEY!
In the general revamping of the Rolls-Royce and Bentley factory that has gone on over the last few years, the most obvious change is to the reception area. From the austere '30s facade of its main admin block now sprouts a glitzy vestibule that is pure architectural showbiz.
It's the sort of thing that beardy Bill Bryson will moan about in his next book, Notes from a Small Automotive Manufacturing Facility, and it ought not to work, but it does. Tradition and modernity rub shoulders, challenging but ultimately respecting each other. That is the British way and there is no finer example of it than a current Bentley. But there are a few too many Audis in the car park for my liking.
The temptation at this point is to resort to my collection of Commando War Stories in Pictures books and make a few disrespectful allusions to our favourite adversary in the field of human conflict. But let's be a bit more grown-up about this. I like the Germans. I met Dr Ulrich Hackenberg, the new board member for engineering. He is a splendid fellow, a true Bentley enthusiast and someone whom you'd gladly buy a drink if he baled out and landed in your greenhouse. So no war jokes.
But then I entered the lobby and was confronted with a particularly fine study in oils of a Hawker Hurricane shooting down a Heinkel 111, and this got me thinking. I was at Crewe to drive the year-2000 model Arnage, a car that will come with a choice of not just the twin-turbo 4.5-litre BMW V8 installed at launch (now designated a Green Label Arnage, after the background colour of its winged badge) but also the old 6.75-litre turbo V8 as found in two-door Continental Bentleys (Red Label).
During the war, of course, Rolls-Royce – in this very factory, in fact – produced the Merlin engine for the Hurricane, the Spitfire and a host of other kites. BMW, meanwhile, powered the Dornier 217 and the Junkers 188 and later supplied the unitary engine and nacelle assembly for the outstanding Focke-Wulf 190. So the Battle of Britain still rages under the bonnet of this latest Bentley. I'm sorry, but I just can't help it.
A quick briefing. All year-2000 Arnages have improved rear leg and foot room, courtesy of a redesigned bench and a lowered floorpan. Sat-nav is now standard, as are electrically folding door mirrors and speed-sensitive power steering. Externally, differences are few – clear indicator lenses, bigger 18-inch wheels and revised bumpers housing the discreet sensors for the new parking radar. The ground crew have been up all night working on the suspension, too, but we'll come on to that.
The real action begins under the gently shimmering engine cowlings. Strictly, the Crewe V8 would not fit in the Arnage, but with a few simple modifications it slipped in with suspicious ease. Matthew Waterhouse, the project manager, suspects that the original car's engineers were subconsciously considering it when they drew the engine bay. Engineers are like that – a bit of an undisciplined rabble. Engine assembly is now back in-house, where a small team of our brave lads ministers to this awesome 400bhp, 619lb/ft powerhouse.
A few miles on the road are enough to separate the Englander Bentley from the Hun Bentley. The BMW unit delivers 350bhp and 4201b/ft, and an Arnage thus equipped is no slouch. But once I'd driven the Crewe version, I was tempted to say Not so fast, Fritz. It's all about delivery. The awesome low-down torque of the Red Label version means that by the time the Jerry version, piloted by the evil Reichsfotographer Paul Von Dubious, has responded to the order Achtung! Noch ein cog bitte! I'm already at angels 15 and waiting in the sun.
The Green Label requires a good kick with the old jackboot to extract real performance, but in the Red Label one merely has to curl one's toes inside one's best Jermyn Street brogues and the Bentley rockets to 60mph quicker than you can say Good God, Ginger's bought it – 5.9 seconds. It is superb and, apparently, just what the owners asked for.
In truth, the BMW version is still more refined and quieter. The noise in the 6.75 Arnage would cause a few monocles to fall from fanatical Prussian eye sockets, were it found in a Rolls-Royce, which is why this engine won't be making it into the Seraph. But in a Bentley it seems wholly appropriate, especially as improved engine mountings and increased body rigidity have given the engine note a firmer edge and banished the slight lumpiness found in the two-door cars. The Bentley fairly thunders as you push the throttle through the emergency gate etc., etc. Tally ho!
Since we're on rigidity, we'll come back to the undercarriage. I was under the distinct impression that the new Arnage's ride was softer, but Herr Dr Hacken-berg tells me, with a sinister chuckle, that
it has actually been firmed up a touch. Torsional improvements have allowed a more precise suspension set-up, which actually makes the ride seem more supple through better overall composure. It proves, once again, that what is genuinely good for handling is generally good for ride, too.
The Red Label Arnage is a fantastic motor car and the best thing that Rolls-Royce/Bentley/VW makes. At £149,000 it is a mere £4,000 more than the BMW-engined Green Label variant, a premium well worth paying. Scramble! Another triumph of British pluck over the white-coated German motor-industry machine, then.
Er ... no. Apparently Obergruppenfuhrer Ferdinand Piech loved this car so much he had to be forced from it at the point of a well-oiled Webley service revolver. It was a true collaborative effort and harks back to what I said at the beginning about tradition and modernity in happy conspiracy. So now, as Churchill said, let us go forward together.
For this Tommy, the war is over.
THE VAUXHALL VECTRA, A REPRESENTATIVE VIEW
Could be on for a new car. The other day, Gav – he's my boss, MD of Vectra Print/Copy – called me into his office and said, 'Jim,' he said, 'you remember tuna wars? Well, now it's toner wars. The opposition are taking cartridges into Europe and we need to regain the initiative. I'm giving you Germany, Jim. I want you to go over there, get a feel for the place, and while you're there I want you to drive Vauxhall's new Vectra. I don't mind telling you this car could play a role in your future, Jim. I want your report by Monday.'
