Jeremy - The Times

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The Clarkson review: Mercedes GLA AMG 4Matic (2015)

The hottest hatch bar none streaks out of the last chintz saloon

By Jeremy Clarkson                                                    Published 09 March 2015


Mercedes GLA 45 AMG 4Matic, £44,595

AS WE know, there are far fewer blockbuster films being made these days than at any time in cinema’s peacetime history. When I was growing up, there was a constant supply, and they were varied. There were westerns and historical dramas and war films and huge, sweeping epics involving Julie Christie. I’d see Lawrence of Arabia one weekend, Where Eagles Dare the next and Young Winston after that.

Then I’d see Young Winston again because it was the first time I’d copped a pair of breasts on the silver screen. Then I’d claim I’d lost my bus fare home and watch it again.

Today it’s a very different story. You have Iron Man, Iron Man 2 and Iron Man 3. Then you have Iron Man teaming up with Captain America and Thor, and Wolverine versus Jaws.

It’s the same story with monsters. You had Alien and Aliens, and Predator and Predator 2. And later you had Alien vs Predator. And soon you just know it will be Alien and Predator vs Iron Man and Wolverine and an Old Etonian in a cape, or a suit, or a spaceship — or maybe an Old Harrovian. Whatever; it’ll definitely be some kind of thin-lipped Brit.

I don’t really mind any of this. I like Robert Downey Jr, I loved Avengers Assemble and I’ll watch almost anything if it features Scarlett Johansson in a pair of rather too tight trousers. But I am a bit sad that every single big-bucks film these days is about someone with metal bones or a massive hammer.

We see pretty much the same sort of thing going on with cars. It’s not that we’ve lost brands such as Humber and Wolseley and Hillman; that happened back in the mists of time. No, it’s that what’s left is all a bit samey.

The Skoda Octavia is a VW Golf. So’s the Audi A3 and so is the Seat Leon. And anything that isn’t a Golf is either a VW Polo or a Fiat 500. Except the Fiat 500X, which is an Alfa Romeo.

Rolls-Royce has done a magnificent job with the Ghost of disguising the fact that underneath it shares many components with the BMW 7-series. You absolutely cannot tell, but you know. And that spoils the experience a bit.

It’s the same story with the Bentley Continental GT. As I may have mentioned about 700 times in the past few months I currently have a big fan-boy crush on that car. But if I were to own one I’d always know, every time I climbed into it, that, actually, I was climbing into a Volkswagen Phaeton.

You might imagine that the solution to all this is to buy a Mercedes-Benz, because what you’re getting underneath is a Mercedes-Benz. Unfortunately, Mercedes has gone completely bonkers in the past couple of years, which means that the Mercedes you buy could well be based on a Mercedes you don’t like.

There was a time when the company’s range was very simple. You had medium-sized cars, large cars and very large cars. All of them were functional, restrained, beautifully made and tasteful. But Mercedes has gone all Hollywood and is now making a million versions of the same thing. There is now a Mercedes for every single person on the planet.


The GLA 45’s seatbelts work out your girth by strangling you reassuringly before you set off

And all of them are a bit — how can I put this tactfully? — chintzy. Mercs used to be styled by a man called Brown Bag. I’m not joking. That was his name. Oh, he said it in Italian to make it sound more interesting, but there’s no getting round the fact that Bruno Sacco means Brown Bag.

Anyway, Brown Bag was brilliant. He had no time for jewellery and glitter. But he’s gone, and in his place is the sort of man who would describe Elton John’s spectacles as a bit understated. Just look at the front of a Merc these days. It has about a million styling details. It’s a sensory overload. A Cheshire IT man’s front room with headlamp washers.

All of which brings me on to the car I’ve been using for the past week. It’s the Mercedes GLA 45 AMG 4matic, which means it’s a four-wheel-drive A-class that’s been slightly raised to give it a bit of off-road credibility and then lowered again to make it sporty. The end result is a car that’s just 3in taller than the standard hatchback but includes roof bars. So really it’s not taller at all.

And then we get to the styling, and, ooh, there’s a lot of it. At the back there are vents and kickplates picked out in aluminium, plus there’s a spoiler, and if you want, there’s the option of having another spoiler mounted over the one that’s already there. There are also many chromed badges, plus lights that look as if they belong on top of an American police car, and the net effect is: there’s more stuff here than you would find in your granny’s sitting room.

Look at the front for too long and you start to go cross-eyed. Then you have power bulges on the bonnet — obviously — and picked out on the front wings the legend “turbo”.

You don’t need to be reminded of it because, crikey, this thing is fast. Lots of hot hatches have a 2-litre turbocharged engine but none produces quite so much get-up-and-go as Merc’s one. Put your foot down hard and 4.8 seconds later you’re doing 62mph.



The Golf R is often cited as the best and the fastest of the hot hatches, but in a drag race with this Merc the VW wouldn’t know where it had gone. Well, it would. Because you can see the glare of all the chrome from space. But you know what I mean. So it’s very, very fast and it handles nicely too. Even when it’s raining and the roads are slippery, you can bomb along, allowing the four-wheel-drive system to keep you on the tarmac.

Inside are some lovely touches. You get brilliant seats and a seatbelt that works out how fat you are by strangling you before you set off — it’s surprisingly reassuring in a BDSM kind of way. You also get a very Germanic sat nav system that knows — precisely — where the jams are. Because of this I saved myself a two-hour hold-up outside Guildford last week.

The only real drawback to the way this car works is the throttle. It’s a problem with all GLA cars. The accelerator doesn’t send a request for more power from the engine until about a second after you’ve asked for it, which on a busy roundabout is an age.

That would drive me a bit potty. But not as potty as the styling. I simply couldn’t live with it. And I’m not even sure what this car is supposed to be: a high-riding hot hatch? A low-riding SUV? A crossover with attitude?

In all honesty I wouldn’t bother working it out. I’d simply save my money and buy the standard A-class instead.

Go to driving.co.uk to search for used Mercedes GLAs

Clarkson's verdict ★★★☆☆
A B-grade A-class

Mercedes GLA 45 AMG 4Matic specifications

Price: £44,595
Engine: 1991cc, 4 cylinders
Power: 355bhp @ 6000rpm
Torque: 332lb ft @ 2550rpm
Transmission: 7-speed automatic
Performance: 0-62mph in 4.8sec
Top speed: 155mph
Fuel: 37.7mpg (combined)
CO2: 175g/km
Road tax band: H (£290 for first year; £205 thereafter)
Release date: On sale now


The GLA 45 AMG 4Matic is festooned with chrome and aluminium ornaments. For those who need more, there is the Edition 1 version, also pictured in this slideshow, available in Germany. British buyers can create a similar effect with the £1,530 Aerodynamics package

Edition 1 version of the GLA 45 AMG

Mercedes GLA 45 AMG 4Matic



www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/ingear/clarkson/article1526760.ece

www.driving.co.uk/car-reviews/the-clarkson-review-mercedes-gla-amg-4matic-2015/

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THE CLARKSON REVIEW: FORD MONDEO ECOBOOST 1.5 TITANIUM (2015)

Persuasion’s Perfect, Miss Austen. Don’t go trying Perversion

Jeremy Clarkson                   Published: 15 March 2015


Ford Mondeo EcoBoost 1.5 Titanium, £22,245

GIVEN the choice of buying a BMW or a Ford, almost everyone would choose a BMW, which makes everything I’m going to say in this article wearisomely irrelevant. I could tell you that if you buy the Ford you get free myrrh for life and an evening out with the dealer’s extremely accommodating young wife, and you’d still say, “Nah. I’ll take the Bee Em, thanks.”

Working for Ford must be a bit like being Jeffrey Archer. You slave for years and years on a project, and you’re proud of it, and it’s very good, but when it emerges into the marketplace, everyone says, “Yes. But you’re Jeffrey Archer.”

Or working in public relations for Blackpool Pleasure Beach. “Yes, very nice. But it’s not Disney World, is it?”

When I first started writing about cars, Ford had developed a cunning solution to the problem of badge snobbery. It worked out that for £20,000 BMW would sell you four wheels and a seat. Everything else was a very expensive option. “Oh, you’d like a windscreen? Well, that’ll be £17m, sir.”

So a £20,000 Ford came with absolutely everything as standard. I remember once driving a Ford Granada estate and it was kitted out with electric seats, an electric sunroof, air-conditioning and a million other things that would have made a BMW cost more than a house on Venice Beach.

This trinketry was a bit like filling an average book with a sex scene every few pages. You get a couple of pudendas here and some buttocks like ostrich eggs there, and pretty soon people begin to forget that the plot’s a bit shaky and the characters aren’t fully formed. Except, you know, down there.

Unfortunately this doesn’t work any more, because today BMW is filling its cars with sex scenes as well. They are no longer boxes with wind-down windows. They come with climate control and sat navs and electric windows as standard.

Which means Ford has had to go mad, and explains why the Ford Mondeo EcoBoost Titanium I’ve been testing for the past week came with more standard equipment than you would find on the bridge of a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier. The steering wheel was festooned with buttons, and woe betide anyone who delved into the submenus on the central command and control system. Let me put it this way. It comes with voice-activated texting. As standard.

So let me say this loud and clear. This is a big car, a five-seater with a truly gigantic boot. It is fitted with every conceivable luxury. And it costs £22,245. I cannot think of any car yet made that offers better value for money than that.

Frankly it wouldn’t matter if it had the engine from a cement mixer and suspension made from scaffolding: £22,245 for a car this size and this well equipped is crazily low. It is the McMeal of motoring.

Let’s look first of all at the drawbacks. Perhaps because it was developed mainly in America, it is wilfully unsporty. Ford of Europe is responsible for some of the sportiest cars built: the Escort Mexico, the Escort RS Cosworth, the Sierra RS Cosworth, the Fiesta XR2, the Lotus Cortina, the Escort RS 2000 . . . the list goes on and on.

Ford in America is different. It did the Mustang, which came with leaf-spring suspension and a live rear axle such as you would find on an ox cart, and that’s it. It has the same sporting heritage as I do.

Ford of Europe spent three years trying to fix the American car. It had to make the suspension function and fit an interior trim that didn’t look like it had been made from melted-down cassette boxes. But you can take the boy out of Texas, send him to Eton and dress him up in tweed and you’ll still be able to tell that he’s not from round here.

So it goes with the Mondeo. It’s not slow, by any means. Its 1.5-litre engine will zoom you to 62mph in less than 10 seconds and propel you on a wave of pleasant noises to a top speed in the region of 140mph. It’s got nicely weighted steering too, and my test car had a sweet, six-speed manual gearbox that felt very old-school. But the suspension is set up, to the exclusion of everything else, for comfort.


With reams of standard equipment, the EcoBoost Titanium evokes the bridge of a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier

It’s not what I was expecting but it could be quite a clever idea. There are many cars that offer a sporty, taut and connected-to-the-road feel, but very few that offer a comfy place to sit down after a long day at work. If that’s what you want, then you’ll be wanting the Mondeo.

Just don’t drive it at night. Recent research suggests that the average driver uses full beam for only 2% of the time behind the wheel, but this is no excuse for fitting glow-worms instead of actual lightbulbs. Because when it’s dark and you’re on a country lane you really can’t see where you’re going. I bloody nearly piled into a car that was parked at the side of the road.

Also, don’t bother trying to use some of the more exotic toys. Because they don’t really work. You push the voice- activation button and say in your best RP, “Radio 4”. And the one thing you can guarantee is that what happens next will not be the selection of Radio 4.

This makes me worry a little bit about the inflatable seatbelts that are fitted in the back. The idea is that if you crash, the belt turns into a bouncy castle and spreads the impact over a much wider area of your children’s fragile bodies. In theory it sounds a very good idea. But will it work like the voice activation? Or the full-beam headlights? My children elected not to find out.

It sounds here as if I’m having a downer on this car and I’m really not. As the week crawled by in a tangle of dreary journeys from London to Guildford and a Saturday afternoon trudge up the M1, I really did start to appreciate the Mondeo’s extraordinary comfort. And there’s no getting away from the fact that it is extremely large and extremely good value for money.

So, really, who cares if the voice activation is a bit wonky? Jane Austen’s sex scenes aren’t much cop either, but everyone seems to like her books.

And I liked the Mondeo. Maybe the diesel version would be better — its economy would be — but the model that intrigues me most comes with a three-cylinder 1-litre petrol engine. I shall try it as soon as possible and report back.

In the meantime, you go and buy yourself a BMW. It’ll hurt your back and won’t come with inflatable rear seatbelts so it might end up hurting your children as well. But, hey, the most important thing is impressing the neighbours and on that score the Ford won’t do at all.

Go to driving.co.uk to search for used Ford Mondeos

Ford Mondeo EcoBoost 1.5 Titanium specifications

Engine: 1498cc, 4 cylinders
Power: 158bhp @ 6000rpm
Torque: 177 lb ft @ 1500rpm
Transmission: 6-speed manual
Performance: 0-62mph: 9.2sec
Top speed: 138mph
Fuel: 48.7mpg (combined)
CO2: 134g/km
Road tax band: E (£130 a year)
Price: £22,245
Release date: On sale now
Verdict: The best value you can possibly get
CLARKSON'S VERDICT ★★★★☆


Ford Mondeo



Ford Mondeo


www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/ingear/clarkson/article1529629.ece
www.driving.co.uk/car-reviews/the-clarkson-review-ford-mondeo-ecoboost-1-5-titanium-2015/

[RedMoon11]

I’ve Found Top Gear’s New Presenter — and She’s A Woman

Jeremy Clarkson           Published: 22 March 2015


Mégane Renaultsport 275 Trophy-R, £36,430

WHEN THE BBC announced that I was to be suspended from my job on Top Gear, I thought it would be a good idea to maintain a low profile for a few days. Which in one big respect was a bit tricky because the car I had on test that week was the Mégane Renaultsport 275 Trophy-R. And it’s about as under-the-radar as a Day-Glo B-52 bomber.

To make matters worse, my own Mercedes chose the very day of the announcement to explode. And I do mean “explode”. After start-up it sounded as if four of the cylinders were full of plastic explosive and the other four were so full of nitroglycerine they weren’t working at all.

I therefore decided to use my bicycle. But the chain came off. And before I could get it back on, about two and a half million photographers and news crews had descended on my London flat.

I thought about asking AA Gill, my colleague and friend from this newspaper’s larder, to come and pick me up, but he is the worst driver in the world. And I didn’t think he’d be able to manage the job of driving through a photographic scrum without making everything worse. So. It was the Renault, complete with its white body, black roof, red wheels and copious writing down the side.

Let me walk you through the headlines of this vehicle. It starts out in life as a Renault Mégane, a car much favoured by the sort of person that is not interested in cars — I’m surprised Adrian doesn’t have one. But then it is altered, completely.

It comes with a turbocharged 2-litre engine, but you choose how much power you would like it to develop. Set the on-board computer to Normal mode and you get 247bhp, which in a three-door hatchback such as this is what engineers call “a lot”. However, if you put the computer in Sport or Race mode, you get 271bhp, which causes engineers to say, “Don’t be silly.”

In Mad mode this car will get from 0 to 62mph in 5.8 seconds, and then it will keep on accelerating until you’re doing the speed of sound. An earlier hot Mégane — the R26.R — was so fast that in 2008 it set a new lap record for front-wheel-drive cars at the Nürburgring. And to give a sense of just how much more impressive the new model is, it smashed that lap record by a whopping 23 seconds.

Some of that is down to the almost completely bald tyres, which come with a warning notice in big, bold type telling you not to expect any grip at all if it even looks like rain and that if it is wet, you should keep the traction control on or you will skid off the road and die. Die, d’you hear?



Then you have the adjustable dampers from Ohlins, PerfoHub double-axis front suspension, Akrapovic titanium exhaust and, inside, almost nothing at all. The rear seats have been replaced with air, the sat nav is gone, the air-conditioning is gone, even the rear wiper is gone. Anything that weighs anything at all has been ditched. So it’s rather bizarre to find a choice of seatbelts. You can get the optional full race harness but you’ll still have the normal inertia-reel system too.


The Trophy-R’s interior is spartan, to save weight, but take the racing harness as an option and you’ll end up with two seatbelts

It should be said you can get all the stuff that’s been taken out put back. But since this adds a lot to the already steep £36,000-plus asking price and defeats the object, I wouldn’t bother.

You get the drift anyway. It’s not what you want for a low-profile week when you are trying to stay out of the spotlight. And yet . . . as it turned out, it was exactly what I wanted because, ooh, some of those paparazzi are persistent. They work in teams, using scooters and cars so that you can run — but you can’t hide. Especially if you’re in a white car with red wheels and lots of writing on the sides.

As they seem to have no qualms about telling you all what I do and where I go, I hope they won’t mind if I explain what they do. Jump red lights. Carve up buses. Do more than 100mph on the Westway. (Yes, you did.) And treat cyclists like insects. The paparazzi are like Terminators. They absolutely will not stop.

I don’t want to use the D-word but I can quite understand how that drunken idiot at the wheel of the Mercedes in Paris ended up slamming into the tunnel support. Because when you are being hounded, it’s easy to lose concentration.

I thought about abandoning the car and using the Tube instead, and I thought about asking for a bit of help from the police. But, hey, in my old job I got a lot of practice at driving while doing other things, so it wasn’t much of a challenge to shake them off. This is because the bike guys are a bit thick. They hang back, hoping you haven’t spotted them. So a left and then another quick left usually results in them whizzing past the end of the road in which you’ve just parked.

But there was a woman in a Volkswagen Golf who was very impressive: smooth and tenacious. If a job vacancy does crop up on Top Gear, she’d be ideal.

She was in a Golf diesel and I was in a 271bhp Mégane Renaultsport 275 Trophy-R and for about half an hour it was simply impossible to get free.

And at this point some of you will be starting to wonder: what is the point of buying a fast car? Because, yes, at the Nürburgring I could have left her far behind, but I was in Marylebone and, unlike her, I had to obey the rules of the road. And if you do that, a Golf diesel has exactly the same performance as a stripped-out, hunkered-down road racer.

This is undoubtedly true. But it’s missing the point, because, ooh, that Renault is fun. It’s firm, yes, but unlike all the other firm cars I’ve driven, it’s not stupid. There’s a compliance to the shock absorbers that means you don’t have to grit your teeth and squint every time you go over a pothole.

And it’s noisy too, and not in a throaty, grrrrr sort of way either. It’s noisy because there’s no soundproofing. Which means you get a real sense that you are inside a machine. And if you love cars, as I do, because they are machines, that is very satisfying. I like to hear the gravel pitter-pattering on the floor and the wheels bouncing around.

The only thing I’m not sure about was the little green light that came on telling me when to change up. I’m in a racing car, for heaven’s sake, being chased by Divina Galica. I’m not on a bloody economy run. Oh, and it beeps a lot. For no reason.

Mostly, though, I loved this car more than Divina loved her Golf, because she was driving for a reason. It was her job. And her job, she thinks, matters (it doesn’t). Whereas I was driving for the sheer sport of shaking her off. I was only going out to buy my son’s birthday present. Why would I care if she snapped me doing that?

And, yes, reader, I won. I went down a back alley that was blocked by a lorry. Many builders were standing around, and when I apprised them of the situation, they agreed to move it. Then, before Golf lady could follow, they put it back in the middle of the road. Cheers, lads.

Browse the used Renault Méganes for sale on driving.co.uk

Mégane Renaultsport 275 Trophy-R specifications

Engine: 1998cc, 4 cylinders
Power: 271bhp @ 5500rpm
Torque: 265 lb ft @ 3000rpm
Transmission: 6-speed manual
Acceleration: 0-62mph: 5.8sec
Top speed: 158mph
Fuel: 37.7mpg (combined)
CO2: 174g/km
Road tax: H (£290 for first year; £205 thereafter)
Price: £36,430
Release date: On sale now

Clarkson's verdict ★★★★☆

Pray the paparazzi never get their paws on this


Mégane Renaultsport 275 Trophy-R








Mégane Renaultsport 275 Trophy-R


www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/ingear/clarkson/article1532912.ece

www.driving.co.uk/car-reviews/the-clarkson-review-megane-renaultsport-275-trophy-r/


Highly priced car Renault Megane PHOTO: Splash News
Jeremy Clarkson was driving a sporty Renault Megane on Friday,13 March 2015 .
www.sunmotors.co.uk/news/stiggin-up-for-clarkson/


Jeremy Clarkson seen leaving his west London home on Friday, 13 March 2015
The Times

[RedMoon11]

The Clarkson review: Mercedes S 63 AMG Coupé

We Can’t Go On Like This. You’re Beautiful But A Control Freak

Jeremy Clarkson   Published: 29 March 2015


Mercedes S 63 AMG coupé, £125,595

WE HAVE been told many times in recent months that driverless cars are now being developed and we’re all dimly aware, if we are paying attention, that there are many issues to be addressed before they are allowed onto the roads. Quite apart from the technical hurdles, which are legion, there are ethical conundrums too. For example, what will a driverless car do when, in an emergency, it is presented with a choice of whom to kill? You, its owner? Or the bus queue into which it must plough if it is to save your life?

And then there’s the biggest question of them all: what’s the point? You send your driverless car into town, it finds a parking space, slots in neatly without scraping itself against anything and . . . and . . . and then what? It can’t go into a shop and pick up some milk, can it?

For a driverless car to be useful, it must, first and foremost, be a car. And if it’s going to be a car, which is a personal transportation device, you may as well do the driving. Because driving is not taxing or difficult. You just have to sit there and miss stuff.

I had a taste of driverless-car motoring last week when I spent the week with a Mercedes S 63 AMG coupé. This car had the lot. It could steer down a road with no input from me. It could sense an impending accident and lock its brakes to activate the seatbelt pre-tensioners; it could also identify pedestrians on the pavement and anticipate what they would do next, and then take avoiding action to miss them. My job was simply to get out at the other end, looking as relaxed as that smug chap from the old Rothmans adverts.

But I never did because, actually, the cleverest electronics are not as clever as even the stupidest human.

Let us take the humble parking sensor as an example. In any city centre parking manoeuvre, they start wailing and barking when they are 3ft away from an obstacle. This is no use at all. You’re always 3ft from something when you’re parking. You need a reminder when the gap’s down to 3mm.

This is the problem that blights the Mercedes. Yes, it’s very clever that it can “read” the speed of the car in front and maintain a constant gap. But how does the driver of the car in front know you want to overtake when you are being stationed by electricity three miles off his rear end?

And then there was the last-minute change of direction that I needed to make to avoid one of the nutty paps who remain on my tail. I had seen the car on my nearside and I knew for sure I could nip in front, but the Mercedes decided it knew best and took control of the steering and the brakes.

I blame the world’s lawyers for all of this. Mercedes knows that it could bring the tolerances down to reasonable levels but if it did so, and there was a crash, any QC worth his considerable weight could summon a galactic bout of mock incredulity in a courtroom. “Do you expect us to believe that this car could steer through a gap with just” — snort — “3mm to spare?”

I’m afraid that after just a couple of days I turned off all of the drive-by-wire stuff and just used the Mercedes as a car.



There has always been a coupé version of the S-class and it’s always been called the CL. But for reasons that are entirely unclear to everyone outside the Mercedes marketing department this is called the S-class coupé. That may be technically correct, but I can assure you it sure as hell neither looks nor feels like a two-door version of the big Berlin taxi.

It looks wondrous. My test car had silly red brake callipers and optional Swarovski crystals in both its daytime running lights and its indicators, but these aside, it was a menacing blend of power bulges, skirts and the sort of brushed-zinc look that you find in those million-pounds-a-yard kitchen shops on Holland Park Avenue, in west London.


The cabin oozes luxury but the driver aids overwhelm any sense of excitement

Inside, there was quilted leather and a sense that you were in the first-class cabin of a Far Eastern airline. It’s the sort of car in which you say “Mmm” as you settle down and close the door. The seatbelt is even handed to you by a butler. He never brought any nuts, though. Black mark, that.

Eventually, though, when you’ve stopped going “Mmm” and turning all the electronic paranoia off, it’s time to go for a drive — and it’s exactly what you’d imagine. “Cadderberry luggzury” (as the chocolate ads used to say) with a hint of chilli pepper.

Of course there are buttons to make the whole car uncomfortable — you even get one that makes it lean the wrong way in corners — but if you leave all this alone, you get a fast, comfy coupé that rumbles when you give it the beans and hums when you don’t. It’s nice.

Apart from the steering. There’s nothing wrong with it, naturally. It doesn’t suddenly stop working and the wheel doesn’t abruptly become red hot. But just occasionally you do wonder if it’s connected up as well as it could be. I have a similar issue with the mildly hesitant throttle.

But here’s the main problem I have. For quite a lot less you can have a BMW M6 Gran Coupé, which is even better- looking and comes with two more doors. It doesn’t have the driverless toys, but you don’t want them anyway. And it won’t cruise quite as well, but on the upside, it is much, much more exciting.

If that’s not what you want, fair enough, but that’s where the Bentley Continental GT enters stage left. This has the Merc’s luggzury and the quilted leather and, if you go for the V8, the exhaust bark as well. Plus it is a Bentley, and that counts for more than a Mercedes badge.

All three cars are good-looking, fast two-seaters with space in the back for very small people on very short journeys. And all will depreciate like a chest of drawers falling out of a tower block.

If you really do like driving — and if you’ve read this far into a motoring column, I have to suppose you do — then the BMW is the obvious choice. It is magnificent and snarly and balanced and all the things you crave. On a dirt road in Australia last year, with the sun going down after a long, hot, beautiful day, it provided me with what I think was the nicest drive of my life.

As a driver’s car the Bentley is not — quite — in the same league as the BMW, but what you lose in cornering and braking and acceleration, you gain in the “Ooh, that feels nice” moment when you close the door.

Which leaves us with the Merc. It is stuck between a rock and a soft place. And I’m not sure that’s a very sensible place to be.

Go to driving.co.uk to search for a used Mercedes S-class

Mercedes-Benz S 63 AMG coupé specifications
Engine: 5461cc, 8 cylinders
Power: 577bhp @ 5500rpm
Torque:
663 lb ft @ 2250rpm
Transmission: 7-speed automatic
Performance: 0-62mph: 4.2sec
Top speed: 155mph
Fuel: 28.0mpg (combined)
CO2: 237g/km
Road tax band: L (£860 for first year; then £485)
Price:
£125,595
Release date: On sale now

Clarkson's verdict ★★★☆☆
Designed like it's driven - on autopilot


Mercedes S 63 AMG coupé


Mercedes S 63 AMG coupé


www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/ingear/clarkson/article1535889.ece
www.driving.co.uk/car-reviews/the-clarkson-review-mercedes-s-63-amg-coupe/

[RedMoon11]

Clarkson Unbound

His loudmouth antics revolutionised TV car shows and cost him his job last week. But it took more than oafishness to make Top Gear a global phenomenon. Nick Rufford, who has worked with the presenter for 10 years, reveals a disciplined, country-loving insomniac who shrugs off adversity and could shake up television yet again

Nick Rufford  Published: 29 March 2015


Clarkson turned Top Gear into a show that claims to have a global audience of 350m

There was no steak and chips on the menu at the Assaggi restaurant in Notting Hill, west London, on Thursday but Jeremy Clarkson managed to avoid losing his temper.

Twenty-four hours had elapsed since the BBC sacked him from Top Gear for punching a producer (allegedly over an absent steak and chips). Improbably, despite much more weighty national and international news, Clarkson was at the top of the headlines; the paparazzi were hunting him and the man himself was eating pasta.

With him at the first-floor summit in the restaurant were his co-presenters James May and Richard Hammond and the man often referred to as the fourth member of the Top Gear team, Andy Wilman, Clarkson’s old Repton school friend and executive producer of the show.

There was one item on the agenda: the future of Top Gear. Those within earshot of the conversation report that there was a fair amount of swearing at the table — but it was all in good humour, unlike the rant that had got Clarkson sacked.

It was the first time the four had met face to face since the BBC had dropped what Clarkson described as “the bombshell”. The question on everyone’s lips: would the award-winning team break up and go their separate ways, or stay together and launch a new show with the same theme?

According to sources, the discussion started well but quickly descended, with the help of Assaggi’s wine cellar, into a drive down memory lane, as each relived his favourite Top Gear moment. What was clear, though, is that if they could relaunch a new show as a team, they would do so.

“They tried to be serious but it was a bit like an episode of Top Gear staged in a restaurant instead of a studio,” said one observer. “They suggested broadcasters they might approach but they were just guessing. Then they talked about how to draw up a business plan but it was a shambles. Alan Sugar would have laughed out loud.”

They parted cheerfully, according to a source, and “May got a bit over-nostalgic and couldn’t find his way home afterwards.”

Why do four, sweary middle-aged men matter — and who is this Clarkson, anyway? As his editor on the motoring pages of The Sunday Times for the past decade, I know why his antics make the headlines, but I also know the ferociously hard-working insomniac (and surprisingly cautious driver) behind the raucous public persona. Clarkson has two stand-out traits. One is his work ethic. The other is his ability to shrug off misfortune.

He laughed off a custard pie that was pushed in his face when he received an honorary degree from Oxford Brookes University. He was mildly annoyed when protesters dumped a load of manure on his driveway — but only because it delayed him getting to work.


The show has attracted stars such as Cameron Diaz and Tom Cruise

“If I have a philosophy it’s this,” he has said. “Get born, live your life, die. And don’t worry about anything in between because it’s a waste of time. My attitude is if I get up in the morning and I’m still breathing, I’m quids in. I hardly ever worry. I don’t suffer from depression, I don’t even have moods. If you’re in a bad mood, you’re wasting time.”

It’s an approach — born partly from the premature death of his father — that he instills into his own children. “When I was growing up, we laughed at every calamity that struck,” he said. “Now I tell my kids, laughing is the most important thing. You fall over. Laugh. Someone’s nasty to you. Laugh. Life is short and you haven’t time to be stuck in traffic jams or be sad.”

Clarkson has said that if you “dole it out you have to be able to take it”, although his late mother once observed that he wasn’t as thick-skinned as many assumed. “People might find this hard to believe, but he does actually get hurt by some of the things people say about him,” she said. “He’d never let on, though. It’s as though he feels he’s got his laddish image to live up to. To be honest, I don’t think he enjoys having to keep up the image 24 hours a day.”

SPOOL back to the summer of 1996. Lad culture was at its zenith: England were hosting the Euro 96 football tournament, Oasis were the biggest band in the world, Loaded magazine was selling more than 400,000 copies a month and on TV a frizzy-haired loudmouth in bad jeans and a dodgy blazer was holding forth on a BBC2 motoring show.

First broadcast in 1977 as a regional magazine show about cars, Top Gear had a long history of being inoffensive, both in its presenters (Angela Rippon and Noel Edmonds) and its topics (boot space, fuel economy and road building).

Clarkson had arrived in 1988 as a co- presenter. With a background in journalism (South Yorkshire-born, he cut his teeth as a cub reporter on the Rotherham Advertiser and had been working for Performance Car magazine), the 28-year-old was confrontational.

He reviewed a Toyota Corolla with foam taped to his head because, he claimed, the suspension was so bad. He declared that “Norfolk people are so interbred they don’t know the difference between a Ferguson tractor and a Ford Capri”. The sexy-looking Ford Probe was, he said, able to “snap knicker elastic at 50 paces”. The industry hated him.

“In the early days I frequently took calls from the upper echelons of the British motor industry to complain about Jeremy’s comments on this road test or that,” said Tom Ross, the editor who hired him. “The calls soon stopped and car companies realised that the old style of largely bland car tests had gone for ever.”

The BBC’s offices at Pebble Mill, in Birmingham, where the show was made, received sackfuls of angry letters but there was no doubting the Clarkson effect. The ultimate accolade came in the summer of 1996, when Top Gear was officially banned from attending the annual industry love-in that was the British motor show.


Tara Palmer-Tomkinson's driving frightened Clarkson

In 2002 the series was relaunched with Clarkson as the star, after a format he was said to have worked out with Wilman in a pub. Clarkson’s old school friend — a habitually unshaven straight-talker — was a TV veteran behind the camera.

According to Wilman, the new Top Gear manifesto was simple. It would have a news section so “important but boring” cars could be dispensed with quickly. It would be filmed before an audience in an old aircraft hangar that would become “an oasis for people who like cars”. It would have an all-male line-up. And, perhaps most importantly, “it would always be an unfair show”.

Its catchphrases and in-jokes became almost as famous as Clarkson himself. There was the “cool wall” for vehicles designated too desirable — or not; the Reasonably Priced Car driven by celebrity guests ranging from Joanna Lumley to Tom Cruise; and the masked mystery man, the Stig, revving some of the most expensive machines in the world around the racetrack. Even Clarkson’s delivery style became famous (he blamed his long pauses on the fact that, as a smoker, he had to get the lines out without appearing out of breath).

The presenters’ characters were also solidifying: Clarkson, the oaf who walked through a door rather than opening it and fixed cars with a hammer; Hammond, the cheeky chappie with a generally sunny disposition; and May, the sensible one mercilessly ribbed for being boring.

The formula worked — and not just among car fans. In 2005 the show won an Emmy in the non-scripted entertainment category, prompting Clarkson to joke he was unable to go to New York to receive the award because he was busy writing the next script.

The single event that propelled Top Gear away from being just another TV show was the rocket-car crash in 2006 that almost killed Hammond. The footage of the near-300mph smash was spectacular, his survival was treated by the press as miraculous, and 8.13m viewers watched the team welcome him back to the show.

Suddenly the presenters were household names, and the digital age made their fame global. BBC Worldwide, once a small operation that produced videos of the corporation’s popular shows, sold the programme to more than 170 nations. There were spin-off magazines, books, DVDs, toys and, famously, a Stig-on-a-rope soap. Companies started producing their own versions of the show (under licence), in Russia, France, America, Australia and South Korea.

And as the programme grew, so did Clarkson’s notoriety. His trip to Patagonia last year in a car with a numberplate — H982 FKL — supposedly chosen to inflame Argentine sensibilities over the Falkland Islands and the 1982 war, caused a diplomatic incident.

Today Top Gear claims to have a global audience of 350m, and its formula of studio comedy and wacky challenges — Wilman describes them as “crap men adventures with crap cars” — is as popular in India, Iran and Indonesia as it is in Isleworth. Top Gear is the most illegally downloaded show on the planet and is also the BBC’s single biggest earner.
 

Richard Hammond's crash shocked fans

The three badly dressed, middle-aged men who present it are global rock stars. Clarkson acknowledged as much, saying recently: “The great thing about going on the road is that we never got the opportunity to be rock stars when we were young. And now we have.”

By rock-star standards, Clarkson’s fracas with the Top Gear producer Oisin Tymon was a minor tantrum. Clarkson, however, does not have rock-star immunity — and the BBC is a publicly funded institution steeped in political correctness, as Clarkson has all too frequently pointed out on Top Gear.WHEN Lord Hall of Birkenhead, the BBC’s director-general, announced last Wednesday — in regretful tones reminiscent of Neville Chamberlain’s declaration of war — that Clarkson was out, the news stunned fans across the globe. Clarkson too was shocked. Yet I predict he will quickly recover.

Whenever people ask me what it’s like to work with Clarkson, I say, “He’s the easiest journalist I deal with”. People assume that his laddish public persona extends to being a chancer in private but he is incredibly disciplined. As well as writing scripts for Top Gear he does weekly columns for The Sunday Times and The Sun, and one for Top Gear magazine. He suffers from insomnia. When he’s pacing around in the early hours he’s scribbling down ideas.

There are a few other things about Clarkson that the critics who have turned him into a cartoon hate figure — he has been accused of misogyny, “casual racism” and destruction of the planet through reckless addiction to cars — won’t recognise.

His biggest fans are not white, middle-aged British males. Top Gear’s audience is predominantly overseas and largely young. The show is dubbed into eight languages, among them Farsi. Mozaffar Shafeie, an Iranian actor living in London, voices Clarkson for BBCPersian TV, beginning with a shout of “Emshab!” — Farsi for “Tonight!” — and faithfully translating phrases such as “gentleman sausage”.

It is on record that Clarkson is a huge fan of Genesis and the Who, but few know he is also a pretty good drummer. He has had help from Alex James, the Blur bassist, who is a near-neighbour in Oxfordshire.

Clarkson may be a fast driver on track (as a holder of a motor racing licence, I can attest to this) but on public roads he is a bit of a dawdler; his job relies on him keeping his licence, plus his critics would crow all the louder if he were caught speeding. He was flashed by a speed camera last year near Whitby, North Yorkshire, and got his first ticket in more than 30 years.

People imagine he is all for concreting over the planet but he loves the countryside. He owns 173 acres of Oxfordshire, a farm he bought in 2009 and christened Diddly Squat. He’s planting new hedgerows there to attract butterflies and birds, and he is a paid-up member of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.

He is on record as saying that if vegetarians come to his house, they’ll get nothing except mashed potato: “I certainly won’t be cooking them a nut cutlet.” But I can reveal (sorry, Jeremy) that I’ve had a very nice mushroom risotto Chez Clarkson.

He doesn’t hate cyclists. A side effect of the TV coverage of the past few days has been to reveal Clarkson out on his bike. This isn’t a fad; he has cycled about town for as long as I can remember.


Clarkson, Hammond and May in a typical Top Gear stunt for their African special

He is most closely associated with cars but he has shown he can turn his hand to anything. He contributed to the BBC Great Britons series with a profile of the Victorian engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel. He has done history documentaries about the Victoria Cross, Arctic convoys and an allied attack on U-boat pens. He also wants to make a series about the perils and pitfalls of a self-confessed townie starting a farm.

If all this is true, why does he divide opinion unlike any other television personality? One reason is that he has long bitten the hand that fed him. In one Top Gear episode he drove a tiny Peel P50 microcar into a supposed BBC staff meeting. The sign on the door read: “How to reduce the carbon footprint of our ethnically diverse disability access policy for single-parent mothers.”

Inside, sitting at a table strewn with copies of The Guardian, a woman said: “I believe we’ve already made significant inroads into the implementation of an open and inclusive policy for the ethnocentrically homogenous objectives of this department.”

“Sadly the meeting went on for so long that there was no time left in the day for programme-making,” narrated Clarkson.

He has mercilessly made fun of Radio 1 and Radio 2, especially the Jeremy Vine show, which he described as “a soapbox for the weak and the stupid to moan and groan about those who have been more successful in life”.

After being accused last year of mumbling a racist term — which was never broadcast — during filming for a Top Gear episode, he was forced to apologise and said he was on a final warning.

“I’ve been told by BBC chiefs that I’m drinking at the last-chance saloon,” he wrote in The Sunday Times. “From now on I shall arrive at work on a bicycle with a copy of The Guardian under my arm, and at lunchtime, instead of moaning about how everything on the menu is vegetarian, I shall cheerily ask for extra lentils in my nuclear-free peace soup. Also I must remember when I’m in a lift to not goose Mary Beard.”

One commentator wrote last week that Clarkson’s sacking was an “opportunity to refresh and reinvigorate the show he leaves behind. Top Gear as we know it is Clarkson — brash, blokish and politically incorrect — but there’s no reason it has to be so.”

Perhaps, but it is also an opportunity for the non-PC Top Gear to resurface elsewhere. What’s certain is that Clarkson won’t be retiring.

May, the only presenter to have so far spoken publicly since the decision, said the BBC’s Top Gear would no doubt carry on. But he added the three existing hosts came as a package, hinting he and Hammond were unlikely to carry on without Clarkson. Hammond tweeted it was the end of an era.

Both Hammond and May are freed from their BBC contracts this week. With Clarkson and Wilman, they could yet launch a show with a different title (friends have jokingly suggested Change Gear), distributed around the world by another broadcaster with equal or greater reach.

Wilman has said in the past that Netflix, the online subscription TV service, could be the ideal partner for a new-format Top Gear. It doesn’t carry advertising so would be free from the kind of commercial pressures that might otherwise force the show to be less risqué or outspoken.

Will it be the same without the BBC to lamthingy, though? Did Clarkson feel happiest blowing a raspberry up Auntie’s skirts and getting away with it?

Despite his derision for its management, Clarkson remained loyal to the corporation whenever he was in trouble and, according to friends, assumed until the day he was sacked that he would work there until he was carried out in a coffin.

“When I’m abroad, I am filled with pride when I tell someone I work for the BBC,” he once wrote in this newspaper. “I still get a shiver of excitement every time I walk through its doors. I think the concept of commercial-free broadcasting is a good one and — whisper it here — I think it’s good value too.”


www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/newsreview/features/article1536962.ece

[key]

My son and I are so sad about this. Hope they find a spot.

[thestig]

I’m having another baby. But I can’t tell you what it will look like





As you may have heard, the BBC has taken my gun and my badge, and I must admit it’s all been a bit of a shock. For more than 12 years Top Gear has been my life, completely. It was an all-consuming entity, a many-tentacled global monster that was dysfunctional and awkward and mad but I loved it with a passion. I loved it like my own child. Which in many ways it was. But then, one day, I read in Her Majesty’s Daily Telegraph that my contract wasn’t going to be renewed and that they were going to give my baby to someone else.

I felt sick because after I’d lost my home and my mother, I’d thrown myself even more vigorously into my job and now, idiotically, I’d managed to lose that too. The sense of loss was enormous. I used to think about Top Gear all the time. It was a black hole at the centre of my heart. I woke every morning worrying about every single line. And I went to bed at night worrying that the changes I’d made during the day were wrong. Friends would talk to me when we were out and, though I could see their lips moving, I couldn’t hear what they were saying. My mind was always elsewhere. I was comfortably numb.
Two days before the “fracas”, I’d been told, sternly, by my doctor that the lump on my tongue was probably cancer and that I must get it checked out immediately. But I couldn’t do that. We were in the middle of a Top Gear series. And Top Gear always came first.


The hole it’s left behind seems to stretch for eternity. And eternity is a big place. Imagine a ball of steel the size of the Earth. Now imagine a fly landing on that ball once a day, and then taking off again. When it eventually has worn the ball of steel away to nothing, that is just the start of eternity. And I’ve somehow got to fill it.
Playing patience on my laptop is not the answer. Because when you get bored, and you will, it’s still only eight in the morning and you can’t even think about going to the pub for four more hours. And then you have to decide not to go to the pub because that’s the road to ruin and despair.


So you watch the lunchtime news and it’s full of Ed Miliband doing his new Dirty Harry act and David Cameron in a hospital with his tie tucked into his shirt and his sleeves rolled up, and it’s still five hours until the start of Pointless. So you go to the shops, and for the first time you are aware that every penny you spend is coming from a pot that’s no longer being topped up. So you decide not to spend anything at all.
The only good thing is that my son is currently living with me in London, doing A-level retakes. Which means I can spend, ooh, about 16 hours a day reading about the Cold War and helping him with his creative writing coursework. But soon he will be gone, and then the yawning chasm will open up once more.


We read often about people who live on benefits, and it fills us with rage that they are sitting about with a plasma television we bought, eating chocolate biscuits that aren’t bloody well theirs. Yet after a couple of weeks in the same boat (well, all right, mine’s more of a liner), I’m beginning to develop a bit of sympathy. Because what the hell do they do all day to stay sane?
I suppose it helps when all your friends are on the dole as well. You can all hang out in the bus shelter together. But selfishly, most of my friends have jobs, which means that until eight at night I have almost no one to play with.


This means I have to make everything last for hours. I have set aside this afternoon to fill in the membership form for a local tennis club. And then I shall use all tomorrow morning to take it round. The afternoon? Not sure yet. I may organise my jumpers.


And so we get to the nub of the issue. When you are thrust into the world of early retirement, it’s no good living from day to day because then you’re just a twig in a stream. You just get stuck in an eddy till you rot. You need to have a long-term strategy. You need something that will fill the void.
But what? Squash? Really? I’m 55 years old, which means that long before I become good my knees will explode and my ears will fill up with hair. Fishing? Hmm. I’m not certain, when you’ve spent a life being chased across the border by angry mobs and shot at in helicopter gunships, that you can fill the hole by sitting on the bank of a canal, in the drizzle. It’s the same story with gardening. When your Maserati’s done 185mph you’re not going to get much of a thrill from a rhubarb growth spurt.


One of my friends, who shall remain nameless, save to say that his name begins with R and ends in ichard Hammond, decided to fill his enforced leave by training his dog. And now, after just a couple of weeks, he reports that the dog in question hates him and hides whenever he comes into the room.
Things will only get worse because recent studies have found that people who retire early stand an increased chance of developing dementia. They also live in a constant state of anxiety and will die nearly two years sooner than they might had they stayed at work.


At 55, then, you’re in a limbo land where time is simultaneously with you and against you. You are too young to put your feet up but too old to start anything new.
Which is why I have made a decision. I have lost my baby but I shall create another. I don’t know who the other parent will be or what the baby will be like, but I cannot sit around any more organising my photograph albums.
Especially as most of the pictures I have are from a fabulous chapter that’s now been closed. The child is grown. The dream is gone. I have become uncomfortably numb.

[dit]

Thanks for posting that, thestig. It seems like a heartfelt piece of writing. I know some will have little sympathy for Jeremy because, of course, he did bring it all on himself ultimately, but his devotion to Top Gear is crystal clear.

[RedMoon11]

If you live in the UK, or other countries where the paper is sold, you might want to pick up a copy of The Sunday Times. All three of them have columns in the Driving section today as well as Jeremy's regular Comments column. In today's paper James buys a new Ferrari 458 Speciale, Richard reviews an Indian Chief Dark Horse motorcycle and Jeremy reviews the Mercedes-AMG GT S.



Twitter

[marantha]

I bought a Kindle edition of the Sunday Times and all these articles were missing...:-(

[thestig]

Jammy little *******

I’ve ordered the very last one — all I need is a job to pay for it

James May Published: 26 April 2015


Ferrari 458 Speciale, £208,090

NOBODY yet knows what is going to happen in the future of Top Gear or its three former presenters. That is the honest truth, despite what you may have read elsewhere. No one has even arrived at a definitive pronunciation of “fracas” yet, so what chance is there that we’d have rescued our careers?

The three of us may be reunited on screen, we may go our separate ways, or we may disappear from the television altogether and each assume a place, alone, in the corner of a pub where any unsuspecting passing drinker who strays into an exclusion zone studiously avoided by the locals will be subjected to a predictable “I used to be on TV” routine.

Whatever we do, it will be scrutinised ruthlessly. Our fans feel betrayed and believe a spell has been broken. Our foes are rejoicing at the banality of our demise. If there’s a hint of mediocrity in any future endeavour, both parties will feel vindicated. Even if Top Gear is revived in a new format with new hosts and isn’t as successful as it once was, that’ll be our fault. And if it’s better, then we were overdue for retirement anyway.

I accept that this is a bit of a hashtag firstworldproblem, but I’m finding it quite difficult to handle. Humility is the key, I think, to coming out of this well.


I therefore decided that driving around in my bright yellow Ferrari 458 Italia was no longer really acceptable. That would give out entirely the wrong message. I don’t want to be mistaken for the scion of a Saudi oil dynasty when in fact I’m an unemployed television presenter trying to keep a low profile. So I thought I’d better have a dark blue one instead.

OK, that was an unnecessarily lengthy run-up to a fairly feeble punchline, so maybe I shouldn’t be surprised it’s all over. Anyway, I really have ordered a new Ferrari, which I accept is a strange thing for an unemployed person to do. It may never have happened before, in fact. So here’s how it really came about.

There we were, all three of us, on the brink of a new three-year contract to make Top Gear, after which we would definitely chuck it in with dignity and hand the reins to a new generation, assuming we were still alive. There were a few details to resolve about time frames and other mundane stuff, but the groaning draft version of this document was actually sitting on my desk.

This was a great privilege, and a once-in-a-lifetime event; an invitation to continue presenting the world’s biggest TV show for — let’s not be shy — a handsome salary. Although I am often racked with Protestant self-loathing over this sort of thing, I decided to reward myself with a new motor from Maranello.

I’m already on my second one, but they’ve both been second-hand. This, again, was an opportunity that was only going to come along once; the chance not only to take delivery of a freshly minted and unfarted-in Ferrari, but to revel in the process of specifying it. If I moved quickly and paid a deposit, I could be one of the first people in Britain to own the new 488 GTB, the future, turbocharged direction of the mid-engined V8 Ferrari.

But then I had a better idea. Why not the 458 Speciale, the more powerful, more focused and altogether more nerdy edition of the standard 458 that Ferrari likes to claim is actually a different model in its own right? Then I would own the last normally aspirated mid-engined V8 Ferrari. It’s a car I’ve already driven extensively — and love.


There was even a certain amount of fiscal sense in this (hashtag still applies, see above). The top-shelf editions of the past two V8 Fezzas, the 360 Challenge Stradale and F430 Scuderia, are actually appreciating impressively in value. At £208,090 before options, the 458 Speciale is expensive but, like every hopeful classic car owner in the land, I could claim it was better than money in the bank.

Smoke poured from the back of my man-maths calculator as I made this case to Woman, whose arms remained resolutely folded throughout; as well they might because our house needs a new roof. I’m pleased to say that common sense prevailed — on her part, I mean — but only because I didn’t admit to my plan for gold wheels.

I rang my dealer —and I use that expression deliberately, because we are talking about a drug of sorts here. No chance, because the order books for the 458 Speciale were now closed. But then he rang the factory, which agreed to make one more — for me. Imagine that. I would own the last example of the last normally aspirated mid-engined V8 Ferrari. It was better than finding a Canaletto at a car boot sale. Yes, please, I said breathlessly.

Off I went, then, to help make what would have been the last film of the recently truncated Top Gear series, a cinematic marvel on the Yorkshire Moors about the pure pleasure of driving in three wildly different cars: a Rolls-Royce Wraith, Ford Fiesta ST and Porsche 911 Targa. Life seemed marvellous.

And then the demons stormed the flimsy steel of “Fracasgate” and everything in the future shattered like the mishandled Christmas bauble that the future turns out to be. It all evaporated, exactly as the poet Thomas Gray warned us: “The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow’r, and all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave” — along with the unsigned contract on my desk and unspoken permission to use the Concorde room at Heathrow terminal 5. It had all gone. All, that is, except the order for a 458 Speciale lodged in Ferrari’s factory system, with only the final details to be confirmed. Oh cock, as I used to say when I was on telly.

The order book for the 458 Speciale was closed but Ferrari offered to make one more for May. Then came ‘Fracasgate’The order book for the 458 Speciale was closed but Ferrari offered to make one more for May. Then came ‘Fracasgate’
Things began to move forwards at a pace appropriate to the Cavallino Rampante — the Prancing Horse. An invitation to visit the factory and choose the specification arrived, so I found myself at Heathrow (but not in the Concorde lounge) bound for Maranello and an appointment with Anna in the Ferrari Atelier — a room that is a real-life version of those car configurators we all like to fool around with, the main difference being that you need actual money to play.

A car of the type you have ordered is parked in the middle of the space. Along one wall wheels of different styles and colours are displayed. Along another are the seat options to sit in. Books of carpet and Alcantara swatches are artfully littered around the top of an exquisite mahogany table. Multicoloured cataracts of beautiful hide cascade down walls. Painted metal panels stand in serried ranks for your inspection.

At one end is a huge screen displaying a more sophisticated version of that online configurator so every possible combination can be displayed in virtual, door-openable and sit-inable form. It’s an intoxicating experience. I was in there for hours, troubled only by the knowledge I couldn’t pay for any of it.

I think they may have smelt a rat when I started talking about my vision of a “tastefully austere 458 Speciale”. And then another when we arrived at the colour choices for that stripe that runs over the bonnet and roof. My dark-blue- with-gold-wheels scheme looked good with a two-tone grey one, but then I noticed the stripe costs almost exactly the same as a basic Dacia Sandero.

Maybe I didn’t need the stripe. “You ’ave to ’ave thee stripe-ah,” said Anna in a way that made my knees crumple like the bonnet of a shunted lightweight Jaguar E-type. I had the stripe. The sat nav? Yes. Reversing camera? Might as well. Nose-lift system for clearing speed humps, extra Alcantara trim on the dash, floor mats (about £1m)? Yes, yes, yes. When you haven’t even made provision for the colour-coded wheel centres, it’s all a bit academic.




I left with a PDF of my completed car. It is truly a thing of loveliness. I lie in bed alternately staring in wonderment at the pictures on my iPad and trembling in the lonely darkness over the massive figure I noticed at the bottom of the file. By the time you read this my 458 will have begun its inexorable creep through the Ferrari production system.

The foundry is charging its furnaces to cast the engine block and cylinder heads. Sewing machines whirr, screwdrivers and spanners twirl. It’s a beautiful process and a slow one — months, rather than the 90 hours it takes to build a Mini — because this is a genuinely hand-built car. But it will get to the end, and then I’ll have to pay for it.

But look: this car really is an investment. I know that’s the most abused expression in car retailing, but for once it’s actually true. I could resell it immediately and get my money back, maybe even more. There’s a cash-flow issue, but this is not a financial disaster.

But then again, why would I do that? This really is an opportunity that was only going to come along once, even when it wasn’t actually meant to. I’m not making an investment, I’m buying a car I truly adore and that gives me a small tingling sensation whenever I think about it. It’s being built now, for me personally, to my precise specification, by people who love their work. It will be my privilege to drive around in it.

Hang on a minute. Unemployed middle-aged man from Hammersmith orders the last-ever Ferrari 458 Speciale, in dark blue. What on earth was I thinking of? Just moments before I signed the order form and committed myself totally and irreversibly, I had a sudden change of heart. I ordered it in bright orange.

[RedMoon11]

Apr 26, 2015 15:25:00 GMT marantha said:

I bought a Kindle edition of the Sunday Times and all these articles were missing...:-(

You should contact Amazon customer services or these links might help: help.thetimes.co.uk/
 www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/public/digital/article3670713.ece

[marantha]

Thank you, RedMoon

[RedMoon11]

THE CLARKSON REVIEW: MERCEDES-AMG GT S (2015)

Cancel the Uber car — I’ll catch a Crazy Horse cab

Jeremy Clarkson    Published: 26 April 2015
By Jeremy Clarkson   Published 27 April 2015


Mercedes-AMG GT S, £110,500

HAVE you ever tried to send a text from the back of a London cab? The suspension is so catastrophically hard that it’s just about impossible. And even if by some miracle you do manage to write vaguely what you had in mind, you will go over a speed bump as you’re sending it, which means it’ll go to completely the wrong person.

Life is a lot more smooth in the new four-wheel-steer Mercedes Vito Taxi vans, but these too come with a drawback. The windows don’t go down, so after half a mile on a hot day you start to feel like Alec Guinness in that box.

Of course life is a lot more comfortable — and cheaper — if you use Uber, and yet somehow I just can’t bring myself to make the change. I don’t know why. I’m not the sort of person who won’t have a mobile phone because “there’s nothing wrong with a good old-fashioned red phone box” and I’m not writing this on a typewriter. But there’s something about Uber that feels wrong.

Maybe it’s the name. Nobody likes a word that begins with U. Or maybe it’s the way Uber cars are driven: I follow them sometimes and it’s as though the driver has just ingested a litre of pethidine. And then there’s the smell. It’s an aroma that comes with its own mass and just a hint of gravity. It’s revolting.


The GT S combines all mod cons with muscle-car grittiness, even if the sat nav screen looks a bit of an afterthought

There’s another thing too. I wonder what damage Uber is doing to the Mercedes-Benz brand. Because nobody is going to get out of an Uber E-class and think, “Mmmm, yes, I have got to get one of those.” The suspension is invariably worn out, the upholstery always has at least one worrying stain and the dash is always festooned with wires to power the driver’s sat nav, which, after you’ve made 16 left turns on the trot, you notice is programmed to work only in Kampala.

I know Mercs aren’t like that in real life. I know they are beautifully made and sensibly equipped and strong. But you don’t. To you, the Uber customer, Mercs are vomitous and horrid.



Which brings me neatly on to the problem you have if you are in the market for a six-figure GT car. It’s a nice problem, the sort of thing you could sort out in your head while lying on your back on a summer’s day in a field full of wild flowers. It’s this: there are now many GT cars costing six figures — or thereabouts — and they’re all very, very good.

There’s the Aston Martin Vantage, the Jaguar F-type, the Porsche 911 Carrera GTS, the Bentley Continental GT V8 S, the BMW M6 and, for rather less, the Nissan GT-R and the Chevrolet Corvette. Don’t laugh. The last model was excellent and the new one is even better.

And now, to make the decision even harder, there’s the car you see in the photographs, the AMG GT S. Which is not billed as a Mercedes because this has nothing to do with the diesel E-class in which you came home last night. Can we be clear on that? Good. So let’s move on.

In the beginning was the SLS AMG, a silly-money quasi-supercar that I completely loved. It was fast only in theory because in practice it simply spun its rear wheels and went sideways. Really, it should have had wipers on the side windows.

What it had instead were gullwing doors, and I’ll let you into a little secret. No one has ever watched anyone climbing from a car with up-and-over doors and thought, “Crikey. I bet that bloke is intelligent and blessed with a gigantic p3nis.” Things that have never been said to someone climbing from under a gullwing door include, “Thank you for coming, Your Holiness.”

The SLS AMG, then, was a stupid car for stupid show-offs, which probably explains why I liked it so much. I certainly liked the noise. You may remember it was used as the Formula One safety car, and even when the racers didn’t sound like vacuum cleaners, you could still hear it — a thundering baritone to the wailing treble.

Anyway, the new car sits on the same basic chassis as the SLS but costs, for reasons that are not entirely clear, almost £50,000 less. Sure, you don’t get gullwing doors — which is a good thing — and you don’t get the old 6.2-litre V8. But that’s not the end of the world either, because what you do get is a wondrous 4-litre dry-sump V8 twin turbo.

It’s clever too. The turbos sit in the middle of the V, which makes the engine incredibly small. And that means it can be located low down and behind the front axle, for a lower centre of gravity and better weight distribution.

There’s more racy stuff, too, because the seven-speed insta-shift flappy-paddle gearbox sits at the back of the car, being fed by a carbon-fibre prop shaft.

The GT S weighs just over 1½ tons, which is light for a car of this size, and it feels it — it’s almost unnerving. Because from behind the wheel it feels as if you are sitting at the back of a supertanker. The bonnet is so vast that if it arrives on time, you will be 20 minutes late. It’s not just long either. It’s so wide that someone could land a medium-sized helicopter on it and you wouldn’t even notice.

It’s odd, then. Because here is a car with many track-oriented features and many buttons that will turn it from a cruiser into a Nürburgring barnstormer. And yet it has a bonnet that’s seven miles longer than necessary.



I think I know why. Behind all the racing paraphernalia and the Mercedes suede and silicone, this is a modern-day muscle car. It’s Merc’s Mustang. You sense this when you drive it. The GT S feels as though there’s very little rubber in the bushes and only the smallest amount of insulation between you and the oily bits. It feels raw. Much more raw than any other Mercedes and any of the other cars that you can buy for this sort of money. It feels — how can I put this? — extremely exciting.

It looks extremely exciting as well. I’m not going to say it’s pretty because it isn’t. The windscreen is wilfully upright and the back just sort of tapers away to a sea of nothingness. But, ooh, it has presence. You get one of these in your rear-view mirror and you will get out of the way.

On a day-to-day basis, it’s swings and roundabouts. The hatchback at the rear is good and the boot’s big. But the width means it won’t fit in a standard London parking bay. And you should definitely avoid the optional carbon-ceramic brakes, which work like a switch. One minute you’re going along and the next you have a broken nose.

Inside? It’s close to faultless, really. Maybe the gearlever is too far back and maybe the sat nav screen looks a bit of an afterthought, but it has everything you could want and a few things you don’t. Why, for instance, would you want to make the exhausts louder?

In a silly car for silly show-offs, that sort of thing would work well. But this isn’t a silly car at all. Of all the vehicles in this bit of the market, it’d almost certainly be my choice.

Because, as I said at the start, I don’t use Uber. So Mercs are still all right in my book. And this isn’t a Mercedes anyway.

Mercedes-AMG GT S specifications

Price: £110,500
Engine: 3982cc, V8
Power: 503bhp @ 6250rpm
Torque: 479lb ft @ 1750rpm
Transmission: 7-speed automatic
Performance: 0-62mph in 3.8sec
Top speed: 193mph
Fuel: 30.1mpg (combined)
CO2: 219g/km
Road tax band: K (£640 for first year; £290 thereafter)
Release date: On sale now

Go to driving.co.uk to search for a used Mercedes-Benz

Click to read May's feature on the Ferrari 458 Speciale
www.driving.co.uk/news/james-may-orders-the-last-ferrari-458-speciale/

Click to read Hammond's review of the Indian Chief Dark Horse
www.driving.co.uk/car-reviews/richard-hammonds-exclusive-outing-on-indian-chief-dark-horse-motorbike/

Mercedes-AMG GT S



Mercedes-AMG GT S (Mercedes UK)

www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/ingear/clarkson/article1547294.ece
www.driving.co.uk/car-reviews/the-clarkson-review-mercedes-amg-gt-s-2015/

[RedMoon11]

10 THINGS YOU DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT JEREMY CLARKSON

He used to own a donkey, you know

By Sunday Times Driving Published 10 April 2015



HOW WELL do you know Jeremy Clarkson? Were you aware that his TV career was formed at school, for example? That he passed his driving test at the wheel of a Bentley? Or that despite his old-school, blokey persona, he has been known to be a little soft?

Be prepared for a few surprises in our list of 10 things you didn’t know about Jeremy Clarkson.


1 Clarkson loves France



Despite what many believe, Clarkson doesn't hate France. In fact, he loves the place, writing: “How can you not like France? Yes, it’s a blend of uninterested waiters in Paris, dreary Left Bank poetry, lamb-burning farmers, appalling pop songs, and Calais, where you give the last of your spending money to a shoulder-shrugging traffic cop.

"But it’s also Val d’Isère, where you go skiing, and St Tropez, where you go to the beach. It’s fast trains, and nuclear power stations and the fading splendour of Biarritz. It’s snails, and cheese and wine, and bougainvillea-dappled sunshine. I even like the French way of looking at what the rest of the world is doing and then doing the exact opposite ... the French are perfectly happy to abide by any international rule, but only if it suits them. ”

Read the article jamesmayboard.proboards.com/post/296293/thread


2 Clarkson can play the drums



Well, sort of: “I practise infrequently and have become to the world of sticksmanship what Germany is to the world of cricket.”

Read the article

You Can’t Kill Me, I’m the Drummer

Jeremy Clarkson
   Published: 18 March 2007

When the BBC asked if I'd become involved in the Comic Relief extravaganza, obviously my initial reaction was "no". I saw no reason to give up my time so a couple of African dictators could buy bigger Mercs.

But then I was told the Comic Relief money doesn't actually buy cars or bigger power tools with which Mr Mugabe can drill into his opponents' heads. It buys useful stuff such as ambulances and help for the mentally ill of Britain.

And anyway, saying no to the Comic Relief team is a bit like saying no to the man at the Tube station with the stack of Big Issues. In fact it's even harder because you can't smile and say: "It's all right, I've already got one."

So what did they want me to do? Wear a leotard and flail about on an ice rink? Sing? Stand in a school playground while children rubbed lumps of elephant dung into my hair?

It turned out the offer was even worse. Would the three Top Gear presenters like to appear on a humorous celebrity version of A Question of Sport?

As I'd rather have spent the afternoon sitting on a ham slicer, I came up with another idea. What about Top Gear of the Pops? It'd be like Top Gear, only instead of cars we'd have music. And then, I said jovially, we could finish with a tune from the Top Gear band.

The Comic Relief people loved this, and commissioned it immediately. And that was great, except for one teeny weeny detail. There was no such thing as the band.

Yes, Richard Hammond used to play bass with a band 20 years ago but gave up when, in a fit of temper, he broke his guitar over the singer's head. And sure, James May is an accomplished harpsichord player with a degree in the science of music. But while he'd be good at Brahms and Chopin, he's not so good when it comes to what he calls "pop".

And that leaves me. I took up the drums about six months ago and have had seven lessons. I practise infrequently and have become to the world of sticksmanship what Germany is to the world of cricket.

In my heart, I fondly imagined that one day, many years from now, when I'd become more proficient, I might team up with the some like-minded souls and perhaps play a small gig to a few close friends in a pub. But here I was, volunteering to make my debut, in a week's time, in a studio full of 700 people, to a television audience of maybe five million.

There's no medical term for what I was going through. Doctors call it simply "sh*tting yourself".

And it became worse when we turned up, a day before the studio recording, to practise for the very first time.

I'd selected Billy Ocean's Red Light Spells Danger, partly because it's a good happy pop song ideal for ending a feelgood Comic Relief show. But mostly because there are only a couple of twiddly bits for the drummer. The rest, though fast, is all fairly straightforward.

Except it isn't. Not when you put other instruments into the mix. I'd always thought the drums are a sort of noise that go on in the background of a song, but it turns out the drummer is the engine room. The man who keeps time. The single most vital piece of the entire ensemble.

Unaware of this, I did my first twiddly bit and sort of picked up with the beat where I'd left off. Much to my surprise, the rest of the band stopped playing, lowered their shoulders and turned to stare at me.

Actually Hammond sort of glared. There was a very real sense that if I did that again he'd kill me. And since I didn't know what I'd done wrong this was worrying.

When you're behind a drum kit, bashing away as though you're in a cage, trying to get out, you can't hear any of the other instruments. You kind of assume they're playing the tune and all is well.

But no, rock music is not the anarchy I'd always assumed. It's actually pure maths. I had to hit the snare at the precise moment Hammond was hitting some aspect of his guitar, and no, he couldn't just "miss a bit out to catch up". When I suggested this, he became even more angry.

To make matters worse I was supposed to be achieving 180 beats per minute. And I was . . . some of the time. Everyone shouted at me a lot for this.

And when I said: "Oh well. It's for Comic Relief. Perhaps people will find my inability to keep time funny," they shouted even more.

Eventually our singer, Justin Hawkins, formerly of the Darkness, turned up. He was a bit amazed to find the drummer and the bassist squaring up to one another, but after a couple of run-throughs said: "That's as good as it's going to get," took over my drum kit and spent the rest of the day jamming with Hammond and May while I ate crisps.

And so the next day, after seven lessons and two run-throughs, we took to the stage and did our song. And afterwards everyone was very kind to me, in the same way you're very kind to a four-year-old who's painted a picture of some flowers. Even though they look like dogs.

The finished product was transmitted on Friday night at 10 o'clock. I hope you were all in bed and missed it.

www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/Features/Focus/article61559.ece

www.driving.co.uk/news/10-things-you-didnt-know-about-jeremy-clarkson/

[RedMoon11]

10 THINGS YOU DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT JEREMY CLARKSON (cont.)

3 Clarkson used to be a pussy cat...



When Clarkson met his wife Francie in 1990, he was a pussy cat, apparently: “He had just started in television then and was mostly watching Danger Mouse and playing Scrabble with his mates; I was the one who went out to work every day in the power suit,” she told The Sunday Times in 2007. “He was very sweet, he'd do the shopping and the cooking – he even did some ironing for me.”

Read the article

Clarkson’s Hero

How Jeremy Clarkson’s outrage over a wounded soldier led to this year’s Sunday Times Christmas appeal

Margarette Driscoll
Published: 2 December 2007

Here's Jeremy Clarkson, writing the other week on getting in touch (or not) with his inner woman: "I shave my face, not my legs. I am not interested in cushions or soft furnishings . . . I think you should only use a telephone if you are on a moor, it's the middle of the night and you are surrounded by wolves. The notion that it can be used 'for a chat' is as ridiculous as the notion that cuddling is in some way rewarding."

You might think that being married to him would present something of a challenge. Followers of his column in News Review are used to his forthright, blokey views on everything from Britishness and the nanny state to binge drinking (it's good for you). As the presenter of Top Gear, he presides over a cheerful mayhem of explosions, stunts and screaming tyres. But behind the Neanderthal facade there is an inner woman lurking - somewhere.

"He once told me that when we met he found me rather intimidating: I had a GTi, a job and wore red lipstick," says his wife Francie. "He had just started in television then and was mostly watching Danger-mouse and playing Scrabble with his mates. I was the one who went out to work every day in the power suit.

"He was very sweet, he'd do the shopping and the cooking - he even did some ironing for me. I know it's not what people expect of Jeremy Clarkson . . ."

That was 1990: neither of them had any idea at the time that Jeremy would one day become a global star. Top Gear is estimated to have more than 350m viewers worldwide and his books seem to have acquired a permanent slot in the bestsellers lists.

The power of his punchy humour was brought home to them in the most unexpected way this time last year, a few months after they had been invited to dinner near their Oxfordshire home and met Major - General Richard Shirreff and his wife Sarah-Jane. Shirreff was about to take command of our troops in Basra.

"The next thing I heard from Richard was a call from Iraq," says Francie. "One of his soldiers, Lance Bombardier Ben Parkinson, although not serving in Iraq at the time - actually serving in Afghanistan - had been badly injured. He'd had both his legs blown off, his spine was badly damaged, his arms were badly damaged, he had terrible injuries and he was in a coma in Selly Oak hospital."

Diane Dernie, Parkinson's mother, had been at his bedside ever since he had been airlifted to Britain and was reading to him from one of Jeremy's books when she saw a glimmer of a smile - his first sign of life.

"So Ben's in a coma, he comes from Doncaster, which is Jeremy's home town, and Richard says, 'It's a big ask, but would you and Jeremy go and see him?' I remember thinking, 'Oh gosh, it's the last thing Jeremy needs'. We get a lot of charity requests and it was a very busy time for Top Gear - but Jeremy said, 'No, no, I really want to do it'."

Realising they would also be seeing other wounded soldiers, Francie started ringing round for Top Gear T-shirts, videos and magazines to take along.

What they found at Selly Oak hospital- which is part of the University Hospital Birmingham NHS foundation trust but also houses the Royal Centre for Defence Medicine - was profoundly shocking.

The National Health Service care was extremely good but the soldiers had no dedicated ward. Colleagues were not allowed to visit wearing uniform for fear of upsetting Muslim visitors and staff. Once their emergency treatment ended, even those as badly injured as Parkinson would have to join the NHS waiting list for the physiotherapy they needed, along with everyone else, despite having fought for their country.

"You're looking at boys who'll live, with luck, but their lives will never be the same again. Ben is making an amazing recovery but that day, when we first met him, he didn't know we had met him. And the reality is he's got no legs and speech is still very difficult for him," says Francie.

"Diane, his mother, is an amazing woman. She's never given up hope. She gave up her job instantly and moved to Birmingham to be by his bedside. Ben's life has been devastated, but so has hers and her family's. We promised her that one day when he was well enough we'd get him down to Top Gear."

That same day they met a 19-year-old whose last memory was of mortar fire as he was blown up in Afghanistan - losing the use of one leg and sustaining terrible stomach injuries - and who had woken to find himself in a geriatric ward. He later contracted MRSA.

Another soldier had been hit by a sniper and was paralysed from the neck down. It would be months before he reached the top of the queue for physiotherapy.

On the way home Francie phoned a girlfriend and said: "You won't believe what we've just seen."

"She said, 'Well, we know people who could afford to buy an iPod each, don't we? Let's do that, then my son can download some music for them'. I thought: okay, I'm on it, and that was the start."

Jeremy did his bit by writing angrily that in the NHS, these soldiers wounded in the service of their country were treated no differently from "a lad who got drunk and smashed his Citroën into a tree".

On their next visit to the hospital they went in three large estate cars. Francie had persuaded Sony to donate MP3 players, PlayStations and games; friends had given gifts and the Clarksons' nanny, whose boyfriend was a former soldier, had given a television and DVD for the accommodation being prepared for the families.

When their convoy arrived they found the hospital was reluctant to let them in as "Jeremy had caused such a hoo-ha". So they sat in the canteen "like naughty children" while a friend sorted things out. (Selly Oak hospital is a different place now, says Francie, with all the issues they highlighted resolved.)

The Clarksons were determined to continue to do what they could to help. Their friends had shown that there was a well of goodwill out there towards the soldiers that was at yet untapped. What they didn't know was that Bryn Parry, a cartoonist and former member of the Royal Green Jackets, had also visited the wounded soldiers and come up with an inspired idea: a new charity, Help for Heroes, which is now part of The Sunday Times Christmas Appeal. It aims to channel that goodwill into the provision of better facilities for men such as Parkinson. WHEN the Selly Oak soldiers were fit enough to leave hospital, many were transferred to Headley Court, a military rehabilitation centre in Surrey which has specialist facilities for amputees.

Headley Court is run on military lines. One soldier said that after weeks as a hospital patient, the day you are wheeled into Headley Court is "the day hope begins".

At Headley Court no one is allowed to feel sorry for himself. "They call it beasting, but they look after each other, pull each other up," says Francie. "There's lots of laughter and a feeling that they are among their own."

The centre is publicly funded but its facilities are far from lavish, which is why Help for Heroes is raising money for it. One of the gyms where amputees are put through their paces is effectively a tent.

Parry was disturbed to find that, despite the importance of swimming in building body strength without putting stress on injured limbs, Headley Court had no swimming pool. A pool was recognised by the government as a "need" but not an "urgent need".

With British troops engaged on two fronts, at high cost to the defence budget, the pool was never likely to make it to the top of the priority list, despite the growing number of injured soldiers being sent home from the two wars.

Instead troops were - and still are - being bussed to nearby Leatherhead where they have to share the pool with members of the public, to the dismay of both sides.

Boys who had been blown up or shot had to reveal their stumps and scars in front of gaping onlookers. As recently as 10 days ago there was an altercation when two women told the troops they should get out of the water as they were "scaring the children".

"It's happened so many times that that one didn't even get reported up the chain," says Francie grimly.

Neighbours have also objected to accommodation being built for soldiers' families at Headley Court, she adds: "If I got their names and addresses I'd have them all tried for treason. These soldiers are prepared to do something none of us is prepared to do. And we owe them, big time.

"I'm not suggesting it should be different, it's not a question of whether they should be going to war or not. The fact is that they are prepared to go and serve wherever they are told - they don't get a choice - and they are giving an awful lot.

"When they come back hurt and damaged, the least we can do is everything we can to help them. They're trained to have pride, to be dignified, never to complain, so it takes us civilians to do that on their behalf."

Francie's sense of the acute importance of supporting men who come back from war is informed by the experience of her own family. Her father Major Robert Cain was one of five men to win the VC at Arnhem in Holland in September 1944.

It was part of Market Garden, one of the largest airborne operations of the war. Some 10,600 troops went in; fewer than 2,500 came out. Major Cain was the only VC who lived to tell the tale.

The plan was to drop airborne forces at strategic bridges in occupied Holland so that land troops could drive through from Belgium into Germany. The last bridge, at Arnhem, proved - as Hollywood later had it - a bridge too far.

Francie's father and his colleagues flew in by glider under heavy fire. Several gliders crash-landed or collided.

Some pilots were crushed when the vehicles or heavy machinery the gliders were carrying smashed into the cockpits.

Cain got to within 2,000 yards of the Arnhem bridge to face a German counterattack. Some 300 of the 400 men he was commanding were killed. He was then ordered to hold nearby high ground where 40 more of his men were killed in 90 minutes. In the siege that followed in Oosterbeek, where the allies had gathered, he was badly wounded and temporarily blinded when a PIAT antitank shell blew up in his face. Yet he carried on fighting.

"His face and legs were full of shrapnel, his eyes blackened and his eardrums were perforated," Francie wrote after visiting the spot where it happened.

"He apparently declined medical treatment (morphine was in short supply), stuffing pieces of field dressing in his ear to stop the bleeding. His trousers had been pretty much blown off.

"The thought of a man with a bloody and blackened face, a rag protruding from his ear, with shredded trousers exposing bloody legs, running around shooting at Tiger tanks from the hip with a PIAT, [took] me back to Hollywood. So why didn't Harrison Ford play him in the film? Dad didn't even have a walk-on part."

He "bagged" three Tiger tanks that day. "The citation told of my father's boundless energy and bravery, motivating and inspiring those around him, putting any concerns for his own safety behind him while he took on an overwhelming enemy seemingly single-handed," said Francie.

She added: "Despite my father's unholy appearance during the battle, I am told he made his men find clean shirts and have a shave before they retreated over the river. He didn't want them to retreat in disarray. I think it helped them to restore some pride in themselves."

Months later, after collecting his VC at Buckingham Palace, Francie's father went to a pub in Whitehall to celebrate with some mates who had also won awards. After a few drinks, he left the VC on the table.

"It made me laugh because I got to see and touch the medal the other day," says Francie. "It's part of an exhibition at the Isle of Man museum that I opened. They made me wear cotton gloves to handle it and I thought: God, and there's my dad leaving it probably in a pool of beer in the pub."

As a child she knew nothing of this - neither of Arnhem nor of its beery aftermath.

After the war, her father rejoined Shell, the oil company. He was 51 when she was born. A few years later he took early retirement and the family moved to the Isle of Man, where Francie grew up. Her father died of cancer when she was 13.

The VC had never been mentioned. "It wasn't a secret, but it wasn't something he would have wanted to talk about," she says. "He wasn't a military man but he was a very disciplined, righteous person. Talking to my mother, he'd found what he had to do in the war very, very disturbing and suffered for years after that emotionally."

Some years ago Jeremy made a television documentary about Major Cain's VC. Soon afterwards an elderly man who called every year selling poppies for the British Legion appeared at the Clarksons' door and gave Francie a bundle of letters.

"They were letters sent between him and two other mates who'd been together in the war. They'd gone home, where you couldn't really talk about it, so the letters were all sharing the horrors they'd had together, which was their way of dealing with it," says Francie.

"That's the other importance of a place like Headley Court. Soldiers can talk to each other about things they wouldn't even tell their wives or friends at home, because they can't understand what they've been through. More Falklands veterans have died through suicide than were killed in the war and the emotional effects of what's going on now are are going to be huge.

"Soldiers have seen their mates killed, they've maybe killed civilian children, they've been to hell and back. As a people we need to prepare for that."

Help for Heroes, of which Jeremy and Francie have become patrons, was launched in The Sunday Times in September. It aims to raise £5m to build a swimming pool and gym complex at Headley Court. It has already raised £1.8m, including more than £100,000 from Sunday Times readers, and we hope you will continue to give to the charity as part of our Christmas Appeal.

It was Headley Court's upbeat spirit that appealed to Francie when she visited. "It's the bit where they start to get back on their feet," she says. "Years ago I used to work in outplacement counselling, which was basically working with people who'd been made redundant and helping them get started again. People used to say to me, 'Isn't that very depressing being around people who are unemployed all the time?' but I'd say it would be depressing if I'd been the one doing the firing: my bit is when the damage has been done, pulling them back up and helping them get started again."

Parkinson, who is 23, has been at Headley Court for several months now. He has lost three years of memory but has regained a little movement in his arm and is learning to balance on special "kneeler legs" designed for double amputees.

"He's being spoken of as the most wounded soldier that's ever survived - it's only down to modern techniques and a bit of luck that he's still alive," says Francie.

Despite that, Parkinson was initially offered only £152,000 in compensation, a sum meant to cover his medical costs for life, while a typist working for the RAF was awarded £484,000 for a repetitive strain injury to her thumb. To make matters worse, his girlfriend, Holly Wood has left him, unable to cope with the extent of his injuries, so he has also lost daily contact with his one-year-old son.

But he is facing up to things as bravely as you would expect. Last week, almost a year after they met, Francie fulfilled her promise and took him to visit the set at Top Gear. "It was a fabulous day," she says. "He wasn't able to get into the cars, but he could watch and talk to the Stig [Top Gear's stunt driver].

"Your instinct is to mother these guys, but that's the wrong thing; they don't want sympathy. He was just in a T-shirt and I kept asking him if he was cold. Finally he said, 'I'm a para - I don't do cold'."

My Jeremy's got a girlie car and has done the ironing

When Jeremy wrote his attack on the treatment of wounded soldiers, he addressed it to Tony Blair, urging him "to help people who you put in harm's way".

A lot of people would like to see Jeremy enter the political arena directly: a petition on the Downing Street website proposing him for prime minister attracted 26,000 signatures recently.

"It's about the only protest vote people get," says his wife Francie. "We haven't got Screaming Lord Sutch any more and I've always believed that people died for the right to vote - so you have to vote - but there is never a 'none of the above' category, which is what a lot of us feel like ticking. So Jeremy represents the 'none of the above' option."

Would he make a good candidate? He is certainly a more rounded character than his popular image sometimes suggests. As a newlywed, says Francie, "he was very sweet, he'd do the shopping and the cooking, he even did some ironing for me. It's not what people expect of Jeremy Clarkson."

But "in truth, he's not a great shopper. If he's a bit hungry he'll go and buy a packet of Smarties, but he can't think, 'I might want to eat something else later on today.' He's not properly domesticated."

Francie, a former employment consultant, became his manager after the birth of their first daughter, Emily, now 13. "I picked up his bookkeeping, which he'd never been particularly good at, picked up the phone, which he'd never bothered answering, and answered letters he'd never got around to," she says.

And Francie for prime minister's wife? Or even prime minister herself? She comes over as the sort of Englishwoman the word "capable" was invented for.

At home, Jeremy drives an open-topped Merc: she declares it a bit too "girlie" and has a soft spot for hardcore, stripped-down Porsche 911s (to Jeremy's horror: he hates them and once destroyed one on Top Gear by crushing the bonnet with a piano, dousing the car in acid, then dropping it onto a caravan.)

She negotiates his contracts, handles his diary, sorts the fan mail, yet seems slightly bemused by the way it has all taken off.

His diatribes about life in modern Britain, hemmed in by speed cameras, CCTV and health and safety guidelines, have struck a chord. The writer Tony Parsons once called him "a dazzling beacon of political incorrectness", but Francie says he's just talking common sense.

www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/Charity/article76289.ece
www.driving.co.uk/news/10-things-you-didnt-know-about-jeremy-clarkson/

[RedMoon11]

10 THINGS YOU DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT JEREMY CLARKSON (cont.)

4 ...and can still be a bit soft, on occasion



Clarkson believes grown men should never cry but admits he had to go for “a little walk” when family pet Kristin Scott Donkey died, and did “get quite sniffly” watching the 1983 Michael Caine flick Educating Rita.

Read the article

Cheer up, Mewling Murray, you’ve made it into Boohoo’s Who

Jeremy Clarkson Published: 15 July 2012

Last weekend all the tabloid newspapers were full of huge headlines wishing Andy Murray well as he prepared to become the first British man to win Wimbledon for 3,000 years.

This was odd. Normally tabloids are extremely good at judging the mood of the nation but on this occasion they were well wide of the mark. Because I couldn’t find a single person, in real life or on Twitter, who wanted the miserablist-in-chief to win. There’s a good reason for this. He’d had the bare-faced cheek to plough through the entire tournament playing nothing but tennis.

There had been no hopping, skipping or clowning-around of any kind. He was a man with the personality of a vacuum cleaner and in post-match press conferences the sparkle of an old man’s brogue. That’s why we were all rooting for the man in the monogrammed blazer.

When the final was over and Murray had lost, I was praying he’d express his anger and disappointment by high-fiving his opponent. In the face. With a chair. That’s what I’d do if I were ever to lose a game of Boggle. But what he actually did was blub, whimpering and mewling like a hysterical little girl whose puppy dog had gone missing. It was pathetic. And guess what. All of a sudden he became a national hero.

Why? We live on a solid little rock in the north Atlantic. It’s cold. It’s wet. We admire the bulldog spirit. We keep calm and carry on. We get a grip. Crying? It’s like eating a horse. Something foreigners do.

In America a stiff upper lip is something that only ever happens when intimate plastic surgery goes wrong. There is no American word for “stoic”. Americans cry more often than they don’t. The smallest breath of wind and they’re all on the news, tears streaming down their blubbery faces as they stand beside their fallen-over wooden houses, explaining between heaving sobs how the good Lord has deserted them.

Even Germans cry, a point that was demonstrated by the enormous and manly Carsten Jancker, who broke down and wept when his side were beaten by Manchester United in the 1999 Champions League final. Finns? Yup. The former racing driver Mika Hakkinen took himself off for a little weep when he thought a mistake had cost him the world championship. And Italian men cry a lot, too. Probably because most of them aren’t actually men.

Here, though, things have always been different. A man could come home to find his wife in bed with the plumber, his dog nailed to the front door and his business a smoking ruin, and still he could be relied upon to put on a brave face and think of some suitable understatement to make it all seem not so bad.

It is impossible, for instance, to imagine a tear in the eye of Nobby Stiles or WG Grace. I bet Earl Haig had no tear ducts at all. Or Arthur Harris.

And certainly when my father-in-law was surrounded by overwhelming German forces at Arnhem, there is no suggestion that he broke down and wept. He just blew up another tank.

In Britain lachrymosity has always been seen, quite rightly, as a sign that you are not really a proper chap. That you may be someone who bowls from the other end, or a colonial. But, oh dear, that’s all changed now.

Every night on the news in recent weeks fat people who’ve watched far too much American television are to be found standing in front of their moist sofas sobbing as they explain how the flood waters came all the way up to their knees. It’s sick-inducing and should be banned from the airwaves. People aren’t allowed to bare their breasts on the news. So why should they be allowed to bare their souls?

It gets worse. Nick Faldo wormed his way into the nation’s hearts by crying after he won a stupid game of golf. And the only reason we feel sorry for Paul Gascoigne is that he let us see his feminine side during a football match against Germany. Nowadays a little tear on television can win you not just the love of a nation, but also a lucrative advertising deal and a lot of sex with women who think you are all gooey and nice.

Well, that’s what they say. They argue that the tear-stained face of a man is a sign that he likes to eat celery and that he gives half of his salary each month to a home for distressed kittens. They say that this is a good thing. They also say they don’t want us to come home at night in a bear skin and demand our wicked way. And that isn’t true, either. Women want a crybaby in the house in the same way that men want their wives in a pair of Y-fronts.

That said, I can cry. I cried in Born Free when Elsa was released into the wild, and I’m told by my mother that I was inconsolable in a film in which Norman Wisdom went to bed with a horse. But as an adult? Well, when our pet Kristin Scott Donkey died I had to go for “a little walk”, and I’m afraid I get quite sniffly in Educating Rita. But that’s it.

And rightly so. Because, as Britain changes, it is very difficult to think of one single defining national characteristic. We don’t wear bowler hats any more. Benny Hill is dead. And our army is now smaller than the Padstow Tufty club. All we have left is a stiff upper lip.

Which brings me on to the citizen test that all new boys have to pass if they want to become British. At present it’s full of irrelevant questions about the number of parliamentary constituencies, what quangos do and who is allowed to vote.

There should be one question only.

When is it acceptable for a grown man to cry in public?
a) Never.
b) Whenever he is upset by something.

Anyone who ticks b) should be taken directly to Heathrow and put on the next flight to abroad.

www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/comment/columns/jeremyclarkson/article1080951.ece


5 Top Gear germinated when Clarkson was at school



Clarkson was expelled from his eminent public school Repton, in Derbyshire, for “drinking, smoking and generally making a nuisance” of himself. Repton was where Clarkson met Andy Wilman, executive producer of Top Gear.

He was also a classmate of Adrian Newey, chief technical officer of the Red Bull F1 team.


6 Clarkson took his driving test in a Bentley



Clarkson passed his driving test in 1977 at the wheel of his grandfather’s Bentley R Type, similar to the one pictured. He was so confident he’d pass that he took along scissors to remove the L-plates afterwards.


7 Clarkson supports the armed forces



Clarkson is interested in the military and in 2007 became a patron of Help for Heroes, a charity that provides support and facilities to wounded British servicemen. He has also taken part in a sponsored bike ride to raise funds for the cause.

www.driving.co.uk/news/10-things-you-didnt-know-about-jeremy-clarkson/

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10 THINGS YOU DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT JEREMY CLARKSON (cont.)

8 Clarkson is a Sunday Times veteran writer



Clarkson has written more than 1,000 articles for the Sunday Times in a relationship that has lasted more than 20 years.

Read Clarkson's first review here.

20 YEARS OF CLARKSON: ASTON MARTIN VANTAGE REVIEW (1993)

Vroom with a view

By Jeremy Clarkson   Published 14 March 2014

Jeremy Clarkson | 20 years of Clarkson

Jeremy Clarkson's first column for The Sunday Times. Originally published April 18, 1993



On the one hand, Aston Martin’s new Vantage is as brutal as a dockers’ boozer, yet, on the other, it’s a civilised as an EM Forster heroine. As a result, finding a target audience for the thing is hard.

When it’s just sitting there doing nothing, it looks like a big, silly old Hector, a throwback to the time when supercars had improbably large engines at the front, rear-wheel drive and bulgy bits everywhere else. It appears to be an anachronism and it doesn’t matter how many airbags or catalytic converters they say it has, it still looks a bit daft.

Inside, it’s like my old headmaster’s study. The doors aren’t lined with books, but they look as though they ought to be. The carpets are thick, the leather is plentiful and the wood was obviously carved by someone who knows, or is even married to, Mrs Dawson from the condom commercials. The people who make Aston Martins are what Tory politicians like to call “the salt of the earth”.

They are, however, craftsmen, and it shows. Even though Aston Martin is now owned by Ford and the interiors play host to a number of Ford bells and whistles, it is still a headmastery place to be. A sort of baronial hall with a ding-dong doorbell. But it’s the bit under the bonnet that matters most.

There’s a game going on at the moment with every Tom, Dick and Luigi claiming that they are about to launch the world’s fastest car. The instant Martin Brundle thumped a Jaguar XJ220 around the Nardo test track in Italy at 212mph and, as a result, put the car in the Guinness Book of Records, Bugatti cleared its corporate throat and said its new EB110 had been timed on the same track at 212.5mph. Yah, boo, sucks. Now McLaren says its F1, a BMW-powered three-seater with a price tag of $1m, will do 220mph. And so it goes on.

Aston Martin, however, does not talk in superlatives about the Vantage, which is odd, because under the bonnet is the world’s most brutal engine. In a nutshell, the twin-supercharged 5.3-litre V8 is exactly 10 times more powerful than the motor in your Golf GTI. Nearly.

That pumped-up, puffed-out body may look silly in a crowded town centre where everyone wears shoes made out of eco-friendly potato skins, but show it an empty piece of road and it will rearrange all your internal organs. Zero to 60 takes less than four seconds.


Calling the performance explosive is like calling the space shuttle jolly clever. Unless your name is Ayrton Senna, you will not have felt, or heard, anything like it in your life before. At 2000rpm it is breaking windows. At 4000rpm your ears begin to bleed. At 6500rpm people from the noise abatement society come round and give you a summons. When you change from second to third at 92mph, the rear wheels will, if you want, burn rubber. Oddly, though, at 80mph in sixth gear, the engine is ticking over at a mere 1500rpm.

When you learn it can do all these things, and more, its exterior styling starts to make sense. If, in Terminator, Arnie had been nibbled to death by a field mouse, nobody would have bothered going to see Terminator 2. The aesthetics must always be matched by the power.

The most surefire way of feeling stupid is to drive a car that looks as though it will go quickly when, in fact, it would have the devil’s own job passing a dilapidated milk float. People laugh at you, and rightly so. The Aston Martin writes out cheques that its body can cash, which is undoubtedly a good thing.

Cars these days have become an outer set of clothes, the only clue that passers-by have about what sort of person you are. This is why hairdressers, as often as not, drive around in a Mazda MX-5.



You wouldn’t, or shouldn’t, go out shopping in an Armani two-piece if your belly is so big that it looks as though you’ve got a space hopper down the front of your shirt. On this basis, the Aston Martin Vantage is for those who are hung like a horse, have forearms like redwoods and boast a family tree that can be traced all the way back to a time when everyone was an amoeba. Oh, and you need to have £186,000 in the bank too.

Oddly enough, nobody springs immediately to mind.

GO TO 20 YEARS OF CLARKSON HOMEPAGE

www.driving.co.uk/news/20-years-of-clarkson-aston-martin-vantage-review-1993/

www.driving.co.uk/news/10-things-you-didnt-know-about-jeremy-clarkson/

[RedMoon11]

10 THINGS YOU DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT JEREMY CLARKSON (cont.)

9 Clarkson loves the Volvo XC90


Amongst other cars, Clarkson has owned three Volvo XC90 4x4s since 2003. “As a means of carrying people and stuff at the same time, the Volvo has no equal,” he has said.

20 YEARS OF CLARKSON: WHAT CARS DOES CLARKSON ACTUALLY DRIVE?

Clarkson's personal garage, since 1993

By Jeremy Clarkson Published 14 March 2014



THEY SAY THAT IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT CARS A MOTORING WRITER REALLY RATES, YOU SHOULD LOOK AT WHAT THEY HAVE IN THEIR GARAGE. SO HERE’S WHAT CLARKSON HAS BEEN DRIVING FOR PLEASURE DURING HIS TIME AT THE SUNDAY TIMES.

HE PAID FULL PRICE FOR MOST — ONLY A FEW WERE ON LONG-TERM LOAN FROM MANUFACTURERS IN THE EARLY YEARS.


1993 Ford Escort Cosworth
“Late at night, when all I wanted to do was to get home, it would be sitting there, angry and spoiling for a fight”

1994 Jaguar XJ6
“If you want a relaxing and stylish ride, nothing even gets close to the Jaguar”

1995 Jaguar XJR 4.0
“The nightmare on Elm Strasse, the supercharged fist in an iron glove”

---

1995: After working on a freelance basis for two years, Clarkson starts his weekly column

---

1996 Ferrari 355
“At full chat, a 355 sounds like God shouting. In terms of grip, handling and poise, the 355 was Torvill and Dean”

1998 Jaguar XJR V8
“It comes with enough torque to stop a pacemaker at 500 paces. You can expect it to reach 60mph before you’ve set off”

1999 Toyota Land Cruiser Amazon
“It’s built to arm-wrestle the Outback. Why is it the most unreliable piece of junk I’ve had the misfortune to own?”

---

1999: Clarkson leaves the old version of Top Gear. He begins a second column in the News Review section

---

2001 Toyota Land Cruiser Amazon (again)
“The Land Cruiser blitzes every other car in its class. It was able to swallow me, my wife, her embryo, two kids, the dog and a seesaw”

2001 Ford Focus
“What we’ve got is one of those 11-year-old wonder kids that have just graduated from Cambridge with a degree in quantum physics”

2002 Mercedes SL 55 AMG
“With nearly 500bhp on tap you only need think about putting your foot down and you’ll end up in a magistrates’ court”

---

2002: The new-look Top Gear is launched, with Clarkson back at the helm

---

2003 Volvo XC90
“As a means of carrying people and stuff at the same time, the Volvo has no equal. The packaging is a work of genius”

2005 Ford GT
“It is fine. It is perfect. It knows it’s a great, great car that was ruined by a useless ape who fitted a crummy aftermarket alarm system”

2005 Mercedes SLK 55 AMG
“I had to haggle the price up. Being a motoring journalist means being offered big discounts. But being a motoring journalist means I can’t accept”

2005 Volvo XC90 (again)
“The first car to have been designed by someone who had children, not an engineer who’d read about them in a book”

2007 Lamborghini Gallardo Spyder
“I took the Gallardo backstage at a recent Who gig and it looked right, sitting there among the rock stars and the roadies”

2007 Mercedes 600 Grosser
“The Grosser is fitted with so many ornaments it could almost be twinned with Elton John’s head”

2008 (Another) Volvo XC90
“It’s a dreadful car to drive, really, but it’s so clever and so well thought out we’re about to buy a third”

2008 Mercedes CLK Black Series
“It is not a joke. Like everything to come out of the Fatherland since it was formed in 1871, it is utterly and deadly serious”

2009 Range Rover
“This is the automotive equivalent of France, the Sony Bravia, The Sunday Times and Mick Jagger. It is the answer”


 10 Some people want Clarkson to be Prime Minister



In 2008, 49,446 people signed an online petition under the title, “Make Jeremy Clarkson Prime Minister”. In response, the office of Number 10 Downing Street, under the then PM, Gordon Brown, created the following 55-second “light-hearted” video claiming that they had “thought long and hard” about the idea.



The video was criticised by the opposition Conservative party as a waste of taxpayers’ money. Clarkson later said he would be a “rubbish” prime minister because he has problems not contradicting himself in his columns.

---

Read the latest Clarkson here

---

Originally published April 19, 2013

www.driving.co.uk/news/10-things-you-didnt-know-about-jeremy-clarkson/

[RedMoon11]

If You Don’t Buy One, at least watch the crashes on the web

THE CLARKSON REVIEW: LAMBORGHINI HURACAN LP 610-4 (2015)

Jeremy Clarkson   Published: 3 May 2015


Lamborghini Huracan LP 610-4, £180,720

IN THE olden days, when Raymond Baxter was on the television and you had to have two O-levels to be a policeman, a family saloon took about 20 seconds to reach 60 miles per hour, which then turned out to be its top speed. Whereas a supercar such as the Ferrari 308 GTB would get to 60mph in a dizzying 6.7 seconds and then keep on accelerating all the way to an almost unbelievable 155mph.

Today, however, family saloon cars can do 155mph, and so to keep ahead of the pack, supercars are now so fast that if you keep your foot hard down on the throttle in second, third or fourth gear for more than about three seconds you will lose control and crash into a tree. This is a fact. And if you don’t believe me, put “supercar crash” into Google. You’ll get more than 1.3m hits.

It’s not simply the speed and the power that cause these crashes, either. It’s the fact that today supercars are no harder to operate than a knife and fork. In a Seventies Lamborghini you really had to work for a living. The clutch pedal felt as if it was set in concrete, the interior was as hot as the middle of a star, the steering was heavier than dark matter and usually you died of heat exhaustion from reversing out of your garage.

A modern supercar doesn’t feel like that at all. Even the Bugatti Veyron is no more dramatic to drive than a Volkswagen Golf. This lulls people into a false sense of security. They think they can handle the savagery that lives under the bonnet. So with a big grin they shout, “Watch this!” to their passenger, and stamp on the throttle — which means three seconds later they are going through the Pearly Gates, backwards, in a cloud of fire and screaming.

When I drove the McLaren P1 around the Spa-Francorchamps racetrack in Belgium recently, it was raining and I didn’t use full throttle once. But of course you know that, because I’m still here, writing this.

It was much the same story with the Ferrari F12berlinetta that I drove over a Cairngorm in the snow a couple of years ago. I think I may have used full power once, for about a 200th of a second. But I was in seventh gear at the time, doing 24mph. And still a bit of poo came out.

I love that these idiotic cars exist. And I love that we live in a world where all you need to buy one is some money. The government doesn’t insist on any special training; it simply says, “Can you reverse round a corner?” If you demonstrate that you can, then you are allowed to buy a car that can do 250mph. That’s fantastic when you think about it.


The Huracan’s high seats limit vision at the lights

However, while I will applaud the people who buy these vehicles, I wouldn’t — because what’s the point of buying a car so scary-fast you don’t dare use more than half of what’s available?

Much better, if you want a snazzy mid-engined rocketship, is to come down a peg or two and buy something from the Little League. The new Ferrari 488 GTB looks as though it might be quite interesting, and there’s always the McLaren [insert whatever name it is using today] — that’s a good car as well. But come on: you aren’t really buying a supercar for the speed, are you? It’s because you like the way it looks. Yes it is. Be honest.

And if that’s the case, then really the one-stop shop has always been Lamborghini, purveyor through history of motorcars that are demonstrably worse than the equivalent Ferrari but that look sen-bleeding-sational.



Let us examine the case of the recently departed Gallardo. It was not as nice to drive as the Ferrari 458 Italia. And yet more than 14,000 people bought one. Me included. And Richard Hammond. Why? Because it was — and will remain — one of the best-looking cars ever made.

All of which brings me on to the Gallardo’s replacement, the car you see in the photographs this morning. The Huracan. Sounds good, yes? As though it’s named after the most cataclysmic weather event known to man? Yes, but it isn’t. Like almost all Lamborghinis, it’s named after a stabbed cow.

And straight away there’s a problem. It is striking, for sure, but is it as striking as a Lamborghini should be? This is a descendant of the mad Countach and the bonkers Diablo. What you want from Lambo is a Game of Thrones assault on the senses, and, I dunno, the Huracan is a bit Wolf Hall. And, whisper this, I don’t even think it’s particularly good-looking. Look at it from directly behind and it has the exact same silhouette as a loaf of bread. This is not a good thing.

Don’t be too disheartened, though, because beneath the Hovis styling you get four-wheel drive, a carbon fibre and aluminium chassis that is light and easy to fix, a snappy flappy-paddle gearbox (manual isn’t available) and, joy of joys, a normally aspirated 5.2-litre V10. It’s fitted with a stop-start system for city driving, but don’t be fooled: a motor such as this runs on baby polar bears and causes extreme weather events. And it sounds completely wonderful.

I have heard it said there’s too much understeer when you really open the taps, but I didn’t notice any of that. I thought it was a joyous car to drive. In Road (Strada) mode it’s extremely comfortable, and if you go for Track (Corsa) or Sport on the Soul button on the steering wheel, it is fast. But not so fast you actually soil yourself. (Although there is a tremendous Huracan crash on the internet, during which both occupants almost certainly had a bit of a trouser accident.)

Apart from the lack of a cupholder, this is a car you could and would use every day. It’s not so big that it’s hopeless in town, the dashboard is wonderful to behold, and it’s comforting to know that behind the scenes everything is made by Audi. The next R8, in fact, will be a Huracan with Lamborghini crossed out and the word Audi written on, in crayon.

There is, however, one problem that drove me mad. Italy’s motor industry finally mastered the art of making a decent driving position a few years ago, yet now Lamborghini has forgotten and mounted the seat far too high.

This means you sort of look down on the interior rather than across it, but worse, because the windscreen is a long way away and there’s a lot of roof between you and it, it’s as if you’re driving round in a preposterous peaked cap. And that means when you are waiting at a set of lights, you can’t see when they go green. You only know you have to set off when the chap behind starts beeping.


The Huracan is one car traffic wardens won’t miss

Oh, and I have to mention the steering-wheel-mounted switches for the indicators and wipers. No, Lamborghini. Just no. I know Ferrari did it first, but as my teachers used to say when I’d been caught copying, “If Wilkins jumped off a cliff, would you jump off one too?”

Niggles aside, though, this is an interesting car because it’s an other-way-round Lamborghini. It doesn’t look very exciting but it’s tremendous to drive. Really tremendous, actually. Around something called “the Top Gear test track” it was faster, apparently, than its big brother, the Aventador.

Go to driving.co.uk to search for used Lamborghinis

Lamborghini Huracan LP 610-4 specifications
Engine: 5204cc, V10
Power: 602bhp @ 8250rpm
Torque: 412 lb ft @ 6500rpm
Transmission: 7-speed dual-clutch
Performance: 0-62mph: 3.2sec
Top speed: 202mph
Fuel: 22.6mpg (combined)
CO2: 290g/km
Road tax band: M (£1,100 for first year; £505 thereafter)
Price: £180,720
Release date: On sale now
CLARKSON'S VERDICT ★★★★☆
 On the cover it says Wolf Hall but inside it’s all magic and dragons

Lamborghini Huracan LP 610-4

Lamborghini Huracan LP 610-4 (Lamborghini)

www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/ingear/clarkson/article1550343.ece
www.driving.co.uk/car-reviews/the-clarkson-review-lamborghini-huracan-lp-610-4-2015/

DM

[RedMoon11]

Hold the High Fives, Hank, till Someone Figures Out How to Drive It

THE CLARKSON REVIEW: CHEVROLET CORVETTE Z06 AUTOMATIC WITH Z07 PERFORMANCE PACKAGE (2015)

Jeremy Clarkson   Published: 10 May 2015


Chevrolet Corvette Z06, from £99,140


Chevrolet Corvette Z06 automatic with Z07 performance package, from £99,140

IN THE past few weeks, as you might imagine, I’ve spent quite a lot of time on the telephone to various people in California, and I must admit it’s been rather enjoyable. Talking to an American about stuff is like talking to a child who’s going to the zoo. There’s no irony, no self-deprecation and none of the barely fathomable subtlety you get when talking to a Britisher. It’s a non-stop rollercoaster of primary-coloured enthusiasm.

We see exactly the same sort of thing in the online blurb Chevrolet has created for its new Corvette Z06. It’s billed as a “world-class supercar” and a “triumph of design and engineering”. There’s even a quote from Tadge Juechter, the chief engineer who worked on the car: “Its aerodynamic downforce performance is massive and unlike anything we’ve ever tested in any street car.”

Here in Europe we scoff at this sort of thing. We read it and think, “Yeah, well, you would say that. You designed it, so you’re hardly likely to say it’s a bit crap.” Whereas an American would read the quote and think, “Wow. The new Z06’s aerodynamic downforce performance is massive and unlike anything Chevrolet has ever tested in any street car.”

There’s more. Chevrolet tells us the Z06 sits “at the intersection of Le Mans and the autobahn”, which to me means it sits in the French village of Bar-sur-Seine, just to the southeast of Troyes. But it wasn’t sitting there at all. It was sitting in the pits at the Thruxton racing circuit, in Hampshire, on a very windy and extremely cold May day last week.

There is nothing on God’s green earth that is quite as depressing as a second- division British racing circuit: the metal window frames on the mildewy portable buildings, the boarded-up burger vans, the cock-eyed signs saying, “Marshal camping”. And there in the middle of it all was what appeared to be a child’s toy, an egg-yellow Corvette. It cheered the place up in the way a pair of bright curtains can make a squat feel like home.



Before we begin, I should explain that I like the 2015 Corvette a very lot. Only recently I told you that the Stingray convertible version was good-looking, fast, adroit in the corners and excellent value for money. If it weren’t for the scrap-metal-dealer image and the fact the steering wheel is on the left whether you like it or not, the new Corvette is a car I would very much like to own.

Or would I? Because what you see in the pictures this morning is the latest incarnation of the new ’Vette, the Z06, a car that sits at the intersection of Le Mans and the autobahn and has better downforce performance than any other street car ever made by anyone ever.

It certainly has plenty of grunt because the company has added a supercharger to the 6.2-litre V8 engine. And in round numbers this means 650bhp and 650 torques. Which in turn means that in a drag race — and I know this because I tested it — it has the same performance as a Porsche 911 Turbo.

In the olden days this would have been enough. Hank and Bud and Tadge would have looked at the straight-line speed and, after a bout of high-fiving, put the car on sale. But that is not the way in Kentucky these days. So the Corvette has a carbon-fibre bonnet for a lower centre of gravity, along with titanium intake valves and composite floor panels, plus the option of carbon ceramic brakes.

And you get a dial on the centre console that can turn your relatively benign road car into a screaming track monster. Although when I say screaming, I mean bellowing. And even that doesn’t quite cover it. When the Z06 leaves the line in a full-bore racing start, the noise from its four centrally mounted tailpipes is painful. Ever heard a Harrier hover? Well, it’s like that.

Except it’s louder. Once, I was taken to watch Nasa test a 37m-plus-horsepower space shuttle rocket engine in a place called Stennis, in Mississippi. I told the man I didn’t need ear defenders because I’d seen the Who, but it turned out I did. It was a genuinely awesome and awful experience, that sound. And even that wasn’t as loud as the ’Vette. It’s a sound that has a mass. It has gravity. I shouldn’t be at all surprised to hear that it can kill.


The Corvette has a single-clutch transmission instead of a lightning quick dual clutch

Of course, inside the car, you are several yards in front of the noise and, anyway, you’ve got more important things on your mind, such as: “I’m going to crash soon.” It’s hard in the cockpit to work out what’s wrong, there’s just so much going on, but having given the matter some thought since I came home and lay in the bath shaking, I think I have the problem. Chevrolet has fitted titanium this and ceramic that because these words look good in a brochure. And they give an owner good boasting rights at the golf club and the shooting range. But don’t be fooled into thinking they make the car easier to drive and easier to manage. Because they don’t.

This car is evil. You turn into a corner and there’s some quite pronounced understeer. You give it a dab of power to solve the problem but because there’s so much torque, the back end doesn’t start to come loose. It lets go completely.

So now you’re sideways and in real trouble. Because Hank and Bud and Tadge have heard that a racing car needs quick steering, they’ve gone mad and given the Z06 a rack that would be deemed twitchy on a PlayStation. And semi-slick tyres. And nowhere near enough lock. So now you’ve spun.

On the next lap you know not to exceed the levels of grip, but because the steering is so twitchy and because the power is so grunty, it’s hard to stay below the point of no return. The only solution is to drive very slowly indeed.

Let me put it this way. If this car is supposed to sit at the intersection of Le Mans and the autobahn and if all that titanium and carbon fibre stuff is there for a reason other than marketing, why is it available only with a manual gearbox or the dimwitted automatic that was in my test car? Why would it not have blink-of-an-eye flappy paddles?

That’s the giveaway, really. This car was built to look good in a brochure. The numbers and ingredients are tantalising, but this car is not a serious player in the European theatre of war. It may be able to out-accelerate just about everything, and on a skid pan the size of Texas, where there’s nothing to hit if you overstep the mark, it can generate some extraordinary lateral G. But it’s not nice to drive.

So if you want a serious car, buy one from the continent that gave the world Shakespeare, Monet and Emerson Lake & Palmer. Europe does serious well. It does substance. It does brilliant. America does Disney. And what we have with the Z06 is Disney trying to do a hard-hitting documentary about Africa’s civil wars.

Naturally, it hasn’t really worked.

Go to driving.co.uk to search for used Chevrolets

Chevrolet Corvette Z06 automatic with Z07 performance package
Price: £114,780
Engine: 6162cc, V8, supercharged
Power: 650bhp @ 6400rpm
Torque: 650 lb ft @ 3600rpm
Transmission: 8-speed automatic
Acceleration:
0-62mph: 3.4sec
Top speed: 186mph
Fuel:
20mpg
CO2: 322g/km
Road tax:
M (£1,100 for first year; £505 thereafter)
Release date: On sale now
Verdict: Looks
great
on your driveway.
Keep it there

Clarkson's verdict ★★★☆☆

The Clarkson review: Chevrolet Corvette Z06 automatic with Z07 performance package (2015)
Looks
great
on your driveway.
Keep it there

PROS
✓ Huge grunt from the 6.2-litre V8 engine
✓ Louder than a space rocket
✓ Porsche 911 Turbo performance

CONS
X Hyper-twitchy steering
X Understeers... then flips you round with even a dab of throttle
X Dim auto 'box and no flappy paddles


Chevrolet Corvette Z06


www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/ingear/clarkson/article1553027.ece
www.driving.co.uk/car-reviews/the-clarkson-review-chevrolet-corvette-z06-2015/

[RedMoon11]

[RedMoon11]

THE CLARKSON REVIEW: PORSCHE CAYMAN GTS (2015)

Lower Suspension, Faster Cornering But Still No Italian Starlet

Jeremy Clarkson   Published: 17 May 2015


Porsche Cayman GTS, £55,397

SOON almost no one will want to buy a car. You may think the industry is vibrant and full of many exciting things, but the truth is: cars are enjoying their last hurrah, burning brightly as suns do just before they fizzle out.

The problem is simple. Apart from a few friendless weirdos, today’s young people are simply not interested in cars at all. When I turned 17, and this is probably true of you too, I became consumed with the need to get on the road as quickly as possible. I wanted a car, not just for the freedom that such a thing would afford, but for the sheer joy of being able to drive a ton of machinery at a hundred miles an hour.

My son is very different. He’s 19 and has not bothered to take his driving test. His argument is a simple one. There’s a coach that stops right outside his flat in London and it takes him, in a blizzard of wi-fi, to and from Oxford. For £11.

If he wants to go somewhere else, he can use a train or something called “a bus”. An Uber cab is never more than a few clicks away, and there’s always a Boris bike for short trips on level ground when it’s not too cold or hot or wet. He can move about without worrying about breath tests or speeding fines or parking tickets or no-claims bonuses. My son therefore thinks he’s free simply because he doesn’t have a car.

And there’s no point going on about the open road and the wind in your hair and the snarl of a straight six because he just doesn’t see cars this way. With good reason. When he was little he spent two hours a day on the school run strapped into a primary-coloured child’s seat, in the back of a Volvo, in an endless jam. There’s no way this was going to engender any motoring-related dreams. He wasn’t sitting there in a goo of expectation, thinking, “Hmm, when I’m big I will do this as well.”

There’s more. When I was a boy we had Grandstand and World of Sport on the television, bringing us all the action from the country’s racetracks. We had rallycross, and we had Minis going wheel to wheel with Ford Cortinas and enormous American muscle cars. And Formula One had no stewards in Pringle jumpers making sure that on the circuit there were no overtaking moves at all.



But look at what we have today. F1 is so boring that the television companies have to show replays of a pit stop. They do. In Barcelona last week they showed us a car having its wheels changed and then they showed it to us again, as though we might be interested. My son certainly wasn’t. So we turned it off and went to watch some football.

In the olden days there was even a car show on the television. There were Lamborghinis whizzing hither and thither and McLarens at full chat in Italian motorway tunnels. But that’s gone too now, and when it comes back you can be fairly sure it’ll be full of handy eco-Milibandy hints on how to get more miles to the gallon from your hybrid.

Then we have car advertising. Where are the burning cornfields and the shots of pretty women hanging their fur coats on parking meters? Gone. And in their stead we have £9.99 win free save international zoom-zoom nonsense full of palindromic numberplates with a bouncy Europop beat. They’re selling cars as though they’re fridges.

And if you sell something as a practical proposition, it had better actually be practical. Which, as we’ve established, a car isn’t. Nor is a fridge, for that matter, since you have a supermarket on every street corner now that can keep everything chilled until you need it. Free up the space in your kitchen. Get rid. And free up the space in your garage while you’re at it. Because you don’t need a car. Not really. Not these days.

My generation, we see the car as an Alfa Romeo drophead on the Amalfi coast with a French playboy at the wheel and Claudia Cardinale in a headscarf in the passenger seat. Today’s generation sees the car as a Toyota Prius, in a jam, on a wet Tuesday, with a Syrian accountant at the wheel and a broken TomTom on the passenger seat.

The tragedy is that car makers don’t seem to have noticed that this is going on. That there’s nothing — absolutely nothing — out there selling the idea of a car as a dream.

Jaguar, for example, makes a sporty car and then two weeks later brings out a new version that is sportier still. But it is chasing an audience that is getting older and dying. Most people just want a bit of peace and quiet and 40 miles to the gallon. And the new generation don’t want a car at all. And certainly not a car that can do 180mph.

There’s a similar problem at Porsche. I tested the Cayman S not long ago and thought it was pretty much spot-on, an almost perfect sports car for the fiftysomething chap whose automotive love affair began long before the thought police arrived with their Gatsos and their parking-by-phone nonsense.



So what does Porsche do? Well, it brings out a new model called the GTS, which is lower and gruntier and more sporty. Hmm. Does Porsche think the world is full of people saying, “Wow. There’s a new Cayman out that is 10mm closer to the ground for better cornering”? Because it isn’t.



Still, that’s its problem. Not mine. Mine is reviewing a car that’s a bit odd because it is not, as you might expect, a follow-up to the 2011 Cayman R. That came with no equipment at all and was designed for track-day enthusiasts. The GTS comes with all the usual appurtenances of gracious living. But is actually more powerful and faster than the R was. Odd.

And it gets odder because if you buy a normal Cayman S and fit all the stuff that the GTS has as standard the two cars cost as near as dammit the same.

I’d stick with the S because while the GTS is a lovely thing to drive on the sort of deserted road that doesn’t exist any more, really, apart from in Wales (where I was, luckily), you’d need a stopwatch to tell it apart from the S. Both are beautiful to hustle through bends, both go well and both ride nicely apart from on bumpy city-centre streets, where they are both a bit crashy. The GTS especially so.

I had only two criticisms of the S. I didn’t like its flappy-paddle box and its seats were deeply uncomfortable. Well, the GTS I tried had a manual, which was sharper, even if it did feel very old-fashioned to be doing so much work, and seats that felt better.

But were they? I only ask because after a week with the car I had to visit a massage person. I’m not saying the two things are connected. But it seems likely.

So I don’t see the point of this car. If Porsche wants to give us a lower ride height and slightly higher cornering speeds, it’s got to start reselling the dream of the car. It’s got to forget G-forces and think about the G-spot.

We need more glamour. We need more Italian starlets in headscarves. We need a new James Dean, because he sold more cars by dying in one than a million engineers will shift in a lifetime.

Porsche Cayman GTS specifications
Price: £55,397
Engine: 3436cc, 6 cylinders
Power: 280 lb ft @ 4750rpm
Torque: 479lb ft @ 1750rpm
Transmission: 6-speed manual
Performance: 0-62mph: 4.9sec
Top speed: 177mph
Fuel: 31.4mpg (combined)
CO2: 211g/km
Road tax band: K (£640 for first year; £290 thereafter)
Release date: On sale now

The Clarkson review: Porsche Cayman GTS (2015)

Clarkson's verdict ★★★☆☆
Add your own burning cornfield

PROS
✓ More power than even the old Cayman R...
✓ ...yet much less pared down
✓ Manual gearbox

CONS
X The Cayman S is more useable every day
X Lacks glamour
X I needed a massage after a week in that seat

Go to driving.co.uk to search for used Porsche Caymans

Porsche Cayman GTS

Porsche Cayman GTS

www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/ingear/clarkson/article1555779.ece
www.driving.co.uk/car-reviews/the-clarkson-review-porsche-cayman-gts-2015/

[RedMoon11]

CLARKSON ON: AMERICA

A collection of Jeremy's Yankee rants

By Sunday Times Driving    Published 28 May 2015



DON'T PICK on the little guy, they say, which could explain why Jeremy Clarkson frequently likes to poke fun at that global powerhouse America and its inhabitants. Below is a collection of his funniest remarks on the nation, taken from both his opinion pieces in The Sunday Times News Review and his car reviews for Driving.

Most of the comments are acerbic but Clarkson will often poke fun before revealing that he rather likes the country and many of its cars, so if you're reading this across the pond: do take it all with a pinch of salt, y'all.

---

"Do you believe that America’s involvement in Iraq was righteous and justified? Do you have an attack dog? Do you believe everyone has a right to own as many automatic weapons as they damn well please and that Obama Barrack is basically a communist? Yes? So, of course, you drive a Chevrolet Corvette."

Chevrolet Corvette Stingray convertible review July 27, 2014


"The Americans have [the word] 'awesome', which is used to describe the Holy Grail, the Grand Canyon, the moon landings, a cup of coffee from Starbucks, a new pair of socks and everything in-between. It signifies that they are an upbeat people who are extremely pleased with pretty much everything."

You reckon you can talk like us, Hank? Well isn’t that just awesome October 12, 2014


"Americans may have adopted all of the creature comforts that science has sent their way, but at their core they yearn to be out on the prairie, living rough and eating whatever they can shoot. Remember Petrocelli? The man was a skilled attorney but when there was no case to solve, he was to be found out in the sticks building his own house. Then there was Bobby Ewing. He worked in the oil business, drove a Mercedes SL and had a plastic wife. But at weekends he wore a tartan shirt and spent his time repairing fences. Americans love repairing fences."

Range Rover LWB 5.0 V8 supercharged review January 5, 2014


"There are so many pick-up trucks sold in America that you begin to wonder if the sheer weight of the damn things, all in one place, in one corner of the globe, could start to affect the planet’s orbit."

Hennessey VelociRaptor 600 review November 30, 2014


"In Soviet Russia you were allowed to do everything but vote. Whereas in America 20 years ago you could vote. But do nothing else. And it’s still bad today. In summer my daughter was carted off by the police for smoking near a fruit machine while under the age of 21."

Yes, siree — count me in for genocide and conservatory-building November 25, 2012


"If for some reason you had to up sticks and get out of Britain, where in the world would you live? . . . New York? Yup, it’s very exciting but I bet you’d quickly become fed up with being shot."

No, it’s me, Ermintrude — you’re just not my idea of a significant udder October 19, 2014


"[In Europe] we have Lotus, Ferrari, Maserati and Aston Martin. And [in America] they have the Ford F-150 Lightning pick-up truck: 0-60mph in a millionth of a second. Enough space in the back for a dead bear. And on a challenging road about as much fun as a wasabi enema."

Ford Mustang review September 25, 2005


"On a recent trip to America I maintained my 100% record of never having driven though Nevada without being stopped by the police. Six trips. Six heartfelt roadside apologies to a selection of burly-looking men in beige trousers."

Lexus LFA review September 9, 2012


"If you want a serious car, buy one from the continent that gave the world Shakespeare, Monet and Emerson Lake & Palmer. Europe does serious well. It does substance. It does brilliant. America does Disney. And what we have with the Z06 is Disney trying to do a hard-hitting documentary about Africa’s civil wars. Naturally, it hasn’t really worked."

Chevrolet Corvette Z06 review May 10, 2015


"In America ... there's no such thing as a Countryside Alliance because there's no class-based struggle between a bitter-with-jealousy metropolitan elite and a few crusty old lords who have 120,000-acre grouse moors in Scotland. In America everyone wants to be a part of the great outdoors. They like the idea of cutting down trees and shooting critters in the spine."

VW Transporter T30 TDI 174 Sportline review June 4, 2006


"Maybe we come across as a bit arrogant. According to Rowland White’s amazing new book Phoenix Squadron, when the first four Brits were sent to the new Top Gun academy in California, they didn’t much care for the 'Maverick' and 'Iceman' style of call sign adopted by their American counterparts. But their hosts insisted, so they came up with 'Cholmondley', 'Dogbreath', 'Alien' and 'Spastic'."

I’m starting divorce proceedings in this special relationship March 15, 2009


"Today the average [American] petrol pump attendant is capable, just, of turning on a pump when you prepay. But if you pay for two pumps to be turned on to fill two cars, you can, if you stare carefully, see wisps of smoke coming from her fat, useless, war-losing, acne-scarred, gormless turnip face."

The United States of total paranoia July 2, 2006


"You know the Stig? The all-white racing driver we use on Top Gear. Well, we were filming him walking through the Mojave desert when, lo and behold, a lorryful of soldiers rocked up and arrested him. He was unusual. He wasn't fat. He must therefore be a Muslim."

Arrested just for looking weird July 9, 2006


"It's still plastic. It's still made in Kentucky. It still has the big V8. And — stop laughing at the back — it still comes with exactly the same sort of suspension that you get on a Silvercross pram. Yup. It has leaf springs, which means it still rides like it's running on wooden tyres. It's a car so pumped up on steroids, it would be unable to take a drugs test without falling off its motorcycle. It's a car with arms like Schwarzenegger but a p*nis like a shrivelled-up little acorn."

Chevrolet Corvette C6 review August 29, 2004


"There are many people called 'preppers' who really do believe that the end is nigh and that they should prepare by buying some gas masks and soup now, along with a few automatic weapons. And maybe the odd pump-action 12-bore shotgun. And a few pistols ... Obviously, over here, on the civilised side of the pond, we do not fancy the idea of 'prepping' for post-apocalyptic survival because if it comes to a choice between tenting and being dead, most of us would tick the box marked 'Kill me'."

Guns down, survivalists — it’s the cheesemakers who’ll inherit the earth December 28, 2014


"It's based on a normal American 4x4 called the GMC Tahoe, which is very probably the worst off-road car in the whole of human history. It's too ugly, too big, too thirsty, too slow, not well enough equipped and hopeless when it's presented with snow, mud, gravel, soil, grass, stone, drizzle or even a light breeze. It doesn't work on the road either and when I took one into the desert I ended up coming home on a camel – that's true, that is."

Hummer H2 review January 12, 2003


"Many people imagine when they rent a convertible in America that they'll be thumping down Highway 1 under a blazing sky in a throbbing Corvette or an evocative Mustang. Yum, yum, they think. Freedom. Sunshine. A V8 bassline. Engineer boots, leather jackets and tight blue jeans. The American dream. Sadly, however, most tourists end up with a Chrysler Sebring convertible, which is almost certainly the worst car in the entire world."

Chrysler Sebring Cabriolet 2.7 V6 review October 5, 2008


"Any nation that can't make a cup of coffee and is utterly confused by the recipe for 'a pot of tea' is going to struggle pretty badly when it comes to something as complex as making a car. "

VW Polo 1.8 GTI review November 19, 2006


"In the past 200 years Australia has only invented the rotary washing line, and America's sole contribution to global betterment is condensed milk. The notion of these two great nations coming together to make a car doesn't fill anyone from the world's fountain of ingenuity with much hope."

Vauxhall Monaro VXR review July 10, 2005


"Motorists in the States are happy to drive round with a sub-machinegun in the glove box and eat nothing but lard but they will not wear seatbelts. Maybe it's because they consider it an abuse of civil liberties, maybe it's because they're too fat and lazy."

Honda Civic review February 29, 2004


"It is a 15½ft, seven-seat people carrier of monumental awfulness. We will start with the seats. Yes, there are seven, but there is no one alive today that could fit in any of the five in the back. It’s also thirsty and unrefined and sounds like a wounded whale. Handling? Terrible. The ride? Terrible. Seat comfort? Terrible. It was plainly styled by a man who gets excited at the thought of house bricks, and finished off on the inside with a range of plastics that feel like Cellophane."

Chevrolet Orlando 1.8 LTZ review January 1, 2012


"The worst example of getting it wrong, however, comes from Americans who, having lived in Britain for a while, think they can start talking English. Every time Christian Slater calls me 'mate' I'm filled with a sudden desire to shave his face off with a cheese knife. Americans cannot say 'mate' any more than Germans can say 'squirrel'."

It's English as a foreign language December 17, 2006


www.driving.co.uk/news/clarkson-on-america/

[RedMoon11]

THE CLARKSON REVIEW: ALFA ROMEO 4C COUPÉ (2015)

Be Gone, Crazy Creature. The Ecstasy I Feel Is Not Enough

Jeremy Clarkson    Published: 31 May 2015 / 01 June 2015


Alfa Romeo 4C coupé, £51,500

A number of years ago a writer on the hysterically earnest motoring magazine Autocar said in a review of some supercar or other that it caused “absolute mayhem” when he parked it in a supermarket car park.

Hmm. I’m not sure his definition of absolute mayhem is quite the same as mine. Because in my quite extensive experience no supercar causes people to run screaming for their lives, or to throw a milk bottle full of petrol at a policeman. And no. Not even the lowest, yellowest, loudest Lamborghini makes people rush into a petrol station kiosk and start helping themselves to the sweets, before killing the cashier and burning it down.

In Italy a small crowd of admirers may gather, but elsewhere, and especially in Britain, the only reaction you get is from small boys, who clutch excitedly at their tinkles. That’s not absolute mayhem in my book.

But it must be said that the Alfa Romeo 4C coupé you see in the pictures this morning did cause something of a stir. In London, where most people wouldn’t even look twice if Harrison Ford bounced down the middle of the road on a space hopper, women from offices would stop halfway across zebra crossings for a better look. Bus passengers would reach for their cameraphones.

Other motorists would applaud. It was a long way from absolute mayhem but I can tell you this: I’ve never driven any mainstream road car that generated quite such an outpouring of affection. Not ever. It was like I was whizzing about in a reincarnated blend of Gandhi and Diana, Princess of Wales.



The reason people like it is simple: it’s sporty and interesting and different but it’s not even slightly threatening. Think of it as a Ferrari puppy. Sadly, however, there are a few issues with the actual car. Where do I start? With the steering wheel, which would be dismissed as “too plasticky” by the makers of those penny- in-the-slot cars you find outside suburban chemist shops?

How about the problem of getting out after you’ve parked? Put simply, it’s like being calved. Or maybe I should major on the width. This car is so wide it won’t even fit in a standard parking bay. And even if you do shoehorn it into a space, you will then only be able to open the doors the merest crack, which makes getting out even more difficult. Realistically, you’ll get into this car once, and then that’ll be that.

Other things. Well, the boot lid won’t stay up by itself. There is almost no rear visibility at all. The switchgear is so flimsy it makes the steering wheel look like a Fabergé egg, There’s a draught from the bottom of the doors as you drive along, and it’s as luxuriously appointed as a Presbyterian beach hut.

“Aha,” I hear you say, “but I bet it’s an absolute joy to drive.” Nope. It may have a carbon-fibre tub, the sort of thing you find in a Formula One car or a McLaren P1, and it may be so light as a result that it can make do with a tiny turbocharged 1742cc engine, but the steering is inert, and not power assisted, and the brakes lack any feel at all. You have to use muscle memory to decide how quickly you want to stop.

And then there’s the noise. Oh my God. Around town it’s fun. It snuffles and roars and farts but last Saturday I had to drive up the M1 to the Midlands and by the time I reached Watford, I’d had enough. I think my ears were actually bleeding. Manfully I reached 70mph, at which point I started to understand how General Noriega must have felt when the Americans bombarded him with volume. I just wanted to get out. But as we know, that’s not possible.



I didn’t think life could be any more miserable. But then in Northamptonshire I hit the 700-mile roadworks that are monitored by average-speed cameras to make sure everyone does 50mph. There was a sign showing a middle-aged woman in a hard hat and a hi-vis jacket that asked drivers to be careful by saying: “My mum works on this site.”

Don’t be so bloody daft. Of course she doesn’t work on the site. No one does, or they’d have finished whatever it is they were supposed to be doing two years ago.

Anyway, the joy of being forced to drive at 50mph — at which speed the sound is roughly akin to the noise generated by the Grateful Dead — was short-lived because a new problem had reared its head: tramlining.


The 4C may be as luxuriously appointed as a Presbyterian beach hut but it’s fun

I have driven the 4C before in Italy and was assured that its alarming tendency to follow the camber would be solved in the UK by smaller wheels. Well, it hasn’t. Holy cow, it’s frightening. You’re trundling along, minding your own business, when suddenly the car will turn left. Or right. There’s no warning at all, and unless you are an actual Terminator with an ability to know the future, there’s nothing you can do to stop it happening.

And to make matters worse, it really was causing absolute mayhem. The occupants of every other car were swarming around it, trying to take pictures, and there was nothing I could do. If I slowed down, they slowed down, causing people behind to jam on their brakes, and I couldn’t speed up or I’d get three points on my licence. The mandatory 50mph limit is already one of the most dangerous aspects of driving in Britain because it causes bunching and frayed tempers. But in an Alfa it’s borderline lethal.

And so there we are. It’s a terrible car, riddled with the sort of faults that every other motoring manufacturer had addressed by about 1972. And yet I completely adored it. Every other vehicle with its perfect refinement and its perfect electrics and its perfectly adjustable suspension cannot help but feel like a machine. Whereas the Alfa, with its flaws and its tendency to go where it wants, feels human.

Will it go wrong? Probably. But so will your girlfriend from time to time. And you’re not going to swap her for a librarian, are you?



I may not have enjoyed getting out of the Alfa very much but I loved getting in to it because it’s just so exciting to drive a car that has a mind of its own. I’ve driven a few vehicles over the years that made me happy but none of them even gets close to this. It’s a wonderful little package of deep, deep joy.

The problem is that I cannot realistically advise you to buy one. And worse, I could not even buy one myself. Yes, it’s everything a true petrolhead wants in a car but the noise and the veering about and the veterinary operation that’s necessary every time you need to get out would drive me insane.

I wish Alfa would call because I’m not busy at the moment and I really do have a few ideas that would keep the wild-child spirit but sandpaper away just a couple of the really rough edges.

As it is, I’m left with a problem. Because as a car it gets two stars; one for having a fabulously clever stereo system and one for being very economical. But as a thing, I’d give it six.

Go to driving.co.uk to search for used Alfa Romeo 4Cs


The Clarkson review: Alfa Romeo 4C coupé (2015)
★★★★★
...plus an unprecedented sixth ★ — unless you’re thinking
of driving it, in which case deduct four

PROS
✓ Pretty enough to cause a stir
✓ Such an exciting drive
✓ Its many flaws are actually plus points

CONS
X Will probably go wrong
X Veers left or right depending on road camber
X Deafening at 70mph; General Noriega suffered less

Alfa Romeo 4C specifications

Price: £51,500
Engine: 1742cc, 4 cylinders, turbocharged
Power: 237 lb ft @ 6000rpm
Torque: 258lb ft @ 2200rpm
Transmission: 6-speed dual clutch
Performance: 0-62mph: 4.5sec
Top speed: 160mph
Fuel: 41.5mpg (combined)
CO2: 157g/km
Road tax band: G (£180)
Release date: On sale now


Alfa Romeo 4C coupé
 
www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/ingear/clarkson/article1561313.ece
www.driving.co.uk/car-reviews/the-clarkson-review-alfa-romeo-4c-coupe-2015/

[RedMoon11]

THE CLARKSON REVIEW: VOLKSWAGEN PASSAT 2.0 TDI SE BUSINESS (2015)

Usually They Send a Bluebeard. This Time I got a Blue Rinse

Jeremy Clarkson    Published: 7 June 2015


VW Passat 2.0 TDI SE Business, £25,240

MOTOR industry press officers are no fools. If a journalist asks to borrow a car to test, he is sent an all-singing, all-dancing, four-wheel-drive, top-of-the-range super-turbocharged model that has been fitted with every conceivable extra.

The reasoning is simple. The journalist will be so impressed by the 250mph top speed and the foldaway ski jump in the boot, he won’t realise that the suspension is made from milk bottle tops and that the dashboard consists of recycled video cassette boxes. And nor will he notice that while the range starts at a headline-grabbing £15,000, the car he’s testing would cost more than a Gulfstream GV.

Volkswagen, however, is different. The Jetta I borrowed recently was in full rental-car spec, with wipe-down seats, wind-down windows and the sort of engine that you would normally find in a motorised pencil sharpener.

Asking me to review a car such as that is like asking a food critic to review a tablesthingyful of rice or a political correspondent to report on a meeting where absolutely nothing of any interest happened.

This is not because the Volkswagen PR man is an idiot. Quite the reverse. He is one of the few people in the motor industry whom I actually know and he has a delicious wicked streak about six miles wide. He sent the Jetta round in Oxfam trim because he would enjoy watching me struggle to review it.

And now he’s done it again. Many car journalists who have reviewed the new Passat have tested the 4x4 SCR R-Line version, with central heating, a marble bath the shape of a carp’s head and seats upholstered in whale foreskin. Not me, though.

The model he sent round to my house was the 2.0 turbodiesel saloon. In SE Business spec. And don’t muddle that up with business class. Business spec in Volks-speak means it’s designed for the rental market and Tommy the taxi driver. It means you get four wheels and a seat.

Now at this point Paul — the VW PR man in question — is sitting at his kitchen table wearing the smug expression of a man who’s boxed me in. He’s thinking, “You’ve been waffling away for a while now, sunshine, but you still have a thousand words to go. Let’s see what you’ve got . . .”

But Paul has made a mistake. Because the car he sent round had been painted in one of the most delightful colours I’ve seen in many, many, many years. It was very, very, very lovely. Really lovely. I’d like to describe it as a sort of dusky cornflower blue, or maybe the colour of a clear tropical sky just after the sun has done that green flash trick and slipped behind the western horizon. But neither of these things is quite right.



It could be described as the colour of cyanosis, the bluey colour that fingertips become when they’ve been starved of oxygen, but actually it’s closer really to the hue of the powdery flowers that blossom at this time of year on a Ceanothus thyrsiflorus bush.

White is now the most commonly chosen colour by motorists in Britain and I’m not sure why, because while I am not in the least bit practically minded, white really looks good only when it’s clean. Which means of course that if you do go down the white route, you will have to spend your weekends on the drive with a bucket full of soapy water, a hosepipe and a faux chamois leather that cost just £2.75 and appeared to be a bargain, right up to the moment when you discovered it had the exact same ability to absorb water as steel.

There’s another issue too. Anyone who has a clean car is saying to the world that they have a tiny mind. People who wash their cars are telling passers-by that in the house, visitors are expected to leave their shoes in the front hall and that dogs are not allowed on the furniture. Furthermore, they are saying they don’t like or have sex because of the mess it makes.

In continental Europe, where people have a very great deal of sex and there are goats and rabbits on all the furniture, the most popular colour appears to be grey. I was in Paris last week and in every single street, every single car without exception was the colour of a prep-school boy’s shorts. It’s the same story in Rome.

Part of the problem comes from the car makers, which at best offer a range of 10 colours. I don’t understand this. Farrow & Ball can offer every colour you’ve ever thought of but BMW and Mercedes and Land Rover and so on seem to think that cars can be painted only in colours that were used by Charlie Chaplin. “Red, sir? What, like a dog’s p*nis? Crikey, no.”


Though handsome and well built, the Passat would perhaps feel most at home in the airport rental fleet

Bentley does a nice range, but my favourite — since Skoda dropped the Cotswold windowsill green it offered a few years ago — is Mazda’s candy apple red. That said, though, VW’s Ceanothus thyrsiflorus blue is right up there.

The car manufacturer calls it Harvard Blue, but it is wrong because the colour
of Harvard University is in fact crimson.

If it isn’t to your taste, you are rather stuck, because the only other colours that are available are grey, grey, grey, grey, white, black, brown and placenta red. Inside, there are nine options for the colour of the interior trim. These are: grey, grey, grey, grey, grey, grey, beige, beige and beige.

I realise at this point that I now have only about 250 words left to cover the all-new Volkswagen Passat, but that’s fine. I’m not panicking because that’s more than enough. A point proved beautifully by the verse from Corinthians about love.

Love is patient, love is kind.

It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.

It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.

Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.

It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails.

That’s love covered in just 60 words, so you can see 250 words is easily enough to cover the Volkswagen Passat SE Business saloon with the 148bhp 2-litre turbodiesel engine and six-speed manual gearbox.

So here goes. Ready? Good. Then we shall begin. It’s a very handsome car that handles nicely, uses little fuel and is extremely quiet and comfortable. Inside, everything is screwed together beautifully and everything is where you expect it to be. If ever I’m at an airport and the rental company gives me the keys to a car like this, I shall be very pleased.

There are now just 30 words left, which is enough to say that no petrol-powered versions are currently available but that an estate is.

There you go, Paul. I managed it. But next time I try one of your cars, can it please have a bit of angel dust?

Go to driving.co.uk to search for used Volkswagen Passats

VW Passat 2.0 TDI SE Business

• Engine: 1968cc, 4 cylinders
• Power: 148bhp @ 3500rpm
  

[/b] 251 lb ft @ 1750rpm
Transmission: 6-speed manual
Performance: 0-62mph: 8.7sec
Top speed: 136mph
Fuel: 64.2mpg (combined)
CO2:106g/km
Road tax band: B (free for first year; £20 thereafter)
Price: £25,240
Release date: On sale now
Verdict: I’ve got to fill in this part too? OK. It’s nice

[li]CRITIC'S RATING ★★★☆☆[/li][/ul]

PROS
✓ Handsome
✓ Handles nicely
✓ Etc.

CONS
X No petrol versions yet
x Umm...
X Err...

VW Passat 2.0 TDI SE Business


www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/ingear/clarkson/article1564179.ece
www.driving.co.uk/car-reviews/the-clarkson-review-volkswagen-passat-2-0-tdi-se-business-2015/

Ceanothus thyrsiflorus

[RedMoon11]

THE CLARKSON REVIEW: SEAT LEON X-PERIENCE (2015)

Does this Spanish fly? No, it’s a homage to catatonia

By Jeremy Clarkson   Published 14/15 June 2015


Seat Leon, from £16,530

THIS is one of the most important reviews I have yet written. Because since I started testing cars 31 years ago I have never once driven a Seat. The company has never offered and I’ve never asked because I really couldn’t see the point.

Unlike Jaguar or Honda or Chevrolet, Seat wasn’t created by one man with a vision and a passion for speed, beauty and power. It was created because at the time Spain was emerging from its Third World status and the government didn’t want its people squandering their beads and their chickens, or whatever currency they used at the time, on high-value imports such as cars.

So it did what all emerging nations do: set up a factory on home turf that made cheap little runabouts and then put huge taxes on imported cars. The choice for Spanish consumers was simple: buy a Seat for £2.75 or a Volkswagen for £856bn.

This may seem sound economic thinking but the fact is that when you are making a car for people who are trading up from a mule, and there’s no competition and the bean counters are all civil servants, it’s not going to be very good.

The government didn’t even bother giving it a decent name. It’s all very well coming up with a statist acronym for the Spanish Car Company, but did it not think, “Wait a minute. If we sell this thing in the English-speaking world, Seat is going to look a bit silly”?

At least it didn’t go for Spanish High Industry Technology.

When I first started to notice Seat, it was making Fiat Pandas under licence and I didn’t bother driving one because why would I care about an Italian car made by a bunch of people who the week before had been shooting one another and stabbing cows?

Eventually the deal with Fiat fell apart, and Seat had a bash at going it alone. Do you remember what it came up with? Nope. Me neither. But it can’t have been much of a success because pretty soon its bosses were standing outside Volkswagen’s headquarters, hoping for assistance.

Today Seat makes Volkswagens. They don’t look like Volkswagens, but if you examine every piece, by which I mean the engines, the gearboxes and all the switches, you will find they are identical to the engines, gearboxes and switches that you find in a Golf.

So why would you buy the Seat version? Who would choose to have his car made by Spaniards, who are good at fishing off Cornwall, when he could have the exact same thing made by Germans, who, let’s be frank, are good at making cars?

The answer is simple. Seat’s Golf — the Leon — is cheaper than VW’s Golf. But again there’s a problem. Because if you want a cheaper Golf, you can buy a Skoda Octavia. Which is made by Czechs, who are also good at making cars.

The idea is, though, that if you buy a Seat you get a cheaper Golf with a bit of Mediterranean flair and pizzazz. A bit of that Barcelona angel dust. Which raises a couple of questions about the Seat Leon X-Perience SE Technology that was sent round to my house last week.

What Mediterranean flair? What pizzazz? What Barcelona angel dust?



Yes, I agree, it had very snazzy door mirrors, but apart from this it was easily the most nondescript waste of metal, glass and plastic since Microsoft’s Kin phone. And it was brown.

Seat tries to jazz this up by saying it’s actually Adventure Brown, but there’s no such thing. Adventure colours are purple and lime green. You never see a brown Hobie Cat or a brown jet ski or a woman in brown underwear. Unless she’s, like, 90.



This car is supposed to put us in the middle of Barcelona, sitting in a fun little restaurant on a sunny day, watching the crowds go past that Middle-earthy cathedral, but in fact it’s as far removed from that as a monster truck is from the gurgle of a newborn baby. I tried as I drove along to imagine who on earth would want to buy such a thing.

But I couldn’t. Because I can’t think of anyone I’ve ever met, seen or heard about who would sit down with the calculator and say: “Right. I want a cheap Volkswagen, but it must be built by Spaniards, not Czechs.”

I assume, though, such a person must exist. So, for the benefit of the nurse who must read this out to him after she’s mashed his breakfast, here goes . . .

The car I tried is fitted with a 148 brake horsepower turbodiesel engine that has been tuned to deliver as many miles to the gallon as possible. A million times a second it takes note of where your foot is on the accelerator, what gear you’ve chosen, the barometric pressure, the ambient temperature and the engine temperature before deciding — precisely — how much fuel should be delivered to the cylinders. And the result is: unless you give it a bootful of revs when setting off, you’ll stall.

Also, any attempt to use second for a low-speed manoeuvre means you will judder to a halt and people will point and laugh and you will feel foolish. I haven’t stalled so much since I last drove a Golf diesel, which, of course, has exactly the same engine.

Speaking of which. The X-Perience tag tells us that this car is an estate and has the four-wheel-drive system used in the Golf Alltrack and the Skoda Octavia Scout. And not only do you get the benefit of all-wheel drive, but it rides higher than the basic Leon, and some of the more vulnerable panels are shrouded in plastic. It might not be a bad farm car, this. Apart from the stalling. And the fact that an almost identical Skoda is cheaper. Certainly the boot is huge.

Further forwards, you get a Golf steering wheel, a Golf sat nav system, Golf climate control and Golf dials, all for only a fraction more than you pay for exactly the same stuff in a Skoda.



I liked the vast electric glass sunshine roof. But further investigation revealed it to be a £1,060 option. In fact most of the stuff on my test car was an option. God knows what you get on the £26,905 basic Leon X-Perience SE Technology. Four wheels and a seat, probably.

To drive, however, it feels like a Lamborghini Aventador. I’m lying. I just wanted to think of something different to say because, actually, it feels like a Golf or an Octavia, and I bet you’re getting a bit fed up with that observation now. I know I am.

So let’s conclude. I’m grateful to Seat for lending me this car because it reinforces every belief I’ve held about Seat’s cars. They’re a waste of time.

If they were bright and funky, ran on rioja and had upholstery made from prawn shells, then I could see the point. They would offer an upbeat, flamenco alternative to a humourless Volkswagen.

But they don’t. The car I drove was boring. And brown. And you can buy an Octavia Scout, which is the same car, only better-looking, for £1,500 less.

Go to driving.co.uk to search for used Seat Leons

The Clarkson review: Seat Leon X-Perience (2015)

All the x-citement of lukewarm paella

★★☆☆☆

PROS
✓ Its economy is better than Spain's
✓ All wheel drive
✓ Probably good for farmers

CONS
X Where's the pizzazz?
X Easy to stall
X Why wouldn't you buy a Skoda Octavia Scout instead?


2015 SEAT LEON X-PERIENCE SE TECHNOLOGY SPECIFICATIONS
Price: £26,905
Engine: 1968cc, 4 cylinders
Power: 148bhp @ 3500rpm
Torque: 251lb ft @ 1750rpm
Transmission: 6-speed manual
Performance: 0-62mph: 8.7sec
Top speed: 129mph
Fuel: 57.6mpg (combined)
CO2: 129g/km
Road tax band: D (free for the first year; £110 thereafter)
Release date: On sale now


www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/ingear/clarkson/article1567058.ece

www.driving.co.uk/car-reviews/the-clarkson-review-seat-leon-2015/

[RedMoon11]

THE CLARKSON REVIEW: RANGE ROVER SPORT SVR (2015)

The Rangie Rolex: it’s big, it’s daft and your man can’t afford one

Jeremy Clarkson    Published: 21/22 June 2015


Range Rover Sport SVR, £93,450

AS MY parents dropped me off at boarding school my dad reached into his pocket and presented me with a small box. In it was an Omega Genève Dynamic, and I welled up a bit. Partly because I was very frightened about what boarding school would be like, but mostly because I had never seen such a wondrous thing. A whole watch. Of my very own.

As the years dragged by I suffered many terrible things. I was thrown on an hourly basis into the icy plunge pool, dragged from my bed in the middle of the night and beaten, made to lick the lavatories clean and all the usual humiliations that public school used back then to turn a small boy into a gibbering, sobbing suicidal wreck.

In the first two years the older boys broke pretty much everything I owned. They glued my records together, snapped my compass, ate my biscuits, defecated in my tuck box and cut my trousers in half with a pair of garden shears, but I made sure when I heard them coming that my watch was safely locked away.

Today the Genève Dynamic has become something of a classic. James May recently bought one and took it to work, showing it off to everyone. “Look,” he said, like an excited Eeyore. “Isn’t it beautiful?” An opinion he held right up to the moment I said, “Oh, yeah. I’ve got one of those.”

I really have. Sometimes I take it out and wind it up and remind myself that no matter how awful life might be, it was, from 1973 to 1975, one hell of a lot worse.

I would like to start wearing the Genève again. But there’s a problem. Since those days watches have stopped being an heirloom that was presented by fathers to sons on important days and worn for life. And have become symbols of God knows what.



I fear that if I wore what is obviously a Seventies watch, people might think I was being postmodern or ironic or some such nonsense. And I’d hate that, because as a general rule I pretty much despise anyone whose watch face is deliberately interesting. Which in certain circles today is: pretty much everyone. I saw a man the other day wearing a watch that was a) electric blue and b) about the same size as his face. I don’t doubt for one minute that it had cost about £60,000 an acre, and, boy, did he want you to know it.

I’d also like to bet that in a special mahogany box in his dressing room there were several other watches, and that raises a question: why? Owning two watches is like owning two irons, or two tumble dryers. It’s totally unnecessary.

Why would you buy a watch when the one you are currently using still works? They don’t — and I won’t take any argument on this — go out of fashion. And there has been no big technological breakthrough that means they are now able to keep time more efficiently than they did in the past.

I like a nice watch. I look with great attention at all the 200-page features about them in GQ magazine and I have been known to pause for several moments to look in a jeweller’s window. But I wouldn’t actually buy one, because what’s the point? My current Omega Seamaster is still going strong and I don’t doubt for a moment that the only thing that will stop it will be the incinerator into which they put me when I’m dead.

I’m going on a bit here so I’ll come to the point. When did Rolexes become naff? There must have been a time when they were elegant and beautiful and worn by people with taste and discretion. But then one day they became the timepiece of choice for people called Steve. And now I think it’s fair to say the only thing in the world that’s worse than a fake Rolex is a real one.

I don’t doubt for a moment that they are well engineered and designed to survive a nuclear holocaust but you only ever see them sticking out from the cuff of a suit that’s a bit too shiny, wrapped round the tattooed wrist of an arm that’s a bit too thick.

And that brings me neatly on to the Range Rover. Not that long ago Range Rovers were the very embodiment of quiet good taste. And underneath the raffish, stately exterior they were extremely capable. You could buy a BMW or a Mercedes but you would end up needing a new wing after you’d crashed in slow motion into a gatepost, having failed to traverse a muddy field. On the correct tyres a Range Rover has always been miles and miles better than anything else. It’s been a world-class car. A gem. An all-time classic.



But now something is going wrong because Range Rovers are becoming like Rolexes: a bit naff. I think I know why. They have always been extremely expensive, which meant that everybody who couldn’t afford one had to buy something else. But now things have changed because there’s a Range Rover Sport and a Range Rover Evoque and the Land Rover Discovery Sport, which looks like a cross between the Range Rover Evoque and the Range Rover Sport.

And that means every Steve in the land is now running around in one, with his ridiculously thick tattooed arm hanging out of the window.

It’s as though it has suddenly become possible for the mildly well-off to buy themselves a title. And what it means is: the really well-off who would ordinarily buy the big, proper version of the Range Rover with the split, folding tailgate are thinking, “Oh, Lord. I can’t drive the same car as my plumber. I must get something else.”

But what? There is nothing else. Unlike Rolex, which has competition from about a thousand other brands, there is no alternative to a Range Rover. You can get machines that work as well in the fields and you can get machines that work as well on the road. But you cannot get one car that can do both things quite so well as the King of Solihull.

And now finally we arrive at the car I’m supposed to have been reviewing. The new Range Rover Sport SVR. It’s ridiculous in every way. It’s ridiculously expensive and ridiculously unnecessary. And it has a supercharged 5-litre V8 so it is ridiculously thirsty and ridiculously fast.

I mean, if you want a car that goes from 0 to 62mph in about a millionth of a second and has a top speed of several thousand mph, why buy something with the frontal area of a house and the fuel consumption an of an oil rig disaster?

Yes, it handles extremely well for something that’s bigger than a Scottish island, but if that’s what you want, why not buy a Jaguar, which has roughly the same engine, uses less fuel, goes even more speedily and costs less?

It gets worse because the ride in the Sport SVR is woefully abrupt. It’s the price you pay for its ability to lap the Nürburgring in two seconds dead.

It is a stupid car and I loved it very much indeed. Because this is a Range Rover you can buy knowing with absolute certainty that the man who comes to service your electric gates won’t have one as well.


The Clarkson review: Range Rover Sport SVR (2015)

Handles extremely well for something bigger than a Scottish island
★★★★☆

PROS
✓ Good handling for a giant
✓ So ridiculous no one else will own one
✓ The traits of a classic

CONS
X Exorbitant price tag
X Guzzles fuel
X Why not buy a Jaguar?


RANGE ROVER SPORT SVR SPECIFICATIONS
Price: £93,450
Engine: 5000cc, V8
Power: 543bhp @ 6000rpm
Torque: 501lb ft @ 2500rpm
Transmission: 8-speed automatic
Performance: 0-62mph: 4.7sec
Top speed: 162mph
Fuel: 22.1mpg (combined)
CO2: 298g/km
Road tax band: M (£1,100 for the first year; £505 thereafter)
Release date: On sale now




www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/ingear/clarkson/article1569988.ece
www.driving.co.uk/car-reviews/the-clarkson-review-range-rover-sport-svr-2015/

[RedMoon11]

THE CLARKSON REVIEW: PORSCHE 911 TARGA 4 GTS (2015)

Common sense, pah. Look at this tasty Porsche Pudding

Jeremy Clarkson Published: 28 June 2015


Porsche 911 Targa 4 GTS, £104,385

ANYONE who buys anything for practical reasons is almost certainly a bore with a cardigan, a no-feet-on-the-furniture rule and so much time on their hands they can spend an entire afternoon reading online reviews of dishwashers.

Who can be bothered to write an online review of a dishwasher? They’re all the same. They’re white and boxy, and after they’ve finished making your dishes clean they issue a succession of beeps, telling you they must be emptied instantly, even if you are watching Game of Thrones and someone’s just got their kit off.

I hate Which? magazine. I hate every single thing it does and every single thing it stands for. I hate having to share a planet with people whose job is to test kettles. And I hate, even more, people who read their findings before deciding what sort to buy. It’s an effing kettle, for God’s sake. Just buy the blue one.

I keep being told there are now better phones on the market than an iPhone, and I’m not interested. Yes, they may have better cameras and battery life and they may sort pictures by where they were taken rather than when (which is idiotic), but an iPhone looks nicer and that’s the most important thing. I hate people who don’t have iPhones.

I also hate people who buy Kias, because they did not use any emotion at all when making their purchasing decision. They read road tests, doubtless in Which? magazine. They looked at online reliability surveys. And possibly even made comparative resale charts on the kitchen table. People such as this should be sent to prison.

There’s nothing wrong with a Kia. They’re good cars. But nobody’s buying them because they’re good. They’re buying them because of some finance deal or some extended warranty package. Which is why, whenever I’m pulling up behind a Kia at a set of red traffic lights, I’m tempted to run into the back of it on purpose. To punish the chap behind the wheel. Who will then have to spend the next two months of his life researching injury lawyers to find what firm would be best at convincing a judge that he really does have whiplash.



All of which brings me on to yet another review of the Porsche 911. There are many models in the current range, and if you ask a 911 enthusiast to talk you through the subtle differences between each, you can be sure that by the end of the conversation one of you will be dead. Because either you will kill him to shut him up, or you will kill yourself.

All you need to know is this. If you have any common sense at all you will buy the Carrera S, because if you buy anything more exotic than that you are wasting your money. Happily, from Porsche’s point of view, most of its customers don’t have any common sense and almost all of them think their lives will be enriched if they buy a 911 with no roof, or with four-wheel drive, or with a turbo or with some scaffolding in the back.


The Targa mechanism is like something out of Thunderbirds

The result: Porsche made more money last year from selling almost 190,000 cars than its parent company, Volkswagen, made from selling more than 4.5m.

Do you really think it costs £401 to paint the instrument dials yellow, or £170 to make the key fob the same colour as the car? Do you think it costs £5,787 to fit ceramic brake discs? Well, it doesn’t. And if you tick that box on the order form, you are being milked.

And good for you. Because when you spend a silly amount of money on a silly, trivial thing that will help you not one jot, you are demonstrating that you have a soul and a heart and that you are the sort of person who has no time for Which? magazine because you were up till three the previous night enjoying “just one more bottle”.

All of which brings me back to the car I’m reviewing this morning. It’s called the 911 Targa 4 GTS. Which means that it comes with unnecessary four-wheel drive, a massively complicated sunroof and wheels that can be removed only by someone with a degree in engineering. Not that you’ll ever need to remove them because there’s no spare.

The GTS badge means this car is fitted with a collection of options that are available individually on the normal Carrera Targa 4. And if you had all the time in the world, and a calculator, you could work out whether or not they represent good value. Knowing Porsche, I have a hunch they don’t.


If you don’t like the colour of the Targa’s dials, spend £401 on making them yellow

To drive? Hmm. Well, because of the massively complicated sunroof, this car is quite heavy, a point that becomes obvious shortly after you’ve put the exhaust in Sport mode, said to your passenger, “Watch this”, and put your foot down. There is acceleration, for sure, and anyone from the 1970s would describe it as vivid. But today? It feels a bit lacklustre, to be honest.

It’s much the same story in the corners. Because the Targa is more softly sprung than other 911s, and because this one has four-wheel drive, it’s not quite as exciting as you might imagine. It’s a long, long way from spongy, but it’s pointing in that direction.

There’s more, I’m afraid. When you want to open the sunroof, it’s like a scene from Thunderbirds. The whole car splits in half, palm trees lie flat, swimming pools fold away and, after a little while, everything goes back together again. Except now the bit of canvas that was above your head is stowed behind what are laughably called the rear seats.

Not since the BMW Z1 with its drop-down doors have I seen such a complex solution to such a simple problem. And to make matters worse, as with all Targas the noise and the buffeting when you drive along with the roof stowed is, shall we say, noticeable. No, let’s not. Let’s be honest and say horrid.

And I don’t care. I like the idea of the GTS because GTS sounds good. And I like the Targa because it looks fabulous. The back window with that brushed- aluminium hoop is style at its best. Yes, it makes the car heavy, puddingy, slow and noisy, but those are things that trouble only the weak and the foolish.

Put it this way. You can go skiing in Aviemore, which is close by and the locals speak an approximation of English. Or you can go to St Moritz. You can fill yourself up when you’re hungry with a cheese sandwich or you can eat out. You can live in Huddersfield or you can live in San Francisco. Why not live as well as you can?

And why allow practicalities to stick their awkward noses into the equation? If you do, you won’t buy a 911 Targa. It has too many drawbacks. But if you don’t, you end up with a car that looks nice.

Let me put it this way: when you buy a painting, do you go for something that fits in a particular space? Or one you like looking at?

Browse more than 280,000 new and used cars for sale on driving.co.uk

CLARKSON'S VERDICT ★★★★☆
F.A.B

PROS
✓  As pretty as a painting
✓ Sounds like a dream
✓ A car for people who know how to have fun

CONS
X Complicated kit
X Lacklustre acceleration
X Expensive options

Porsche 911 Targa 4 GTS specifications
Price: £104,385
Engine: 3900cc, 4 cylinders
Power: 424bhp
Torque: 324lb ft
Transmission: 7-speed manual
Performance: 0-62mph: 4.7sec
Top speed: 188mph
Fuel: 28.2mpg (combined)
CO2: 237g/km
Road tax band: L (£870 for the first year; £490 thereafter)
Release date: On sale now



Porsche 911 Targa 4 GTS

www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/ingear/clarkson/article1573087.ece
www.driving.co.uk/car-reviews/the-clarkson-review-porsche-911-targa-4-gts/

[RedMoon11]

End of the road: Andy Wilman on his final Top Gear

Executive producer: "Thank you for watching — and goodbye"

By Andy Wilman Published 29 June 2015



This article was originally published in The Sunday Times Driving on the morning of June 28, 2015 — prior to Wilman's final Top Gear episode being aired on British TV

Top Gear as we know it has ended. Here, its executive producer, Andy Wilman, reflects on the unlikely achievement of a bunch of middle-aged blokes who just thought car shows should be fun

www.driving.co.uk/news/end-of-the-road-andy-wilman-on-his-final-top-gear/
www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/ingear/cars/article1573999.ece

Read more: jamesmayboard.proboards.com/post/298276/thread