James - topgear.com columns

[RedMoon11]

In honour of Le Tour De France reaching Blighty, here's Captain Slow on the elegant simplicity that is the bicycle

James May: On Bicycles

14 December 2012

 
Captain Slow considers the benefits of the world-changing elegant simplicity that is the bicycle

What I am about to say is not going to be popular with at least one of my Top Gear colleagues, but here goes anyway. I'd like to stick up for the bicycle.

The bicycle was without doubt one of the greatest inventions ever. Without the bicycle, and the desire for liberty it generated, we would probably not have the car. Many of our great carmakers began by making bicycles - Peugeot as well - and most of us learn the basics of the Highway Code riding a bicycle.

Many things in life are supposedly ‘like riding a bike', in that we'll never forget how to do them. But actually, it's very easy to forget how to play musical instruments, do quadratic equations, strip and reassemble a rifle while blindfolded and make pastry. Only the ability to ride a bicycle remains with us after decades of inattention, and that's because riding one taps into some innate understanding of basic physics. A bicycle really is an extension of both your body and your psyche.

Who doesn't have, or have access to, a bicycle? It's like having some shoes or a tin opener. In places such as Copenhagen, where cycling is pretty much the opium of the people, bikes are like community chattels. You can't really own a bicycle any more than you can actually own an umbrella or a cat.

I'm perfectly familiar with all the regular objections to bicycles and the cult of cycling, but they're all just cant, really. Cycling has long been hijacked for political ends, but so what? It can be ignored, like the BNP. I get annoyed with people who bought a bicycle three weeks ago and now present it to me as if they've discovered the cure for all society's ills. I know what they're good for, and what they're not good for. Among the latter is carrying a new refrigerator. Unless you're Chinese.

Cyclists jump red lights and ride across the pavement, but so what? Cyclists are pedestrians really, since they are leg-powered. They've just added a few levers and cogs to improve their own efficiency.

Bicycles should never be regulated, they should never be subject to road tax, they should not require third-party insurance and competence to ride a bicycle should not be tested. It tests itself, because if you can't do it, you have a crash. Bicycles are the first rung on the personal-transport ladder and should be free at the point of use. I'll champion the bicycle until I'm worn through to the canvas.

But I do have a complaint. Cyclists have become miserabilists.

Several times a week, I go for a bike ride alongside the river near where I live. It's good for me. Or at least it is until I meet another cyclist coming the other way. "Morning," I chirp, cheerfully, because I am cheerful, filling my lungs with the airy elixir and freeing up my tired old bones. Nothing.

I was keeping score for a while, but I've long since lost count. It stood at something like - May, 8,000; other cyclists, nil. I supposed I might just be coming across as a weirdo. So I then tried smiling instead. Still nothing.

People walking their dogs respond. So do people roller-skating, staggering home after a really late one, picking through bins, collecting rubbish, delivering parcels and trimming their bushes. Sometimes the dogs themselves reciprocate with a simple bark. Only cyclists reject these basic conventions of greeting that reaffirm our membership of a universal fraternity, which is being human. Just a nod of the head will do. Nothing.

Maybe these cycling crusaders don't take me seriously, since I ride in my clothes rather than in a Lycra gimp suit with TV packaging crash helmet and a stupid flashing light attached to my face. Just because I'm not dressed up as a Teenage Mutant Ninja Bellend doesn't mean I'm not a proper cyclist. I haven't been without one since the age of three. I had to be prised from one of them by a kindly old dear at the top of a Scottish mountain, as my fingers had frozen to the handlebars. Don't come over all superior with me, you saddle-faced gits.

This is what has gone wrong with the supposed bicycle revolution. In all honesty, I think there should be something in it. We could use bikes more, we could feel healthier, we could reduce some journey times and leave the roads more free for the ambulances we will eventually need to call. A bit of cycling could, possibly, improve the fiscal and physical well-being of UK plc.

But it won't happen until the people who presume to represent this ancient and excellent activity learn to do it with a bit of a smile and a wave. Either cheer up, or fall off.

www.topgear.com/uk/car-news/james-may-on-bicycles-2012-12-14

 www.topgear.com/uk/james-may/james-may-bicycles

[RedMoon11]

May has just driven the LaFerrari. But he has more important things on his mind...



James May on: Ferrari Pencils



My Ferrari pencil is currently my favourite possession. I’m lucky enough to own several pencils, including some coloured ones, but this is the pencil I love best.

Anyone who visits the Ferrari factory will probably come away with a pencil. I was given mine when I went there recently to drive the hybrid LaFerrari. But never mind that. This is one hell of a pencil.

It’s bright red (also available in yellow) and has ‘Ferrari’ embossed along the blunt end of its circular cross section, in gold. Apart from that, it’s just like any other pencil, and shares the shortcomings of them. It’s too thin for my sturdy peasant-bred fingers, and the rubber on the end is far too short for the number of mistakes I make in my exquisitely tooled, Morocco leather-bound notebook, with marbled frontispiece and backispiece*.

There is a full 130mm of lead, but only 8mm of eraser. A calculation suggests that I can only afford to be wrong with my Ferrari pencil for six per cent of its use, otherwise I’ll have worn its rubber out.

These figures are now wrong, however, because I worked them out with the pencil without making any mistakes, so the experiment has slightly skewed the results. This is exactly why science is difficult.

“Yes, but…” I hear you cry, from the collective lavatory of the nation, and I know. This pencil was certainly not made by Ferrari, because Ferrari do not have any woodworking facilities. It was made by a pencil-making company and branded by them too. It is no more a Ferrari Pencil than the tissue in Amedeo Felisa’s executive khazi is Ferrari Bogroll.

But it is a Ferrari pencil, the one officially sanctioned by them, and of which pale 4B imitations will not be tolerated. If you have a 
ballpoint pen as well, you can write ‘Ferrari’ on 
one end of your pencil. But you will not have a Ferrari pencil. You will have a pencil with ‘Ferrari’ written on it. See?

You might think I’m going on about this a bit, but be honest. Do you have a Ferrari pencil? No? Bet you wish you did, in the same way I wish I had a 400 Superamerica in the garage. It’s only a pencil, but it’s a start, and 100 per cent more Ferrari than your pencil that isn’t a Ferrari pencil. Ha!

What this pencil has – and it’s very important 
in the world of posh cars – is provenance. It was placed in my hand by the hand of someone at Ferrari, with the words, “Here, have a Ferrari pencil.” And this is just the start of what will probably turn out to be 
a long and fascinating history involving theft, disappearance, rediscovery in a desk drawer, resharpening 
and eventual sale at a Bonhams auction for 
an enormous sum 
when I’m dead.

The catalogue entry, with photos, will point 
all this out to entice wealthy pencil collectors. 
The adventures that my Ferrari pencil have 
might easily befall another pencil, but the difference is, this one started life at Ferrari as a Ferrari pencil. It makes a difference.

If you doubt this, have a look at what’s happened to Steve McQueen’s 275 GTB/4, soon to be auctioned at an estimated price of many millions of pounds.

I’ll say it again: it is merely a pencil, made by someone else, for Ferrari. Where is La Passione in that? It’s there, because there are many millions 
of pencils that could have been elevated to this mystical role of being the official Ferrari pencil, but this is the one that was. Ferrari chose this one, just as it chooses its paint and leather suppliers. Ferrari choose things carefully.

To be honest, I have some other carmakers’ officially endorsed pencil products. I have a Porsche pencil, and a propelling pencil from Mazda, I think. Haven’t seen that one for a bit.

The Porsche pencil is pretty good, and nicely balanced, but I find the lead slightly on the hard side compared with the Ferrari’s. Something 
about the Ferrari 
pencil (its colour, maybe; the perfect weight distribution established by the rubber and its securing ferrule; perhaps simply the knowledge of its origins) makes it more dashing between my fingers. It’s full of 
crude drawings as yet undrawn, but I know 
they will be better, and will thrill me more, for coming from this pencil.

How to explain it? It’s the fizz, I suppose. When 
I pluck the Ferrari pencil from my tragic plastic desk tidy, I feel as I might if I presented myself at the Hertz car-hire desk to be told I’ve been upgraded from an Up to a 458 Speciale. It’s going to be a more memorable journey. Oh yes, I almost forgot. The LaFerrari. It’s fantastic.

www.topgear.com/uk/james-may/james-may-column-laferrari-2014-7-23

James May @mrjamesmay
Tried to write my name with the Ferrari pencil but spin off on a right-hander.

[RedMoon11]

James May on: His New BMW i3

Yes, a presenter of Top Gear is getting excited about an electric car…



I am very, very excited about my new electric BMW i3. 
In the interests of accurate journalism, I ought to point out that it’s still not here, despite what I said a month or two back, but that’s probably because it’s being recharged somewhere on the way from Germany. Badoom tsch!

But I’m still very excited. Why, though? Why would I be so sleepless over a car that’s going to traumatise me with this new syndrome of ‘range anxiety’, a very polite name for ‘battery tyranny’? Why, when I’ve recently driven La Ferrari LaFerrari 
– a car that harnesses the wonder of electricity in a very intelligent and sustainable way – am I worked 
up about humming around in an overpriced battery-powered aircon unit? It troubles me.

I’m taking a lot of stick about this car. A number of people have pointed out that buying an electric car but continuing to work on Top Gear is somehow not very ecological. But who said it was? I’m not interested in the ecology, I’m buying it because I’m a car enthusiast, and I’m really not going to sleep better in the knowledge that Nick Clegg is pleased with me. Quite the opposite, to be honest. Doesn’t explain why I’m jumpin’ about it, though.

Someone on Twitter was also having a pop at 
my credentials as a car fan. How could I deny the passion of driving, they asked?

Well, look. There’s more than one way to be excited by cars. I love daft supercars, but I also like 
a Rolls-Royce Ghost for its serenity and sense of detachment. A whisper-quiet electric car may expose a new facet to this thing that used to be called ‘motoring pleasure’. We’ll have to see.

I’ve said it before, but the electric car thing is a bit of a public experiment, and I’m keen to take part in it. But, having said that, I never got very excited about taking part in experiments in the chemistry lab at school, except the one where I heated up Clive Kingston’s metal ruler in a bunsen burner and then left it on his desk. So that still doesn’t explain it.

What intrigues me is that the electric car has been around almost as long as the car itself. Even within my own lifetime, it’s been kicking around on the 
back burner (an analogy that needs work, because obviously it would be on an electric ceramic hob) 
in the form of milk floats and meals-on-wheels delivery vans. But I never considered anything like that for a moment.

But all of a sudden, an electric car 
is a bit cool. Why? I suppose because the environmental pretence makes it quite fashionable. Driving an electric car is being the change you want to see in the world, or whatever hipsters say, and sneaking around town in complete silence, mowing down unsuspecting pedestrians, places you in that sector of society 
that embraces change instead of resisting it. 
It’s the fuzzy edge, the avant garde. And that’s 
me. You should see some of the shapes I throw 
out on the floor.

But there’s something else. For decades, an electric car was simply that – a car powered by a useless battery and an electric motor, but in every other respect just like a car. The only other thing anyone ever recharged was a toothbrush.

Now, though, we recharge everything, even vacuum cleaners, so it seems perfectly humdrum. Not only that, the act of plugging in your car has become part of the culture of being connected. It’s not just about electricity, it’s about intelligent devices.

To put it another way, an electric car used to be like Richard Hammond. You fed him some baked beans, and he carried on being another irritating Brummie bloke. Now it’s more like Professor Brian Cox. You ply him with exotic French wines, and he explains stuff about quantum physics.

This, I’ve now realised, is what it’s all about. I’m 
sad enough to sleep with the i3 order form next to 
my bed, and looking at it last night, I noticed that 
I’d held back on posh trim and phat alloys, and spent all my money on things like satnav, jam assist, driving assistant plus, internet capability, online entertainment, smartphone compatibility, DAB, and so on and so on. I can play computer Battleships in a traffic jam and watch YouTube clips from Battle of Britain in the privacy of my own car.

That’s why it seems to be, suddenly, a thing of wonder. It’s not really a car at all. It’s a giant iPad. Being a car is just one of its apps.

www.topgear.com/uk/james-may/james-may-bmw-i3-2014-8-29


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James May on: Global Design

The age old question of why design varies in different countries has been answered…

Sep 19, 2014


I'd never ridden a Harley-Davidson Sportster, which 
is an odd state of affairs. 
I’ve been to the US a lot, and I’ve tried lots of motorcycles, but never the one that says “American bike” like plastic cheese says “American dining experience”. So I borrowed the 1,200cc V-twin for the day and headed into the hills.

Up ahead, Richard Hammond was on an even bigger hog; something like the Heritage Big-Boy Bob-a-Job Fat B*****d. The motorcycle seemed to have run away by itself.

After a couple of hours, we stopped and swapped. Then, after another couple, we stopped for a cheeseburger. The Sportster, we decided, was the default Yankie Mo’cycle, the one you get if you ask someone to pick up a bike for you when they pop out to the shops for groceries somewhere in the Midwest. Over here, a Harley Sportster is a statement, but over there, it’s kinda like a bike. We named it Postman Harley. I can’t remember a time when some incarnation of this bike wasn’t in production.

Usually it happens in a restaurant or hotel, 
maybe at a sporting event. Now it was while I 
was pulled over at the roadside, but the question 
was the same: can Europe and the US really be 
so far apart? Their tomatoes are big and bland, 
while ours are small and intense, because America celebrates excess while we celebrate flavour. We 
like to eat strawberries in strawberry season from 
a punnet, for sheer joy, whereas an American strawberry is a decoration or votive offering 
that’s as likely to appear on your returned laundry 
as it is on an omelette. Perhaps more importantly, their roads are broad and largely straight, while 
ours wander around, still in thrall to some ancient itinerants who trod the first routes.

Maybe this explains it. Bikes from small countries – the UK and Japan, for example – are shaped by matters of efficiency, of dealing with scarce fuel, expensive resources and unexpected turns. Lightness, sharp handling and high revs in exchange for displacement are the result. A bike should to some extent, and perhaps to a large one, be minnow-like.

But America is big, and even if you start in the right state, the way to San Jose is likely to be a long ride, so you may as well relax. So you sit far back and low, feet forward. The bars are broad and the steering responses are leisurely. You could probably take your hands off and have a bit of a kip. I bet people have, but I bet they woke 
up still rumbling along on a Harley.

Meanwhile, in the Old World, we are bolt upright at best, and on my own Triumph I’m spinally extended into a yogic pose. Now Hammond tells me this goes back a lot further than the dawn of internal combustion, because the cowboys of the Wild 
West rode like this, stirrups extended, slumped 
in the saddle for days on end, one hand on the reins. So it might be Rocky Raccoon’s fault.

Again, everywhere is a long way away where Harleys live. The engine is massive, but not that powerful. The Triumph develops almost twice the power with not much more than half the capacity, and is a riot of mechanical action. Progress on the Harley is achieved one firing stroke at a time, each one an event in itself rather than part of a bigger scheme. I’m guessing the oil-change intervals are less critical than they are on a V4 Honda.

Gearchanges? You might need one occasionally. On a Japanese crotch-rocket, it happens a lot, and takes a stab of the toe. On the Harley, I lifted my leg from the peg, performed a flourish with my ankle, and stabbed the next one home. That’s as it should be if it only happens after 300 miles on an interstate.

I found myself lovin’ ma hog. The road and 
the scenery helped, as ever, and the pure pleasure of riding along displaced any real concerns over motorcycle technological progress or the finer points of dynamics. Funny, isn’t it? I’ve always looked at them and thought them ridiculous, at least at home. Unsuited to our European sensibilities. Bulky, slightly crude, more a badge of nervous 
midlife than a means of sustaining the biking muse.

But maybe I’m ready now. The big V-twin is not a perfectly balanced 90-degree job. It’s a thumper, transferring its mechanical shortcomings to bars and pegs, which vibrate. But this is a good thing. I’m 51. I knew I was still alive.

www.topgear.com/uk/james-may/james-may-on-design-2014-9-19

[RedMoon11]

James May on: Driverless Cars

The driverless car may not be the answer to all your transportation troubles, but May's app might just be...

Oct 20, 2014

What, people keep asking me, is the point of this driverless car we've heard so much about? I can think of a good one straight off.

There is no more depressing phrase in the English language than ‘designated driver', except perhaps ‘buffet supper'. Being the designated driver is like being the German guards in the Escape from Colditz board game: it's a role no one wants, assumed only by a default of some sort. Even my good German friend won't be the guards in Colditz, unless we put him in the cooler for a month first.

But if we needed only to nominate a designated car? All could be in the arms of Dionysus, the job of steering given over to some sober and incorruptible algorithm, like being driven home by Judge Judy.

Anyway, driving, for the most part, is a bit dullsville. Especially on the motorway, where I always think I'd be better off on the train. The car requires just enough of my attention to keep me from doing anything worthwhile, but not enough to stimulate me. On the train, I can read a book, play on my computer or have another tall one.

But the car is more convenient, because it's outside the door, while the train is over at the station, and even then only if you're lucky. So why not climb aboard the car, relax and get on with something constructive while you go from A to B, rather than from something like D to W? Perhaps it could be designed to let you take control for that interesting wiggly bit at the end, for old time's sake.

However, there remains a problem. That journey I made from London to some dark corner of Kent the other day still took almost three hours, which is longer than I'd spend on any other activity. Three hours, to transport myself from England to the Middle Ages! The problem is actually the car, rather than the burden of having to drive it. Cars are slow.

So let's think further ahead. Richard Hammond has been, and has devised (admittedly only as a concept) a ‘home pill'. He's in Kent, he wants to be back in Ross-on-Wye, so he pops the pill and blam! - he's in the garden in his bath chair.

Unfortunately, this relies on something like teleportation, which is theoretically possible but remains one of those things we know we don't know. So over dinner in Kent, we turned the idea into an app called iHome. Here's how it works.

Richard Hammond has drunk 18 gin and tonics, and decides he wants to be back in Ross-on-Wye. He presses the ‘home pill' icon on his smartphone. Now a man, who is one of several who have been observing him just out of sight, fires a measured dose of heavy tranquilliser, in the form of a dart, into his exposed neck.

Hammond goes out like a light - he was about to anyway, to be honest - and the process of getting him home before he comes round again can begin.

Should Hammond need to be back in Ross-on-Wye in a hurry - and I can't imagine why anyone would - this would involve a dedicated business jet with a fast car at either end. If it's less urgent, the journey can be on a bus, a tramp steamer and a light commercial. Obviously this needs to be worked out in advance, and the tranquilliser dosage adjusted accordingly, so he doesn't wake up inside a packing case full of straw in the back of a UPS van.

The details of the journey need not bother Hammond. One moment, he'll be sitting opposite me at a table; the next, he'll be in the garden, his bed, his shed or wherever he entered in the ‘preferences' pane of iHome. I feel the same about him.

The logistics are clearly complex, especially during the trial phase. But once a lot of people have the app, a comprehensive network of operatives could be established, and various ‘home' routes could be combined for parts of the journey. Hammond may find himself - or not, as he'd be oblivious - in a packing case along with a global electronics salesman and a gap-year teenager. We've been able to do this sort of thing with letters and parcels for centuries.

This is the great advantage of iHome over the driverless car - the technology exists and is proven. We just need to apply it to people as well as birthday cards and pointless eBay purchases.

The only real hurdle is the cost. We worked out that getting Hammond back to Ross from Kent would cost quite a lot. About the same, in fact, as a well-specced Golf GTI.

So for now, he'll hold back on the G&Ts and just drive. As usual.


www.topgear.com/uk/james-may/may-on-driverless-cars-2014-10-20
 

[RedMoon11]

James May on: Tax Disc Holders

Nov 11, 2014

It’s the end for the tax disc. Even worse, it’s the end of the tax disc holder...

A few weeks ago, I bought an old motorcycle. It hadn't been on the road for more than a decade, at least not legally, because the faded tax disc was issued in 2002.

But when I pulled the tax-disc holder apart, I found behind that disc, in all its glorious and undimmed originality, an even earlier one, from the Seventies. Amazing. Like the Porsche 911, the design of the UK tax disc has evolved quite gently, giving the impression that it's never changed. But placing side by side two separated by 30 years reveals that it has, and quite drastically (see also the 911E vs the 996 Carrera 2).

Almost everything was different: typography, colours, use of biro rather than a printer. Only the diameter was the same. There didn't seem to be any evidence of the annoying perforations around the old disc, but the first owner may have trimmed them off with scissors. He was neurotic enough to keep the tax disc in the first place, after all.

I found this quite fascinating. Then I threw it in the bin. There's enough old crap in the world without us keeping the ephemera of fiscal admin, otherwise we really will suffocate under the weight of history. What an idiot. Me, I mean. Now that the total demise of the paper tax disc is upon us, it emerges that people actually collect these things. Apparently, they can change hands for considerable sums on eBay. I've thrown dozens away over the years, and now it turns out that what I thought were mere tax discs were actually objets d'art. I've effectively junked a minor preparatory Henri Matisse sketch. Or at least a few free nights in the pub.

Then I remembered: I still own that old red Porsche you may have seen on the telly once or twice, and with it the mahoosive and meticulous service history file compiled by the previous two owners. This includes every tax disc ever issued to the car, pasted in chronological order onto sheets of card. Obviously, I would maintain this tradition.

But I didn't, did I? I just kept slotting each new disc in the holder, in front of the one that had expired three months previously. Going upstairs with the old one to look for glue was too tedious. I'd do it one day. But, eventually, the holder looked like Richard Hammond's wallet stuck to the windscreen, and in a fit of pique I threw them all away.

Plonker. That would have been a complete set from 1984 to the end of the tax-disc era, so I'd canned a small fortune, like some witless junk-shop proprietor who finds Da Vinci's Studio di cavalli and sees it as an unfinished drawing of some bits of horses.

Still, maybe it's for the best. Since 1937, when Churchill removed the ring fence that ensured ‘road tax' was actually spent on roads, the tax disc has been an ironic rip-off that's too difficult to tear out of its paper holder. I buy them online these days, of course, but for decades buying a tax disc meant rooting around for the V5, MoT and insurance certificates and then queueing for about half an hour in a post office, staring at cheesy greetings cards and (in the case of my local post office) a dusty set of drawing instruments unsold for at least 25 years.

Look at a really old tax disc on eBay. I've just seen one from 1953, which the vendor helpfully describes as ‘expired'. The original victim may well be dead by now, and that paper circle represents a bit of his too-brief life wasted on admin. You may as well collect posters advising of buses on rail-replacement service. These things are small monuments to misery. In the bin with them. Now.

There remains only to decide what to do with the tax-disc holder. There's a case for binning that too; the annoying supposedly ‘self-adhesive' plastic thing that would be cluttering your windscreen had it not shrivelled in the sun and fallen into the footwell. Motorcyclists may be glad to be shot of the holder-on-a-stick, not least because there's never a truly convenient place to bolt it on to the bike.

But, weirdly, I feel we should keep them. Relieved of the requirement to display a tax disc, we can use them instead to exhibit comedic selfies, pictures of our pets, Agincourt salutes to parking wardens, limericks, uplifting messages to humanity, whatever we like. I see emerging a new culture of tax-disc holder repurposing.

I bought a job lot of holders a few years ago, and I have three left over. Anybody like one? They're historic. Collectors' items.


www.topgear.com/uk/james-may/James-May-on-tax-disc-holders-2014-11-11

 

[RedMoon11]

James May on: Yellow Cars
Dec 16, 2014
Is anything not improved by being yellow? James ponders the mysteries of the colour spectrum



So there I was, bowling through some bit of rural Spain, when I came up behind a Hyundai Getz.
The old one, before the facelift. Boxy little thing.

I'm sure I must have driven an early Getz. I suspect it was the sort of car I secretly quite liked, for being basic, small and unpretentious. But really, no, I can't tell you much about it.

But this one was yellow, and that made all the difference. Yellow lent it vigour, purpose and the impression of an event rather than the mere progress of a crap small car. It was like a piece of over-processed and slightly sweaty cheese added to the arid and predominantly beige landscape by a Surrealist. I liked it.

By contrast, our own Seat Ibiza diesel hire car was... do you know, I'm not absolutely sure I can remember. I think it might have been some shade of black. I didn't much like the Ibiza diesel - I thought it was well dullsville - but it might have been a bit more enjoyable to drive had it been a cheerful colour. Yellow, perhaps?

I find it strange that the yellow car remains such a rare thing, when yellow is such an uplifting and go-ahead sort of colour. Porsche does a good one, and calls it "Speed Yellow". That just about sums it up. Dark blue is a bit "brake early" by comparison.

And yet the world is full of people driving cars from right across the grey spectrum because they will have a better resale value, or some such nonsense. It's your car, so why not have it in a nice colour, such as yellow? You might die before you sell it, and then you will have departed this life as someone with a grey car.

I think quite a few things in life can be improved by being yellow. I have a yellow bathroom suite, which is a very inspirational environment in which to take a poo. I have a yellow fridge, too. Had it for centuries. And I never tire of closing the door on the barren white expanse of its interior and leaving the kitchen enlivened with a Mondrian-esque rectangle of yellow, as I head out to the chippy.

Come to think of it, bananas are slightly preferable to apples, because they're yellow, and can be had with custard, which is also yellow. A quarter-pounder is just a burger, but with cheese it's better, and that stuff is really yellow. Chips and curry sauce, cold cuts with piccalilli, poached egg on toast. I could go on, but I think you get the drift.

I also have a yellow Ferrari, which is the thing I'm here to defend. A man approached me recently to tell me that he didn't "approve" of my car, because it should be red, as if I could give a brass fart about the opinion of anyone else, or as if I'd walked into the dealership and said: "I'm not sure what colour to have, but it must be acceptable to a man in action slacks from the back of the Daily Mail whom I'm going to meet in Kent one day."

Let's get to the bottom of this. People imagine that red is Ferrari's colour, but this is not strictly true. Red was Italy's national racing livery in the pre-sponsorship days, which the Ferrari F1 team largely maintains. Alfas and Maseratis would have been red as well.

But I think Ferrari's official company colour is actually yellow. When Enzo Ferrari put Baracca's rampant horse on a shield to make the Scuderia Ferrari badge, he chose a yellow background. I believe there is something significant about the colour yellow to the heraldry of the town of Modena.

Note, also, that the Ferrari legend above the old gateway to the factory is, in fact, yellow, not red. Ferrari itself put that there long ago, and has not seen fit to change it, because it's correct. And Ferrari would know.

Driving a yellow Ferrari is a good and bad thing. It's good because it's visible, which is a safety feature. It's bad because it's visible, so people notice it, and I can see them saying: "Look at that knob in the yellow Ferrari." But when I've gone, the backs of their eyeballs will be full of buttery goodness. Having a red one is just so totally square, and that goes for other cars, too.

Incidentally, Valentino Rossi has a 458 as well. It's yellow. Winners drive yellow. He must have seen mine.


www.topgear.com/uk/james-may/james-may-on-yellow-cars-2014-12-16

[RedMoon11]

May: "Used Your Car Horn? Pay A Fiver"

Feb 10, 2015

Captain Slow has a cunning plan to make Britain's roads politer: a pay-per-honk horn. Does his idea blow?




So: this bloke walked out right in front of the car, and immediately revealed a serious shortcoming with my BMW i3. You don't hear it coming.

At town speeds, the Car of the Future is virtually silent. Even the tyres don't make a noise, because they're thin and eco and are concerned with higher tasks than merely gripping the surface. If you actually want to run over people, I can recommend the i3. But you'll have to delete that collision-avoidance system, which I'm sure is there exactly because of this sort of thing.

What was I to do? Blow the horn? Didn't really seem right. Obviously, he was ever so slightly a bit of a pillock for walking into the road without looking, but in the end he was a soft, fleshy (and, in this case, slightly pissed) pedestrian, and I was in a car. He didn't really deserve to have a trumpet blown up his bottom.

It then occurred to me that I've never blown the horn on the i3. It might make a noise like the sliding doors on the Starship Enterprise. I found a side street and pressed the button. Parp! It sounded like the horn on a car. How disappointing.

What the i3 needs - what every car needs, really - is some sort of polite town horn, the equivalent of a cough or an ahem, or my mother shouting "I say" out of the window. Tonally, a typical car horn sounds confrontational, and like an admonishment. A bit bugle-like. Bugles are used to rouse armies and send them in to attack, I just want to warn a bloke that he's about to die in the future. I need something like an oboe, or a kazoo. Perhaps Sir Simon Rattle could have a think about this.

Meanwhile, back in the car, I changed lanes, perhaps quite suddenly, but a big coach full of Italian trippers was doing something to my left. There was a decent gap. But the bloke behind leant on his horn for a good 15 seconds or so. Blowing a trumpet at me. How rude.

Now I don't want to sound like the wheel-shufflers at the Institute of Advanced Motorists, but the Highway Code says the horn should be used "only while your vehicle is moving and you need to warn other road users of your presence". Sounds like a reasonable rule.

When, in fact, do you really need to blow your horn? If someone is about to reverse into you, I suppose. What about when the drunk bloke walks into the road? I could "warn him of my presence" or I could just stop, which is a better idea. If I'm blowing the horn, I can't be devoting all my energies to not running over him. Unless you actually are in an orchestra, braking is usually a better course of action than blowing a trumpet.

Really, the horn is a bit like an airbag. It's nice to know it's there, but you don't really want to make use of it. So it's also a bit like the Women's Institute as well. Blowing the horn is something that should happen once or twice in a lifetime, in those moments when you really can't stop and someone is going to die if they don't leap out of the way in the last yawning instant. Yet people are doing horn all the time.

Let's turn this around. Let's give everyone on foot a trumpet. Now, as you walk around the shops, and people stand in front of you, blow it at the backs of their heads. They blow trumpets at the back of your head as well. Man stands in front of me in the pub, I'll blow my trumpet at him. Taking a bit too long at the cash machine? Someone will blow a trumpet at you. Imagine how annoying this would get. You'd expect to get your face punched pretty quickly, and that's as it should be.

So I'm proposing a system. You have to pay to use the horn. Every car is fitted with something a bit like a household electricity meter from an old film about post-war British misery - A Kind of Loving, maybe. You feed it with fivers, and every fiver allows you to blow the horn once. Touch the button, and it costs you a fiver. Every additional second within each horn blow costs another fiver. You can only pay in advance, or your horn is disconnected by Offtoot.

You can use the merry town horn for free. But it hasn't been invented yet.


www.topgear.com/uk/james-may/may-column-car-horns-2014-02-10