Born to Be Riled (15 page)

Oh I’d driven all sorts of supercars before, including a great many Ferraris, and they’d been fun. But I hadn’t actually considered buying one.

Frankly, even if I could have afforded such a thing, I’d have needed another car to handle the days when it was wet, or when I had to carry more than one person, or when I put my back out. On top of all this, super-cars
tend to be as brittle and as vulnerable as baubles on a Christmas tree.

All these things apply, of course, to the 355 but it didn’t seem to matter. I wanted one. I needed one. It was like meeting the girl who one day will be your wife. Friends may point out that she has spots and a temper and costs a fortune to run but you don’t worry about practicality when you’re in love. And I was completely smitten with the 355.

The first step was to leave London. People think I gave up 15 years of fun and games in the capital for the sake of the children but that’s not entirely accurate. I did it because I needed a garage.

But the new house meant that my wife had to ricochet between Peter Jones and Osborne & Little, spending what little money we had on curtains and fridge-freezers.

Every day I’d come home and there’d be another cardboard box in the yard, another poignant reminder that the day when I could buy a Ferrari had just been pushed back.

I became desperate. I took my box full of foreign banknotes to the bank and raised £47. I looked down the back of the sofa, and went through old coat pockets. I considered holding up a sub post office. I even started doing advertisements on local radio.

But it wasn’t until my wife found me watching a documentary on rent boys in King’s Cross that she ordered me to buy the damn car and cheer up.

Fifty-seven minutes later, I was in a Ferrari dealership matching carpets up to bits of leather and wondering how it would all look when teamed with scarlet paint.

It seems just about all first-time Ferrari buyers choose a
red car, even though you can have blue, green, black or yellow. The choice of interior specification is even more limited though.

I’d always wanted cream sports seats, which add £2000 to the price and, despite the salesman’s misgivings, that’s what we settled on, along with carpets the colour of claret.

And so, after an hour of toing and froing, the order form was brought out and I found myself on my knees, putting the shakiest signature of all time to the document.

And yes, I really was on my knees because there is no chair on the customer’s side of a Ferrari salesman’s desk.

Rowan Atkinson complained bitterly about being asked to wait until his cheque cleared when he bought a 456 recently but I had no worries as I handed over the £5000 deposit. Now there’d be no going back.

And there wasn’t, because in the garage right now is a bright red Ferrari 355 GTS – that’s the one with the lift-out roof panel. The GTB is a hardtop, and the Spyder is a full convertible for hairdressers from Altrincham.

The first month with my 355 was, to be honest, disappointing. First, it had come without a radio. Second, it felt strange to be driving my own car after years in press demonstrators.

And third, it needed to be run in, which meant keeping the revs below 4000. That’s OK on a motorway, where in sixth gear you can do 90, but on country lanes overtaking was nigh on impossible.

The 355’s five-valve-per-cylinder V8 revs so quickly that in a full noise take-off I needed to change gear every half a second.

After I’d covered a thousand miles, the car was taken
back to the dealership for its free first service and for a radio to be fitted. It’s an Alpine by the way, and it’s £800 worth of junk.

Today, it’s heading towards the 2000 mile mark, which is a bit of a worry because I’ve told the insurers I’ll only do 5000 a year. In exchange, they only charge me £850.

That’s cheap, but the fuel bills are not – it does 18mpg – and nor will future services be all that Asdaish. In order to change the cam belts, which must be done regularly, they have to take the engine out of the car.

Nevertheless, to date it hasn’t put a foot wrong. Oh, the carbon fibre seats squeak against the back of the leather-lined cockpit and the roof panel creaks and groans, but when the revs build up past 6000, you really don’t care.

The point is that this supposedly brittle piece of millimetre-perfect engineering appears to have been hewn from a solid piece of granite.

And best of all, I still love it. I’ve learnt to keep the suspension in its comfort setting, knowing that it automatically switches to sports mode if I start to go quickly.

And I now know how easy it is to graze the undersides on speed bumps, but let me tell you this: when the road is empty and the sun is shining, there is no better car on the planet.

I’ve always said I’d sell it to pay for the boy child’s school fees but I’ve changed my mind. Sorry Fin but you’ll have to go through the state system like everyone else.

Harmless stuff, you’d have thought, especially as it’s true, but the locals went ape. Indeed, I am actually looking forward to the postal strike so the supply of vitriol is halted.

The leader of the city council, who has extraordinary hair, led the charge, suggesting that I shouldn’t peddle such insulting rubbish in a London-based newspaper. Ooooh. Touchy.

She went on: ‘So, if you ever do venture north of Watford Mr Clarkson, I would be happy to show you round Birmingham and the error of your ways.’

Well, sorry to disappoint you Theresa, but I don’t live in London, or even near it. And I spend a damn sight more time in your city than anywhere else. And that’s how I know it needs more restaurants.

I will not, as many people have asked, publicly apologize but I do feel the need to get on my knees and grovel at the feet of Eric Ferguson.

Eric reminded me of a piece I wrote back in March, where I made some predictions about the forthcoming Formula One season.

If I’d said Murray Walker would be eaten by aliens, it would have been more accurate. In fact, I said Michael Schumacher had gone to Ferrari because he knew something that we didn’t. I insisted he would be the 1996 world champion.

I said that Damon didn’t have enough bottle and would be runner-up, that Jacques Villeneuve would make a complete fool of himself, and I dismissed Mika Hakkinen as deranged. All this from a man who, in private, was hurt that ITV never even asked him to get involved with their new assault on Grand Prix racing.

Mr Ferguson suggests I know less about motor racing than I know about motor cars, a point that rankled at first but, having thought about it, he may have a point on that front too.

I, after all, described the Ford Escort, on television, as a terrible, disappointing dog, and it went on to be Britain’s best-selling car.

When I reviewed the Toyota Corolla I said it was dull and, to make the point, fell asleep on camera while reading a brochure about it. And the Corolla is now the world’s best-selling car.

How about this for a gaffe? I once waxed lyrical about the Renault A610, saying that it was a fabulous car offering hitherto unseen levels of performance for a bargain basement price.

And in the first year, Renault sold six of them.

I am not finished yet. I completely misjudged the Peugeot 306, saying that it lacked sparkle and that it was boring. Ooops. It is, in fact, a wonderful car that I enjoy driving very much.

Then there’s the Vauxhall Frontera. On first acquaintance I liked it, but since then I’ve discovered it’s very probably the nastiest new car you can buy.

Yes, Mr Ferguson, sometimes I get it wrong and sometimes I don’t. And that automatically makes me a damn sight more reliable than most car dealers.

You see, hate mail comes and goes but there is always a steady stream of letters from people who are being taken to Sketchley’s by garages.

Every morning, it’s like ‘Dear Deirdre’ in metal. Today, someone wrote to say they’d spent £16,000 on legal fees, fighting a dealer who refused to mend their car.

Then there’s a couple who say Nissan won’t honour a warranty on their Micra.

I see in the papers this week that a well-known BMW dealer from Yorkshire, have been fined for knowingly selling fake BMW wheels for real BMW prices.

And my sister, who bought a Mondeo on my recommendation, has vowed never to touch anything with a Ford badge again after the dealer told her a barefaced lie.

The trouble is that, judging by the letters I get, all car dealers are as bad as each other. There’s a report in one of the motoring rags this week which tells of a man who bought a £61,000 Daimler only to find it was an out of date model that had been sitting in a field for two years.

When he complained, he was offered a vastly inferior model as a swap.

This whole state of affairs is shambolic. I’ve spent the bulk of this column apologizing for the error of my ways, and I would like to think that car dealers think hard about doing the same.

I know margins on new cars are tight but a little courtesy and some honesty costs absolutely nothing.

I really do believe that people in the motor industry sometimes forget what a huge purchase a car can be.

My wife bought a new vacuum cleaner this week and was treated like a goddess by the salesman. And yet if she sauntered into a car dealership with £10,000 in her
pocket, they’d only just stop short of calling her a bitch for wasting their time.

Here’s a tip guys. When a customer comes in, offer them a cup of tea. And if you have premises in Birmingham, offer them biscuits too. It’ll have been a while since they ate out and they’ll be grateful.

They’ll buy a car from you, and be happy, and then they’ll stop writing to me. This will free up more time for research and make my pontifications more accurate. As it is, I reckon Damon will be the champ in 1997 and that the Scorpio’s a real beaut.

Mr Ford was livid and told his Brylcreemed designers to build a car that would make mincemeat out of the Ferraris at Le Mans. He was going to teach that eye-tie dago a lesson he wouldn’t forget.

The bunch of fives came in the shape of the GT40 which, in various guises, won the 24-Hours four times.

Now, ever since I was old enough to run round in small circles, clutching at my private parts, I have been a huge fan of Ferrari and especially the 250 LM. But here was a Ford that was beating it. The GT40 became my favourite car and I would plead with my dad to buy a
Cortina, to replace the last one he’d crashed. Ford need the money, I’d argue, to build more GT40s. I had three Dinky toy GT40s and my bedroom wall was plastered with pictures of them. I even sat in one once, when I was eight or so, and decided there and then it would be the car I’d have one day. Like the Lamborghini Miura, which was also built to spite Enzo Ferrari, it came from a time when car design was at its peak. Look at a McLaren or a Diablo today and tell me they have the sheer sexiness of a 1960s supercar.

There have been loads of good-looking cars since but none had quite such dramatic lines as the GT40 – I’m talking about the racers, not the elongated and muted MkIII car.

I was at the Goodwood Festival of Speed earlier in the summer and, though there were many stunning cars squealing up that hill, I maintain that the GT40 was best. Yes indeed, the best-looking car of all time. And fast, too. Nought to 60 took 5.4 seconds and you could get the needle round to the 170mph quadrant on the M1, should you choose. There were no speed limits then, because homosexuality hadn’t been invented.

It was also a proper engine. I’ve always subscribed to the view that there ain’t no substitute for cubes and here was a car with 7000 of them in a rumbling V8 package. And there it was, in the grounds of the Elms Hotel in Abberley, fuelled and ready. The keys were in my hand, the sun was shining, the temptation to run round in circles was large. I was going to realize a 30-year-old dream and actually drive a GT40; and I didn’t really care that it was a 300bhp, 4.7-litre, Mustang-engined road car with a boot. Ford had only made seven of the things before the
American magazine
Road and Track
said it was a badly made crock of donkey dung and the plug was pulled. And I, the man who loves the GT40 the most, was going to use it to tear up some tarmac.

Actually, I wasn’t. For the first time in 10 years of road-testing cars, I had to admit, after desperate struggling, that I am just too tall. And no, it wasn’t a Mansell whinge about being uncomfortable. I was simply unable to get my knees under the dash, my head under the roof or my feet anywhere near the pedals.

If you’d put a pint in front of John McCarthy when he stepped off that plane from Beirut and then peed in it when he was about to take a swig, he would have been less disappointed. But now I’m glad. Yes, I’m happy that Ford made the car only suitable for hamsters and other small rodents. I’m happy that my trip to Worcester was a waste of time and that I had to rewrite the item I’d written for the programme. I’m delighted that I shall go to my grave never having driven a GT40. Because the dream will never be tarnished with a dose of reality.

Vanessa Redgrave was my childhood film star idol and now I’ve learned she is the sort of woman who probably doesn’t shave her armpits. Then there was the Ferrari Daytona, another car I’d wanted to drive since I was old enough to use crockery, but which actually feels like it should sport a Seddon Atkinson badge.

So, if you’re a child longing for the day when you can get behind the wheel of a McLaren or a Diablo, may I suggest you stand in a bucket of Fison’s Make it Grow. Because by the time you’re old enough they will have been made to feel old and awful by the hatchback you use every day.