Born to Be Riled (49 page)

Yesterday I drove a car that actually looked like a baked bean. It is made in Korea, where they eat dogs, by a company called Hyundai, and it was called the Accent GLSi. Obviously, I would rather pull my own ears off than buy such a thing, but after a yard or two it became apparent that it was indeed the wheeled equivalent of Ronseal’s five-year wood guarantee. It did exactly what it said on the tin. Farted, mostly.

But for the man who needs his food to be mashed before it goes anywhere near his mouth, it was absolutely perfect; well, it was until I went banger-racing in it, but there you go.

As a result of all this, I have a remarkably simple request. Because of platform sharing, car makers are now able to make new cars, economically, in small numbers. It’s called niche marketing and is best explained by the Golf, which has so far given rise to all sorts of diverse elements, from the Audi TT to the newly updated Beetle.

Well, look. If VW can make a new Beetle just to keep a handful of trendy fortysomething urbanites happy, how about deliberately making a really bad car to keep the journalists who work for car magazines happy?

Ford did it with the ’92 Escort, and Vauxhall followed up with the Vectra, but since then there’s been nothing. So here’s an idea. BMW obviously hasn’t a clue what to do with Rover, so why not use it to produce a selection
of overpriced joke cars, simply for the press? Something with a thatched roof, perhaps, and dry-stone doors. You could then line them all up on the north bank of the Thames and play amusing tunes with their horns, and we’d love you for it.

My elderly neighbour popped round recently to say that gangs of motor-bicyclists are going past our houses much too quickly and that something must be done.

Gulp. It was one of those moments when you pray for a meteor shower or an earthquake or any damned thing that would provoke a change of subject. But nothing was forthcoming so, with a sweaty neck, I was forced to agree.

Here’s the problem. Urban fortysomething motor-bicyclists have discovered that the roads in north Oxfordshire are wide and largely unencumbered by functioning speed cameras. So on sunny Sundays they come along with their sports exhaust systems and go bonkers.

It’s horrid, but as I have spent the past 15 years challenging the notion that speed kills, it seemed unwise to start a campaign for curbs in my back yard.

To stay away from the petition, we’ve spent the past few weeks indulging in some ‘neighbour avoidance’. This largely involves mooching around the house with the shutters closed. I’d have been happy if she’d stretched cheese wire across the road, or mined the cat’s-eyes, or anything really, just so long as the bikers went away and I wasn’t publicly involved.

But instead she wrote to the council, which arrived to paint red marks across the road. The result was both dramatic and immediate. Last weekend I noticed the average speed was down from 180mph to somewhere in the region of 165.

And now it’s my turn to do something. So here goes. First, I should explain that being heterosexual with no fondness for rubber clothes, I don’t like bikes very much. And I don’t want my children to like them either. Some parents say drugs are the biggest threat to youngsters today, but I disagree. Every weekend, everyone under the age of 25 takes crack, smack and E and very few are harmed as a result. Bikes are far more dangerous. So, to put my kids off, I take them into the garden on peaceful Sundays and we watch them hurtle by. ‘See that man, kids?’ I say. ‘He likes looking at pictures of other men’s bottoms. And by tonight he’ll be all dead.’

Am I getting through yet? Well, let me try another tack. Bikes are not that fast. Only last month I went to the Thruxton racetrack in Hampshire with a Porsche 911, which is by no means the speediest car in the world, and a Yamaha R1, which can knock on the door of 200mph. But over a lap the car was faster by 0.75 of a second.

As the flag dropped, the motor-bicycle tore off at a truly breathtaking pace but, as the first corner approached, it came over all weedy and pathetic. To get it round a corner at more than a brisk walking pace, the rider had to lean right over so that his knee was actually touching the road. They call the scuff pads on the end of the footpegs ‘hero blobs’, but I have no idea why because halfway
through the bend the car, despite the burden of four-wheel drive, just sailed past.

Yes, the motorized bicycle was faster on the straight bits, but where’s the fun in that? If you want to go fast in a straight line, try easyJet, which, for as little as £29, will take you pretty damned close to the speed of sound.

I’m regularly overtaken by bikers, and I’m sure they feel manly as they sweep by, but come the next corner I like nothing more than getting right up behind them and flashing my lights. Get it right, and without wishing to be too lavatorial, you can almost smell their fear.

For sure, it must be pretty damned scary to ride around on something that will skid into a hedge if you sneeze. But look, guys, if it’s a cheap thrill you want, why not rent
Armageddon
from the video shop? That way, there’s a zero chance of running over my dog.

Seriously. Hit a dog in a car and they’ll make you a freeman of Seoul. Hit a dog on a bike and you get a one-way ticket to the pearly gates.

Bikers fight back by saying the motorized bicycle is faster in traffic, but it isn’t. When I want to go somewhere in London, I pick up the car keys and set off. You have to go upstairs and spend 45 minutes dressing up like Freddie Mercury. By which time I’m there.

And I’ve got the girl, who assumes, as you struggle in, dressed in chains and rubberwear, that you’d be more interested in her brother.

So look, instead of hacking out to the Cotswolds this afternoon, why not mow the lawn or play tag with your mates?

If not, then would you mind awfully fitting an exhaust
system that masks the sound of the engine in some way. Because if you don’t, I will set up a stereo in your garden tonight. And play Barclay James Harvest at full volume until dawn.

It’s strange that new Labour should choose to take its holidays in Tuscany. Italy, for heaven’s sake: it’s the very antithesis of grind-your-own potpourri, nanny-knows-best Islington.

A friend who teaches sociology at Rome University once said that it is not difficult to govern the Italians, just unnecessary. ‘You can have as many laws as you like,’ he explained, ‘just so long as they are not enforced.’ And you have only to look at Italian history to see why. One minute they had Caesar nailing orders to the village notice board, then along came Hannibal with a different set of instructions: ‘Kill a Florentine: Win an Elephant!’

And it’s still going on: governments never last more than a year, so new rules that come along one day are overturned the next. Best, really, to just get on with living and ignore the edicts. That way you have anarchy, which before a change in the 1929 OED, meant ‘a perfect state where no government is needed’.

So I wonder what Mr Blair and the wide-mouthed frog thought when they found people openly smoking in Pisa’s no-smoking airport. What went through their minds when they found that, contrary to Euro-rule 277/4b, the lavatories in the restaurants do not have two
doors separating them from the kitchen? And how on earth did they cope on the roads?

They have bus lanes in Italy. But cars go in them, too, because, it’s said, the police are more interested in crime. Rubbish. They are only interested in their uniforms, which were designed by Fendi. Except the bags: they’re Gucci. Maybe if British police had Reebok shoes and Paul Smith suits they might worry less about your dirty rear numberplate and whether you’ve had a wine gum. It’s a thought.

Contrary to popular belief, though, you can get stopped by the Italian police. A friend was hauled over for jumping a red light but, when she explained that this was permitted in Britain after 11 p.m., the officer said ‘Good idea’ and let her go. It
is
a good idea. My professor mate says it is an act of ‘monumental stupidity’ to sit at a red light when nothing is coming. And he can’t fathom the new Italian law that says you must wear a seatbelt. ‘It’s like betting against yourself,’ he says. ‘Putting one on is like saying, “I am, at best, a mediocre driver. I may crash.”’

The Italians do crash, a lot. Every bend on every road is garnished with floral tributes to poor old Gianni, who, at a crucial moment, ran out of talent. But in Italy to die in a 100mph fireball is to live.

Certainly, I pity poor old Mr and Mrs Blair if they chose to drive around at the speed limit, because other road users will have thought them mad. Indeed, in Sicily once, while trying to discover just how fast the Sierra Cosworth would go, I chanced upon a police van trundling down the inside lane. Naturally, I braked hard, but it was no good, and out of the van’s window came an arm, followed by a head and then a whole torso. He was waving at me frantically,
demanding that I put my foot down again. Sure, he was a policeman, but he was, first and foremost, an Italian bloke and therefore he, too, wanted to know if the 150mph rumours were true.

And it isn’t just the police who encourage you to go faster. I was once struggling down the outside lane of the autostrada in some godawful diesel Fiat with a large Alfa ramming me gently, but repeatedly, up the rear. And in the back of it were two nuns.

Go to an Italian motorway service station in the holiday season and the car park will be littered with tourists, usually American, crying their eyes out: ‘We just daren’t go back on the road.’

To stay out of trouble, you need to go fast. Really fast. People will dive into a hedgerow when confronted with an onrushing Ferrari. There’s none of the mealy-mouthed Terry and June pettiness you get in Britain.

Of course, they have drink-driving rules, but, so far as I can tell, there’s no specific limit, so nobody gets prosecuted. Then there’s parking: to find a space, you use your bumpers to move another car out of the way. And hands up anyone who’s seen a double yellow line in Italy. Or a speed hump. Or a Gatso.

But here’s the thing: it works. And while I’m sure Mr Blair was initially horrified by the freedom bestowed on the subjects of a fellow Euro-state, I do hope that, as he lay awake at night, digesting the fagiano alla caruso and listening to the crickets, he realized that ungoverned traffic is like an ocean: it will find a natural level that swells like the tide at rush hour and then, all by itself, ebbs away.

Unfortunately, Canute Prescott is still in charge of the roads, and I think he takes his holidays in Mablethorpe.

A senior Ford executive told me the other day that modern customers will make up their minds about a car in just five seconds. Five seconds? What planet is he on? Five seconds is far too long.
The Big Breakfast
can give you an entire news bulletin in five seconds. And I certainly didn’t need five seconds to make up my mind about the new Nissan Almera GTi. I saw a picture and knew immediately it was horrid.

Oh, I’m sure its fuse box wasn’t nailed in place by an Indian, and I’m sure it’s jolly fast. But telling someone at a drinks party that you have a Nissan Almera is like telling them you have ebola. And that you’re about to sneeze.

Nissan says in its press advertisements that the Almera is better than the Golf GTi, but I don’t need five seconds to find out that it isn’t. It’s a bloody Nissan, for crying out loud. In the 20-year history of hot hatchbacks, only one car maker has ever been able to take the fight to Volkswagen. Peugeot.

Peugeot, of course, is French, but I see that as a good thing. While we wail and wring our hands at American trade shenanigans, they just up the price of Coca-Cola to £50 a can. Marvellous.

Then we must consider Peugeot’s latest advertising campaign, where we see Gatso cameras with long lenses and cars taking off from humpback bridges. These are designed specifically to annoy the ‘speed kills’ lobby and that, too, is a good thing.

And, finally, their new pocket rocket, the 206GTi, is made in Britain. But spend just five seconds in the cockpit
and you’ll be overcome by a need to get out again. It’s vile. The dashboard is made of deeply veined plastic so it looks like an elephant’s arse. And you cannot find a comfortable driving position. Unless you are an ape.

Then you’ll note there is no sunroof and, despite a dashboard-mounted readout that says GPS, no satellite navigation either. After five seconds you’ll not only be out of the car but out of the showroom, on your way to see that nice man at VW with his solid-as-a-rock Golf.

Mistake. Big mistake. What you need to do is turn the key, ignore the engine scream and set off. Eventually the overactive choke shuts down and you are in what can best be described as an asteroid. All the other cars on the road become big lumbering planets. But the 206? It’s doing 2000mph on the back roads, where neither Mr Prescott nor Isaac Newton can get at it.

You know that ball that Will Smith found in the
Men in Black
laboratory, the one that Tommy Lee Jones said had caused the New York blackout? Well, that’s what the 206GTi is like. You don’t so much drive it as hang on and hope for the best.

For those who haven’t seen
Men in Black
, it’s like taking a terrier for a walk.

It’s like body-surfing down an alpine ravine. It’s an extreme sport with wheels.

It’s fitted with frantic, sprint gearing so that, at motorway speeds, the engine is doing 4000rpm. This means it’s loud, but it also means you’re right in the power zone and even so much as a breath of wind on the throttle pedal will give you a whole new hairdo.

It’s not that the 2.0-litre engine is particularly powerful, but Peugeot has used every trick in the book to eke as
much as possible from it. And it’s the same story with the rear suspension. Front-wheel-drive cars understeer, right? Turn into a corner too quickly and the nose will want to plough straight on. Not in a Peugeot. If you lift off the power, the back swings round and you get armfuls of oversteer, which is exactly what the enthusiastic driver wants.