Born to Be Riled (52 page)

Earlier this month I wrote a column for
The Sunday Times
in which I might perhaps have said motorcyclists were a tiny bit gay. Certainly I claimed that they liked to look at photographs of other men’s bottoms.

Well, there’s been an awful lot of fuss and bother, with e-mails flying hither and thither, flicked V-signs in traffic jams and a piece in
Motorcycle News
which said I was being deliberately controversial. As opposed to what, I wondered? Accidentally controversial?

It also said that I only wrote the column to annoy the Road Test Editor of
Top Gear
magazine. ‘A tad wasteful’, they suggested, to devote an entire column in a national organ to one man.

Oh, really? Well, they devoted a whole column to me, and now I’m going to devote what’s left of this one to John Prescott, who has a brilliant new wheeze. Basically, if Railtrack don’t get the trains to run on time, they’ll be fined £40 million. Which is more than you get for urinating in a public place. I find myself wondering what good this will possibly do. Certainly it’ll ensure that money, which could be spent making the network better, goes to the government, where it will be spent on a few more focus groups. And big penalties like this will scare away investors. So, the trains will get worse. And then they’ll get fined again.

I wouldn’t mind, but it’s not like the people at Railtrack sit around every morning thinking up new and exciting ways to bugger up the network. I’m sure they’re doing their best, and the last thing they want is Jabba the
Hutt and his ginger-haired, rhubarb-shaped sidekick at the Rail Regulator acting like a brace of school bullies.

I should have thought it would have been more helpful if Taffy Two Jags had said: ‘Look, if you can’t do anything to make the trains better, we’ll give you £40 million to spend on new signals or better coffee or something.’ But, oh no. Chopper Prescott has decided to spend all his money on another lunch. And a diving holiday in the Maldives. And a helicopter to get to the Grand Prix, where he cheered wildly for someone called ‘Damien’. And what little there is left over is being spent on turning the road network into a giant f****** bus lane.

Now, look. Trains are a good idea. They help alleviate the pressure on Britain’s roads and work well in tandem with the car and truck. Buses don’t. Buses are stupid.

With the power of hindsight, everyone can see that Beeching was wrong to rip up the railways in 1963. It may have seemed like a wise move at the time, what with the coming of the car, but now we can all see it was madness. And I will bet everything I own that in 30 years’ time we’ll all be sitting around saying: ‘Prescott was an arse when he made all the roads buses-only.’

Actually, I’m saying it now. It’s all very well claiming that each bus is full of 50 smiling motorists who’ve left their cars at home, but that’s simply not the case. If you look at a bus after, say, 10 o’clock in the morning, it is almost always empty. And if there is someone on it, you can just tell they’ve never owned a car in their lives – not with that hairdo. And that coat.

Prescott doesn’t seem to understand that no one will buy a car, tax it, insure it, pay to park it somewhere and then use the bus to go to work. But then we should
remember that he failed his 11-plus and was described by his mother as ‘not very bright’. But even he, surely, can see that a car is far more comfortable and far more convenient than a bus. A car goes where you want it to go and comes home when you’re good and ready. A car offers you peace and Terry Wogan. A bus offers you nothing more exciting than the opportunity to sit on someone else’s discarded chewing gum.

And buses are not fast. All the coach operators who use it say the new M4 bus lane has made no discernible difference to their journey times. And one operator, in Reading, even cut services after it was opened because there was ‘insufficient demand’.

Only 50 buses an hour use the M4 between Heathrow and London – that’s less than one a minute – and they now have a lane all to themselves. While the 16,000 cars that use the same stretch are hemmed into the remainder. It’s idiotic. It’s insane. It’s the product of a damaged mind.

And it gets worse because a quick survey of the 50 buses using the new lane reveals a nasty surprise. Most are airline coaches ferrying flight crews into central London for a little light sex.

And then we have the 350 taxis. Well, that’s really helping the road network and its overtaxed users. Sitting there watching American businessmen whiz past you into town at 50mph while you just sit there and sweat.

History, I assure you, will not be kind to Mr Prescott, and I suggest that history starts right now. So drop him a line, explaining exactly why next time round you’ll be voting for… well, anyone, really, just so long as he goes back to serving gins and tonics on the
QE2
.

Did you know that there’s such a thing as a summer truffle, and that it’s nowhere near as good or tasty as a winter truffle? No? Well, don’t worry, because neither did I until I tried to order dinner the other night at a restaurant where this sort of thing matters.

I had to sit there, nodding sagely, while the waiter guided me through truffle technology. We’d gone through earth and moisture and pigs when, all of a sudden, he adopted the look of a man who’s just been stabbed in the back of the neck with a screwdriver. His open-mouthed, wide-eyed expression showed he was in deep shock, but analysis showed there was bewilderment too. Maybe a hint of anger. And all because here, in Michelin central, a man on the next table was putting Tabasco sauce on his fish.

I understood this expression well, because I had worn something similar two days earlier, when Alfa Romeo delivered to my house a 156 with a diesel engine.

This is like teaming white socks with your new suit. It’s like playing Mozart at 45rpm. And, yes, I imagine, it’s like spending eight hours preparing the perfect fish only to have someone with an asbestos mouth pour nitroglycerine all over it.

I’ll tell you some things about Alfa Romeo which will outline the preposterousness of such a thing. We think of McLaren as a dominant force in Formula One today, but back in the 1950s Alfa was so far out in front it once pulled in its car on the penultimate lap and polished it. So it would look smart when it crossed the finishing line.

Enzo Ferrari began his career with Alfa, a company that has given the world some of the most exquisite cars ever made. Have you ever seen a 2900B? Have you heard one? Henry Ford did, and said later: ‘When I see an eight-cylinder Alfa Romeo, I take off my hat.’

And it’s still going on today. Oh, sure, people who want four wheels and a seat can buy a BMW or a Vectra, but those who know, those who care, those who want the steering to talk and the engine to howl: they buy an Alfa. So what in God’s name were they thinking of when they fitted a diesel engine to their magnificent 156? A filthy, carcinogenic, rattly diesel! In a work of art!

Yes, I know that in Italy diesel fuel costs 3p a ton, and the savings make up for the catastrophic loss of self-worth, but why export it to Britain? Why? Here, diesel engines are for mealy-mouthed, penny-pinching, open-toed beardies in Rohan trousers. They’re for people who absolutely don’t care about cars or motoring, only the need to do it as cheaply as possible.

Diesel Man yearns to be a parish councillor. He fits yellow headlamp covers and a GB plate when driving in France. He studies road maps before he sets off rather than on the motorway, and he always fills up when the tank is still a quarter full.

You can always spot the son of Diesel Man in the playground at school. While all his mates are telling one another how fast their dads’ cars go, he is warbling on in a nasal whine: ‘Yes, but my dad’s car does 50 miles to the gallon.’ And then they steal his milk, and rightly so.

Because despite the wild claims of Diesel Man, diesel cars rarely average more than 35mpg. If he says he’s getting
50 or 60, you can tell him from me that he is a liar. And then punch him in the face.

Alfa Romeo has done its level best to enliven the concept of diesel motoring, droning on and on about its new five-cylinder turbocharged 2.4-litre five-cylinder engine. But the simple fact is this: at 4000rpm, when a normal Alfa would be rolling up its sleeves for an all-out, spine-tingling assault on the upper reaches of its bloodcurdling rev band, the diesel version is out of puff and begging for a gear change.

Yes, the diesel has torque, but where’s the power? Where’s the zing, zing, snap, snap, whoa-that-was-close excitement of a Twin Spark. Or the would-you-listen-to-that bellow of the V6. Where’s the fun?

You sit there, on your Recaro seat, clasping a Momo leather steering wheel, gazing over a carbon-fibre dashboard, listening to an engine that belongs in a bloody tractor. They say it’s eight decibels quieter than a normal diesel, but that’s like saying Concorde is quieter than a Harrier. It’s still noisy enough to give you a nosebleed.

And at £20,300, it’s not cheap. The Twin Spark 2.0-litre version is £100 less and completes a double whammy by being about a million, billion, trillion times better.

PS. Oh, and before I go, A.A. Gill wants to buy an Alfa, so if you have one for sale drop him a line. Doesn’t matter what model. He can’t tell them apart.

I’ve just finished reading this month’s edition of
GQ
, which is a style magazine for men, and it seems 1970s kitsch is very much in vogue at the moment. Beanbags are back, and so are lava lamps. Then we find page after page of furniture that is made from black leather and brushed aluminium, such as you’d have found on an old Akai tape deck. Or wood, which is so dark and so heavily grained it actually looks like Fablon.

So, if the 1970s are in, then the new Rover ought to be the car of the moment. It’s even called the 75, to remind us of a time when 10CC were not in love, and it is festooned with all sorts of natty throwback styling details. If this car could have its hair done, it would probably go for an Afro.

Seriously, it’s actually very handsome and, though it’s big, it’s not at all tank-like. No more than a tank top anyway. But, strangely, this is an acutely embarrassing car to drive. Maybe it’s me. I’m the first to admit that I don’t like Ben Sherman shirts or those new shoes which look like punts. I buy into fashion only when I’m absolutely sure it isn’t fashionable any more.

I can’t abide the idea that I might be setting a trend because – who knows? – it might be a trend nobody else will follow, and I’ll be left out there with a halibut on my head and big pink kneepads. Well, that’s how I felt in the new Rover. Idiotic. Out of step. Not sure whether I was Dr Finlay or Dr Feelgood. Did I want milk or did I want alcohol?

The problem is simple. The 75 has been on sale for
months, and I have not yet seen one. The new Jags, which are a deal more expensive, are everywhere, but nobody is buying the 75. So people were looking at me, and that’s unnerving.

I think I see why Rover has taken on Sophie Wessex to help get the nation ‘on message’. According to Brian Sewell, the art critic who was used in commercials for the 75, she will get high-profile, trendsetting opinion-formers into the car, so the rest of us will breathe a sigh of relief and follow suit.

But I fear it won’t work. Sewell cites A.A. Gill as a prime target for Sophie, but I know he’d rather pay for an Alfa than be given a Rover. And when you look at all those smiling faces at
GQ
’s Man of the Year party, you can’t help thinking: How many of you lot would buy a Rover. Jamie Oliver? Johnny Vaughan? TPT? Not a chance.

Above all, you see, it’s Rover, and that is just about the least cool badge in the business. At best, it is associated with tweedy doctors in Harrogate; at worst, it conjures up visions of Red Robbo dancing like a Cossack in Lickey End. Rover, the name, is a dog.

But what of the car? Mine came with a 2.5-litre V6 that went with the automatic gearbox about as well as a marriage between Harold Pinter and Scary Spice. Do not think this is a fast car and you will still be disappointed. It is woefully lethargic, unwilling to kick down, and, even when it does, a lumbering barge.

Then there’s the interior, which is even more wrong. I liked the piping on the seats. I liked the seats themselves, and I liked the creamy dials. But why have they put ultramodern LCD displays alongside ancient LEDs
and set them all against a wood ’n’ leather backdrop?

That said, my car had every conceivable toy, which caused me to guess its price at £35,000. In fact, you could buy such a thing for just £25,000, and that’s good value. Good, but not amazing.

The handling, however, is neither good nor amazing. I suspect BMW ordered Rover’s engineers to stay away from 3- and 5-series sportiness and, as a result, we’ve been given a wheeled suet pudding. But because of this the Rover does have one trump card. After a hard day at work, when your head is pounding and the traffic is awful, there is no better car in this class for getting you home. It is as comfortable as a Rolls-Royce, soaking up Mr Prescott’s speed mountains like they’re just not there. And it’s eerily quiet, too, so that as you get on to the motorway and hit the cruise control, you simply cannot believe you’re in a machine that goes head to head with a BMW 3-series, let alone a Ford Mondeo.

So if you’re in the market for a car that drives like a candlelit bath, the Rover 75 should be your first choice. But, of course, if you’re in the market for such a thing, you are almost certainly old. With Volvo out of the way, and Nissan now importing the Skyline GTR, Rover has a clear run at the Saga louts. 75? It should be the minimum age limit for buying one.

I’m writing this on a new computer, which has decided that all ‘I’s shall be capitals and that occasionally it’s fun to
type the odd word in Greek. So I’ve spent most of the day on the phone to a man who explained, with a lot of sighing, that it’s all very simple. And I suppose it is, if you’ve spent the past 14 years in an attic.