Don't Stop Me Now (4 page)

I liked it, too, hugely. I liked it even more than the Ferrari 360 because it’s better balanced and easier to control at the limit. It changes direction like a fly, grips like a barnacle and goes like a jet fighter on combat power. At one point I saw 175 mph on the clock, and there was plenty more where that came from.

It is a technological
tour de force
, a genuinely very good car, even if it is a trifle pricey at
£
115,000. But it left me feeling under-whelmed: there was no sense of occasion, like I felt when I first stepped into a Ferrari 355, or a Diablo, or a Zonda even.

This is important, because supercars appeal to the small boy in us all. We may hate the bastards who have them and we may know they make no sense at all, but that doesn’t stop us wanting one. And there’s the thing: I don’t particularly want a Gallardo.

As I stepped out of it after a two-day stint, there was no pulsating desire to get back in again, and keep going. Although this may have had something to do with the fact that, after three hard minutes on the test track, the clutch was a thin veneer of dust on the main straight.

There we are, then. The message remains the same. If you want to go really, really fast, buy a plane ticket.

Sunday 21 September 2003

When women crest the brow of middle age and start on the high-speed, unstoppable plunge to an osteoporotic, alopecia-ravaged death, there are many ways to pretend that it isn’t happening. Breasts, ravaged by gravity and babies, can be re-upholstered. Tummies distorted by pregnancy can be vacuumed away. And shops such as SpaceNK and Boots sell exotic creams that soothe wrinkles and cellulite.

I have watched Joan Collins walk into a restaurant and noted how all the women stare in open-mouthed wonderment. Here she is, aged 70, and she doesn’t look a day over 58. You certainly wouldn’t give up your seat on a bus, were she to step on board with some heavy bags.

Now, compare and contrast the fortunes of Ms Collins with the plight of Barry Manilow. We hear he’s had plastic surgery and what do we think? Poof. Mickey Rourke is said to have had Botox put in his face. Poof. Jay Kay wins a prize for most stylish man. Poof. A. A. Gill. Poof. Paul Smith. Poof.

Men who wear ‘product’ in their hair, whatever the hell that is. Poofs. Men who put on suncream in England. Poofs. Men who have combs or hairdryers. Poofs. Men who wash their cars. Poofs. Men in sandals. Poofs. Men who go to the dentist when they don’t have toothache. Poofs.

Men who take vitamin tablets. Raving poofs. And backs to the wall, everyone: there’s a jogger in the room.

Any attempt, whatsoever, to delay the visible signs of old age is met with a torrent of barracking and cruel jibes. And rightly so.

I wear clothes so that people cannot see my genitals. I have a stomach like a Space Hopper because I like eating food. My teeth are yellow because I drink 100 cups of coffee a day. My hair is cut with scissors. My bathroom scales are broken. I haven’t combed my hair since I was 12, and I last washed a car in 1979.

I’d like, therefore, to say that I’m all man, but in my heart of hearts I know this to be untrue. Because a huge hole has appeared in the back of my hair and it’s driving me insane with worry.

Baldness is bad enough when it appears from the front, but when it starts at the back, creating a big pink crater, it looks stupid. And what makes it worse is that the mirror lies. It tells you that you still have a full rug. It tells you that all is well. Your hole is as invisible as the hole in the ozone layer, but you know it’s there all right, like a huge crop-circle, amusing people who sit behind you in cinemas.

Last weekend, a girl at a party tried to reassure me, saying that bald men smell nicer than those with a full crop. To demonstrate the point, she sniffed the shiny pate of Shaun Woodward, who happened to be near by, and declared the aroma to be ‘lovely’. Whereas what’s left of my curly top, she said, was ‘horrid’. So much for the morning-pine goodness of my jojoba-tree shampoo.

I wasn’t fooled, though. I know that baldness has to be masked. But how? I could go down the Dylan Jones route and give myself a number one. But then Dylan is editor of
GQ
magazine, and as such must be a poof.

Nothing works. Have a hair transplant, and you end up with something that looks like a Scottish forest on your head. Go for a scrape-over and you’re marooned in your house every time there’s a light breeze. And as for the wig? Forget it. Elton John has all the money in the world, and he still looks like he has a Huguenot carpet tile on his bonce.

If men were women, someone from Alberto Balsam would have thought of a cure for this terrible affiction. But we’re not. So they haven’t. I have, though. Simply hide your barnet under a car.

Plainly, if you’re the sort of person who worries about hair loss, there is a trace of vanity, a hint of poofery in your make-up, so it needs to be something with a bit of panache and pizzazz. Though, obviously, it can’t be a convertible.

A coupé, a car that puts style way above substance, is perfect. Not that long ago there were many from which to choose. Volkswagen did the Corrado, Nissan the 200SX, and Honda the Prelude. And there was the wonderful Fiat Coupé, a raft of cheap Porsches and the 6-series BMW. But one by one they all died away. Killed off, as people began to realise they were paying more for what was basically a saloon car in a funny hat.

Now, though, they’re coming back. Joining the ancient Alfa GTV, the Toyota Celica – which is very good, incidentally – and the Hyundai Coupé – which is even
better – will be the Chrysler Crossfire (a Mercedes SLK in a fairly pretty shell) and the Nissan 350Z, which is better looking but a bit of a pig to drive. It’s just so wearing. Best of all, though, is the new Mazda RX-8, partly because of its rear doors, which open backwards to create a hole in the side of the car as big as the hole in the back of my head, and partly because it is so much fun talking about its Wankel rotary engine.

You’ve no need to explain how this works, because after you’ve said the name people are usually too busy laughing to be listening.

In essence, though, you get a sort of triangular-shaped ‘piston’ which spins round in a vaguely circular cylinder. The upside is uncanny smoothness – a buzzer sounds when you’re up past 9,000 rpm to warn you that a gear-change might be in order – but the downsides have always been thirst and unreliability.

The problem is that the tips of the triangular ‘piston’ spinning round in the cylinder 9,000 times a minute have to be as tough as diamonds, but obviously not as expensive. I have no idea what Mazda has used – the residue of a Weetabix that’s been left in a cereal bowl for a week, probably. That’s the toughest substance I’ve ever encountered.

Whatever, Mazda says it has addressed all the problems in its new car, and that’s good, because the upsides are better than ever. It may be only a 1.3-litre engine (in normal engine terms) but the power it delivers is astonishing: 231 bhp. And it just gets better and better as the revs begin the climb. Get past 7,000 rpm and it’s like you’ve pressed a hyperspace button.

It handles, too. Unlike most coupés this one sends its power to the proper end of the car – the back. So the front does the steering, the rear does the driving, and you sit in the middle wondering why all cars don’t feel this way; so balanced, so right and omigod I’ve just gone past 7,000 rpm again and it’s all gone blurry.

As a practical proposition: well, it’s not a people carrier, but you do get a decent boot and two smallish seats in the back. And with those doors, even the fattest children in the world can get in.

The best thing about this car, though, is the price:
£
22,000 is remarkable value for money, especially as my car had an interior that was not only nicely trimmed but also equipped like the innards of Cheyenne Mountain.

This is a very good car with an exceptional engine. But the whole point of a coupé is to bring a bit of style to your humdrum hairdo with its big hole at the back. It has to be a toupee with tyres, a weave with windscreen wipers, a syrup that can go sideways.

And on that front the RX-8 is a bit questionable. It’s as though they had a styling suggestion box at the factory, and every single idea was incorporated. It’s not ugly, and it’s certainly not plain. But it is messy.

There is, however, an upside to this. People will be too busy examining the curved front, the striking back and the endless detailing, to notice the driver’s a poof.

Sunday 14 September 2003

The Audi TT has had a pretty undistinguished life so far. I thought, when it was launched, that it was as cute as a newborn lamb but that its steering was as woolly and as vague as a sheep. It turned out to be worse than that. After just a few months it began to emerge that on motorway slip roads the Pretty Titty, as I like to call it, would spin round and slam into the nearest solid object.

That was fixed, but worse was to come, because the redesigned cars, identifiable by their tail spoilers, were bought by young men who care just a little too much about their hair. So while it might not be quite so hellbent on actually killing you, it would murder you socially by making you look like an estate agent.

To try to inject some new life into what’s quite an old car now, Audi recently fitted the 3.2-litre V6, which is a good thing, and two gearboxes, which makes it rather jerky around town.

The idea is that when you select, say, third, the second gearbox prepares fourth, making the change almost seamless. Apparently each shift is done in something like 0.001 of a second, saving you 0.03 of a second every time you change gear.

Now you might think that it’s an awful lot of bother,
fitting an extra gearbox just to save a thirtieth of a second. But after this week I’m not so sure.

Last Sunday I caught an afternoon flight to America and spent until 1 a.m. filming in Detroit. Then I drove west for 100 miles to be ready for a dawn photo-shoot.

After that was over, I filmed the new Ford GT40 for
Top Gear
– it’s very, very good – and caught the overnight flight back again.

On Tuesday morning I raced home from Gatwick, wrote 3,000 words, quickly, because there was a school meeting that night, and on Wednesday I needed to write two television scripts, before flying to the Isle of Man for three filming days. I could have done with more time, but on Saturday night I needed to be in Berlin ready for a Sunday appointment with the new Porsche Carrera GT.

Next week things get really busy, with two overnight shoots, three columns, two features, two commentary records and trips to Surrey, London and St Tropez.

Never have I needed a fast car more. So, of course, the Mercedes broke down. The gearbox has decided it wants to be a ball gown or a potato, anything but a bucket of cogs, and naturally the spare parts have to come from Germany. I mean, it’d be far too much to expect Mercedes in Britain to clutter the place up with replacement bits and pieces. It might look ugly in the profit-and-loss accounts.

That’s why I’ve been in the Audi, and on balance I must say I like the new gearbox(es). To hell with the horrid steering and the cherrywood chassis and the estate
agent Bauhaus styling; every second counts, and if I can save one after just 30 gear-changes, good.

It is for this reason that there are currently men in the house fitting some kind of wireless transmitter device that allows me to access our new broadband connection.

Just this morning I needed to know when high water was in the Solomon Islands. Now, in the past, that would have necessitated a trip to the library, in a car with only one gearbox, but then along came the internet and suddenly you could get the answer in 10 seconds. But now, 10 seconds is an aeon. With broadband I can get the Solomons’ tidal charts in one, leaving me time to download Gerry Rafferty’s new album and have a spot of virtual sex with a young lady in Kiev.

At work I’ll take the stairs rather than use a lift that has no ‘door close’ button. Standing there for three seconds waiting for them to shut automatically will make me late for the next appointment and the one after that until, eventually, I’ll miss the heart attack I have scheduled for 2005.

On the roads I don’t curse speed cameras because of the civil liberty issues. I curse them because they slow me down. Every time a traffic light goes red I want to get out and smash it up. On Monday I glowered at a poor woman whose horsebox had turned over on the M25. ‘I don’t care about your horse. I’ve had to swerve round you and that’s cost me 3.27 seconds.’

But I reserve my special level of hatred, my mental Defcon 4, for people who drive up the A44 at 40 mph. I don’t think we should be allowed to kill people who drive
too slowly; it is never right to take a life. But I do think we should be allowed to torture them a bit. Saw their legs off, maybe, or shove a powerful air hose up their jacksies. Forty may have been all right in 1870, but it’s simply unacceptable now. If all the world did 40, it wouldn’t work any more.

This week, however, I found a woman coming up the A44 at 30 and I went beyond incandescence into a semi-catatonic state of pure rage. My blood turned to acid and fizzed. My heart was filled with hate. I very nearly followed her home, just so that I could burn it down. But there wasn’t time. And, to make matters worse, the Pretty Titty didn’t quite have the oomph to get past. Oh, it had the right gear in a jiffy, but the 3.2 wasn’t enough of a heavyweight to exploit the gaps. God, I wanted my Mercedes. Or, better still, the new Noble M12 GTO-3R.

This doesn’t accelerate when you press the pedal. It explodes. In the time it takes an Audi to select a gear, or the SL to gird its considerable loins, the lightweight Noble has added 10 mph to its speed, your eyeballs are fastened to the back of your skull and your left kidney has come off.

It may only have a 3-litre Mondro engine, but the addition of two turbochargers means it will accelerate from 0 to 60 in, oh, I don’t know, four seconds. Maybe a bit less. And you’ll reach the end of the road long before it reaches its top speed of 170 mph.