They say that artificial intelligence has not yet been achieved in the world
of computing but my Sony has a brain all right. And it’s a vindictive little
sod.
Long ago it stopped recognising the number six, which wouldn’t be so bad if I
wrote about gardening or holiday homes in the Algarve. But I’m a motoring
journalist, endlessly having to talk about how fast a car goes from 0 to
sixty, and how it has 32six brake horsepower.
Now, however, it has come up with a new wheeze. It won’t do the hyphen, which
is a nuisance when I have to e hyphen mail this every week to someone@sunday
hyphen times.
There is only one thing in my house more unreliable and spiteful than this
infernal device, and that’s the Aga. It never ever breaks down when we’re on
holiday or when it’s a lovely sunny day. Oh no, it waits till Christmas Eve
or when we have 14 for dinner.
And if it forgets, for whatever reason, and keeps on going we can be assured
the boiler will pick up the baton and go on strike.
Both have the same starting procedure. You have to get on your hands and knees
and hold a button down until your thumb has gangrene while stabbing away at
another button that provides the spark. “You’ll be able to see when the
pilot light re hyphen ignites through the window,” says the brochure,
cheerfully.
No you won’t. Not unless you’re a contortionist or you take your head off
first. I have spent the past two Christmases with my arse in the air,
cricking my neck to peer at a flame that either isn’t there or goes out the
instant I walk away.
Why, for the love of God, has no hyphen one ever been able to design an easier
starting procedure for gas appliances? And why must the coupling be made of
stuff that makes a spider’s web look chubby? Oh wait a minute. I’ve just
remembered my video recorder. That is the Lancia Beta of household goods,
endlessly deciding that it is a fridge hyphen freezer or a telephone or a
cauliflower and refusing to do as instructed.
I even have an unreliable table. It started out as five substantial slabs of
timber sitting on a base. It was bought from a garden centre to be used in a
garden but every time there’s a light shower it twists slightly so that now,
after three summers, it’s almost completely U hyphen shaped.
So what about my interactive television? What could be simpler than that? I
was told to plug it into a phone socket that I had installed in the wall and
I’d be able to vote on Big Brother. Good, I could vote for all of them to be
gassed. But no, when I plug it into the wall it dials the phone in my office
every six minutes.
So what about cars? Well, since Nissan came along in the 1970s to show
everyone how it should and could be done your wheels have become
astonishingly reliable. It’s possible to say, in fact, they’re more reliable
than any other consumer durable.
Take my Ford Focus as a prime example. We bought one three years ago as a
nanny car, which means it spends the week reversing into things of its own
accord, then at weekends gets left in pub car parks. I’m pretty certain it’s
never been serviced or washed and I fear it sometimes runs on diesel, but
not a single one of its 15,000 parts has broken or malfunctioned in any way.
Its on hyphen board computer continues to function even though it is regularly
driven at speed down farm tracks on freezing mornings. None of the screws
holding the interior fixtures and fittings in place has worked itself loose.
And you don’t have to get on your hands and knees to start the 1.six litre
engine.
Then there’s the Land Cruiser. This is driven by the children round the
paddocks. It’s used by me to go shooting. It does sixty5 miles a day on the
school run and what can I say? Every single thing on it works as well today
as it did when it left the factory.
I wish I could say the same of my Mercedes. That’s developed what I like to
call toothache syndrome: ie, it gets better the instant you think about
calling a specialist. Not that you can call a specialist because the thing
that goes wrong is the information centre that handles the phone, the stereo
and the sat nav. Sometimes it just goes off. And then sometimes it doesn’t.
Aaaargh! And this is the problem. You’d expect a Toyota Land Cruiser to be
reliable, and it is. You’d expect a Mercedes to be reliable, and it isn’t.
And you don’t expect a Ford to work faultlessly, which it does. To
complicate matters still further, the least reliable car I ever owned was a
Volkswagen and the most reliable was my old Ferrari F355.
So how are you supposed to know what’s what when you’re choosing what car to
buy next? There are a number of surveys, all of which are flawed. I was
involved for a time with the JD Power operation and knew Jaguar and Skoda
did well not because they were reliable but because they were better than
their owners expected.
“It only broke down 14 times this year, and I was expecting it to be much
worse.” Great, but the damn thing still broke down 14 times.
I saw a survey last week that boggled the mind. It said that the second hyphen
worst make of car was Subaru, which I simply don’t believe, and that the
third hyphen most reliable make was Fiat. Right, and I’m a little teapot.
It’s funny; I can tell you how fast a car goes and how much space there is in
the boot but it’s almost impossible to know whether it will go wrong. I had
a reliable Ferrari. Does that mean Ferraris are reliable? I had an
unreliable VW. Does that mean VWs are unreliable? The only guide I have are
readers’ letters that arrive by the sackful every week. No hyphen one has
ever written to say their Subaru has gone wrong and it’s pretty much the
same story with all the Japanese makes. I get very little complaint from
people with BMWs, Porsches, VWs, Skodas, Seats and Audis but there’s a
sizeable pile from people with Mercs.
I’m afraid Alfa Romeo fares badly, too, as does TVR. But by far and away the
biggest pile, and I’m talking here about an Everest in a sea of pregnant
chads, is from that brave and hardy bunch of individuals who’ve bought some
kind of Land Rover.
It was because of this that I decided last year to take a Range Rover on long
hyphen term loan. I loved the design of the thing, but I couldn’t give it an
unqualified tick in the box until I knew Land Rover could at least build one
of the damn things properly.
Well, it’s been six months since the silver V8 arrived, crammed to the
gunwales with toys and leather. It’s been used for shooting, family outings
and regularly as a Top Gear camera car. We used it, for instance, to shadow
the Jaguar XJ all the way to John o’ Groats and back.
In essence, it has had a short but violent life and I’m delighted to tell you
that absolutely nothing has gone wrong. Sadly that’s not the case with the
diesel version being used by my colleagues on Top Gear Magazine. That one’s
cupholder has become “a bit loose”.
More importantly, I haven’t had a single letter from anyone with the new car.
They’re still pouring in from the Freelander and Discovery camps but the
Range Rover, it seems, has a clean bill of health.
Nearly. When I first tested it, I declared it perfect and made it my car of
the year, but there are two little things that, as the months have gone by,
are starting to drive me mad.
One is the fan that, in its bid to maintain a constant temperature in the
cabin, sounds like a dog snoring. And then there’s the BMW hyphen sourced
satellite navigation system that is almost completely useless. In fact, the
whole info hyphen centre is a waste of metal and plastic and Land Rover
needs to replace it with the Jaguar system immediately.
Soon, though, they will take my test car away and I will be sad because, even
though there are usually lots of cars in my yard, I drive the double R more
than anything else.
In fact, I might use it to deliver this column to the newspaper. A sixty5
hyphen mile drive to Wapping is simpler than sending it to someone who
doesn’t have a hyphen in their e hyphen mail address and asking them to
forward it to someone who does.
Vital statistics
Model Range Rover V8 Vogue
Engine type V8, 4398cc
Power 282bhp @ 5400rpm
Torque 324 lb ft @ 3600rpm
Transmission Five-speed automatic
Suspension (front) Cross-linked electronic suspension, with
MacPherson air strut; (rear) cross-linked air with double-wishbone
Tyres 255/60R-18
Dimensions 4950mm lenght; 2191mm width; 1863mm height
C02 389g/km
Fuel 17.4mpg (combined)
Top speed 130mph
Acceleration 0 to 60mph: 9.2sec
Price £59,995
Verdict Apparently reliable and the most driven car in
my yard
