Last week I was in Isachsen, a remote settlement high in the Arctic. It’s so
far north that anyone who lives there would be well within their rights to
call the Inuit of Greenland a bunch of southern poofs.
Except no one lives there. It was created in 1948 as a US cold war “weather
station”, a place where “meteorologists” could keep their eye on any
unpleasantness coming over the pole from the Soviet bloc. But then, one day
29 years ago, the scientists just upped sticks and left.
Today it is easily the most godforsaken place on earth. Already listed as
having the worst weather in Canada, the motley collection of buildings
stands alone and deserted. Doors bang forlornly in the wind. Vast tundra
buggies – caravans on wheels taken from monster trucks – stand in snow up to
the midriff. And scattered around are the vehicles we saw in Ice Station
Zebra, a movie that was made here.
Inside, newspapers from the Seventies are left open, indicating precisely what
day the men left. Manuals and charts remain pinned to the walls. The larder
is stacked with food, all of which was “best before Gorbachev”. Spooky is
the word for it. But bleak would do as well, because it’s all coated in a
foot-thick veneer of snow. You walk into the dining room and everything, the
tables, the chairs, the cutlery and cookers, is discernible only from its
outline in the untouched smooth white blanket.
Sadly, however, the station’s runway was not as the scientists had left it.
Wind and time had taken their toll on the surface. And the potholes that had
resulted had become clamping points for the sheet of industrial-strength
weather that this place has endured over the years. Get out of the wind, in
May, and it’ll be about minus 17.
Plainly I needed to get out of this place, but unless that runway could be
cleared I wasn’t going anywhere.
In one of the sheds I found a selection of diggers and pickup trucks from the
1970s, which like the chairs and the beds were entombed in what appeared to
be an impregnable fortress of snow and ice. You would have bet your eyes and
your liver that none could ever be started.
But happily, because I’m a lucky sort of soul, I happened to be travelling
with an Icelandic mechanic called Halli. And Halli wasn’t so sure. So, armed
only with a tin of start gas and the news that the keys were still in the
ignition, he set about a sorry-looking Komatsu WA180 while I trudged off to
look for Ernest Borgnine’s frozen corpse.
Fifteen minutes later I could scarcely believe my ears, because what I was
hearing, 400 miles from anything that could even laughably be called a road,
on a lifeless island a spit from the North Pole, was the sound of a diesel
engine.
Now Halli was not the sharpest knife in the cutlery drawer. I can’t see that
he’d ever be invited on In Our Time. I feel sure that if you asked him to
define human thought from a left-bank perspective he’d be a bit stuck. In
short, you probably wouldn’t have him round for dinner.
And yet he has been blessed with a gift. Halli can mend stuff. He can get your
iPod to work when it’s minus 25. He can weld up a fuel tank using nothing
but a lightning conductor and three car batteries. You can lie him in the
snow and get him to fix the air locker on a leaking differential and he’ll
find it no more difficult than turning on a light switch.
I saw those iced-up diggers and thought “not a chance”. He saw them and saw
only an opportunity.
And what worries me here is that he’s part of a dying breed. When the chain
comes off my son’s bicycle he can no more put it on again than he could
perform a heart transplant on a wasp. What’s the point? Such skills mean
he’ll either wind up in Kwik-Fit or working as an engineer for £2.50 a year.
Best he brushes up on his Voltaire and then there’s a chance he’ll end up with
Melvyn on the radio talking about the Poincaré Conjecture. That will earn
him much respect and lots of dizzy socialist women will want to sleep with
him.
But the fact of the matter is this. Melvyn Bragg could not start a Komatsu
digger that had sat in an ice coffin for 29 years. And Halli the Icelander
could. So who’s the daddy now?
I read last week that children must be taught in schools how to be black. And
that if this isn’t possible they must be made to go on school sharing
exercises to other educational establishments, where everyone is a Muslim.
That’s all well and good, but wouldn’t it be better if the teachers showed
them how to mend a bicycle and how to refit the belt on a front-loading
washing machine.
I’ve just realised that my 12-year-old daughter cannot wire a plug. So how’s
she going to get by if she ever finds herself at a remote Arctic weather
station with a blocked runway and she doesn’t have an all purpose Halli-tool
with her? She’ll be up a gum tree.
Strangely, this brings me neatly on to the Audi S3, which is an Audi A3 that’s
been to the tanning salon and, like Melvyn, the hairdresser.
What you have, then, is an A3 with huge 18in wheels, a chin spoiler with
stubble, and a luxuriant hairpiece on the roof. Inside they’ve really gone
to town, giving the pedals and the gearlever an aluminium effect.
Of course this new look only works if the car has also been to the gym, and it
has. So under the bonnet there’s the 2 litre turbo engine from a Golf GTI.
Only instead of the 197bhp you get from the VW, the S3 churns out a simply
staggering 261bhp. Good job you’re given four-wheel drive.
On paper, then, this looks like a pretty good car. Lots of power, 0 to 60 in
5.7sec, a price tag of £27,000. And because Audi makes its cars, in my
opinion, more beautifully than any other automobile firm in the western
world, there’s very little chance that the children of Melvyn will be left
at the side of the road, unwilling and unable even to open the bonnet.
Unfortunately, though, all is not sweetness and light. The biggest problem for
me is the engine.
It’s not very nice. It’s harsh when you rev it, and there’s far too much turbo
lag when you don’t.
And it’s not like they were stuck for something thrusty and powerful to give
this sporty car some extra oomph. Why didn’t they go for the V6 currently
used in the Golf R32? And even more strangely, why not the exquisite, light
and compact V8 from the RS4?
So the engine’s wrong, along with the feel of the thing when you’re driving
it. Unusually for an Audi it rides quite well most of the time and is
therefore a comfortable companion, but when you push it, and that’s surely
the point of a car with stiffened springs and fat wheels, it feels woolly
and cumbersome.
I’d like, at this point, to advise you all hold off until the much talked
about RS3 comes onto the market. But I’m reliably informed that despite much
speculation in the motoring press, and even a handful of spy pictures, no
such thing will be launched until after the all-new A3 is introduced, two
years from now.
So if you want a sporty, reliable, well made car for around £27,000 what are
your choices? There’s the hideous Mercedes C-class coupé or the bread van
BMW calls a 1-series. Or, in the true tradition of multiple choice, c) none
of the above.
What I’d do is save nearly £3,000 and buy the Golf R32, which has the same
four-wheel-drive system as the Audi but comes with a much better V6 engine.
It’s also a Volkswagen, and as Woody Allen showed us in his 1973 film Sleeper,
they also start on the button having been abandoned for years.
Vital statistics
Model Audi S3
Engine 1984cc, four cylinder
Power 261bhp @ 6000rpm
Torque 258 lb ft @ 5000rpm
Transmission Six-speed manual
Fuel 31mpg
CO2 271g/km
Acceleration 0-62: 5.7sec
Top speed 155mph
Price £26,990
Rating Four stars
Verdict There are better cars for the money
