As I’m sure you know, the first recorded music you could buy came in the form
of a wax cylinder. Such things must have amazed the people in their frock
coats and their stovepipe hats, even though there were one or two problems.
Like, for instance, they melted if you left them in the sunshine or in a
warm room.
Oh, and they could not be duplicated. Yes, a performer could record his song
onto a cylinder that he could then sell. But if someone else wanted to buy
one, he’d have to perform his song all over again.
Also, because they turned at 120rpm, the song could only last for two minutes.
Which is why Pink Floyd could not be invented until the long-playing record
came along 15 years later.
Then we had to wait until the 1960s when William Lear, of Learjet fame,
developed the eight track and convinced Ford the players should be fitted in
Mustangs. And then it was another 10 years before smaller cassette tapes
took over. And you had to buy Dark Side of the Moon all over again.
Then after another 10 years had dawdled by, someone worked out that music
could be stored in a digital format, so we were given compact discs and
everything went berserk.
Today, you have a video iPod and a wafer-thin television set. You have a
portable satellite navigation system, Sky+, a digital camera, a widescreen
laptop, a rampant rabbit, automatic sprinklers on your lawn and a mobile
phone that plays Freebird when anyone calls.
I even have a coffee machine that is programmed to deliver a hardcore XXX slug
of caffeine in the morning, a more mellow blend in the afternoon and
homo-no-caff after six in the evening. How cool is that?
This dramatic and frenzied burst of activity has created a new type of person.
The gadget freak. And he is every bit as important to the world of
consumerism as the last great marketing invention: the teenager.
Of course, to keep him happy, many new and useless things were invented. The
home cinema. The La-z-boy electric recliner. The computerised barometer.
Along with phones that take pictures, cameras that access the internet and
even, I’m told, material that will be able to store and display information
from the internet. This means that if, for some reason, you don’t want to
read The Sunday Times in newspaper form, or on the computer, or the
television, or on your mobile phone, you can – and I’m not joking – read it
on your own trousers.
See the problem? Everything that can be stored as a one and a zero is already
stored. So now, in the absence of any new and exciting breakthrough, you’re
just being offered the same thing in a slightly different way. Usually
Danish.
I recently bought a magazine called Smart Life. Billed as the international
lifestyle technology bible, it is full of gadgets and gizmos that honestly
and truthfully make me dribble. I want to own every single thing in it.
Did you know, for instance, that you can now buy a lavatory roll dispenser
into which you plug your iPod so you can enjoy some four-four time while
doing your number twos.
Or that you can buy a MediaBox? According to the blurb, it is an HDD media
player with a 500GB capacity that can upscale the output from your PC to a
full-on 1080p HD. I have absolutely no idea what any of this means but it’s
silver and black and I want one very badly.
The colouring and the style of the thing are everything. We are so consumed by
the glowing LEDs and the flashing readouts and the smooth, clean look we
don’t really realise that everything in the whole magazine is stuff we’ve
seen before, redesigned by Scandinavians in polo-neck jumpers and offered on
the internet to idiots like me for £2,000.
No really. Having created the gadget freak with the concept that everything
can be turned into ones and noughts, we are now being offered what we
already have, only in brushed aluminium.
It’s the Bang & Olufsen way. Put some simple Philips technology in a
sleek black box and you can charge the earth. Which is why you are now being
asked to pay £64 for a smoke alarm, just because it’s Danish, and £534 for a
chair just because it was designed by a man called Arne.
It’s almost as though everyone in Denmark is employed to do nothing but think
of a sleek new mounting system for an iPod. And that, of course, brings me
on to the Volkswagen Phaeton.
I have written and raved about this car many times. And I see no reason why I
should not write and rave about it again this morning.
Partly this is because I’ve spent the past few weeks trying to find the
perfect large, comfortable car. And partly because I know the Phaeton is the
answer but no one seems to agree. The only person I know who has one is the
director-general of the BBC. And that’s a miserable 3 litre diesel.
The one I have here is, in essence, a Bentley Continental GT minus the
turbocharging and the chromed smooth-action ventilation knobs. It has the
same 6 litre W12 engine, the same four-wheel-drive system and the same
extraordinary attention to detail.
In a Phaeton, you could drive at 186mph all day, when it’s 122F outside, and
the air-conditioning would maintain a constant temperature of 71.6F. This is
guaranteed. Or rather it would be if the car wasn’t limited to 155mph.
It also has a dashboard that slides away to reveal the air vents and headlamp
washers that do one headlamp at a time – so as not to reduce visibility too
much.
There’s more. It has the best seats fitted to any car, the interior is fitted
with a dehumidifier so the windows will not steam up no matter what you are
doing on them, and it has adjustable suspension that really does adjust.
Turn a knob one way and it’s like your coming home on a cloud. Turn it the
other and it feels like your hair’s on fire.
As a luxury car – as a machine for going quickly and comfortably in sepulchral
silence – the Phaeton is better than any of its rivals from Mercedes, Audi,
BMW, Jaguar and Maserati.
Of course, you may think that £74,000 is a lot of money for a Volkswagen and
you may be disinclined to spend that kind of money in a showroom full of men
in donkey jackets buying Polo vans. But the main reason you stay away is
because it looks so dreary.
This works well, of course, if you are the director-general of the BBC. You
want people to think you slipped into a donkey jacket and bought a Passat.
But most people, me included, need a bit more, I dunno, pizzazz and
zestiness.
We know that when Volkswagen gave this car to a Belgian and asked him to fit a
better-looking body, the result was the Bentley Continental. So what I
suggest is that VW now gives it to a Dane.
No really. If the Danes can make me want to refit my entire house with new
radiators because they look nice, and install an iPod cum bog roll
dispenser, I’m damn sure they could transform the excellent Phaeton basics
into the absolute must-have accessory.
Let me put it this way. You all want an Aston Martin, don’t you. You know it’s
made up of Jag and Ford bits but you don’t care. You want one because it
looks just so sleek and amazing. Right. And where was the designer of the V8
Vantage from? Well, let me put it this way. He’s called Henrik Fisker.
Vital statistics
Model Phaeton 6.0 W12 4Motion LWB
Engine 5998cc, 12 cylinders
Power 444bhp @ 6050rpm
Torque 413 lb ft @ 2750rpm
Transmission Five-speed automatic
Fuel 19.5mpg (combined cycle)
CO2 348g/km
Acceleration 0-62mph: 6.1sec
Top speed 155mph (limited)
Price £74,272
Verdict A supermodel in all but looks
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