This being my first column of 2005, I suppose it would be traditional and easy
to start off this morning by wishing you all a very happy new year. But I
fear that here, in the motoring outpost of an increasingly sanitised world,
it won’t be happy at all. In fact, you’ll probably lose your driving
licence.
A recent report has found that with 4,600 speed cameras nestling in every bush
and behind every bridge parapet, even the most careful of drivers must now
expect to be banned from driving up to three times in their motoring career.
It is a statistical fact.
There’s talk, too, that drivers who have an accident in which someone dies
should be charged as a matter of course with manslaughter. Which means, if
you think about it, that there can be no such thing as “an accident”.
This is true, of course. Thanks to the example set by the infernal and
increasingly powerful Health and Safety Executive, staff at BBC Radio
Sheffield have been given booklets on how to boil a kettle — “under no
circumstances empty the contents over your head” — and more recently at the
BBC in Birmingham how to use a revolving door. They’ve even provided
diagrams.
Then you have RoSPA, which stands for the Royal Society for the Prevention of
Something which, by its very nature, cannot be foreseen. This doesn’t put
them off, though. Crikey, no. And of course, if they find peril in a
revolving door, imagine how many dangers they can uncover on the roads. Best
really if you don’t drive at all.
Especially if you’ve had a wine gum recently. Every so often someone suggests
the amount of alcohol permitted in a driver’s blood should be zero. In the
same way that people used to suggest that hunting with hounds was cruel and
that smoking should be banned in pubs. Those on a mission are always going
to beat those who aren’t really bothered either way.
That’s why we have 20mph zones in towns and 40mph limits on motorways. It’s
why we’re not allowed to use mobile phones at the wheel any more and why
petrol is now more expensive than myrrh. It’s why all the traffic lights are
set on red for two weeks and green for a thousandth of a second, and why the
roads are a multicoloured blaze of lanes for anything that isn’t a car. It’s
why you can’t find a parking space. It’s why you’re ticketed when you move,
and ticketed when you stop. It’s why you pay the congestion charge in London
and why you have to let the bus go first.
It’s why the council in Kingston upon Thames wants pedestrians to be able, and
I’m quoting now, to walk down the middle of the road without being told to
“get out of the way” by motorists.
The pressure I face from the anti-car lobby is both fierce and relentless. I
was recently filmed driving a £1,500 Porsche from London to Brighton, which
you might think was pretty harmless. But no. According to some halfwit MP
whose name I can’t be bothered to remember, I killed the planet in the
process.
It was the same story when I drove a Land Rover Discovery up a mountain in
Scotland, and when I raced a Ferrari 612 against a plane to Switzerland.
Every single time I get in a car on television there is some pressure group
out there, or some MP, or some Hoxton busybody, waiting to brand me
irresponsible.
The message is clear. I’m promoting something that, while no one was looking,
became as unacceptable as using the n word. Among the Guardian classes — and
they’re the ones with the real power these days — motorists must be
pilloried, abused and reminded of their misdeeds at every opportunity. Even
the weather forecast now has an air quality index, designed solely to make
Beemer Man feel a pang of guilt.
And every single survey that is critical of the car, no matter how harebrained
or blatantly one-sided, receives blanket news coverage with lots of shots of
cars belching out . . . well not much actually. But this doesn’t bother the
Guardianistas.
What really gets up my nose, though, is the car industry. It’s huge. Even in
this country, where few actual cars are made, it still employs directly or
indirectly one in 10 of the adult population. Around the world the number of
people who depend on it and the product it makes runs into the hundreds of
millions. In terms of financial clout, too, it’s massive. At least as big,
I’m told, as the Colombian drug cartels, and they run private armies.
So where’s the fightback from this leviathan? Where are the chest-beating good
news stories? Where’s the oomph? Why is Bill Ford not stripped to the waist
on live TV in a bare-knuckle fist fight with George Monbiot? The motor
industry is the lion, the king of the financial jungle. So I’d like to see
it roar from time to time. Rather than introducing the new Ford
Focus with its increased levels of safety and quieter bloody tyres.
The first Focus was a revelation. It was far from the best-looking hatchback
on the road and far from being the best packaged or the fastest. What made
it a phenomenal global success was, strangely, its independent rear
suspension, an expensive option for Ford that paid off in spades. Because it
made the Focus an absolute dream to drive.
It was so good, in fact, that I bought one — a simple, normal, 1.6 five-door.
It’s our station car, our tool. It’s what we leave in unlit railway car
parks for a week and give to the nanny when she’s going clubbing. And after
four years I can tell you two things. I still find it enormous fun to drive.
And it has never gone wrong.
This means it hits both important bull’s eyes and that endows it with an aura
of greatness.
So what about the replacement, then? The new Focus? Well obviously it didn’t
go wrong either, but then the car I drove was a meticulously prepared press
demonstrator and I only had it for a week. So as far as long-term
reliability goes I don’t know.
What I do know is that the design flair that set the original out from the
crowd is gone. It looks like an early Nineties Vauxhall Astra from the
outside, and, er, a car from the inside. There’s nothing at all to raise
your pulse rate even a little bit.
Worse than this, though, is the driving experience. Sadly, my test car was a
diesel, which tends to sit in the recipe like a giant anchovy, overpowering
the delicate flavours of everything else. It left me cold. It’s not bad, but
for fun I prefer the old one.
So far as price and equipment levels are concerned, it’s right where you’d
expect it to be, cheaper than the rivals from Germany, more expensive than
the rivals from France, and running neck and neck with its big enemy, the
Vauxhall Astra.
I get the sense with this car that Ford devoted its entire engineering
resource to the issues of safety, economy and the environment. Which is a
bit like the lion pandering to the antelope. It’s all jolly worthy, but for
over £15,000 I want a little bit more besides.
I suppose, all things considered, the Focus is still, just, the hatchback to
buy, but do you know what I’d do? If I were in the market for a
straightforward car I’d buy the old one. At £12,000 it was the best of the
bunch, and now that good ones with low mileages are kicking around in the
second-hand columns for £6,000 they’re even more unbeatable.
Of course, I’m not in the market for a straightforward car. What I am in the
market for, still, is a GT. Several months have elapsed since I ordered this
car, and several weeks since I paid the deposit. American customers have
been attended to, but sadly those of us in Europe must wait while the car is
Blairified with quieter exhausts and so on.
Each time I ring to ask when it’s coming, the delivery date is pushed back
another month. So now I’ve given up calling.
Instead I sit around watching the dollar crash and wondering why the price has
gone up. It started out at “less than £100,000” and is now past the £120,000
mark, plus another £4,000 if you want stripes and fancy wheels.
And to make matters worse, the car that hasn’t even been built yet is now the
subject of a recall for some suspension component. Still, I do expect to
take delivery of this 212mph monster at some point in 2005 and that will
make it a very happy new year for me at least. See you in the dock.
Vital statistics
Model Ford Focus Titanium five-door
Engine type 2 litre, 1997cc, turbo diesel
Power 136bhp @ 4000rpm
Torque 251 lb ft @ 2000rpm
Transmission Six-speed manual, front-wheel drive
Fuel/CO2 51.4mpg (combined) / 145g/km
Tyres 205/55 R16
Acceleration 0-60mph: 9.3sec
Top speed 126mph
Insurance Group 10
Price £17,375
Verdict A bland sequel
Rating 3/5
