Last weekend the skies turned blue, literally and metaphorically, when Richard
Littlejohn, the roly-poly pro-war columnist for The Sun came for
lunch. Over the years Richard and I have established that we share wildly
different views on America, Israel, the Arab world, Yasser Arafat and what
might be done to solve the 50-year war. So instead of arguing, we have put
the whole Middle East into a demilitarised, no-go zone and we simply don’t
go there any more.
Unfortunately we spent so much time toasting the demise of Piers Morgan that
by six in the evening we had both forgotten the golden rule.
Giddy from the merlot, I pointed out that Britain cannot afford to run its
armed forces, a National Health Service and a welfare state, and that
Europe, no matter how unpalatable and difficult it may be, must become a
cohesive, unified forsh.
“Nonshensh,” thundered Littlejohn, who began to outline his vision of an
Anglified world in which Britain, Ireland, Canada and Australia join forces
to back the US which, he says, is the last beacon of hope for this troubled
and violent world.
Littlejohn, you need to know, spends a deal of time in a gated community in
Florida. Much of his family lives in Detroit. He really thinks America is
the land of the free and the home of the brave. If you cut him in half . . .
I’d be grateful.
I, on the other hand, feel more at home in a Zurich tram station than I do in
the bar of a Ritz-Carlton hotel. And I have more in common with my dog than
I do with the immigration officers at an American airport.
It’s the little things that baffle me most of all. The way every coffee shop
plays Pachelbel’s canon in D on the Muzak system, the way the
middle classes don’t wear socks, the way they address one another in such
loud voices across the hotel swimming pool, the inability they all have to
locate themselves, or anyone else, on a map of the world, the love affair
with country music, the mullets, the television ad breaks, the way they
don’t offer you a cup of coffee or a drink when you go to their houses. I
always feel like a civilised human being at a garden party for very rich
apes.
The strangest thing about America, though, is that half the cars sold there
every year are not cars at all. They’re SUVs. And the bestselling car of
them all is the Ford F-150, which is a pick-up truck.
The car makers love this because a car is quite expensive to make. It needs to
be safe, quiet, fast, spacious, economical and comfortable. And by the time
you’ve shoehorned a list of requirements like that into a vehicle, the
profit margins are tiny.
A pick-up truck, on the other hand, is made by nailing a couple of slabs of
pig iron onto a chassis that would be recognisable to the makers of any
19th-century covered wagon. Then you simply add leather seats to make it
feel like a premium product, and charge whatever you like.
Those in the know reckon that on a $12,000 pick-up truck Ford will make
$3,000-$4,000 more than it would from selling a $12,000 car.
Well, $4,000 dollars might not sound like much. But you need to remember that
Ford has sold 800,000 F-series pick-up trucks every year for the past five
years. They account for a quarter or all its sales and half its profits.
They bring in $20 billion a year, which means that if the F-150 pick-up
truck were a corporation, it would be in the Fortune 100 list. It is, quite
simply, a machine for making unimaginable lumps of money.
Do the American customers feel cheated by this? I should cocoa. Gas-guzzling
cars are all but outlawed these days but a pick-up is classified as a truck
so it’s exempt from swingeing legislation on fuel economy. That means it
quenches your thirst for a V8, and it gives other road users the impression
that you are Charlton Heston.
When you have a pick-up, you are not an IT engineer from Intel.corp. You are a
frontiersman who likes his beer cold, his deer raw and his music
country-style. You can go to the woods at weekends with your other
pick-up-driving friends and dream up plans to rid Washington of its
coloureds. You have the military-style wheels. You have the military-style
haircut. You have the guns. You even have the uncomfortable shirts.
Imagine my horror then when my wife casually announced the other day she’d
like a pick-up. “What,” I exclaimed, “in the name of all that’s holy, do we
want one of those for?” We’re European. We were sipping tea while the
Americans were shooting Indians. We’ve had 2,000 years to get used to
civilisation, not 20 minutes. We’re advanced, we’re slim, we’re at the
cutting edge of evolution. We think that shooting bears is daft. Budweiser
gives us a headache and we think George Bush is an arse. So why in God’s
name do we want to drive around in a car made from a hen house and two bits
of railway track?
Apparently we need one for taking wounded chickens to the vets and picking up
trees and donkey feed (life on the wild western frontiers of Chipping Norton
can be tough).
I argued that if we must have a Ku Klux Klan mobile, it’d have to be Japanese
because at least they are built to withstand just about anything. “Look,” I
said, pointing at the news from Somalia/Iraq/Sudan/the Balkans, “I don’t see
those freedom-fighter Johnnies turning up for the battle in a Land Rover or
a Dodge Ram. They’ve all got Japanese pick-ups because, along with the
cockroach and the AK-47, they’re the most indestructible things on earth.”
Without further ado, I called Mitsubishi and asked if I could borrow one of
its L200 double-cab Warriors, which account for nearly half of all
pick-up-truck sales in Britain. Sales which, worryingly, have been growing
at the rate of 40% per year.
It arrived sporting lights on the roof, chrome roll bars and chunky wheels.
And it lasted three days before a hose fell off and in a cloud of black
smoke it ground to a halt.
Sadly, they sent another and I took it for a drive. Where do we start? The
ride was more uncomfortable than the Cresta run. There was no performance at
all. Space in the back part of the double cab was a joke. And it’s all very
well pointing at the undeniably large boot, but you can’t put anything in
that because every time you pulled up at a set of lights, passers-by would
simply help themselves.
There’s another problem, too. In his last budget, Gordon Brown decided that
too many people were using tax-deductible vans and pick-ups as family cars
at the weekend. And as a result, from 2007, those that do will be clobbered.
As a tax-avoidance scheme, then, the pick-up’s days are numbered, which means
it must be judged as a vehicle. And I have to say it’s one of the worst I’ve
ever driven. Yes, there’s a ruggedness to the undersides, and yes, there is
four-wheel drive. But why? We have no wolves and the only arms we’re allowed
to bear have hands on the end.
If you really do want a work tool, buy a van. The only reason for buying a
pick-up is because you want to look American. But there’s an easier way of
doing that. Eat lots of chocolate and lose your atlas. Or get Richard
Littlejohn over for lunch. You could even sit on him — it’s a lot more
comfortable than sitting on a pick-up truck, trust me.
VITAL STATISTICS
Model: Mitsubishi L200 Warrior (with leather)
Engine type: Four-cylinder, 2477cc turbo diesel
Power/torque: 113bhp @ 4000rpm 177 lb ft @ 2000rpm Transmission:
Five-speed manual, four-wheel drive
Suspension: (front) double wishbone and torsion bar (rear)
rigid axle, leaf springs, shock absorbers
Tyres: 265/70 R16
Fuel: 28mpg (combined) CO2 209g/km
Insurance: Group 17
Acceleration: 0-60mph: n/a
Top speed: 94mph
Price: £21,113 (inc. Vat)
Verdict: Only useful for pretending to be American
