So, where are you going for your holidays this year? Tuscany? The Dordogne?
Spain? The list of possibilities is seemingly endless. But it’s not as long
as the list of places you don’t even consider. Yakutsk, for instance, or
Algeria. I bet you never really thought about Haiti either, or Iran. But
topping the list of places I bet you’re not going to is Germany.
Don’t you think that’s a bit weird? I mean, most of the places that don’t
stack up as tourist resorts fail because you’ll be shot or because you’ll
come home with an interesting new disease. Neither is even a remote
possibility, however, if you take the family to Munich.
And there’s more. What is it that Tuscany has that Bavaria lacks? There are
mountains, lakes and the promise of many cloudless days sitting around a
swimming pool. You can even find a bottle of local wine that will make you
just as drowsy as the stuff you get in Italy.
And then Bavaria really gets cracking, because there’s no possibility of
running into John Mortimer at the greengrocer’s. You won’t be woken at 6am
by a teenager on a 4cc motor scooter, and you won’t be troubled by strimmers
on a Sunday because this is Germany and that sort of thing is banned.
What’s stopping you from going, I imagine, is not the country itself but the
people who live there — the Germans. But if we look back over the summer of
sport, it’s hard to see why this should be a problem.
I mean, did you see that ape the Spanish sent to Wimbledon. What, apart from
basic bone structure, do you have in common with him? And then there was the
World Cup. The Italians all looked greasy and disgusting, the Portuguese
were worse, and the French appeared to be Algerian, whereas the Germans, to
be honest, looked like us. Except for the glaring fact that they could
actually play football.
Yes, you might be thinking, the Germans do look like us but they are not like
us because they have no sense of humour. Really? So when was the last time
an Italian made you laugh? How many times have you left a French restaurant
with your sides rent asunder? And where’s the comedy in taking a donkey to
the top of a bell tower and hurling it over the side? The Germans, on the
other hand, do have humour. It’s just tuned a little differently from ours.
To prove this, I shall now tell you a German joke. A man is out shooting
rabbits with his friend. He takes aim and misses, slightly to ze left. So he
reloads, aims again and misses by the same margin to the right. He then puts
his rifle away. “What are you doing?” says the friend. “Well,” says the man,
“on average, ze rabbit is dead.”
To us, this, is about as funny as soil. But tell it to a German and you’d
better make sure the St John Ambulance people are on hand, with oxygen. If
this joke had been written earlier, our boys could have read it out at the
Somme and millions of lives could have been saved.
So why do they find it so hilarious when we don’t? Well, that’s simple. Our
humour is based around cruelty whereas there it is based around maths (and
farting, obviously).
This becomes obvious when you look at the new Porsche 997 Turbo in the 911
series. You’ll note it’s the 997, which means it’s one newer and one better
than the 996. But it isn’t one better at all. It’s millions better. If I’d
made it, I’d have called it the Porsche Jesus Christ Almighty Would You Look
At That Bastard Go.
Of course, it’s the same basic shape as all previous 911s but the engine is
completely different. In fact it’s completely different to any engine we’ve
ever seen before because the turbos have variable vane technology. This
means they work like small boosters when the revs are low — good for
immediate response — and rockets when the revs are high.
The upshot is 473bhp, which doesn’t sound like much. But if you put your foot
down, I promise, all thoughts of a power shortage will be gone immediately.
Because this car doesn’t accelerate. It teleports. Bang, and you’re in the
next space and time continuum.
The figures suggest there are faster cars, and on a track there are. The
Ferrari 430, for instance. There are cars, too, that are more fun to drive;
the Pagani Zonda springs to mind here, and the Ferrari again for that
matter. But on a normal everyday road, where a Zonda’s massive rear flanks
don’t fit and a Ferrari’s low nose keeps graunching, you can exploit all of
the Porsche’s power and torque all of the time. In the real world nothing
could hang on to the tail of a Turbo. Nothing.
And of course, being four-wheel drive there’s immense grip even when it’s
raining. And better still it’s well made so it won’t go wrong as often as
its Italian rivals. And it has four seats and sat nav and a phone and all of
the things you’d get in a Mercedes or an Audi.
Oh, and let’s not forget fuel consumption. Because of the variable-pitch turbo
blades it has a Wesleyan attitude to consumption and, as a result, doesn’t
even attract the gas guzzler tax in America.
As a technical exercise, then, the 997 Turbo is hugely impressive. And yet I
wouldn’t buy one any more than I’d go on holiday this year to Baden-Baden.
Some of this is down to the styling. The Porsche Turbos from the late
Seventies were pretty, almost dainty little things. And they were simple.
The 997 is none of that. It is small compared with most supercars, but it
doesn’t look it, and it’s been blunderbussed with trinketry.
Every panel, every small corner, every nook and every cranny is fussy and
overdone. And on my test car the brake callipers were yellow. I’m sorry, but
how complete does your life have to be for you to worry about the colour of
your brake callipers? I know of no one apart from David Bowie who wakes
every morning to think: “Hmm, I’m good-looking, rich, a rock star and
crikey, I’m also married to a supermodel.”
Inside there was a problem too. My car had the optional sports seats, which
have electrically adjustable side supports. Fine, but even on their widest
setting they’re still too small for those who haven’t seen their feet in a
while. If you’re not David Bowie, stick with the standard seats. They’re
fine.
The seats, however, and the brake callipers are only small reasons why I
wouldn’t have the 997 Turbo. It isn’t even the Onanist City Boy image that
still clings to the car. No, for me, I would steer clear for exactly the
same reason you will not be taking your holidays in Dortmund. There’s no
passion.
Just last week I drove the new Lamborghini Gallardo Spyder. It was, of course,
a preposterous car, loud and shouty where the Porsche is smooth and
unruffled. Jarring and stiff where the Porsche is comfortable and
controlled. It isn’t as fast as the Porsche either, despite being £33,000
more expensive. And yet the Lambo grabs you by the heart and the Porsche
just doesn’t.
Even though the 911 is the better car, by hundreds of miles, I’d buy the
Gallardo. But then I’m a man who’s having two holidays this summer. One in
the Isle of Man. And one in Botswana.
