I don’t think I’d like to be a trawlerman; truffling around in a
stomach-churning ocean for fish that the Spanish have caught, cooked and
eaten already. I also wouldn’t like to be a removals man, smearing my
fingers down dado rails while trying to get a bossy woman’s sofa into a
corridor that just isn’t wide enough.
But most of all I wouldn’t want to be a public relations executive. Yes, PR
works for celebrities and PR put a buffoon into No 10, but mostly there is
no tangible measure of success. Did the iPod become a global phenomenon
because of great PR? Did the Sinclair C5 fail because the PR wasn’t good
enough? Maybe. Maybe not. PR people sit in that murky grey area between the
vagaries of chance and the certainty of advertising.
In theory what you try to do in PR is raise awareness and shape public
perception. But in reality what you do is take journalists and radio disc
jockeys out for lunch and try not to look too embarrassed when they don’t
turn up.
You spend weeks trying to get a mention of the foot spa you’re promoting in
any publication, no matter how small or insignificant. And you’ll find
yourself punching the air in a dopamine-drenched moment of ecstasy when you
find that two dozen phone calls, the promise of some light sex and six
redrafted press releases have got the product on to page 14 of Lincolnshire
Life. In the middle of an article about financial services.
Things, however, are rather different if you work in public relations for the
car industry. Because here you’re not cajoling the journalists. It’s the
other way round.
Here’s the problem. Most young car journalists are paid less than £15,000 a
year, which means they have barely enough money left at the end of the week
to buy food. And yet, each week, a brand new car is delivered to their
house, full of fuel and insured.
What’s more, twice a week they will be flown, first class or on a private jet,
to Florence or Tokyo or wherever. Here they will stay in a 38-star hotel
where they will be showered with tasty morsels and refreshing wines.
The next day, after driving the new car through some lovely scenery, they will
have a £150-a-head lunch and then board the jet for home clutching a nice
freebie. A laptop computer, perhaps, or some expensive luggage.
So, are they going to give up being Elton John by saying something awkward
about the car they’ve been driving? Would you? Or would you bend over
backwards, or forwards even, to ensure you were on the guest list for the
next big global freebie? The car industry PR people know this. They know
they have the power. They also know they have the budget to make sure that
every single new car, no matter how dull, is guaranteed to get full-page
coverage in all the magazines and all the newspapers.
This, then, is one of the best jobs in the world. You farm out the tiresome
business of writing press releases to some poor hack who’s down on his luck
and then you spend all day eating grapes while telling journalists that if
they want some new car for a photo-shoot ahead of the launch there’d better
be a lot of sucking up.
You don’t believe me? Well ring Porsche or BMW in the morning, ask to speak to
the press office, and I can pretty much guarantee you’ll spend the rest of
the day bouncing from voicemail to answerphone.
My favourite motor industry PR person is a girl who works for Nissan. The
first time we encountered one another she lunged out of the audience in the Top
Gear studio to berate me for a less than favourable review of the 350Z.
It wasn’t the time or the place so I told her to go away, and now all motor
industry personnel are banned from the hangar and the track when we’re
recording. If I had my way I’d ban them from all of Surrey.
Then, the other night, she suggested at the Top Gear awards ceremony
that I don’t write my own newspaper columns. Well, sorry love, but as you’ve
probably just realised, I do.
And to make matters worse, this morning I’m doing the new Nissan pick-up
truck. Getting it wasn’t easy. Normally when I want to review a car I simply
ring up and ask to borrow a demonstrator. But Nissan was reluctant to
oblige, saying it was too expensive to deliver a car over Christmas. Quite
why this should be so I have no idea. Perhaps it’s because the PR staff
wanted all the demonstrators for themselves over the two-week break.
Though quite why anyone might want a pick-up truck I have no idea. They are,
to the world of cars, what Mexican food is to the world of cuisine. They
exist, they are popular in Texas, and, er, that’s it.
There are some tax advantages I suppose. If you have a Vat-registered company
and you use a pick-up truck to do your business then you can get the Vat
back. What’s more you pay only an annual flat tax rate of £500 a year,
whereas with a car it’s all worked out on how much global warming you do.
And employees with pick-up trucks don’t have any tax liability even if they
use company fuel at weekends.
Doubtless if you’re an accountant you’re probably nursing a semi at this point
but if you’re a normal person, well I’m sorry, but going this far to save
money on tax is daft.
No really. It would be like moving to Andorra or Belgium to cut your tax bill.
Why? I mean would you rob a bank, knowing you’d do time in jail, just so
when you came out you had a lump sum to play with? No? Well that’s what
you’re doing if you move to a bleak and friendless place like Andorra. And
it’s what you’re doing if you drive a pick-up truck.
These things are classified as commercial vehicles because that’s what they
are. Oh, they may have leather seats and CD players but that’s like putting
a painting in a cowshed. It’s still a cowshed.
The Nissan Navara Aventura I drove had rain-sensing wipers, cruise control,
Bluetooth connectivity, a voice-activated mobile phone and satellite
navigation. It also had five leather seats and deep-pile carpets. But
underneath it had leaf springs, such as you would find on an ox cart on a
Chinese farm.
So it rode with all the comfort of the Middle Ages and handled with all the
poise and panache of a boulder tumbling down a hillside. It wasn’t what
you’d call quiet, either. Unless you test shotguns for a living. In a blast
furnace.
Nor was it wieldy. I found myself attempting to park in spaces that would have
swallowed a Hummer and, much to the amusement of bargain hunters who were in
town for the sales, giving up after half an hour. You really do have to
think of the Navara as you would a skip lorry.
But if you’re prepared to live with these drawbacks, if you really want a
pick-up truck for work or to make some kind of weird neocon style statement,
then it’s not bad. Even though it’s built in Spain it will almost certainly
be mechanically bulletproof and the four-wheel-drive system means it’ll keep
going in muddy bits.
What’s more, the Navara has a torquier diesel engine than any of its chief
rivals and a bigger load bay, which comes with all sorts of clever mounting
points to ensure stuff doesn’t roll about. This, then, is probably the best
of the bunch.
And don’t you find that interesting? No free suitcases. No first-class travel.
No PR input whatsoever. And still a favourable conclusion.
Sort of.
VITAL STATISTICS
Model Nissan Navara Double Cab Aventura
Engine 2488cc, four-cylinder turbodiesel
Power 171bhp @ 4000rpm
Torque 297 lb ft @ 2000rpm
Transmission Six-speed manual
Fuel 33.2mpg (combined cycle)
CO2 226g/km
Acceleration 0-62mph: 11.4sec
Top speed 105mph
Price £24,869
Rating 3/5
Verdict The closest a pick-up has come to being a proper car
