I was bored. I’d eaten everything in the fridge, learnt to play the piano and
beaten myself at chess. And then someone from Jaguar rang to see if I wanted
to go to South Africa for the weekend. Damn right I did. Getting there is
very easy — you go on a plane — but working out what to expect when you
arrive is rather more tricky. On the one hand you think you’ll spot Peter
Gabriel with a bone in his nose, chanting. Or maybe Charlie Dimmock bouncing
up and down in Nelson Mandela’s rose beds. But on the other hand you suspect
you may be hacked to pieces by a machete-wielding mob.
You certainly don’t go to South Africa for the viniculture. We stayed at a
vineyard and on one evening they took us to the cellar, which was full of
huge steel vats and pressure gauges. It was like being in a nuclear power
station.
And what did the finished product taste like? Well pretty much like the stuff
that comes from the outlet pipe at Sellafield. I doubt the French would put
it in their windscreen washer bottles.
So what about ebony and ivory getting along in perfect harmony? Yes, apartheid
is over but all the black people seem to have got now is the vote, and a
carrier bag each. I’m not kidding. Even if you go far out into the blazing
heat of the hinterland, you will find the roadside littered with people who
are just sitting there, with a plastic bag, doing nothing.
Occasionally one will stick out his thumb so you can give him a lift to a new
bit of roadside where he can sit with his bag, doing nothing. But the back
seats in the Jag were too small so I’m afraid I just cruised on by.
I don’t think I’ve been anywhere where the rich, behind their razor wire and
automated sprinkler-fed lawns, live quite so close, and yet quite so far
away, from the poor and their plastic bags. I don’t think a Guardian
reader could cope.
Frankly, though, I had more important things on my mind. For 30 years I’ve
toured the globe looking for the same light that we saw in Butch Cassidy
and the Sundance Kid, when Paul Newman takes Katharine Ross for a spin
on his new bicycle. You know what I’m talking about; that dandelion-flecked
morning promise of warm summer breezes to come. Well it’s there, in South
Africa.
And Christ almighty, it gives good mountain. It’s a bit like Greece, and
Yorkshire and northern California. But of course it’s not because the clouds
are pure Wilbur Smith; they could only be African. And then you have the
Lowry trees, with their Lionel Richie hair-dos. You don’t find those
anywhere else either.
Then you spot where the post-sanctions money was spent. On the roads. They’re
amazing.
Now they’ve worked out that tyres go on cars, rather than round one another’s
necks, they’ve created one of the best driving countries anywhere on earth.
Eventually I got to Cape Town and oooh, what a place. It’s often said that
London, New York and Rome are the world’s three great cities but none has
much of a backdrop. That’s why I prefer Hong Kong, Wellington and Reykjavik.
You have the restaurants and the shops and the bars. And all the time you
can admire God’s axe work in the background.
In many ways Cape Town is like Sydney or Vancouver. It has a Britishness to
the architecture and there’s a sort of touristed-up dock area where you can
pay too much for stuff you don’t need. But in Cape Town you have Table
Mountain just there, right at the end of your nose.
This — and I’ll take no argument, thanks — is one of the world’s great cities.
And South Africa, despite the hilarious attempts to make wine, is one of the
world’s great countries. I loved it.
Jaguar had made the most of the three-day trip, too, providing helicopters to
take us into the mountains and Ribs to take us round the coast. They
provided choirs every time there was an embarrassing silence and at night
they provided telescopes so we could look at Saturn.
They’d also provided 16 chauffeur-driven long wheelbase XJs to ferry us around
when we were drunk. And 45 XKs for when we weren’t. Although by the time I
got there 700 journalists from around the world had been through the
programme, so there were only 39 left.
So, what’s the XK like? Well, if you go faster than 130mph I can report that
the front end starts to get a bit light. You lose some of the “feel” from
the wheel. And this, in one of the strangest games of consequences ever, is
because of the need to provide a decent-sized boot.
Here’s why. EU rules say that the compulsory high-level centre brake light has
to be mounted within a certain distance of the rear window. And because the
rear window on the XK convertible is small, so it’ll fit in the boot without
taking up too much space, the only place to fit the brake light is on top of
a big rear spoiler. And because it’s so big, the front of the car starts to
“lift” at speed.
Of course, you wouldn’t expect there to be a similar problem in the coupé,
which has a big rear window, but this is Jaguar, a small company that’s been
losing money hand over fist in recent years. So thanks to a need to
economise, both models get the same spoiler. So both have the same
high-speed handling issue.
You see a similar thing going on with the aerial. Most cars these days have
one inside the front windscreen, hidden away. But because the Jag has a
heated front windscreen, and the heater elements mess with the reception, it
comes with exactly the same sort of electric antenna you used to fit as an
after-market accessory to your 1976 Ford Cortina.
And to think this car is made in the same factory that used to churn out
second world war Spitfires. Though, of course, back then British ingenuity
wasn’t at the mercy of American next-quarter accounting.
Because of these two little things the Jaguar is not a car from which you walk
away saying “I have got to have one even if it means cutting out my own
tongue”. It’s not a car that stirs the soul and breaks your heart. Instead
it’s a car you’ll decide to buy after a logical process of elimination.
Yes, a 6-series BMW is faster, but come on. This is not a car that stirs your
soul either; just your stomach. It’s hideous. And with that silly iDrive
malarkey it’s also far too complicated.
So what about the Mercedes SL? Well, unless you can have the AMG growler, the
answer’s no. It’s just a bit too boring.
The Jag, on the other hand, isn’t. It is pant-wettingly pretty and it makes
just the most visceral, animal snarl when you boot it. On the move this
turns into a muted version of the noise you got from 1970s American muscle
cars. You’ll adore it.
You will also adore the simplicity of the undersides. It rides on proper
suspension, not some oleohydrypneumatic nonsense, the controls work
brilliantly and while the back seats aren’t big enough for hitchhikers, or
even their carrier bags, the front is spacious and wonderful.
There’s only one small thing. The Aston Martin V8 Vantage. This comes from the
same company, Ford, was designed in essence by the same man and has
basically the same engine. But it sounds even better and is even prettier to
behold. So, would you always think, if you had the Jag, that you’d bought
second best? Honest answer? Yes. But there is another way of looking at it.
Aston Martin has a properly crap reliability record whereas the latest
figures put Jag ahead of every other car maker in the world except Lexus. So
what you have with the XK is a reliable way of enjoying at least some of the
Aston magic.
It’s like Cape Town, then. You have a taste of Africa without the malaria, the
flies in your eyes or having your genitals cut off by angry locals. Yes, the
wine’s rubbish, but like the aerial and that high-speed lift it’s a
small price to pay.
VITAL STATISTICS
Model Jaguar XK 4.2 convertible
Engine 4196cc, V8
Power 300bhp @ 6000rpm
Torque 310 lb ft @ 4100rpm
Transmission Six-speed automatic
Fuel 25mpg (combined cycle)
CO2 269g/km
Acceleration 0-62mph: 6.2sec
Top speed 155mph
Price £64,995
Rating 4/5
Verdict A spectacular savannah cruiser and more reliable than
the Vantage
