Following the success of the Great Britons series, in which a drunken
Kurd-killer with the military nous of Enid Blyton romped home in front of
the genius Isambard Kingdom Brunel, I thought it might be fun to see if we
could find the Greatest Car.
Being a man, I like this sort of thing. I like structure and order and spend
hours of every day organising everything into a series of neat ’n’ tidy
lists. Today, for instance, the five best films I’ve ever seen are: The Long
Good Friday, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Local Hero, The Killing
Fields and Jean de Florette.
Some people found it funny when Nick Hornby wrote about the record shop owner
in High Fidelity charting the five best songs for playing at your
girlfriend’s father’s funeral.
But I thought it was fine — in the same way that I find it reasonable to list
the five bestlive acts I’ve ever seen at the Hammersmith Odeon. Or the five
best spaghetti carbonaras I’ve ever eaten.
Whenever a radio station spends a weekend playing the 500 best songs of all
time, I’m there, scoffing when the Doobie Brothers are at 321 and knowing
full well that the speccy peacenik will be at number one, imagining that
there’s no heaven.
Only last week I rolled out of lunch with a group of guys at 4pm and spent
till nine in a bar trying to organise the best five pop songs of all time.
It went like this: Katrina and the Waves with Walking on Sunshine; Echo
Beach by Martha and the Muffins; Common People by Pulp; Good Vibrations by
the Beach Boys; and, at number one, California Dreamin’ by the Mamas and the
Papas.
Then things really got interesting as we set about trying to sort out which
guitarist pulls the best, screwed-up “lemon face” while performing a solo. 5
Rory Gallagher; 4 Gary Moore; 3 Dave Gilmour; 2 Jimi Hendrix; and, at number
one, by a country mile, Robin Trower. And finally, we kept ourselves busy
until closing time on the big one: can having a pee ever be better than
having sex? We all agreed that it could.
At the moment, I understand, the BBC is trying to sort out the best books ever
written. But that’s too easy: The Sum of All Fears by Tom Clancy; The Fist
of God by Frederick Forsyth; Red Storm Rising by Tom Clancy; Shadow 81 by
Lucien Nahum; and Ice Station Death Bikini Killer Virus by Clint Thrust.
There is no subject too big or too small to be categorised and filed by the
structured, single- track mind of a man. Marker pens. Suitcases. Mobile
phones. Cities in Europe. Cameras. Watches. Cigarettes. Beers. Women.
Women’s breasts. Women’s bottoms. Women’s underwear. Films. Music. Nicotine
patches. Every single one of them can be graded, given a star rating and
filed in that Kalamazoo we call a brain.
It was obvious then that Top Gear should set out to name the greatest car of
them all in its forthcoming series. So each week a different person will
spend five minutes trying to convince the viewers to vote for whatever
they’ve chosen.
My problem was trying to determine what’s meant by “greatest”. The five best
cars I’ve ever driven are the Ferrari F355, the Porsche 911 Turbo, the
Ferrari 575M, the Subaru Impreza WRXSTIGTProDriveiiiTT (or whatever it’s
called now) and the Mitsubishi Evo VIII.
All fairly contemporary, you’ll note, and there’s a very good reason for this.
Very few car makers go backwards with a new model. It’s usually faster,
quieter, more comfortable and more economical than its predecessor so,
therefore, the best car has to be something in current production.
But we’re not looking for the best car; we’re looking for the greatest. And so
now we arrive at the doorstep of the E-type Jaguar. In the past I’ve voted
for this because Enzo Ferrari called it the most beautiful car ever made and
because it cost £2,000 and, allegedly, went at 150mph.
But is the E-type the greatest car ever? How did it move the world on a yard
or two? It didn’t. It was pretty and fast and exceptional value for money
but it offered the world no new solutions, no innovations, no breakthroughs
of any kind.
I think that if a car is to be called great it must have done something new.
And that brings us to the Sinclair C5 and the NSU Ro 80 and the BMW 2002
Turbo. None of which is even remotely great.
So what about the Mercedes S-class? This was the first car ever to be offered
with airbags, the first to come with antilock brakes, the first to get
double glazing, the first with rain-sensing wipers. This thing could win the
fathers’ race and a chess tournament at the same time. But I never see one
slide by and think, “My, now there’s a great car.”
At this point some of you are probably thinking about the VW Beetle or the
Mini, or perhaps the Fiat 500, all of which mobilised nations and sold by
the million. And yet popularity on its own is not enough. I mean, Coronation
Street is popular, but it’s far from being great. If we’re going purely on
popularity, the Toyota Corolla wins and I’m sorry, but it just doesn’t.
No. I think greatness is determined by a combination of things. A great car
must have made some technical or stylistic contribution that the automotive
world hadn’t thought of beforehand. It must have been popular too.
But most of all, it must have had some kind of X-factor, some sense when you
see it that having one is more important than taking your next breath.
That’s why, after weeks of sweaty crumpled sheets and long walks in the
garden, my candidate for the greatest car in the world, ever, is a car which
had its 39th birthday just last Thursday — the Ford Mustang.
Certainly no car has so perfectly captured the mood of the moment as this. In
1964 the Beach Boys were providing the soundtrack, the Mexicans had the
drugs, Mary Quant had the clothes and Ford had the car.
With its short tail, its long flat bonnet, its shark’s nose and those
haunches, it was the genesis of modern automotive design. Before it came
along, cars were for your dad. But this was for your mum too, and your
sister and your delinquent drag-racing brother.
It was also the first car to be offered with what you and I would now
recognise as an options list. Some $2,300 would buy you the base, two-door
hard top but then you could go berserk. You could have a convertible or a
coupé, you could have a straight six or, for just $400 more, a V8. Then the
choices really began: bucket seats, four on the floor, more power, even more
power, more noise, bigger wheels, bigger brakes, anything that took your
fancy.
So yes, there were technical, stylistic and marketing firsts here, and that’s
what made the Mustang such a hit. It had been sold as an idea to the Ford
board as a car which could, fingers crossed, sell 10,000 a year. But on the
first day 22,000 were sold. By the end of the first year they were up to
420,000 and by the end of 1965 they were getting awfully close to
three-quarters of a million.
Even though it was only ever sold in America, it was the fastest-selling car
of all time, a record that’s never been beaten. It might also have been the
biggest moneyspinner too, since Ford was making $1,000 on every Mustang they
sold. That’s $420m in the bank, in 12 months.
The Mustang was king of the hill for 10 years until Ford completely
overreacted to the oil crisis and in 1974 introduced a vacuum cleaner
instead. No, really, the 5.0 litre V8 version produced just 122bhp and it’s
hard to think of any engine, before or since, that wasted so much space.
Ford has tried since to resurrect some of the magic and announced this week
that the current model will get some fancy wheels to commemorate the 40th
anniversary. But really, the moment is gone.
Or is it? Next year, an all-new Mustang is due to be launched. Look carefully
at some of the details in the pictures. Note the fake air scoops in the rear
wings, the slanted grille and the hooded headlights. Then stand back and
consider the proportions. Remind you of anything? I can’t get anyone at Ford
to tell me what engines might be offered, which implies they don’t know yet,
but since half the Mustang’s appeal is its American-ness, I think we can
forget about the Aston V12 or the Jaguar V8. And that means, it’ll probably
have the current 4.6 V8 in some kind of modified form.
If I had to say or be shot, I’d expect the fastest, biggest-wheeled versions
to produce 400bhp and cost $35,000. I’d also expect no right-hand-drive
version. But I don’t think that should put you off.
Think about it. Imagine how good it would sound when you told people what you
drove. The five best car names of all time: Thunderbird; Firebird; Phantom;
Stag. And the clear winner? Well, the greatest car of them all also has the
greatest name: Mustang.
