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reviews of the 25 best cars Jeremy has driven
Hello and welcome to a look back at all the best cars I’ve driven since 2003.
But first, a hearty welcome to a rose-tinted peer into what the next 12
months has in store...
Recently a plump woman with short hair appeared in court, where police
explained how they’d found her driving a Perodua – it had to be a Perodua,
didn’t it? – along the M32 at just 10mph. This meant there was a 60mph speed
difference between her crummy jungle car and everyone else. And that’s more
dangerous than driving at 120mph, because then there’d be only a 50mph
difference.
Of course, in court the plump woman explained that she was frightened of
driving and that she had been receiving treatment for her fear for three
years. What’s more, she said, she had a sign in her back window saying, “I
do not drive fast. Please overtake”, and she’d got on the motorway by
mistake.
I don’t care. Plainly we are talking here about a woman who cannot drive and
who should, under no circumstances, be allowed near the wheel of a car
again. Allowing her on the road is as daft as allowing me to be an air
traffic controller.
And yet, in these strange times when all speed is perceived to be bad and mad
and the preserve of those whose penises are too small, she was banned for
seven days. Whereas if you did 120mph, magistrates would almost certainly
order you to stand in a bucket of sulphuric acid for the rest of time.
Meanwhile, all over the country, councils are dreaming up new and increasingly
barmy ideas to squeeze a few more lumps of money from motorists. In Norwich
longer cars will pay bigger parking charges, in Richmond drivers of 4x4s
will be beheaded and in London Ken Livingstone will measure the amount of
carbon dioxide you’re producing and bill you accordingly.
And it’s no use blaming the loony left for this pitiful state of affairs. In
The Mail on Sunday the right-wing columnist Peter Hitchens says cars have
caused the ruin of so much of our landscape that we must use them less.
His dream may be realised when America invades Iran because this, surely, will
inflame the fundamentalists in Saudi Arabia, and if that happens, well, you
can forget about the £5 gallon and start thinking of converting your car to
run on racehorse sperm. It’ll be cheaper.
The future for Britain’s 33m drivers, then, is not orange. It is somewhere
between green and nonexistent. And yet despite this, there’s plenty of
evidence that the next 12 months will see the arrival of more motoring
excitement than any time in automotive history: 2008 may well be the Chinese
year of the rat but here it’s the year of the car.
Heading the list, of course, is the Nissan GT-R, the long-awaited follow-up to
Nissan’s giant-killing Skyline. Unlike the Skyline, however, which was a
normal production saloon converted to greatness with tweaks and turbos, the
new car was built from the ground up as a demonstration that Japanese
attention to detail is capable of crushing European passion and American
power. Some testers are even mentioning the £60,000 GT-R in the same breath
as the Bugatti Veyron.
They say that you can enter a corner at a suicidal speed and as you feel the
tyres give up their struggle to hang on, you accelerate. They talk about how
you can feel the computers working out a solution, and how the grip is
restored, harnessed and exploited in a way that leaves you wide-eyed with
startlement.
It’s not a pretty car and that’s half the appeal. You have the sense that
everything on it, from its gormless bottom lip to its angular stealth bomber
roofline, was designed to make it that little bit faster. And that’s before
you get to the plasma-coated cylinder bores. Or the computer-controlled
four-wheel-drive system. Or the twin turbocharged 3.8 litre V6.
This is a car that uses PlayStation electronics to tackle the laws of physics.
And from what I’m hearing the results are almost beyond comprehension.
They’re even claiming it lapped the Nürburgring in 7min 38sec. That’s faster
than a Porsche 911 Turbo. Sadly, demand for the GT-R will be so high that
official imports won’t start in Britain for another year, by which time
they’re saying the even more incredible V-spec model we’ll get will be
£65,000.
That’s still astonishing value for money, but if it’s too much, don’t despair,
because for about half the price you can have much the same sort of thing in
the shape of Mitsubishi’s Evo 10 – the first Evo that doesn’t look like it
was modelled on those cardboard tramp houses you find under inner-city
flyovers.
Although it doesn’t have the wallop of the Nissan or the technical
sophistication – it’s mechanical rather than electronic – it will still
inspire your awe on those occasions when it’s raining and you’ve been told
you can have life-saving liver surgery as long as you can get to Durham in
25 minutes.
And then we have Audi, which has decided the horsepower battle between BMW and
Mercedes is all a bit limp-wristed. At present the M5 offers 507bhp, and the
E 63, 514bhp. Well, the new twin turbo V10 Audi’s put under the bonnet of
the RS6 will deliver 580bhp. Game, set and match to the gentlemen from
Ingolstadt, it seems.
Other cars I’m looking forward to? The Abarth version of the Fiat 500, the Jag
XF with the new V8, and quietly, because it’s a bit embarrassing, the Lexus
IS-F. Theoretically, this stands no chance of being better than the BMW M3
or the Audi RS4, leave alone the gloriously insane Mercedes C 63.
And yet deep down inside, I have a sneaking suspicion it’ll marry the sheer
blood-curdling, ear-bashing excitement of a rear-drive 5 litre V8 sports
saloon with the sort of quality you normally find only in a mechanical
heart. It’s good looking too, in a Wilmslow sort of way.
There’s going to be some glorious idiocy in the next few months as well.
Maybach is set to launch a landaulet version of its limo, in which the rear
portion of the roof can be folded away. This will enable people in the back
to drive along in the open air. Which will make it easier for us to throw
eggs at them.
Equally silly is the hybrid version of the Cadillac Escalade. Although, that
said, a part of me rather loves the idea of a three-ton car made slightly
heavier with the fitment of several weighty batteries and another engine
being exempt from the mayor of London’s green-based congestion charge. But
the prize for swivel-eyed lunacy goes to Alfa Romeo, which has just started
to build its new £100,000 8C. What this is, most of all, is a
public-relations exercise. Only 500 will be made, and the idea is that we
all gasp with admiration at Alfa’s genius.
You’d imagine, then, that it would be keen for the likes of me to have a go,
so that I can tell the world just what a marvellous car it’s created. Sadly
not. It says all 500 have been sold already, mostly I suspect to people
who’ll simply lock them away in air-conditioned bunkers and never drive
them.
Shame, because this is the car I was most looking forward to driving in 2008.
First, it’s an Alfa Romeo, which, if you’re a disciple of all things
motoring, is like the love child of every god there ever was. Lamborghinis
are all right if you want to show off. Alfas are for people who don’t.
Second, this is one of the most beautiful cars I’ve ever seen. Ferrari, of
late, has forgotten the importance of style. Its cars are no longer pretty.
This is. So pretty in fact that in metallic cherry red, on 20in wheels, it
makes my hair start to itch and my knees stop working properly.
And then, to justify the price tag, there is the technology. It has the same
450bhp 4.7 litre V8 that you’ll get in Maserati’s new coupé, and the
body is made from carbon fibre and draped over a steel spine. The result is
strength, lightness and speed. Sure, Nissan’s GT-R will be faster, but
that’s like being married to Keira Knightley and then being jealous of
someone who’s married to a horse with a first from Oxford.
Inside, you have carbon fibre seats clad in Ferrari leather, simple
old-fashioned dials and a sense that all is well in your little world. This
could be one of the great cars. Designed by enthusiasts and styled by gods.
It’s only a shame I’ll probably never find out because it’s being marketed
by absolute morons.
I’ll bring you the lowdown on the other cars once I’ve driven them, but in the
meantime let’s remind ourselves of the glories the car world has brought us
in the past five years.
We list the specification and price that applied on the date of Clarkson’s
original review for each car and indicate whether a model has been
discontinued. Current prices are correct at time of going to press (source
Newspress). The fuel consumption figures are based on the combined urban and
extra urban cycle
