Clarkson on Cars (3 page)

And to cope with the power it gets two first gears, a third and two very high fifths.

Mark my words, the trees’ll love it.

This is how the steering in a Proton works. You twirl the wheel as quickly as possible and two whisks attached to the end of the column stir up a sort of box full of yoghurt. When the yoghurt is spinning fast enough, centrifugal force rotates the box and the wheels turn.

The brown-suited wise men of the motoring world have been saying that the new Corrado should have the 200SX’s chassis, the Celica’s equipment, the Piazza’s price, the Prelude’s engine and the 480 turbo’s computer.

But their opinions go for nought because in the coupe market, it is style that counts.

Which of the following answers would you like to give if an impressionable young lady were to ask what sort of car you drove? a) a Nissan b) a Toyota c) a Volkswagen d) an Isuzu e) a Honda f) a Volvo?

She equates VWs with Paula Hamilton and Nissans with zero per cent finance; thus the Corrado is bound to be more sought after than any Japanese competitor, no matter how many horsepower are entrusted to their rear wheels.

It seems to me, Sir Isaac Newton could have been more gainfully employed. Any man who has the time to sit around in an autumnal orchard wondering why apples don’t float around in space once they part company with the parental bough, ought to be out looking for a proper job.

Maybe it was in the hobbies section of his c.v. or maybe employers in the seventeenth century were a trifle anti-Semitic, but either way, Isaac never did get a proper job and went on instead to design what was marketed ten years ago as the Ballrace, or Newton’s Cradle.

It set the scene for a host of so-called executive toys and relied for sales on the premise that the average high flyer doesn’t have anything better to do while at his desk than sit watching a load of chrome balls bash the hell out of each other until it’s coffee time or the phone shrills a cheery message that his wife’s burnt supper again.

Newton’s thingumijig is, however, confined to page seven of yesterday’s news now – its headline grabbing antics of yesteryear fulfilled, in these days of war, hunger and crisp packets without little blue salt sachets in them, by a veritable myriad of toys all of which are jostling for pole position by the blotter.

My rare sorties to the world of big business and, rarer still, my visits to the offices of those that control it, have revealed a constant.

Whether the executive has plumped for red walls, white shag pile and chairs shaped like mattress springs or traditional oak panelling, leather seating and standard-lamp lighting, the centre-piece of his room is always an absolutely massive desk… a desk that’s as uncluttered as a hermit’s address book.

To the right, there’s the telephone; to the left, an intercom. Dead ahead, beyond the equally uncluttered blotter there are dog-eared photographs of his wife, taken in those salad days when she didn’t burn supper, and his children, taken when they were angelic rather than punk.

Somewhere, though, there will also be a toy – not an Action Man or a Care Bear. An executive toy has to be more than just fun to play with. It must also be an attractive, decorative item which doesn’t look out of place in a professional setting.

You have to understand that the
street cred
of a top businessman would be seriously impaired should anyone bodyswerve his personal secretary, make it into the inner sanctum and catch him playing with a Scalextric set.

But if you broke in and found him struggling with a Puzzleplex jigsaw, all would be well. These jigsaws are extraordinarily beautiful
objets d’art
which, almost incidentally, happen to be infernally difficult puzzles.

Each one of these three-dimensional, wooden jigsaws is handmade, each is completely different from anything that has gone before and, best of all, the manufacturer, an eccentric called Peter Stocken, will create your puzzle in any shape you like – a car, a Welsh dragon, an artificial lung, anything.

You need an afternoon to complete a simple one and about £50 to buy it. For the more difficult variety, extend the time allowed to a day and start adding the noughts.

I must confess I was hugely tempted to invest but had I succumbed, I fear you would not be reading this and that my superhuman, week-long struggle to give up smoking would have been thwarted.

Another great puzzle is the much cheaper Philosopher’s Knot, the idea being that you have to extricate a larger glass ball from a surrounding web of knotted string. It looks even trickier than that Hungarian cube thingy from last year.

But the interesting thing about it is that were the ball made from shoddy plastic and the string from something of inferior quality, sales to businessmen would be sluggish. It looks good in between the telephone and the blotter on an executive’s desk.

Similarly, I noticed Fortnum and Mason are selling a twisted length of black and white plastic tubing for £35 in their gift department. I spent many minutes poring over this most unusual creation hoping an assistant would overcome any prejudices my tatty jeans were instilling in him and volunteer an explanation.

None was forthcoming and because I always feel so foolish when asking such people what various things do, I kept my mouth shut. If I were in their shoes and such a question were fired at me, I should want to know why someone would be considering the purchase of an item without knowing what it was or did.

Thus, I reserve behaviour of this kind until about 5.25 p.m. on Christmas Eve when, in desperation, I have been known to spend a week’s wages on a device for melting the teeth of dead okapis merely because ‘it looks nice’.

The upshot of all this nonsense is that my notebook says ‘funny plastic tubing. Fortnum’s. £35’. If it is merely decorative, then it works well but costs rather a lot. If it has a function, then I should enjoy being enlightened.

I’d actually gone to Fortnum’s in search of a truly great executive toy – an 18-inch-high suede rat in a blue leather coat and a felt hat. It is supposed to be Reckless from the Captain Beaky gang but he seems to have died now the hype has all quietened down as no one seemed to remember the item in question or from whence it came.

I recall it cost close on £40 but, believe me, as a desk centre-piece, it had no peers.

Unless, of course, you’re a gadget kinda guy in which case 1986 holds much more in the way of excitement than dear old suede Reckless ever could.

Take telephones. Quite why an executive needs the 15-memory variety with built-in answerphone, hands-off dial facility, digital read-out, supersonic turbo recall, optic fibre laser and led handset, I know not.

Especially when I consider all he ever does is pick the damn thing up and say to his secretary, ‘Get me whatsisname of doodah limited.’

Hands up all those who are familiar with the wide-open secretary who’s all set to transfer you to her boss until she finds out you’ve got something to do with his work when all of a sudden she will announce, ‘He’s in a meeting.’

Is he hell. He’s playing with his Philosopher’s Knot and wanting to know why his wife has burnt supper for the eighth successive night.

Or else he’s sitting back, eyes half closed and fingers steepled enjoying the strains of Beethoven on the mini compact disc system with twin cassette auto play reverse and solar powered volume knob. Oh, and it can play music too.

This is usually located in the bottom drawer – a space which, in that bygone age before floppy discs (which I will not spell with a ‘k’) and cursors, was taken up with things called files.

These stereos fascinate me. The smaller they are, the more expensive they are to buy. I don’t see what’s wrong with my simply enormous Rotel, Pioneer, Akai circa 1976 set up but evidently, it is miles too big – and judging by some of the prices these days, it didn’t cost enough either.

Having said that though, I was staggered to see a Sinclair flat screen telly in a dusty corner of the Design Centre selling for just £99.95. As is the current vogue, the screen was the same size as your average sultana but the wiry bit round the back was encased in a washing machine-sized shell. No wonder old Clive had to sell out.

Doubtless, he’ll soon come up with a television so small that you won’t be able to see it at all.

When the days of invisible gadgetry are upon us, I may well take my place on the bandwagon and reap the benefits of being able to cover my desk with everything from a sunbed to a nuclear power station without my work space being pinched.

At present though I have just three executive toys, not counting my telephone which is a straightforward British Telecom Ambassador and therefore doesn’t count.

Behind the Citroen press release to my left is the Waterford Crystal aeroplane I was given for Christmas by someone I didn’t like very much until I found out it cost more than £50.

Lost in the vicinity of a half-eaten packet of McVities dark chocolate biscuits – remember, I’m trying to give up smoking – and the designer-label notebook is a half-inch-high, hand-painted pig. Always have loved that.

And occupying pride of place is my helicopter – a stunningly good toy made by Mattell in the 1970s and foolishly dropped from the line-up a couple of years back. Tough luck you can’t buy one these days.

The machine, which is genuinely powered by its blades, is connected to a central command post by a wire and flies round in circles with a hook dangling underneath poised to pick up empty matchboxes and old Coke cans.

Such precision flying requires 100 per cent Chuck Yeagerish concentration so, when I’m airborne, little thought is given to burnt suppers or indeed any of the rigours encountered in daily life.

What lunchtime? What meeting? What Citroen press release?

‘Yes darling. I’ll pick you up at eight… No this time I promise… Well, I know, but last night was different… Yes, well the night before was different too… No, standing around on Fulham Broadway isn’t much fun… OK listen, if I’m late tonight, I’ll buy you dinner at San Lorenzo. Bye.’

Gulp. I’ve got an appointment in Twickenham at six.

San Lorenzo costs twenty quid a head and that’s without going bonkers on the port and brandy. Then there’s the taxi and they don’t take credit cards so I’ll have to get some money out and the banks are closed.

Now, my autobank’s a dodgy little blighter. Sometimes it enjoys Gettyish generosity and will plunge wads of Harold Melvins into the recipient maulers but on other days, for no apparent reason, it’s tighter than a Scotsman on holiday in Yorkshire and won’t hand over so much as a damn penny.

‘I wouldn’t mind if the green screen was polite and said something like, ‘Sorry old chap but your overdraft’s a little excessive and it’d be more than my job’s worth to hand over the cash at the moment.’

But ‘insufficient funds available’ is so terse; so final. And the queue behind, already exasperated by my inability to remember my code number on the first attempt, is reduced to a giggling mess as I shrug nonchalantly and, fighting back the tears of humiliation, stroll away as if it doesn’t matter.

But with the threat of an £80 experience among the stars at San Lorenzo hanging wearily about my person, there is no alternative and I find myself approaching the damn thing, dripping like ageing cheese in an old sock.

Inevitably there’s a queue. Inevitably a gang of screeching Hoorays fall in line astern of me. Inevitably I programme in the wrong number twice and inevitably I’m told, to the accompaniment of a crescendo of shrieks from the Ruperts, that I’m a miserable pauper.

Boarding the tube at Sloane Square, I consider my predicament and weigh up the consequences of a late arrival at Fulham Broadway. They are too dire to contemplate. Eighty quid is a lot of money for a pauper. Oh God, please help.

Now I bet you didn’t know that God works in Volkswagen’s press office. Because after my return to the den of iniquity that afternoon, Charles, who is VW’s effervescent delivery driver, wandered in brandishing the keys to a 16-valve Scirocco I was due to test that week.

And joy of joys, nestling in that sombre but tasteful interior was nigh on two grand’s worth of Panasonic Vodaphone. Better still, VW would pick up the tab for any calls I made.

If the meeting in Twickenham dragged on and I found myself in the kind of snarl-up only the A316 can muster, it was a simple question of ringing the beloved and thus avoiding an £80 outlay that would mean I’d have to live on a diet of small Macs and stickleback and chips for the forthcoming decade.

Sure enough, the meeting did go on and on, despite endless tutting and continual references to Omega’s finest. And sure enough every Cherry this side of Chernobyl was on the 316, misjudging approach speeds and getting confused by roundabouts.

At ten to eight I realised there wasn’t a hope in hell of getting to the Broadway on time and resorted to the Vodaphone. ‘Hello sweetheart… no, don’t shout at me… no, listen… I wa… Becau… No, I’m using a car phone and if this Nissan gets out of my way I’ll be with you in about twenty minutes.’

That simple message cost VW 10p and saved me eighty quid.

This phone-in-the-car business was definitely worth looking into. I had at my disposal a Panasonic EBC1044 with hands-free facility which retails for £1774 excluding VAT. On top of this outlay you are faced with a £50 connection charge and a monthly fee of £25.

Calls made between 7.30 a.m. and 7.30 p.m. from Monday to Friday cost 25p per minute but at all other times the cost is a mere 10p per minute.

Any one of VW’s 350 dealers can fit the hardware, which is broken down thus: £1375 for the handset and a complicated-looking box which was in the boot, £290 for the hands-free facility, £28.95 for the mounting kit and a whopping £79.95 for an aerial which would have to be replaced every time Chelsea played at home.

Hands free, for those of you who’ve just returned from a sightseeing trip on Voyager Two, is a wonderful innovation which allows a driver to hold a conversation without taking his paws from the wheel.