Motorworld (20 page)

I’m always staggered when I consider that we have a fleet of nuclear submarines but no motorways in East Anglia.

We also have no car industry to speak of. Oh sure, we still make cars here but that’s because various Secretaries of State have bent over the railings in Westminster and allowed foreign investors to push broom handles up their backsides.

Britain, they crow, is a net exporter of cars but that’s only because Honda, Nissan and Toyota set up shop here to exploit plentiful grants and cheap labour.

Blame who you like – Red Robbo, Michael Edwardes, Tony Benn, Mrs Thatcher – but our own car firms are history. Jaguar and Aston Martin are part of Ford. Rover
is German and even Rolls-Royce has had to do a deal with BMW to survive.

Great names – like Humber, Singer, Austin, Morris, Alvis, Hillman, Wolsely, Riley and Jensen – are gone.

I wonder, when Lord Stokes went over to Japan after the war to help Datsun set up a car plant, if, for one moment, he could have believed what would happen just 50 years later. The greatest car nation on earth has become a secretary bird, riding around on the back of the German and Japanese rhinos, picking at the fleas. And being cap-doffingly grateful.

There is one area, though, where Britain doesn’t just lead the world, we absolutely dominate it. I’m talking about motor racing.

Look at a Formula One grid. Most of the cars are British and among the eight that aren’t, you’ll find Minardi and Forti, who usually have trouble qualifying.

Even Ferrari, the pride of Italy, realised that if it wanted to get back in the limelight, it needed British help, so their 1996 cars were designed in Woking by a chap called John Barnard.

Benetton is officially Italian these days but does it make or design its cars there? Nope. They come out of a little factory in Oxfordshire. Sauber is Swiss but the engines are British. And where does Mercedes make the power plants that go in the McLaren – Stuttgart? Er, no. Britain.

Then there’s the British Touring Car Championship. The Volvos are built in the Cotswolds. The Renaults are from Didcot. The BMWs are from Surrey. Every single
foreign manufacturer knows that if it wants to win on the track, it must use British talent.

The Americans know it too. You probably think when you look at the cars lining up for an Indycar race that you are witnessing something completely all-American. You are too, except for one thing. Every single car on the grid and most of the engines were designed and built in Britain.

It isn’t exactly a sport but the current World Land Speed record holder is British, as is the faster road car in the world – the McLaren F1. Weird isn’t it that the might of Italy and America, and even Japan, is beaten by a tiny British company?

Weirder still is that such a thing can even exist these days. Outside these shores, they think of Fiat or Chrysler as a small car firm but here, we have not only McLaren but Caterham, Westfield, Morgan, TVR, Bristol, AC, Reliant and countless other tiny bits of fiercely independent cottage industry.

Massively expensive legislation and ever more pricey development costs have failed to dent the enthusiasm of these microscopic car firms which, combined, turn out fewer cars in a year than come from Detroit in five minutes.

These cars are for enthusiasts and that’s one thing you will find by the bucket-load in Britain.

Nearly every car ever made is eligible for one of the thousands of owners clubs. There’s the Bad Car Club, the Club for Unloved Soviet Socialist Rubbish and even ultra specific outfits like the Cortina 1600E register. Got a GT? Well get lost then.

Some say most of the best classic cars ever made are in
Britain, being lovingly nurtured by a nation that perhaps sees cars from yesteryear as a reminder of a once great past.

There are even people out there who collect spark plugs. This would not happen in Spain. One chap has created a display of petrol pumps through the ages. There are blokes who spend more on the carpet for their garage than they do on a child’s education.

The government taxes us, snarls us up, admonishes us constantly and then taxes us again. In 1994, they raised enough from Britain’s car owners to pay for 428 brand new 300-bed hospitals!

The environmentalists harangue us. Right-on commentators refer to motorists as though we’re some kind of nasty disease. And morons with multi-coloured hair camp out in trees to prevent a new road from being built.

But when an E-Type Jaguar burbles by, everyone in the country will take a second, sneaky little look. The British don’t have blood in their veins. It’s four star.

The P-51 Mustang was America’s answer to the Japanese Zero. Powered by a US-built Rolls-Royce Merlin engine, it delivered 1500 horsepower and a knockout blow to the flying machines of the Pacific Rim.

However, the P-51 in which I flew was churning out 3000 horsepower and could deliver a knockout blow to my central nervous system – which was very nervous indeed.

You see, if a 1940s’ car breaks down, and let’s face it they do, a lot, you coast to the side of the road and await the AA. But if a 1940s’ plane breaks down it doesn’t so much as coast but plummet.

And that’s a normal plane. But the one in which I went for a ride had been tuned and fettled to turn it from war plane into a 1990s’ racer. The cockpit canopy had been lopped off each of the wings to reduce drag, and the engine had been tweaked to the point where it was a bomb. And the clock was ticking.

In the back, it was noisy and hot and as the thermals rose to buffet our undersides, there were moments of queasiness, though thankfully they stopped short of becoming the spectacular outpourings that occurred in the F-15.

There wasn’t time to be sick anyhow. You see, an F-15
struts its stuff in the stratosphere, but the Mustang was designed for low-level performance. So I now know what it’s like to do 500 mph 50 feet from the deck.

It’s bloody good fun right up to the moment when the pilot decides to turn. This of course means you stay 50 feet up but one of the wings does not. From where I was sitting, it seemed like the tip was actually pruning the bushes.

The pilots need to be familiar with ultra-low flight because in a race they may need to get among the weeds to overtake. But we weren’t in a race. So there was no need to be down there so pleeeeease Mr Pilot, can we go back up again. Pretty please? With bows on?

The answer was no, and for an hour we charged about in the undergrowth, flicking left and right to avoid small mounds and molehills.

Death, had it come, would have been mercifully swift and I knew the organisers had a standby act to keep the crowd amused while they hosed me down a drain somewhere.

Last year, after a fatal accident, a wing walker was despatched to keep everyone occupied but that went wrong too. As a finale, the pilot flipped his plane upside down so his wing-walking passenger was dangling underneath. However, he misjudged it a bit and took the guy’s head off.

Air racing is under threat in America because its dangerous – and over there, dangerous is a dirtier word than ****.

However, even before the legislators move in, there’s a
very real possibility that the supply of old planes will dry up and that will be it.

I’m just glad that I got to have a go before they face the final curtain.

I am fat. I smoke two packets of cigarettes a day and exercise is an unfamiliar word. All things considered, I’m not cut out to be a fighter pilot.

Yet there I was in North Carolina, being measured up for a G-suit, ready for a ride in what most experts agree is the world’s best fighter plane – the F-15 Strike Eagle.

The F-15 was launched in 1972 and this time the Americans got it right. To date it is the most successful fighter of all time, with a kill rate of 99–nil. A couple have been lost to missiles, but none have ever been lost in air combat. Its nickname is ‘The MiG Killer’ because most of that score consists of Russian fighters, shot down by F-15-toting Israeli Air Force pilots in the war with Syria, or by US pilots in the Gulf.

Now 25 years old, it can still hold its own against any of the new fighters. Pilots love its huge size and strength, which gives it the ability to carry lots of weapons and fly long range. Its got a gun for dogfights, a massive radar, the most advanced air-to-air missiles in the world and the safety factor of two engines. And tough? One pilot landed safely with a whole wing shot away.

Which I wasn’t intending to do. However, all morning there’d been lessons on how to work a parachute, but it’s hard to pay attention when you’re dangling by your balls
from a hook. Then an hour on what to do if the plane caught on fire. I would be connected to the seat by twelve different fasteners, which had to be undone in a certain order.

And finally, there had been some ejector-seat training. If I heard the pilot say ‘bail out, bail out, bail out’ I was to brace myself and pull a big lever by my thigh, a lever that I was not to touch otherwise. Especially in a high-g manoeuvre when I needed something to hold on to. But would I have to wait for Captain Gris Grimwald to say ‘bail out’ three times, or could I go after one? Yes I could, but I warned him not to start any commands with the letter B, or he’d be flying solo in a convertible.

My head full of worries and rules, I then went to the simulator for a lesson in how to drop a laser-guided bomb, something we’d be doing on the Kitty Hawk Range.

Then came the bombshell. I was asking how it’s possible to study the four TV screens while aligning the crosshairs when I was prone to sickness while map reading in a car.

And Gris said, out of the blue, ‘Oh, if you feel sick just fly for a while. It’ll concentrate your mind.’ And that was it. The next day, I wasn’t simply going for a ride in an F-15. Even though I’d never even held the stick in a Cessna before, I was going to fly it.

The acceleration as we tore down the runway was not too far removed from a Ferrari in the initial stages, but when the afterburners kicked in, it was like nothing you could even imagine.

My head was catapulted backwards and no amount of effort could bring it forwards until we’d rolled over and
were flying straight and level in formation with our wingman.

But then there was no real sensation of speed, something I said to Gris over the intercom. This was a mistake.

He hit the brakes taking us down to the deck at 150 mph. Then he lit the afterburners and bang! we were nudging the sound barrier. So far so good, but then he put the F-15 at 90 degrees nose high – an absolutely vertical climb.

My trousers exploded as six g came charging into the cockpit on a white stallion. Suddenly, my five-pound video camera weighed 30 lbs. But that wasn’t important. Not when I learnt that we’d climbed from 1000 to 18000 ft in eleven seconds. I vomited extravagantly.

And as a present, was given the stick. When Gris was flying the plane was rock steady, but as soon as I was at the controls we began to slide downwards and to the left.

Worried, I yanked the stick to the right, whereupon we tilted and climbed another 1000 feet. Two more moves like that my stomach was searching to expel food I’d eaten on my ninth birthday.

It wasn’t until I started to roll it with confidence that fun began to outweigh fear and nausea. In the next fifteen minutes I looped, lit the afterburners and flew in formation with another jet. Well, I thought I was in formation.

I also got to drop my laser-guided bomb… eventually. On our first run I looked out of the window for the target. On our second I used the screens but couldn’t find it, and on the third I simply released it hoping to line up the crosshairs before it landed.

I fear I didn’t just miss the target. I fear I may have missed North Carolina.

But I was past caring. I was also past vomiting. I could think of nothing but going to bed. I cannot begin to explain what 90 minutes in a fast jet does for your constitution save to say that immediately after landing, I fell fast asleep. I also nodded off in the bus taking me back to HQ and again in the debriefing.

But if I ever do take up flying and the instructor asks if I’ve ever flown anything before, I’ll be able to say, ‘Yeah, once.’

Setting up a snowmobile to win a drag race is rather like cooking. You may have all the right ingredients but it’s the preparation that matters.

You need, first of all, to assess the quality of the ice and tune your clutch accordingly. Should it come in at 6000 rpm?

Or is there enough grip to permit an introduction at 8000 rpm – the land of maximum torque?

And how many spikes should you fit to the tank track? Too few and they’ll break. Too many and you risk the arctic equivalent of wheelspin, and your race will definitely be lost.

Happily, all these details were taken care of before I climbed on board a machine which weighed 190 kg yet was propelled by a 240-bhp, turbocharged V-Max engine. You kneel down, clutching the seat between your legs with your feet braced against the rear suspension. That prevents you from flying off the back when the run starts, and leaves your hands free to counter the inevitable wheelie.

I’d watched as the racers stormed down their 400-metre track in 5 or 6 seconds, accelerating from 0–62 mph in just 1.5 seconds. And I was a little nervous.

But there’d be time for some practise runs before the cameras were turned on. Surely…

Er, no. No time at all. So with the light fading, I straddled the machine and attempted to drive through the paddock. The turbo was set for 13 psi and the clutch timed to cut in as the boost began at 6000 rpm. You therefore can’t dawdle. This thing is either stationary or off like a greyhound with mustard up its arse.

As I was lining it up on the starting grid, the director said I’d have just five seconds to do a piece to camera during the run. ‘And for heaven’s sake, don’t swear because if you do we won’t be able to use anything from it.’ Right.

The lights went green, I slammed the thumb throttle open, the automatic clutch cut in with a bang and Lucifer appeared on the horizon, laughing. There was no track-spin whatsoever, despite being on solid ice. The sled simply rocketed off and the skis up front leapt into the air.