My old Alfa Romeo rarely gets into top gear. Still, it’s better than a modern box
JAMES MAY, Richard Hammond and I rarely agree on anything.
But this week, while discussing the details of our next Grand Tour adventure, we did.
We all agreed that modern cars are now so samey and dull that if you put us on the street, we wouldn’t be able to identify 20 per cent of what drove past.
There was a time when I’d listen in disbelief to someone describing the car a robber had used to make his getaway as a “grey saloon”. And I’d think, “Is that it?”
Twenty years ago, I could name not just the make of every single car on the road, but also the model.
I could even identify a car, at night, from 200 yards away, just from the shape of its tail lights.
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But now?
In a big metal forest full of identical-looking mid-sized MPVs? I’d be stumped.
And I don’t think I’m alone. Even the most avid petrolhead would struggle to tell the difference between a Kia and a Ford and a Hyundai and a Toyota. Which is probably why the price of classic cars is sky-rocketing.
Well, that and the fact you don’t pay capital gains tax on a classic car. Buy one for pennies, sell it for thousands and the profit’s all yours.
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We learned this week that a Sierra Cosworth, which would have cost less than twenty grand back in the late Eighties, is expected to fetch £180,000 at auction this weekend.
I once sold a BMW 3.0CSL for £3,000. Today it’d go for maybe £200,000. You can pay upwards of £20,000 for a Fiesta XR2 and double that for a Lancia Delta Integrale.
Remember the Audi Quattro? One of those would set you back a quarter of a million these days, and that’s before we get to the really exotic stuff which goes for stratospheric cash.
However, weirdly, some classic cars are still as cheap as chips. Remember the Rover SD1 that Gordon Jackson used in the first series of The Professionals?
It’s a great car and you can have one, with a V8 engine, for less than ten grand. That’s two grand less than a modern Dacia Sandero. And ten grand would also get you a mighty Triumph TR6 or a Jag Mark X.
I recently bought a one-owner, 1986 Alfa Romeo GTV6, which was in extremely good condition. And it cost me just £8,000.
Is it any good? Not really. Sometimes it won’t let me have second gear. Sometimes it won’t let me have third and last weekend it wouldn’t let me have any gears at all.
The steering is preposterously heavy and only an orangutan would find the driving position comfortable. On top of all this, it has no air-conditioning, no satnav, no USB ports, no air bags and the environmental credibility of a nickel mine.
But when the sun is shining and it’s letting me have three of its five gears, it is a lovely thing to own and an even lovelier thing to look at.
And while I’d never take it to the South of France, or even Oxford, because I feel sure it would break down, it’s tremendous for a short commute and trips out at the weekend.
And here’s the best thing of all. I can’t lose money on it. I may even make some. So next time you’re buying a car, forget the latest Korean box and buy an old MG instead.
Slurs are no joke
STEPHEN FRY was all over social media this week because he’d apparently told a room full of cricket enthusiasts some misogynistic and racist jokes.
But further investigation revealed that the accusation came from just one man in the audience. A man who allegedly had a grudge against Stephen for some unfathomable, cricket-related reason.
Perhaps the man in question assumed that everyone else in the room was dead.
Most cricket fans are. It’s the boredom that gets them. But annoyingly from his point of view, some were not only alive, but awake as well. And they came forward to say that Stephen hadn’t been offensive at all.
It’s tragic, isn’t it, that we live in a time when one person can claim something and that it’s immediately accepted as fact?
Knot a comfy style
AKSHATA MURTHY, who is married to the Prime Minister, was out and about this week in what have been described as a pair of slippers.
Really? Because they don’t look anything like my slippers.
Mine are tartan and have a zip up the front.
Hers had a cork sole and two enormous gold-coloured steel knots where the tongue should be.
I’m not sure Liberace ever had a hovercraft but if he did, this is what it would have looked like.
They looked fantastically heavy and uncomfortable and it made me think.
What are her pyjamas made from? Chain mail?
OH no. There’s a salad shortage.
Thanks to idiotically high heating costs for greenhouses, workforce problems and rotten harvests in Spain and Morocco, supermarkets are running out of tomatoes, peppers, lettuce, cucumbers and broccoli.
Which is why, for breakfast this morning, I was forced to have bacon and eggs, and for lunch, I shall have some of the home-grown lamb I cooked last night, cold in a sourdough sandwich.
Make Joan a they?
IN a rambling speech this week, Putin said that the West was off its rocker and was even thinking of making God gender neutral.
Naturally, the Church of England immediately denied this but it is true to say that several priests are lobbying their bishops to make Him a They.
As a non-believer, I don’t really mind either way. They can call Him a fish if they want. But I think that if God is turned into a sort of cloud-based Sam Smith, then maybe we could claim Joan of Arc as a “they” as well.
This may outrage various women’s groups, who see the fearless and righteous warrior as a superhero. But if you read the history books carefully, you do learn that actually she may not have been as she-ish as you might have been led to believe.
PRESIDENT Biden appeared in Poland this week to make an important speech about the war in neighbouring Ukraine.
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He was on fine form.
“HeknoshuffuddleuningqutiousshefarasIcanumble,” he bellowed, before shaking hands with a pot plant and falling over.
DRIVING LESSON
I HAVE studied the dashcam footage of poor old Dan Walker falling off his bicycle, and at first I thought he’d cut in front of the car he’d hit and that it was his fault.
But then I noticed that, actually, he was following the white lines so maybe it was the car driver’s fault.
And then it dawned on me. It was nobody’s fault. It was just an accident.
So I wish Dan well and hope his nasty-looking facial injuries serve as a valuable lesson to everyone that bicycles are inherently dangerous and that you really should use a car if at all possible.