For Clarkson fans, his review of 2001 cars. ---
01-09-2002, 06:27 AM
#1
For Clarkson fans, his review of 2001 cars. ---
Copyright 2001 NEWS GROUP NEWSPAPERS LTD
The Sun
December 28, 2001
SECTION: THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY; SUN MOTORS; MOTORING; OPINION
LENGTH: 790 words
HEADLINE: NOBLE VICTOR
BYLINE: Jeremy Clarkson
BODY:
Ken Gibson and Jeremy Clarkson have a totally different view of this year's crop of new cars.
Ken is upbeat about the line-up, while Jeremy singles out just one for praise as he slams most of this year's selection.
I'VE been asked to name my five best cars of 2001. But this is a problem because of all the cars I've driven this year, 40 have been dull, ten have been awful and three arrived at my house having fallen out of the ugly tree. The Renault Laguna was quite good and the Audi RS4 was fast, but only one car has really risen from the fruit salad of mediocrity like a big dollop of delicious whipped cream.
THE GOOD
MY Car Of The Year is the Noble M12 GTO.
The body and chassis are built in South Africa and flown to a small factory in Leicestershire where the engine from a Ford Mondeo is fitted.
Fewer than 200 are made each year, so it hasn't been through any EU safety, noise or emission tests.
And it is built by hand, which is another way of saying it's badly built.
This sounds like pretty well the worst automotive recipe since Clive Sinclair did away with the engine.
But, in fact, the Noble is more fun than driving a Ferrari over to Claudia Schiffer's house. For a little light sex.
Through the corners, nothing on the road even gets close. Not even a four-wheel-drive Porsche 911 Turbo. It absolutely will not understeer and the rear-end breakaway, when it comes, is so gentle that you can correct tail slides while reading a map.
The engine may come from a Ford, but it's the 2.5 V6, which, for that extra something, is garnished with twin turbochargers.
The end result is a car that can beat a Pounds 650,000 McLaren F1 from 0 60mph.
And yet it's yours for just Pounds 44,000.
THE BAD
BY far and away the worst car I drove in 2001 was the Lexus SC430.
Built to take on the Mercedes SL, it has a 4.3-litre V8 engine, a top speed of 155mph and a metal roof that folds electrically into the boot.
Sounds good. Isn't.
Part of the problem is the styling, which can make grown men sick. The other part is the suspension, which seems to have been made from solid oak. That would be bad enough but, to make matters worse, it comes with tyres that still work up to 55mph even when they've been punctured.
This means they must be capable of supporting the weight of the car when there's no air in them and that means the sidewalls have the flexibility of pig iron.
You run over a pebble in this car and you'll go home with your spine sticking out of the top of your head.
The Aston Martin Vanquish is the second-best-looking car on the road, after the Aston Martin DB7.
It makes an even better noise than Travis. It goes like lightning and the interior is Cool Britannia made real.
But none of this matters because the whole package is ruined by an F1-style gearbox that cooks its clutch, jerks and takes six seconds to wake up in the morning.
Putting a gearbox like that in a car as good as this is nothing short of automotive vandalism.
The Audi A2 is a well made, light, easy to park, fuel-efficient little town car. So would someone explain why it costs Pounds 16,000 -twice as much as it should?
Peugeot makes utterly delightful small cars.
The 106 and 206 are pocket rockets and the 307 was voted European Car Of The Year for 2001.
However, when they attempt to make a large car, it's the same as Charlotte Church attempting to sing like Tom Jones.
The Peugeot 607, with its weedy engine, a gearbox like soup, blind man styling and ox cart performance, is about as bad as cars get.
I rented a Daewoo Matiz while I was on holiday and it was like driving round Minorca in a polythene bag.
For the same money, Pounds 7,000, you can have a Volkswagen Lupo or a Nissan Micra, which won't exactly set fire to your trousers but they do at least appear to be made from metal.
Rather than thin slices of ham.
& THE UGLY
SO many to choose from, so little time.
Should it be the new BMW 3 Series Compact or the Mercedes C-class Coupe? What about the Citroen C5 or Ken's choice, the Toyota Yaris Verso?
And let's not forget the Fiat Doblo.
But when you sit back and think about it, the answer is obvious.
It's the Lexus SC430 again -a Japanese copy of a German original.
A combination that's about as appealing as sausages and ice cream.
MANUFACTURER OF THE YEAR: It's Ford. Ten years ago, they made some of the ugliest, flimsiest, most unreliable heaps of junk on the planet.
Today, the Focus and Mondeo are class winners and there's a new world-beating Fiesta waiting in the wings.
So what if they've lost sixty-twelve million quid this year. We're getting good cars from them at last.
The Sun
December 28, 2001
SECTION: THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY; SUN MOTORS; MOTORING; OPINION
LENGTH: 790 words
HEADLINE: NOBLE VICTOR
BYLINE: Jeremy Clarkson
BODY:
Ken Gibson and Jeremy Clarkson have a totally different view of this year's crop of new cars.
Ken is upbeat about the line-up, while Jeremy singles out just one for praise as he slams most of this year's selection.
I'VE been asked to name my five best cars of 2001. But this is a problem because of all the cars I've driven this year, 40 have been dull, ten have been awful and three arrived at my house having fallen out of the ugly tree. The Renault Laguna was quite good and the Audi RS4 was fast, but only one car has really risen from the fruit salad of mediocrity like a big dollop of delicious whipped cream.
THE GOOD
MY Car Of The Year is the Noble M12 GTO.
The body and chassis are built in South Africa and flown to a small factory in Leicestershire where the engine from a Ford Mondeo is fitted.
Fewer than 200 are made each year, so it hasn't been through any EU safety, noise or emission tests.
And it is built by hand, which is another way of saying it's badly built.
This sounds like pretty well the worst automotive recipe since Clive Sinclair did away with the engine.
But, in fact, the Noble is more fun than driving a Ferrari over to Claudia Schiffer's house. For a little light sex.
Through the corners, nothing on the road even gets close. Not even a four-wheel-drive Porsche 911 Turbo. It absolutely will not understeer and the rear-end breakaway, when it comes, is so gentle that you can correct tail slides while reading a map.
The engine may come from a Ford, but it's the 2.5 V6, which, for that extra something, is garnished with twin turbochargers.
The end result is a car that can beat a Pounds 650,000 McLaren F1 from 0 60mph.
And yet it's yours for just Pounds 44,000.
THE BAD
BY far and away the worst car I drove in 2001 was the Lexus SC430.
Built to take on the Mercedes SL, it has a 4.3-litre V8 engine, a top speed of 155mph and a metal roof that folds electrically into the boot.
Sounds good. Isn't.
Part of the problem is the styling, which can make grown men sick. The other part is the suspension, which seems to have been made from solid oak. That would be bad enough but, to make matters worse, it comes with tyres that still work up to 55mph even when they've been punctured.
This means they must be capable of supporting the weight of the car when there's no air in them and that means the sidewalls have the flexibility of pig iron.
You run over a pebble in this car and you'll go home with your spine sticking out of the top of your head.
The Aston Martin Vanquish is the second-best-looking car on the road, after the Aston Martin DB7.
It makes an even better noise than Travis. It goes like lightning and the interior is Cool Britannia made real.
But none of this matters because the whole package is ruined by an F1-style gearbox that cooks its clutch, jerks and takes six seconds to wake up in the morning.
Putting a gearbox like that in a car as good as this is nothing short of automotive vandalism.
The Audi A2 is a well made, light, easy to park, fuel-efficient little town car. So would someone explain why it costs Pounds 16,000 -twice as much as it should?
Peugeot makes utterly delightful small cars.
The 106 and 206 are pocket rockets and the 307 was voted European Car Of The Year for 2001.
However, when they attempt to make a large car, it's the same as Charlotte Church attempting to sing like Tom Jones.
The Peugeot 607, with its weedy engine, a gearbox like soup, blind man styling and ox cart performance, is about as bad as cars get.
I rented a Daewoo Matiz while I was on holiday and it was like driving round Minorca in a polythene bag.
For the same money, Pounds 7,000, you can have a Volkswagen Lupo or a Nissan Micra, which won't exactly set fire to your trousers but they do at least appear to be made from metal.
Rather than thin slices of ham.
& THE UGLY
SO many to choose from, so little time.
Should it be the new BMW 3 Series Compact or the Mercedes C-class Coupe? What about the Citroen C5 or Ken's choice, the Toyota Yaris Verso?
And let's not forget the Fiat Doblo.
But when you sit back and think about it, the answer is obvious.
It's the Lexus SC430 again -a Japanese copy of a German original.
A combination that's about as appealing as sausages and ice cream.
MANUFACTURER OF THE YEAR: It's Ford. Ten years ago, they made some of the ugliest, flimsiest, most unreliable heaps of junk on the planet.
Today, the Focus and Mondeo are class winners and there's a new world-beating Fiesta waiting in the wings.
So what if they've lost sixty-twelve million quid this year. We're getting good cars from them at last.
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