Een mooie smartlap uit Salland. Nooit gekregen, slechts geleend (een waarheid als een koe).
zaterdag 31 oktober 2009
Clarkson on: women
Tekst: Jeremy Clarkson (Top Gear)
There was a strange letter in last month’s magazine. It was from a 21-year-old girl who couldn’t understand why her love affair with cars was such a turn-off for men.
Well, trust me on this love, it’s not a turn off for me. There is nothing to warm the cockles of my tumescence more than the sight of a girl in a serious car. Emma Parker-Bowles, for instance, has a Mitsubishi Evo VIII and the thought of that, honestly, keeps me awake at night.
Just yesterday I saw a middle-aged housewife in rural clothes screaming down the M40 in a Lotus Elise. I nearly grew a third leg. And when I heard that Kate Moss had bought an old pagoda roof Mercedes SL, I had to go for a lie down.
We men have learned over the last few years that it’s a good idea to be in touch with our feminine side. If we cry in films, eat lots of salad and read Victorian poetry, it makes us more attractive. But there’s a flip side to that argument. Women can boost the magnetism of their pheromones by getting in touch with their male side. This would mean not changing gear until they hit the redline and fancying lap dancers.
My wife is so completely in touch with her male side, I’m surprised she hasn’t actually grown a scrotum. This is a woman who uses the C-word as early as possible at dinner parties to save time. Guests that shudder aren’t worth talking to, and those that don’t are worthy of further bottom sniffing.
This is a woman who’s just spent three weeks rallying her Elise around the Atlas mountains in Morocco with a girlfriend. Although that said, they missed out on the ultimate prize because one night, instead of handing in their time card, they went for a swim.
This is a woman who once said she couldn’t see the point of cars with less than 200bhp, who won’t drive my Mercedes because it’s an automatic and who loathes any car that has even a hint of pliability in the suspension. She thinks an Aerial Atom is too soft and an Evo FQ340, too slow.
When our third child was born, I suggested that her BMW Z1 might not be the most practical car and that she might require more seats. So she went out and bought a Caterham Seven as well. It wasn’t quite what I had in mind.
Then came the Elise, which arrived, and after a short test drive, was sent straight back to Lotus to have a louder exhaust fitted.
And now she’s bought a Land Rover.
Being mean, I tried first of all to veto the idea on the basis that she already owns two off-road go-karts, the Lotus, a Focus, a Volvo XC90 and a motorbike. When this didn’t work, I tried to convince her that Land Rovers are ugly and crude and that it would just be an expensive eyesore sitting in the yard.
I had in my mind’s eye a long-wheelbase, skinny tyred pickup truck with a corrugated-iron cover and the engine from a 19th century water pump. And in a list of things I wanted to buy, this would come in at about 9,450. I’d rather have gone on Strictly Come Dancing.
She smiled the smile of a woman who wasn’t listening and two days later came home with quite the most remarkable vehicle I’ve ever seen.
It’s an F-registered, left-hand-drive Land Rover 90 diesel which means it’s old, and so slow it can’t climb any sort of hill. That’s bad, but according to the vendor it has seen service with the Swiss Army which is good. It means it won’t have seen any action at all and the engine will have been turned off at all the red traffic lights.
What’s better is that all the military paraphernalia is still in place. That means camouflage paintwork, downward pointing lights that can’t be seen by aircraft, four 20ft aerials, a mine prodder, an engine air-intake above the windscreen and best of all... a gun. Yes. My wife is now so in tune with her masculinity, she’s bought a sodding tank.
To give it even more playground cred, its metal roof can be unbolted and removed completely, it has super-dark tinted windows and it sits on the widest, chunkiest off-road tyres BF Goodrich have ever produced. This thing, I kid you not, makes Lara Croft’s Land Rover look like a Suzuki Vitara. It makes Norman Schwarzkopf’s Hummer look like a Nissan Micra. It is butch, and them some.
Unfortunately, there are some drawbacks, chief among which is that, despite the seven seats, it cannot be used for transporting children because there are no seatbelts and the interior is stuffed to overflowing with razor sharp military protuberances that would sever a seven-year-old’s head in even the gentlest of accidents.
Nor will it be much cop at transporting fence posts and Christmas trees, partly because it’s a short-wheelbase 90 and partly because the back’s already full of camo nets, ammo boxes and chemical warfare suits.
Then there’s the driving experience. I’d love to tell you all about this, but I made such a fuss about not getting the damn thing in the first place, my wife hasn’t bothered putting me on the insurance. Still, I was taken out in it the other night and simply couldn’t believe how loud and crude it was. Nor could I believe how long it took us to do three miles.
That old diesel engine really did manage to make mountains out of molehills, turning even the most Dutch piece of level ground into a sheer rock face that required another gear change to keep moving. I think we hit 40 once. I know we arrived at the party an hour late, feeling like we’d just done an SAS assault course.
“Great, isn’t it?” said my wife.
“No”.
I suppose I quite like the radio which, with those enormous aerials could almost certainly be used to eavesdrop on operations in the Gulf. Actually, you could probably use it to monitor the progress of the Voyager space probe which left our solar system last month.
And I am interested in the piece which is an SA-80 that’s been converted to fire... actually, I don’t what know it’s been converted to fire. But I do suspect traffic wardens would think twice about ticketing a car that has a machine gun clipped to the dashboard.
What I love most of all, though, is that I don’t have to drive it. If I did, people would see me coming and think, ‘what kind of saddo would ever choose to tool around in a quasi-military Land Rover?’ A man in a car like this looks, at best, preposterous, and at worst, like a murderer.
But a girl in a car like this looks like she’s descended from the gods. A girl in a road-going tank is even more sexy than one in nothing at all.
There was a strange letter in last month’s magazine. It was from a 21-year-old girl who couldn’t understand why her love affair with cars was such a turn-off for men.
Well, trust me on this love, it’s not a turn off for me. There is nothing to warm the cockles of my tumescence more than the sight of a girl in a serious car. Emma Parker-Bowles, for instance, has a Mitsubishi Evo VIII and the thought of that, honestly, keeps me awake at night.
Just yesterday I saw a middle-aged housewife in rural clothes screaming down the M40 in a Lotus Elise. I nearly grew a third leg. And when I heard that Kate Moss had bought an old pagoda roof Mercedes SL, I had to go for a lie down.
We men have learned over the last few years that it’s a good idea to be in touch with our feminine side. If we cry in films, eat lots of salad and read Victorian poetry, it makes us more attractive. But there’s a flip side to that argument. Women can boost the magnetism of their pheromones by getting in touch with their male side. This would mean not changing gear until they hit the redline and fancying lap dancers.
My wife is so completely in touch with her male side, I’m surprised she hasn’t actually grown a scrotum. This is a woman who uses the C-word as early as possible at dinner parties to save time. Guests that shudder aren’t worth talking to, and those that don’t are worthy of further bottom sniffing.
This is a woman who’s just spent three weeks rallying her Elise around the Atlas mountains in Morocco with a girlfriend. Although that said, they missed out on the ultimate prize because one night, instead of handing in their time card, they went for a swim.
This is a woman who once said she couldn’t see the point of cars with less than 200bhp, who won’t drive my Mercedes because it’s an automatic and who loathes any car that has even a hint of pliability in the suspension. She thinks an Aerial Atom is too soft and an Evo FQ340, too slow.
When our third child was born, I suggested that her BMW Z1 might not be the most practical car and that she might require more seats. So she went out and bought a Caterham Seven as well. It wasn’t quite what I had in mind.
Then came the Elise, which arrived, and after a short test drive, was sent straight back to Lotus to have a louder exhaust fitted.
And now she’s bought a Land Rover.
Being mean, I tried first of all to veto the idea on the basis that she already owns two off-road go-karts, the Lotus, a Focus, a Volvo XC90 and a motorbike. When this didn’t work, I tried to convince her that Land Rovers are ugly and crude and that it would just be an expensive eyesore sitting in the yard.
I had in my mind’s eye a long-wheelbase, skinny tyred pickup truck with a corrugated-iron cover and the engine from a 19th century water pump. And in a list of things I wanted to buy, this would come in at about 9,450. I’d rather have gone on Strictly Come Dancing.
She smiled the smile of a woman who wasn’t listening and two days later came home with quite the most remarkable vehicle I’ve ever seen.
It’s an F-registered, left-hand-drive Land Rover 90 diesel which means it’s old, and so slow it can’t climb any sort of hill. That’s bad, but according to the vendor it has seen service with the Swiss Army which is good. It means it won’t have seen any action at all and the engine will have been turned off at all the red traffic lights.
What’s better is that all the military paraphernalia is still in place. That means camouflage paintwork, downward pointing lights that can’t be seen by aircraft, four 20ft aerials, a mine prodder, an engine air-intake above the windscreen and best of all... a gun. Yes. My wife is now so in tune with her masculinity, she’s bought a sodding tank.
To give it even more playground cred, its metal roof can be unbolted and removed completely, it has super-dark tinted windows and it sits on the widest, chunkiest off-road tyres BF Goodrich have ever produced. This thing, I kid you not, makes Lara Croft’s Land Rover look like a Suzuki Vitara. It makes Norman Schwarzkopf’s Hummer look like a Nissan Micra. It is butch, and them some.
Unfortunately, there are some drawbacks, chief among which is that, despite the seven seats, it cannot be used for transporting children because there are no seatbelts and the interior is stuffed to overflowing with razor sharp military protuberances that would sever a seven-year-old’s head in even the gentlest of accidents.
Nor will it be much cop at transporting fence posts and Christmas trees, partly because it’s a short-wheelbase 90 and partly because the back’s already full of camo nets, ammo boxes and chemical warfare suits.
Then there’s the driving experience. I’d love to tell you all about this, but I made such a fuss about not getting the damn thing in the first place, my wife hasn’t bothered putting me on the insurance. Still, I was taken out in it the other night and simply couldn’t believe how loud and crude it was. Nor could I believe how long it took us to do three miles.
That old diesel engine really did manage to make mountains out of molehills, turning even the most Dutch piece of level ground into a sheer rock face that required another gear change to keep moving. I think we hit 40 once. I know we arrived at the party an hour late, feeling like we’d just done an SAS assault course.
“Great, isn’t it?” said my wife.
“No”.
I suppose I quite like the radio which, with those enormous aerials could almost certainly be used to eavesdrop on operations in the Gulf. Actually, you could probably use it to monitor the progress of the Voyager space probe which left our solar system last month.
And I am interested in the piece which is an SA-80 that’s been converted to fire... actually, I don’t what know it’s been converted to fire. But I do suspect traffic wardens would think twice about ticketing a car that has a machine gun clipped to the dashboard.
What I love most of all, though, is that I don’t have to drive it. If I did, people would see me coming and think, ‘what kind of saddo would ever choose to tool around in a quasi-military Land Rover?’ A man in a car like this looks, at best, preposterous, and at worst, like a murderer.
But a girl in a car like this looks like she’s descended from the gods. A girl in a road-going tank is even more sexy than one in nothing at all.
Promised Land?
Tekst: Richard Hammond (top Gear)
It’s no secret that I’m a bit of a Land Rover fan; it’s been mentioned in Top Gear magazine before. Indeed, my outlandishly customised, 25-year-old Land Rover 110 – upon which I have lavished enough of my own cash to make my daughters look at it with green-eyed envy as my favoured child – was featured in the mag only a few months ago. It’s not like I’ve got a free one or am secretly on the payroll of the green oval, so I can’t be accused of bias. I am the real deal: a genuine fan.
The big black 110 seen in the mag sits at home next to the younger, fresher and much yellower 110 I bought for my wife to drag her horses along behind, and the two are flanked by a pretty 1959 Series II restored to near perfection and a perfectly un-restored, decrepit old 1957 Series I with more charm than Cornwall. I am, in short, an anorak. And that makes me the worst placed person in the world to review the 60th Anniversary Special Edition of the Defender, the SVX.
Yes, such a thing is probably aimed at a punter like me, with my long-standing love affair with the marque – if anyone’s up for a bit of sentimental Anniversary special edition nonsense, it’s me. But that’s the problem, and it’s one facing several carmakers: they need fans to bolster their image and lend credence and legend to their brand. But what they need then is for those fans to shut up, stop droning on about their preference for the ’78 models over the early ’79-ers and let people with money, and without a string of prejudices, actually buy cars from them. People like me are the curse of Land Rover and other marques accompanied through the oceans of commerce by fleets of fans stuck to their corporate flanks like pilot fish.
"In considering the SVX, I have removed my anorak and remained entirely objective"
Every time Ford hints at a new fast car, or Rolls-Royce announces it would quite like to put a different make of carpet in the boot, or, yes, Land Rover hints it wouldn’t mind knocking out a car with at least its feet in the 21st century, what were once ordinary, level-headed punters turn into rabid, frothing anoraks. How must that feel on the inside of these companies?
They are facing tough, tough times, with changing and restrictive legislation, near-impossible emissions targets looming ever closer and potential customers being constantly badgered into looking at their product as something shat out by the devil to torment dolphins. What they really don’t need on top of all this is a legion of people who consider themselves the ‘real fans’ and won’t allow them to change so much as a petrol cap without bemoaning the way their beloved marque has been mishandled, mismanaged and abused.
Does today’s suited and booted executive know what will happen when the ‘owners club’ hears about the plans he or she has had to concoct just to keep the company going through another year? Does the designer feel the breath of a thousand fans hot on his neck as he sits down to draw a new door mirror? It’s not as though their work is done for the hell of it or out of spite. It’s necessary stuff.
In the case of my own beloved 110, the company had to accept that it had problems many years ago, and employed someone to sit down and redesign the thing when they could no longer deny that you couldn’t actually drive it with both your arms inside the car because it was too narrow and you had to keep the window open and your elbow outside, or face some sort of expensive and compromising operation on your shoulders. Did he feel the angry stares and muttering of a million pub-bores like me tut-tutting with every tap of his keyboard?
I couldn’t really care less. They’re just another faceless corporation. My concern, I’ll freely admit, is for the origins of the brand, the original, driving force behind its inception and the inherent purity of purpose this gave their first products. I like the old shit. And so do most other fans of other marques, if they’re honest.
In considering the SVX then, I have removed my anorak and remained entirely objective. It was built to commemorate Land Rover’s 60th birthday and is generally accepted to be a last gasp for the Land Rover Defender as we know it. I don’t like it. It’s got a van engine, which might be more economical, more flexible, less complicated and more durable than the old Td5 it replaces, but it doesn’t sound as nice. Not as Land Rover-ish. I don’t like the dash; it looks like someone has already customised it, with its raised air vents. I don’t like the new bucket seats – too buckety, and new. And the new bonnet has a bulge in it to better accommodate the new engine. I prefer the old one. It was flatter and better. There, that should do it.
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