"Aya, Almost Has A Cosmo With Toyota Engine Owned by a BMW." (aya-yu)
12/22/2013 at 15:57 • Filed to: Clarkson Sunday Times Review
2
5|
"Aya, Almost Has A Cosmo With Toyota Engine Owned by a BMW." (aya-yu)
12/22/2013 at 15:57 • Filed to: Clarkson Sunday Times Review | 2
| 5 |
Go and Play With Your Flowchart, Comrade Killjoy. While I Floor It.
The Sunday-evening crawl back into London is enough to make most
sentient beings wonder if they should pull onto the hard shoulder and
shoot themselves in the head. The weekend is over. There is nothing but
drudgery ahead. The kids are tired and crotchety. And the traffic is
dreadful.
It was always thus. But now, on the M1, the government
has found a way to make everything much, much worse. Because every few
hundred yards there is an overhead gantry that informs motorists the
speed limit has been lowered to, say, 50mph. And that speed cameras are
on hand to catch those who think that's stupid. This means that everyone
drops down to the new limit. And there's a word for this: communism.
I don't doubt for a moment that many people with interesting hair and degrees in advanced mathematics have spent several weeks working with the principle of flow dynamics and have decided that when x number of cars are using the motorway, pi equals MC² and that the speed limit should be lowered to ensure a smooth passage for everyone. Certainly we know their arguments took in the former transport secretary John Prescott, who announced that the slower you go, the faster you'll get there.
Unfortunately, human beings are not molecules. We cannot be likened to water flowing down a hosepipe, because we're all different. Some people are pushy and dynamic. Some are mice. It is a fact that if you gave everyone in the country £100 today, tomorrow some people would have £1,000 and some would have nothing. And that's what the mathematicians don't seem to understand.
When Russia experimented with the idea of making everyone the same, it wasn't long before it needed a secret police force to keep the system going. Gatso. KGB. Same thing, really.
I came down the M1 last Sunday evening, and I think I'm right in saying that I have never been in a situation on any road anywhere in the world that was quite so dangerous. Because all of a sudden the pushy, dynamic people were stuck, and the car in front could neither speed up, because it was being driven by a mouse, nor pull over, because everyone was doing 50, so all three lanes were clogged.
This sort of thing makes the alpha male mad, so he starts to tailgate and undertake, using gaps that aren't really there. And that causes the mice to panic-brake. Then you're in a world of squealing tyres and tortured metal, and pretty soon you have the headline: "Dozens die in juggernaut dance of death".
I suppose I should explain that by far the worst offender that night was me. This is because I was in a rage at the politicians who allowed this system to be implemented. I was in a rage at the lightly dented Ford Galaxy in front that would not pull over, even when its driver had the chance. I was in a rage at the mathematicians who were responsible for the 50mph limit. But most of all I was in a rage because I was in an Audi. A big, twin-turbo RS 6 that was the colour of a dog's lipstick.
We all know that Audi drivers are by far the most aggressive you
encounter, and I've often wondered which comes first: the temper or the
car.
Well, now I have the answer. Most of the time I'm pretty
calm behind the wheel. I occasionally mutter the odd profanity at
another motorist's idiocy, but I don't tailgate, I don't shake my fist
and I don't arrive at my destination with a face the colour of a plum
and armpits like Lake Superior. And yet in that Audi I did all those
things. I think the company put testosterone in the air-conditioning
system.
Or maybe it's the small-man syndrome at work. We all know
that people who can't reach things on high shelves (no names here,
Richard) have a bad temper because they are not as tall as all their
friends. Well, could it be that Audi drivers are in a permanent state of
fury because they do not have a BMW or a Mercedes?
Either way, I was a menace that night, getting far too close to the car in front in a stupid and dangerous attempt to scare the f****** b****** into getting out of my f****** way.
And while engaging in this idiotic pursuit I noticed something
strange. The Audi was fitted with a radar in its nose that warned you
when you were travelling too close to the car in front. This is
available in many cars these days, and normally it errs on the side of
caution. Not in the Audi, it doesn't. It issues a red alert only when
you are precisely 1in from the car ahead. And even in my deranged state I
thought that was a bit silly.
And I suppose while we're looking
at the negative points we should examine some of the other things that
are wrong with the new RS 6.
No 1: it's not that nice to drive.
You have a four-wheel-drive system that uses a mechanical centre
differential to apportion power between the front and the back. You have
adaptive air suspension. Then you have more diffs that send the power
from side to side. And you have a steering system developed after more
than a century of trial and error. But most of the time it's
uninvolving, and then very occasionally, when you are really tanking
along, it all gets overwhelmed by the torque and goes a bit wobbly. If
you really do want a large estate car that feels like a Ferrari in
wellies, an AMG Mercedes is better.
That said, the Audi's engine
is a peach. The last RS 6 was propelled by a big 5-litre V10, but for
this one the company has fitted the twin-turbo 4-litre V8 that Bentley
is now using in the Continental GT.
There's less power than
before but there is also less weight. A fifth of the car's body is now
made from aluminium. The wiring is as thin as possible. The
soundproofing is chosen for its similarity to helium. And as a result
the performance is still somewhere between electric and mind-blowing.
This is a car that will take two children back to boarding school after
the summer holidays — and yet it will get you from 0 to 62mph in less
than four seconds. And it has a top speed of 155mph.
It's not just brute force and ignorance, either, because when you are
just pootling along, four of the eight cylinders shut themselves down.
And to make sure the car doesn't shake itself to pieces as a result, the
"active engine mounts" are fitted with "electromagnetic oscillation
coil actuators [that] induce phase-offset counter-oscillations which
largely cancel engine vibration". You can tell it's German, can't you?
But
this is exactly the sort of engineering that is missing from the Jaguar
F-type V8 S, which I wrote about last week. The sort of stuff that
makes you go, "Huh?" The entire RS 6 is riddled with it. Clever
solutions to problems you simply didn't know existed. Some of it has to
do with weight. Some with delivering music from the entertainment
system. You sense all the time that you are driving not so much a car as
an engineer's homework.
Maybe that's why it feels a bit detached. A bit uninvolving. Because, unlike the Jag, it wasn't built with passion; it was built with maths. And maths, as we know from the Stalinist cameras on the M1, doesn't always work.
Verdict
It's just got too much Technik.
Clarkson
Reviews is yet another new feature of my kinja, about random but
interesting reviews from our fat belly uk grandpa Jeremy Clarkson.
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saabstory | fixes bikes, breaks cars
> Aya, Almost Has A Cosmo With Toyota Engine Owned by a BMW.
12/22/2013 at 16:42 |
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I like Top Gear, and I enjoy Jeremy's reviews on the show. His written reviews nearly always make me want to punch him in the head. Occasionally he'll make a valid point, but most of his arguments and exaggerations are completely ostensible. The worst part is, they're close enough to being right that people will buy it.
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Aya, Almost Has A Cosmo With Toyota Engine Owned by a BMW.
> saabstory | fixes bikes, breaks cars
12/22/2013 at 16:52 |
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Yep.
But sometimes i like the way he saying things, like that 100 pound analogy.
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saabstory | fixes bikes, breaks cars
> Aya, Almost Has A Cosmo With Toyota Engine Owned by a BMW.
12/22/2013 at 17:28 |
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He's definitely a great writer. He's very very well-read and has a marvelous writing flow. I don't know what the 100 pound analogy was in reference to, and I hope it's not from this review.
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Aya, Almost Has A Cosmo With Toyota Engine Owned by a BMW.
> saabstory | fixes bikes, breaks cars
12/22/2013 at 17:32 |
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From this.
It is a fact that if you gave everyone in the country £100 today, tomorrow some people would have £1,000 and some would have nothing. And that's what the mathematicians don't seem to understand.
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saabstory | fixes bikes, breaks cars
> Aya, Almost Has A Cosmo With Toyota Engine Owned by a BMW.
12/22/2013 at 20:26 |
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Oh, dang. I remember that now. But that's one of the points that irks me.