transport, because this is driving for the buzz of it, and as a result you’re not a passenger. You are there to do a job, which means you are no more and no less important than one of the pistons or the windscreen wipers.
This is the real deal. Everything that happens happens because it happens. Not because some German in a white coat thinks it should happen. The marketing department has not created the noises, the jolts and the acceleration. They’re there because this is a light, powerful sports car and these are the characteristics you must expect of such a thing.
I didn’t like it. Partly because I still don’t fit properly – the steering wheel sits on my thighs, which means I simply could not apply any opposite lock in an emergency. Also, while Caterham will build a car for you, it’s designed to be a kit that you build yourself. That’s why it bypasses regulations on noise, safety and emissions. Great, but I’d never fully trust anything I’d built myself: I’d always assume that a wheel was about to fall off.
Most of all, though, I didn’t like the Caterham becauseit was like camping. The roof looks so terrible that you can’t possibly drive around with it up. But then again, it’s so fiddly that you can’t possibly drive with it down either. Plainly, it was designed by a man who likes to sleep out at night, possibly with some Boy Scouts, far from anywhere, with just a thin layer of canvas between him, the boys and the rain.
And then there’s the business of what you should wear when driving the Caterham.
This is the only car that demands a trip down to Millets before embarking on even the shortest journey.
You need a woolly bobble hat, an anorak and some Rohan trousers. There’s an almost wilful lack of style to this kind of motoring, you see. A. A. Gill described his run from the station in my wife’s Caterham last year as ‘the worst five minutes of my life’.
The problem here is that we are in the very furthest corner of motoring enthusiasm. And, as is the way with all hobbies, things go off the rails when people start to take them too seriously.
Everyone likes to dangle a worm in the water from time to time. But the Caterham is the equivalent of getting up at three in the morning and sitting in the rain, on a canal bank, until it goes dark again.
Everyone looks up when Concorde flies over, but the Caterham is the equivalent of flying to Greece to snap some Olympic 737s. Would you risk getting locked up for your love of this car? Man at Millets would.
I’m interested in motor racing but I don’t want to be a marshal. I find stamps pretty but I don’t want an album.
I like music but I’m not going to build my own instruments. And I like driving but I’m far too old, rich, soft and poncey – and still slightly too big – for what, without any doubt, is the ultimate driving machine.
Sunday 27 July 2003
Lamborghini Gallardo
Suppose you had a priceless Ming vase, you wouldn’t use it as a dice shaker or a vessel for serving punch at Boxing Day parties.
In a similar vein you wouldn’t use a racehorse to hack out, and you wouldn’t use a pearl-handled butter knife to pick a lock. So it’s faintly ridiculous to suppose a supercar can co-exist in the real world alongside young men from Kazakhstan in Nissan Laurels and even younger men from Albania on pizza-delivery mopeds.
So what is it for then, exactly? Getting down and growly on the world’s racetracks? Well, yes, obviously, but even here things can go awry.
Just recently I attempted to see how fast the new Koenigsegg supercar could accelerate from 0 to 60 mph. But as I let the clutch in, one of the many belts that drives something important in the engine bay shredded and I was left in a world of noise and smoke, going nowhere.
Last week I attempted a similar test with a
£
320,000 Pagani Zonda, and again it all ended in tears. As I floored the throttle and the 7.3-litre Mercedes V12 engine girded its considerable loins