Life in the Fast Lane: The Johnson Guide to Cars. Boris Johnson
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they were road lights, but I was too terrified to flick my eyeballs to the left or right to find out.
First you notice you are travelling faster, then you feel as if your buttocks have been clamped by the leather seat.
We were now doing 125mph, which is the fastest I have ever been on land under my own propulsion, and I was just about to give it a breather when I remembered the words of my GQ editor, that this was a ‘muscle car’. ‘Muscle,’ I grunted. And, for an instant, I took that machine up to 130mph.
And maybe that’s nothing to you GQ boys, who have to wear clothes pegs on your noses to keep the virile hormones sloshing out of your nostrils, but it left me feeling, for a moment or two, like a man who had slipped the bonds of civilisation and rediscovered his bestial soul—and also, of course, like a bit of a prat. Officer, I promise I won’t do it again.
Vital statistics
Originally launched in 1997, the new-look GT-R was released in October to take on the Porsche 911.
Engine 2.6-litre, 277bhp, 6-cylinder, 5-speed gearbox Top speed 155mph Acceleration 0–60mph in 4.9 secs Price (1999) £54,000
So many people took so much care to make the Arnage Red Label the car it is: unfortunately for him, Boris ends up with nothing to chauffeur it.
I have a routine now with these cars from GQ. The trouble with being an ace car reviewer like me is no matter how expert you are in thrust and torque, there is one technical difficulty you can’t easily overcome. These cars have no resident’s permit. After a while, the parking tickets start to build up like drifting snow on the windshield.
Word was coming back from Morgan, GQ’s car overlord, that the chicks in the expenses department were starting to get antsy. And then I had two cars in a row towed. First I made the mistake of thinking that I, as editor of the Spectator, would have access to the Spectator garage. Oh no. That privilege goes to Kimberly Fortier, the magazine’s publisher. And so one day I was on the phone to an agitated Norman Lamont, chewing the fat about Pinochet, as one does, when I looked out of the corner of my eye and saw the latest Jap supercar being hoisted through the air, which would have been fine except that I had let the same thing happen to a Swatch Smart Car the previous month.
The chicks in the GQ expenses department—and if you can’t call them chicks, then what the hell, I ask you, is the point of writing for GQ?—decided to put their perfectly formed feet down. I had to find a garage. So that is how I came to be at the wheel of the most expensive car I have ever seen, inching with much squealing of new rubber around a cramped underground car park somewhere in Bloomsbury.
This Bentley Arnage Red Label is yours for £150,000, and it is huge. Its prow seems to stick out like a supertanker, its rump like a steel wedding dress. It has a radar gizmo which beeps as soon as its pristine grey flanks come too near another object—rather like a heart machine on a dying patient, or a Sidewinder missile locking on to its target: bip bip bip beep beep beeeeeep, and when it flatlines, you know the paintwork is only inches away from being scratched. And if, like me, you have by now developed a proper respect for the GQ expenses department, the sweat is starting to bead on your brow.
After about half an hour of trying to thread this mastodon through the eye of a needle, I was stuck. If I went an inch forward the machine beeped me, and if I went backwards, ditto. Every option seemed to involve a crunch and a tinkle. And then, as luck would have it, a very nice man appeared from nowhere and offered to park the thing for me. Now you might pause before handing a complete stranger the keys to a car worth as much as a castle in Scotland, a French chateau, or a garage in Notting Hill, but not this correspondent. ‘Good on ye, mate,’ I gasped to the chap as he smiled and cockily spun the wheel, calculating the angles like a snooker player, and the wing mirrors of the Bentley wagged like the ears of an obedient mastiff as he engaged reverse.
I suppose I could have tried some apologetic gag about how it was my chauffeur’s day off, but I was actually too wrung out, trembling like a man rescued from a rock face when he has spent an hour unable to move up or down. Anyway, if Bentley are mad enough to lend the car to me they can hardly object—and their insurance premiums will hardly be affected—if I hand it over to someone who can actually drive it.
And when I came back in the evening, do you suppose my friend had made off with it? You have too little faith in human nature. Bagging the keys from Cyril the attendant, who must believe I am a man of serious substance to judge by the cars I have been leaving in his care, I pressed the remote-control gizmo to open the door.
For nigh on a century the craftsmen at Crewe have laboured to produce the last word in personal locomotion. From generation to generation have been transmitted the arts of hand-stitching the oxblood upholstery and anointing every seat with a pint of germolene until it is as soft and yielding to the buttocks as a pair of old Viyella pyjamas. From father to son has been passed the secret of buffing up the walnut burr; buffing and buffing with such a masturbatory frenzy that after decades of experiment the interior glows as radiantly as the half-parted lips of Joan Collins. The boffins at Cosworth have souped up the 400bhp six-and-three-quarter-litre engine, souping and souping until it is a gigantic minestrone of valves and tubes with more torque than any other saloon in the world.
From father to son has been passed the secret of buffing up the walnut burr…
This is the car before us now, the Bentley Red Label Arnage, and you can’t even open it up. I press the tit on the key again. Zilch. The indicators wink, but the driver’s door won’t open. Entering by the passenger door, I set off the alarm, which fills the chambers of my skull like throbbing glue. I sit there, pushing every button I can find, until I am rescued by two charming blonde women on the way to a party.
‘Arnage,’ I mutter under my breath. ‘What is this Arnage?’ The word does not exist in English. It must be a mixture of ‘carnage’ and ‘arnaque’, which is the French for ‘a swindle’. Now it won’t even let me move. The boys at Bentley have found somewhere so discreet, so tactful to hide the handbrake—that embarrassingly ordinary object—that Sir cannot find it. He cannot. Where in the name of holy f*** is the handbrake?
I pull the silver knobs on the fascia. I jerk bits of the seat this way and that. I yank the ashtray, the mobile phone holder, the air conditioning. It is now 25 minutes since I first tried to activate this ne plus ultra of comfort and convenience, I hope you won’t be too shocked if I say that I start, in the gentlest possible way, to freak out. That doesn’t work either.
It is now after 8pm and all the honchos at GQ, Rolls, Bentley, etc will have knocked off. Then inspiration strikes. I use my mobile phone to contact the Bentley dealership in North America, whose number is on the press pack at my feet. ‘This is Hamish McSquatter,’ says an answerphone somewhere. As I bounce up and down, howling, on the coach-built upholstery, I reflect that this car has every accessory but one: someone in a peaked cap to drive the damn thing.
Vital statistics
The Arnage Red Label will compete with the most prestigious cars around. Nearest rivals are the Mercedes S500 and BMW 740i.
Engine V12, 24-valve, 6.75 litre Top speed 140mph Acceleration 0–60mph in 3.5 secs Price (2000) £149,000
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