Life in the Fast Lane: The Johnson Guide to Cars. Boris Johnson
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to drive it accidentally-on-purpose into Prince William’s South of France swimming pool.
In fact, I seem to remember Peter Purves driving just such a car in my 1974 Blue Peter Annual. He drove it to Paris and I have it in my head that he parked it sideways on the Champs-Elysées—exactly the sort of stunt the Smart can pull. And here I was, a quarter of a century later, the Peter Purves of GQ magazine, and I couldn’t turn the bloody thing on.
Until at once, with a savage downwards jab at the key like a bad-tempered two-year-old, I accidentally found the right hole; by the handbrake for some reason (‘Natürlich, Gottlob! What is starting but the opposite of stopping?’) and vroom!
A colleague from GQ believes the car is like a motorbike with four wheels. ‘There is nothing that can beat it away from the lights,’ he says. That must depend, I think, on who is at the controls. I do not think that I would have been beaten by an old woman in a bath chair as we kangarooed away from the lights on Liverpool Road. But you should not rule it out.
Once I’d sussed out the Play Station-style, automatic six-speed gearbox, a vague sense of fun started to take over. I cannot pretend that I tested my colleague’s assertion that it can reach 90mph, certainly not on the route between Islington and the Spectator’s offices in Holborn. But if, like me, you rather like left-hand drive, and believe that the so-called motoring authorities encourage an aversion in the hope of deterring the ripped-off British public from buying cheaper cars from the continent; and if you think you might rather enjoy weaving around in a souped-up 600cc beer crate, then you might be a Smart kind of guy or gal.
Everything in the Mercedes is chunky
and rounded, in easy-wipe, vomit-
resistant Fisher-Price plastic.
You might enjoy squeezing its rump into a space no larger than a bath mat; though I should warn you that its charm has not yet penetrated the traffic wardens of Camden. First they clamped it. Then they just removed it—gone; tossed, perhaps, like a Dinky toy into some municipal cupboard.
There’s no car smart enough to get itself out of that one. When I got home, on foot, Bishi and Co were tactful enough not to bring the matter up.
Nothing can spoil Boris’ enjoyment of the bionic new Nissan, not even a government apparently intent on
taking all the fun out of driving.
There I was at some traffic lights on the North Circular, trying to work out the controls, when a shadow fell across my right shoulder and a voice spoke with the sarcastic respectfulness we all know so well. ‘Evening, sir,’ said the fuzz on his bike. ‘Nice car you have there. Your fog lamps are on.’
So that was the significance of that little orange light. Could it be this knob? That knob? Twiddle twiddle. The fog lamps remained on. ‘Do be careful, sir,’ he said as the lights turned green. ‘It can go very fast.’
‘Absolutely’, I called out. At this point I must have touched the throttle of my brand-new Nissan Skyline GT-R because that officer of the law suddenly vanished behind me, and it was ho for St Albans and a crucial meeting of that magnificent body of men and women, the Hertsmere Conservative Association. I wanged her round the flyover and then up on to the M1 and arum-arum-arum, I was just about to let the wild animal out of its cage and put it through its paces when I remembered the warnings of plod.
If I believe what I read in the papers—and of course I do—the boys in blue have decided that they have a new mission in life, which is to persecute and fine the middle-class motorist. And since there was no point in being delayed in police custody, I allowed them to dawdle—those great, fat, two-foot wheels, those Bridgestone radials with the Formula One silhouette, spitting gravel sideways as some great predator might spit the masticated, bony fragments of a deer.
According to the Knight Rider-style in-car computer gizmo, we were only using about 10 per cent of the throttle; and as for something called ‘Boost’, there was a whole lot of boosting this car wanted to do. But no, I said to the car. No boy, keep control of yourself there, as it reached the national speed limit in second or third gear (the gears remained a slight mystery) with barely 3,000 revs, its cardiac system as honed and superfit as Bruce Lee, its prowling haunches bulging with suppressed kinetic energy.
Whoa there, boy, I muttered, fingers clamped and clenched. We can’t let the Tory party down. And though I say it myself, we didn’t. I gave them hell, those Hertsmere Tories. I raved about the iniquity of Labour petrol taxes, the astounding fact that after we spent three months bombing to smithereens the Serb refineries, the gas stations, the tankers—fuel is still cheaper in the former Yugoslavia than it is in London.
‘I tell you this, Mr Chairman, ladies and gentleman,’ I continued amid tumultuous applause, ‘there are now some garages where they offer you a free car every time you fill your tank!’ Hear hear. Har har haaaargh. So it was in a fairly elated mood, you may divine, that I pressed the little remote-control key-unlocker type thing after supper, and the orange indicator lights blinked obediently.
As my foot pressed down, the car surged ahead like a stallion stung by a bee.
Now, let me say immediately that though I may have sipped a glass of Rioja, I was in full possession of my faculties. It was just that the mind turned inevitably to the questions of ideology we had recently been discussing. In the intensifying tyranny of Blair’s Britain, where speed cameras pop at every corner; where Prescott and the police are about—it says here—to cut the speed limit to 60mph; isn’t there a case, I thought, as the M1 uncoiled itself before me, eerie in the yellow sodium lights and all but empty, for some sort of gesture?
Isn’t it only fitting that we defenders of individual liberty should match our words with deeds? Hardly had the thought formed when my foot pressed down and, yeeeow! the blue streak of tin-plated testosterone surged ahead like some stallion stung in the bum by a bee, and that monster cardiovascular system started to suck more petrol into its great, pulsating aorta, while the others cars were left behind as if they were bollards.
Luton is an unlovely place, but never have man and machine passed it by with such scalding indifference. And as the needle crept into the three-figure mark, my doubts began. No, cried the voice of conscience. You have four children. Forget all this libertarian nonsense. Of course other people are affected by your actions.
It may be true that if you did a Henri Paul and hit the pillar of the motorway bridge, it would be you, and you alone, they would have to scrape off the tarmac with a teaspoon. But think of your family, think of your responsibilities, think of the poor chap who has to wield the teaspoon.
Slowly the foot came off the throttle like some postcoital detumescence, until I noticed that everyone else was now whizzing past my ears. They were howling past at 90,100, the Mercs, the Jags and even the little Fords, for heaven’s sake. This was mockery. It was insupportable; and so I started that old game of preparing lines for the cops.
I could try the German tourist routine: ‘Was ist los? Vot? Kann Man nicht in England schnell fahren?’ I could pretend to think that Euro speed limits had all been harmonised upwards to infinity, or that I was still on the road from Stuttgart to Mannheim. Or maybe I should blub and point out that in all honour I had no choice.
‘What can I say, officer? They made me. They’re ruthless, these GQ people. If I write a column and they sense I haven’t properly tested the car, I don’t get paid, and if I don’t get paid I can’t—choke, sob—buy my children Fruit Loops for their breakfast…’ And I pushed my foot down again…and zow. There are two stages in this machine’s acceleration. First you notice that you are travelling appreciably faster. Then you feel as if your buttocks have been suddenly clamped by the leather seat. And I may be wrong but I had the impression that my face was being pushed back into a gibbering rictus as the G-forces kicked in, and the stars turned into trails of light like a slow-release photo