Views - Paradise Regained...

The other night Sir David Attenborough confided the existence of Ilha Queimada Grande or Snake Island. Lying off the southeastern corner of Brazil is a small piece of land with one golden lancehead snake for every footstep. Sir David explained in his breathless, award-winning manner that the snakes are the top predators and no-one but scientists are allowed to set foot on the island. The few fisherman who have ignored the warnings have all died quickly. The Brazilian government maintains a protective bubble that allows a serpentine paradise to flourish.

Which is all very nice for the snakes. So why is there no equivalent for motorists? Not just any motorists but rather the ones who want to do with cars the things that cars were designed to do. An island sanctuary for speed. Imagine it...

You pull out of your drive carefully. Your caution proves well-founded. With your front wheels barely onto the pavement, you slam on the brakes to avoid the red-lined, screaming duel between Peugeot 205 GTI 1.9 and Renault 5 Turbo. Suburbia here is the battle-ground for that most pugnacious incarnation of daily transport, the hot hatch. Every illicit, late night, residential estate match-up can be explored without reprisals. For Everyman, the Golf GTI takes on the Ford Escort RS Turbo; Wolfsburg's 16 valves against Dagenham's Garrett boost-pusher. For the connoisseur, Clio Williams battles Lotus Sunbeam Talbot. For the jaded, Fiat Uno Turbos challenge Maestro Turbos down well-manicured 1/4 miles. A haze of expiring tyres, tortured clutch and brake dust lies thickly about. Waste gates snigger in the next street as you set off.

The police are here of course, it's not Escape From New York, but they have a new remit. Drive your car into someone's kitchen and they'll cart you off, show up with those neon strip lights on your car and they'll taser you in the pants, but every road is a legitimate race track. I like to think that half the policemen resemble Sergeant Al Powell from Die Hard. They're eating Twinkies and drinking Big Gulps whilst hitching up gun belts and going sideways in Police Cruisers. But they like the sound of a rev-limiter as much as anyone else (and they'll laugh at you if you lift through the fast right-hander on Newman Drive).

The other half are Italian policemen. They sometimes flag you down but only because your car was styled by Pininfarina and has a v12. It makes them cross if you're not wearing your shirt unbuttoned to the nipple-line and they'll challenge you to race them in their Gallardo. Some hand out free bruschetta...

You leave suburbia and take the slip-road for the dual-carriageway. Then you have to pause because the road ahead is blocked. A sub-lime Hemi Cuda and Hertz Shelby GT350 are rocking on their suspension mounts and smoking their tyres. They get lined up and bellow off into the distance, fish-tailing slightly. A small group on the verge cheers, passes round a bottle of bourbon and waits for the Superbirds to show up.

After a couple of miles you leave the dual-carriageway and find some fast-sweeping A-roads set into a landscape of rolling fields and small villages. The thorough-breds are being exercised here. Think Mille Miglia through the Cotswolds. You're passed by a dark blue Aston Martin DB4GT Zagato. Whilst every line on the car demonstrates subtle, understated perfection shaped in metal, it's being driven at ten-tenths by someone who knows what it was built to do and who has two wheels kicking up dust on the next apex. As it disappears from view, exhaust note bouncing from the stone walls, it's followed by a thundering Daytona. The low-lying sun, glints on the four chromed exhausts, the jewel-like brake lights flash for a moment and then six Weber 40s open and the big, beautiful coupe is gone.

Leaving the A-roads behind you look for the twisting Bs and you know you've found them when the Caterham R400 appears in your rear-view mirror. Out-braking you into the next corner, the incredible little car spits fire from its four-into-one side pipe on the overrun and then seems to bend physics' rules as it accelerates away.

So all we need, other than political will, millions of pounds and Murray Walker (who will be employed to broadcast constant commentary in his best apoplexy) is a location. To me the best options here seem to be a) the construction of a man-made island somewhere in the Mediterranean, or b) the annexation of Gloucestershire.

No.7

Review - Chevy Impala - Fallen Idols

The 2009 Chevy Impala is a wonderful car. No, that’s not quite right.

The 2009 Chevy Impala is an woeful car. No, not right either.

The 2009 Chevy Impala is a car. That’s about right.

The fact that this is really the only accurate statement that can be made in relation to the Chevy is something of a disappointment to me. As a just-off-the-plane English guy dipping a toe into the US motoring world, it’s true that Avis rent-a-car is not perhaps the ideal place to get a spike of automotive adrenalin. However, it is a useful place to get a realistic view of Everyman’s motoring life. The stuff you can rent at Avis is the stuff the majority of the population is driving on the roads.

And this is where the disappointments began for me. Before I walked over to bay F41 at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, the name Impala was not without glamour for me. It conjured up images of football field-sized hoods, Nimitz-sized rear-decks, some pretty unrestrained fin-work and those triple-rear lights. Yup, I was in 1958. And in 1964. And even in 1970 (although the fins were in remission by then...)

The Impala was always laughably remote in character from its furry African namesake (graceful leaping and prancing, partnered with startling acceleration not being a key part of its standard repertoire), but that didn’t matter. The Chevys in my mind had a low-slung, graceful menace about them. You wouldn’t so much drive an Impala as pilot it smoothly through shoals of lesser cars. You could cruise in a Impala. You could arrive in an Impala. You could chop an Impala, install hydraulics where normal suspension should go and scrape the rear fender along the ground whilst pointing the headlights at the streetlights. You would always look good.

When I arrived at bay F41 this mental bubble was pricked. For a start, the arse (as we’d say in England) was gone. I mean, the trunk was still intimidatingly large compared to a European car. I felt momentarily ashamed that my suitcases were barely noticeable once inside. But the Impala was no longer a car that would impress Fergie with it’s posterior. All the Impalas in my mental records had the kind of rear-deck that a Sunseeker yacht would be pleased to flaunt at St Tropez. The addition of a couple of swim-suit clad girls, lounging on your trunk-lid seemed to be what the acreage of metal was designed for. No longer.

Apart from it’s sadly docked rear, the Chevy had the right number or doors and didn’t look actively offensive in the way that Crown Victorias or Ssang-Yong Mussos do. Cup-holder? Check. Big comfy seats? Check. Pointless nod to technological advancement? Check (those silly automatic headlights). It was all a bit plain-Jane, particularly in boring white with hearing-aid beige interior, but not disconcerting. The disconcerting stuff happens when you drive the car, I discovered.

Picture an elderly golden labrador. Picture this labrador asleep in the late afternoon in a warm room after a long walk and some food. Now imagine giving this happy, snoozing dog a gentle prod with the end of your finger. What happens? Nothing. It might roll-over, or snore with renewed volume, but the level of activity will not change. In imagining this, you have also successfully imagined what happens when you gently increase the pressure on an Impala’s accelerator pedal. Nothing. Perhaps a little more noise.

Now go back to the old, sleeping dog and, instead of a gentle prod, give him a meaningful kick in the mens department. What happens? Disconcerting things happen. The dog will lurch to his feet, probably making quite a bit of noise. He may look wildy around while doing so and will then most likely disappear off in a fairly random direction banging into the furniture as he goes.

This is also what happens when you increase the pressure on the Impala’s accelerator pedal to the point where the car’s electronic brain is forced to admit that it can no longer go on pretending that you’re not there. By way of teaching you a lesson it will then change down and give the engine some beans. You will almost immediately regret your actions as you wrestle the lurching, bewildered old thing back on track and will go back to cruising sedately. This conveniently will allow the Impala to remain almost permanently in high gear at 60 mph, thus presenting reasonable fuel economy figures.

You can get an Impala to go around corners. It will accelerate (eventually) and stop (without much body control). You can heat it up and cool it down to the required temperature quite easily. People in the back will be comfortable on long journeys. But that’s about as far as it goes.

Many of you will no doubt point out that at no stage of it’s development has any Impala pretended to be a Lotus Elise. You’d of course be right. My complaint is merely this. If your car looks the way a 1958 Chevy Impala looks it doesn’t matter that the dynamic experience is awful. But when you mate an iconic name with a body that has the visual tension of a suitcase and an anaesthetized driving experience you have problem. Mustangs, Camaros and Challengers are alive and well, but for me, right now, the Impala is catatonic.

No.7