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
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