Tesla Roadster in London

After an hour or so of explanations and technical data I’m given some info about how to drive it and the keys. This is a very expensive, technological and rare car and the naturalness shown by the person who handed over the keys remarks the quality of Anglo-Saxon people I appreciate more: the lack of paranoid obsessions and a very healthy lightness of spirit.

The Tesla Roadster I’m about to drive is on and ready to go. And I can be certain about this because I know it is, I myself turned the keys in the ignition in the steering column. The engine is completely silent. Not soft, not well deafened. Silent.

However pleasant this feature may be, it may as well be its first flaw. Horacio Pagani objected that driving a silent supercar that utters no grunt, no exciting rumble, is a bit like sleeping with a beautiful woman who just won’t scream. No noise, nothing. It might look like a detail but it really spoils the whole point.
Horacio Pagani could complain about the lack of a captivating sound but he wouldn’t probably say anything about the grit of the car.

The Tesla Roadster does 0-60 in 3,7 seconds. Which is even faster than some Zondas. And while the driver of the Pagani will have to fiddle with the gearbox and the RPM, the only thing the driver in the Tesla has to do is push the pedal. The Roadster has a single gear gearbox, which means vigorous and full acceleration from rest to apparently infinite. The throttle, when released, works as a constant and powerful engine brake. To make it plain: if you push it, the car goes forward, if you lift it, the car decelerates and noticeably brakes by itself.

The acceleration: let’s talk about it. This car doesn’t accelerate, it teleports. A backstreet is enough to realize. Eyes start to hurt, every muscle in your neck has to work overtime to keep the skeleton in one piece.

After playing with the enormous torque and power on a couple of backstreets I dive in the London traffic. Near Harrods, to be precise. London is a beautiful city and the Tesla is an amazing car, but driving a low and sporty convertible, with no power-steering, in an European capital city it’s a bad idea.

Everyone stops to stare, even because although it is true, when the car is still or moving slowly it is very quiet, but when you really get going it gives out a hiss, much similar to that of a turbine. It’s not a loud sound but it’s so peculiar and unusual that it’s perfectly audible. At the light, cyclists and pedestrians ask questions and take pictures. A couple of young men are encouraging me to rev the engine a bit and let them hear the sound. “It’s completely electric.” “Come on! Rev it up!” “It’s electric, there’s no sound!”

At the next light some more weird questions come along. “Wow, is that a Lotus?” “No, it’s not. It’s a Tesla, it’s made in Silicon Valley.” “Is it made in Cheshire?” “No, mate. It’s made in California, USA.”

Tesla say that, even though it’s actually based on the Lotus Elise, it only shares less than 10 % of components with the Elise, and it’s mainly parts of the steering column because they’re expensive to make. However, the Roadster drives and looks like a Lotus Elise, it even shares a fair amount of merits and drawbacks with it. It’s wider and longer and has a boot which can contain a couple of duffel bags, but apart from that, it’s as uncomfortable as the Elise, you sit very low on a couple of very thin bucket seats, the rear visibility is ridiculous and the interior feels plasticy.

Despite the carbon fibre body it’s heavier than an Elise, that’s because while the Elise has 1,8 litre Toyota engine, the Tesla runs on the same batteries that you would find in a laptop, only it has 6831 of them. This affects the weight, the handling and the braking. However, on a normal road, driving at a normal speed, the difference of weight (1,140 kilograms for the Tesla, 860 for the Elise) doesn’t particularly worsen the car. The lightness and agility feeling is the same.
There would be many things to write about this car. About how it works, how you “recharge” it. Tesla say it will do about 250 miles before running out of juice and when that happens, you just plug it in and there you go. Easy to say. There is so much to say in fact that perhaps it’s best to just concentrate on the sensations it gives and how it feels.

Despite the particularity and cost of this car, customers are queuing to get one, and after I’ve taken it for a spin, it’s really not hard to see why. There are two main reasons why I would suggest you buy one. First of all, it is truly gorgeous. Don’t be fooled by the pictures, it is much prettier in reality, although maybe a bit “toyish”. It’s a well made blend of Jessica Rabbit and Jessica Biel on wheels.The second reason is the oomph. It doesn’t matter what you drive, it doesn’t matter what you’ve driven. I promise you, this will feel faster.

If you fancy a drive, visit the Tesla Store in Cheval Place, just near Harrods.

Driving this car it’s a genuinely epic experience.

Just a tip: don’t park near a National Monument in London, the British won’t like it.

Pagani Zonda R, Fendi bike and our future.

If the car were invented today, no government would allow regular people to drive it, it would remain a privilege for presidents and the forces.

Luckily the car was invented many years ago, when children from Briston and Croydon were born with one head only, instead of the two heads they grow today, and during a time when Spain and France were a mere mass of ice, instead of all the green, sea, mountain, lakes and gorgeous girls they offer today. Because of global warming, obviously.

Therefore we have been able, until now, to enjoy turbocharged engines, high fuel consumption, and enormous V8s, V10s, W12s that run on diced hamsters.

However, I'm afraid that the future of means of transport won't have much to do with cars. Not cars as we know them today anyway. I can be sure of this.
The car, as a daily usage of fuel won't exist.
The concept of opening a door, sitting down, firing up the engine and stealing away with wind in your hair will vanish.
Sooner or later, the "speed kills" party will get the upper hand and we'll be "driving" cars that actually drive themselves with satellites aid, to get to where we want to go.
Mercedes are already developing and using systems that make the car brake by itself.
There is certainly going to be an alternative because oil will run out. Naturally I'm not saying that cars will disappear altogether, just as now there are people who collect and keep very expensive, unreliable and old cars, there are equally gonna be people who will drive, on a daily basis, flying scooters fuelled by carrots but will have Ferrari 458s, 500s or Porsches in their garage. To reminisce the old good days of petrol. Oily, roaring and dirty.
What are the solutions, then?

Well, it seems like we have two.
Electric cars. But electric cars need brakes, and they need to be charged with a light socket, so there you go. They need oil.
And hydrogen. Hydrogen is, ideally, the best solution and the theory that everyone likes the most. It is expensive, but you have all the advantages of oil cars (at the pump you fill it up with hydrogen rather than petrol) with none of the drawbacks. Because hydrogen is the most abudant gas in the Universe and the only emissions it produces are from H20. Water.
No one seems to have thought about something, though.
There are currently about 600 million cars in the world, which equal 600 million toxic emissions. Sounds bad, doesn't it?
But with all this global warming talking, all these icebergs that are supposed to melt and sea level rising prominently, nobody thought about the consequences of having 600 million motorvehicles expelling water. Nobody but Jeremy Clarkson has spotted that.
Probably 'cause it's not important.

The problem is not our planet, which will allegedly explode within 10 years, and it's not even the certain fact that all polar bears will melt into snow which will melt into water and Italy will sink.

The car represents freedom. Have you seen "I, Robot", the film starring Will Smith? Would you want to live in a world like that? I wouldn't.

And this brings me on to something that's not a car.

Fendi bike. Some time ago I had a bit of an argument with a friend who, of course, loves it. She says it's amazing, beautiful, she says it doesn't matter if it's not practical and that I can't understand. And I don't, actually.

I don't care if you can have optional sat nav and frog skin bags.
For a price from 5,9 to 9,5 thousand dollars I'd rather hire an assassin to murder the person who designed and thought of this. It's also very ugly. So ugly in fact that I'd rather look at a baboon. Come to think of it I'd rather look at the back of a baboon.

Then I changed my mind.

Yes, I still think it's useless, hideous, wrong, too expensive, designed by people who have sex with endagered species for people who have sex with no one and nothing at all. But I do get WHY it exists. And in a rather twisted way it's a good thing it does.

If you need a bike, do you need to buy one that costs 6 grand, with sat nav and leather bags? No.
In the same way that if you need a car your first instinct is not to buy one that costs 1,2 million euros, has two seats, a body made entirely out of carbon fibre, no boot, carbon ceramic brakes that cost alone more than you need for a well equipped Mini Cooper and a 6 litre v12 with 750 hp.

This is why the Zonda R and a the Fendi bike are very similar. And the reason why we should be grateful they exist.

They draw the line between what you want and what you need.

And if the eco-mentalists and the "lettuce heads", as I like to call them, will win; we'll only have cars, and things, we need. Not cars and things we want.

I want to reserve myself the right to jump in a Zonda or a Viper and thunder through a motorway tunnel at 150 mph, I don't wanna wind up reading The Sun in the back of my oval green car that drives itself.

So, if you like the planet and life the way they are now, buy a Fendi bike and a Pagani Zonda R.

Holland is a strange place: Spyker Aileron

There are very few things, or people, in the world that are weird and serious at the same time. Professional and completely bonkers. Among these things you can find Holland and the Dutch.

This happens because there are two types of Holland and the Dutch have always been able to make the two co-exist. You've got one side of Holland, where everyone goes on caravan holidays and there are tulips, and another side, where people drink, smoke and have sex behind a window with a call girl. There are other examples of this schizophrenia.

Rembrandt, for instance, he was Dutch and all he ever painted were businessmen in dark rooms doing accountancy, but then Van Gogh was also Dutch, and he went to South of France and cut his ear off.

So now I want to talk about another perfect example of this ambiguous personality of the people living in Nederlands. It's called the Spyker C8 Aileron, and it's the last creation to come out of the car company Spyker.
Spyker Cars is a company founded in Zeewolde by two Dutch businessmen, and, apart from having a very catchy name and a very charismatic motto: "Nulla tenaci invia est via", which is Latin for "For the tenacious, no road is impassable", it makes cars.
Very good cars, I reckon.


The C8, the first model ever to go into production in 2000 and still on sale, is the one I want to talk about.
The "Oranje" talent for the picturesque and beauty, although not in a canonic way, is undeniable. The C8 Aileron, even though it has two doors that open like scissors (Lambo style), an interior, a boot, and a bonnet with a 4,2 liter 400 hp Audi engine, it's not a car.

It's a work of art.

My suggestion, if you have about 400.000 euros, is to get two Ailerons. One to drive, and the other one to put into a wooden frame and keep in your bedroom wall, just beside a reproduction of the Mona Lisa, and an alabaster reproduction of the David by Michelangelo.
Undoubtedly, the interiors are the most astonishing feature, theatrical and elegant, and with a few more luxuries than you could find in the old car.
The old C8 La Violette wasn't particularly well equipped, good looking indeed, but it had no bluetooth system, no sat nav, no airbag and even though it did have an air conditioning, there appeared to be no vent to spread the fresh air.
On this new model, the Aileron, there are vents from which cool air will come and a steering wheel with an airbag in it.
That's luxurious.


At this time and point I would like to talk about the feeling of the thing, the handling, but I'm afraid I can't. For a very simple reason: I haven't driven it.
Normally I don't talk about cars that I've not driven. But for cars like this one, I've got to make an exception.
Because, aside from the nose, which kind of reminds me of a fish, this is not an ordinary car.
It's not a car driven by playboys, looking for the lap time. It's car you wear, rather than drive.

So, even if it can't stand up against a Lambo, a Porsche or a Ferrari on the track. It can rival anything parked outside your favourite restaurant in your Tax Haven.
Picture the scene, you arrive in Monte-Carlo and while everyone is bragging about their F430's and Bentleys, you pull up, get out of the car in your black tuxedo and hand the keys over the valet guy.
Rest assured, everyone will be looking at you. At that point you'll be able to draw a grimace on your face and answer the inevitable question.

"What is that?"
"It's my Spyker Aileron."

Dodge Viper SRT10 Top Gear Road Test and Review

We've got unfinished business. In the meantime, my last greeting before its retirement. Dodge Viper

Just look at it.
No, don't say anything. Just look at it.

No, it isn't a Ferrari.

Look at that gigantic bonnet, it is so wide that the lights and the windshield are in two different time zones.
Loot at the 18 (front) and 19 (rear) inches chrome alloy wheels.

Now look down those two salami shaped tubes. That's the exhaust.

No it isn't a Lamborghini. It's a Dodge Viper Srt-10.

The most amazing car ever built.

In 1989 a couple of chaps from Dodge in America came up with an idea.

They began working in a shed, at that time Dodge was short on cash so they made their best, with whatever they could get.

They took the engine from a truck, and threw it under 4,44 metres for 1,6 tons of car.

This car was born quite by accident, and became an icon.

The first version went into production in 1992, it had a 8 l V10 with 400 hp.

The Dodge Viper is special.
It's not an avantgarde car. It can't keep pace with her European rivals. And it seems to know that. It's a bit like Steven Seagal, he knows he's not a great actor and never said he was. He doesn't pretend, he simply does what he loves and does best. Better than anyone else. Breaking baddies' necks.
This car does the same.

If you put your foot down during a rainy day chances are you'll be facing the way you came.
It doesn't accelerate forwards, it accelerates vertically. Towards the centre of the Earth.

Some lunatic might compare it to a Ferrari.

Comparing a Viper to a Ferrari is like comparing David Beckham to Franck Ribéry, technically they are colleagues, but in reality they've got nothing in common, and you can't compare them. Every product to come out of the company based in Maranello it's the result of the same creed: efficiency, performances, technology, exclusivity.
There is nothing efficient or technological about the Viper.

The engine from the latest model (2008) it's an 8.4 litre v10 which develops 600 hp. An engineer from Ferrari could get that much power from a vacuum cleaner. There is no diabolical electronic gadget to put the power down and make you go straight. Consequently, even though the figures show that the Viper is pretty much in the same league as other supercars (0-100 in less than 4 seconds and a top speed of over 200 mph), in reality, a Ferrari or a Porsche would probably eat it alive around a track.
The Dodge is too heavy, too unbalanced, with no aid or traction control or whatsoever, and a monstrous torque to handle.

Having said that, driving it on a track means spending the majority of time sideways, with the big heavy nose pointing ahead and the rear end wandering about, and anyone with a little bit of knowledge will tell you that power sliding and tail swinging is good for the show, not for lap times.

But that's not the point.

This is not why you want, love and buy a Viper.

Buying a Viper for its handling it's like buying a porn film for its plot.

By the end of August, 2010 the production of this car will cease. It's not known yet whether Dodge will resume it, but now Chrysler and Dodge are under Fiat control and rumour has it that the new Viper will be out with a Ferrari engine.

God, I hope not.

The result would be a pathetic compromise between an American muscle car and an Italian supercar, no one would like it or buy it.

The only certainty we have is that the Viper won't be here next year and in order to give it a proper goodbye, Dodge will make the "farewell" Final Edition Viper. Only 50 of these units will be produced: 20 coupes, 18 roadsters and 12 ACRs.

It'll never be as fast as a Veyron.

It'll never be as excellent as a Ferrari.

It'll never handle like a Lamborghini.

But the Viper is something else.

It's a proper supercar.

There's no gadget, no compromise, no kindness.

There is only a very good looking and powerful car.

It is what every supercar should be, crazy, ready to explode every time you turn it on.
Cars that dry rivers out and burn asphalt.

It is politically incorrect, whoever designed it, isn't even half aware of global warming. The Viper couldn't care less about how much CO2 it spits out. It doesn't know words such as emissions and hybrid.

In 2009 in Las Vegas, I could've driven it. But I haven't. Don't know why, but I haven't.

I will, sooner or later, drive it, but this is my only regret so far.

Lotus Elise 111R, the best handling car in the world.