Clarkson on: car makers

Unless something is done, and soon, the motoring journalist will line up in the history books alongside the thatcher and the drystone wallist. We'll become national tourist attractions; put on display in farm parks and expected to entertain tourists with our red faces and our witty anecdotes about the brake drums on an MG.

In the good olden days, it was the motoring journalist's job to smoke a pipe. And then afterwards, he'd don a patched tweed jacket and head for the hills in a new car, determined to ascertain whether it was good or bad.

Back then, even the axle on every car was different. There were swing axles, beam axles, see-saw axles and slide axles. It was a veritable children's playground under there with cart springs trying, and usually failing, to isolate occupants from the bumps.

Not even the doors were uniform. We had the Rover 90 with hinges in the wrong place, and the Renault 14 with a door at the back! So much to talk about. So much fun to be had.

And now we've got this platform-sharing business. Why try to whip up enthusiasm for the VW Lupo when the readers all know it's nothing more than a mad-looking version of the Arosa?

No car maker will take a chance with a radical piece of design because the financial risk of failure is too great. So the only advances we get these days are new engine management systemzzzzzz.

As the millennium draws to a close, I'm running out of bad cars to savage. No really, in the last month I've driven a Ford Mondeo ST200 which was brilliant, a Smart car which was brilliant, an M5 which was brilliant, an Evo 6 which was brilliant and a Lexus IS200 which was dull (but brilliant).

Desperate to find something to maul, I booked a Vauxhall Zafira which turned up at Telly Towers sporting a brown paint job. ‘Aha!' I thought, ‘perfect - a brown Vauxhall people carrier. I'm going to rip it apart, bit by bit.' And I would have done, but it turned out to be brilliant.

No honestly. Even if you forget all about the patented Flex-7 seating system, which is inspired, you're still left with a car that's just really nice to drive. Smooth, fast, economical and with a deftness of touch that belies its family-man aspirations.

Seething, I turned my attention to Volvo, who did everything in their power to make me hate their new C70 Convertible. They flew me in a no-smoking aeroplane to Rome, where we loaded into a no-smoking bus which took us on an hour-long trip to Italy's only no-smoking restaurant, where I had to sit outside to enjoy a Marlboro.

"For the man who needs his food to be mashed before it goes anywhere near his mouth, the Accent GLSi was perfect"

Just to pay my hosts back, I was pretty much determined to feed the C70 to a literary shredder, but I can't do it. If you want a soft, vaguely luxurious four-seater convertible at an affordable price, it is truly brilliant.

I suppose if I gathered together the equivalent BMW convertible and the soft-top Mercedes CLK, I might be able to dig up some microscopic differences, causing me to declare one of them a resounding winner, but honestly, it would be like comparing fish fingers with baked beans.

They both taste nice and they both fill you up, so eat whatever you damn well want. Unless you're having drinks with the Queen afterwards, in which case, best stick to the fish.

Yesterday, I drove a car which actually looked like a baked bean. It is made in Korea, where they eat dogs, by a company called Hyundai, and it was called the Accent GLSi.

Obviously, I would rather pull my own ears off than buy such a thing, but after a yard or two it became apparent that it was indeed the wheeled equivalent of Ronseal's five-year wood guarantee. It did exactly what it said on the tin. Farted mostly.

But for the man who needs his food to be mashed before it goes anywhere near his mouth, it was absolutely perfect; well it was until I went banger racing in it, but there you go.

As a result of all this, I have a remarkably simple request. Because of platform sharing, car makers are now able to make new cars, economically, in small numbers. It's called niche marketing and is best explained by the Golf, which has so far given rise to all sorts of diverse elements, from the Audi TT to the newly updated Beetle.

Well look. If VW can make a new Beetle just to keep a handful of trendy forty-something urbanites happy, how about deliberately making a really bad car to keep the journalists who work for car magazines happy?

Ford did it with the '92 Escort and Vauxhall followed up with the Vectra, but since then there's been nothing. So here's an idea. BMW obviously hasn't a clue what to do with Rover, so why not use it to produce a selection of over-priced joke cars, simply for the press. Something with a thatched roof perhaps, and drystone doors.

You could then line them all up on the north bank of the Thames and play amusing tunes with their horns, and we'd love you for it.