Notes From the Hard Shoulder - James May [19]
By my reckoning, all these things could be combined to allow me to join the motorway in London and then climb into the back for a kip until I arrive in Scotland. Instead, I've been given something to keep me awake. The motor industry has, as usual, aimed low, and humankind has been reduced to fiddling with each other's bottoms like the apes of the trees from which we have supposedly descended.
I think these people should stop arsing around and do something useful.
THE FUTURE OF IN-CAR ENTERTAINMENT
Some years ago I attended the launch of a new Daewoo MPV people-carrier type recreational vehicle, and realised immediately that I was at the dawn of a new era made dark by the lights of a perverted science.
Nothing to do with the Daewoo per se, since it was a perfectly conventional one-box family bus aimed at the sort of people who didn't see Marie Stopes for the true saint she was. At least, that's what I gleaned from the mutterings of my coevals. Couldn't say as much with any certainty myself, since I didn't actually drive it.
No – from the moment we arrived, it was quite clear that the new Daewoo was not aimed at the driving enthusiast, or indeed any sort of driver. It had been designed to keep your kids quiet on a journey, and to that end was equipped with video screens, DVD players, gaming consoles and individual headphone sockets, all of which were installed in the back. So that's where I spent the test drive, having recruited a journalist and photographer partnership from a rival publication to act as surrogate dad and dad up front.
And I hated it. I'm not a Luddite, but these X-boy things really do drive me up the wall, and if I were a parent I would worry that my children were going to grow up with hideously overdeveloped thumbs and atrophied fingers. I also can't quite see the pleasure in watching a film in the car, since it will almost certainly have been made in America and why would you want to look at that when England is just outside the window?
These days everyone is offering this stuff. You can have it as optional equipment on dozens of cars, and you can buy after-market sets that end up looking as though they were wired up by Italians. It's all very well, but I can't help thinking that this kind of thing will drive us further into the hideous embrace of the Dr Mengele of our times, i.e. Dixon's.
And so, as we creep inexorably towards what the AA always calls the Great British Bank Holiday Exodus, here are a few simple (and free) in-car games designed by me and my colleague Richard Hammond on long journeys. All are resolutely rooted in an era when we made our own entertainment.
That's your car (2 players)
Drive along normally. When you spot a really hideous car, either parked or in the next lane, shout, 'See that? That's your car!' before the other bloke does. At the end of the journey, the player with the worst car is the loser.
Take five (2 players)
The object of the game is to secure the best car from the next five that pass in the opposite direction on a quiet road. Selection cannot be revoked, and either player may go first. Player 1 may choose the first car to pass, in which case Player 2 must choose from the next four. There may be a better one, there may not. He has to have the fifth car if he has not chosen already. Player with the best car wins that round.
Longest finger in the world (any number)
This is ideal for Channel Tunnel crossings, ferries to the Isle of Wight or any other circumstance in which passengers are confined to a stationary car with a roof-mounted whip aerial. Remove the aerial and hand to player 1. Holding it by the threaded end, he must perform a pre-ordained facia task using the bendy opposite end, against the clock. Tasks can include retuning the radio or setting automatic climate control to a particular temperature and stratification. Fastest time wins. Note that the radio retuning on auto seek may be compromised by the missing aerial.
In-car air-vent virtual fountain (any number)