Notes From the Hard Shoulder - James May [2]
THIS JAGUAR LOOKS A BIT HALF-BAKED TO ME
I've now been sitting here for some hours looking at a picture of the Jaguar X-Type estate fitted with the maker's optional 'Sports Collection' body styling package. And I have to say, I'm just not sure about it.
To explain why, we have to go back a few weeks to an idle evening when I decided that I would make a Chinese meal. And I don't mean one contrived from a packet sauce and a tin of water chestnuts. I mean the real thing, like that bloke Ken Whatsit would do.
Now, I don't really rate myself as a chef. Anything outside the orbit of the old school favourites – shepherd's pie, cheesy pasta – is frankly a bit of a mystery. But that doesn't matter, because you can buy sets of instructions for clever cooking and the picture on the front is usually so good it's tempting just to eat the book.
I did everything properly. I went to a Chinese supermarket for the ingredients and I borrowed a wok from a neighbour. The preparation time amounted to many hours of careful chopping and straining.
But then it started to go wrong. I've heard a theory that oriental cooking is the way it is because of a historical shortage of fuel, so everything is cut up small and it's all cooked together in one very thin utensil that becomes blindingly hot in seconds. It all happened far too quickly.
I think the word that best sums up my Szechuan double-cooked pork with chow mein is 'grey'.
Undeterred, I decided to try an Indian instead, since the cooking process would then be much more leisurely. I visited a proper Indian food shop and started from scratch with raw spices, ghee, basmati rice and what have you. I ground, roasted, made pastes, marinated things overnight – in fact, my chicken tikka bhuna with peas pilau took almost two days to complete. It could best be described as 'brown'.
As a result of all this I have decided to abandon any ridiculous pretence of being multi-culti and acknowledge that if I fancy a Chinese or an Indian, I'll find some Chinese or Indian people to make it for me. There are several within a few hundred paces of my house, as it happens, and they are much, much better at this sort of thing than I am because they are steeped in the appropriate culture and traditions; rather in the way that I know, almost instinctively, what to do with Spam.
Similarly, I may have spent many hours as a boy sketching supercars in the back of my geometry exercise book with my Oxford Mathematical Instruments set, but I will still recognise that real car designers are better. So if I buy a car that I think looks good, I'll leave it alone. I don't order a butter chicken from the Light of Nepal and then start adding some extra ingredients I brought along from home.
In fairness to Jaguar, the 'Sports Collection' body package is the work of the factory, so presumably all the bits will fit properly. But I can't help wondering why, if it looks so good, they don't just make it like that in the first place. And in what other arena of sporting endeavour is weight added for no performance gain? This is like an Olympic sprinter thinking he'd be better off if he was a bit fatter.
Car manufacturers are developing an unhealthy appetite for mucking about with things that were already right. I've just driven a new and extra-sporty version of the Audi TT, which has a harder suspension, ridiculous bucket seats that feel like, well, buckets, daft alloy wheels that stick out further than the tyres and which you will kerb on the way home from the showroom and, worst of all, a black roof. They've completely ruined it. It was a seminal and much-trumpeted bit of automotive design, but somebody imagined it could be improved with a tin of Humbrol enamel. Even the Subaru Impreza Turbo, which comes sort of pre-kitted, looks better left alone.
I know the modifled-car scene is a huge and vibrant one. I've examined the work of the lads who are into it and a lot of it is really exquisitely done and bought at the expense of still living at home with mum. Good for them. But I still don't believe I've ever seen a modified