Notes From the Hard Shoulder - James May [72]
The Smart's funky enough as it is. A true eccentric doesn't need a silly hat to be recognised as one, and the Smart was enough of a novelty item in plain black. It's a bad comedian who laughs at his own joke, after all. I also began to worry about how the Top Gear staff would take it. They went home for the weekend leaving a black Smart parked outside and would return to discover that a conceptual artist had been at it with a tin of psychedelic alphabet soup. I quickly arranged for the original panels to be shipped home as well, just in case.
The Smart, in the end, doesn't need to make a statement. It's convincing enough as a car. In fact, I think I might buy one, because, on returning home, I discovered another advantage of extreme shortness.
The back half of my garage is full of the usual stiff paint brushes, broken bicycles, Wellington boots, unidentified tinned substances and 'useful' offcuts of wood. Buying just the front half of a car is going to be a lot easier than clearing all that stuff out.
And they do it in a very nice dark-blue colour.
SOURCES
Car Magazine
'I've never felt such a spanner' (July 1997); 'If he knows, he's not saying anything' (August 1996); 'Police car, lights, action' (May 1998); 'Don't forget your toolkit' (June 1995); 'The Vauxhall Vectra, a representative view' (August 1995); 'The Motown Story' (January 1998).
Top Gear
'How great cars come to be abandoned in old barns' (September 2006); 'Some observations on rear-end handling' (January 2005); 'These modern supercars are all bloody rubbish you know' (December 2005); 'Brown's green tax – a bit of a grey area' (March 2005); 'It's a car, Jimmy, but not as we know it' (April 2006); 'How the peace and quiet of England was ruined by the noise of people complaining' (June 2006); 'Jeremy Clarkson ruined my dream car' (August 2006); 'Is it a car? Is it a bike? No. And no.' (March 2000); 'A clot on the landscape' (April 2001); 'I'm just going to Iceland. I may be some time.' (December 2001); 'Harley-Davidson, a hanging offence' (October 2001); 'The Smart car. Not after we'd finished with it.' (July 2002); 'Charles Darwin may be onto something' (March 2005); 'Achtung! Bentley!' (September 1999).
Daily Telegraph
'This is personal' (March 2006); 'Poetry on motion' (April 2004); 'The best driving song in the world ever' (May 2005); 'This Jaguar looks a bit half-baked to me' (June 2005); 'My cup runneth over and into the centre console' (January 2004); 'Track days, or the futility of going nowhere' (October 2005); 'Be afraid. Be very afraid. But only of the size of the bill.' (October 2005); 'The technical revolution in the toyshop' (November 2005); 'The folly of trying to save fuel' (November 2005); 'Any colour you like, as long as it's available from Dulux' (November 2005); 'Breaking down is not so hard to do' (November 2005); 'The Range Rover of outstanding natural beauty' (December 2005); 'Please keep off the mud' (December 2005); 'How to deal with van drivers' (December 2005); 'Naked motorcycle porn showing now' (January 2006); 'Pious Porsche peddles pathetic pedal-powered product' (January 2006); 'Lamborghinis are great. You should have one.' (February 2006); 'The future of in-car entertainment' (February 2006); 'Porsche outperforms desktop printer shock' (March 2006); 'In case you're reading this on the bog, here are some equations of motion' (May 2006); 'Men, rise up and embrace the wheelbrace' (May 2006); 'Classic cars – you have been warned' (May 2006); 'I'm gay, but not that gay' (June 2006); 'The building blocks of the car of the future' (June 2006); 'Only the French would build a car designed to break down' (June 2006); 'Britain's surface industry fails to deliver' (July 2006).
Conde Nast Traveller
'A cheap holiday in someone else's camper van misery' (August 2002).
INDEX
AA
abandoned cars
ABS
'achievement motive'
aeroplanes