CHIRS HARRIS
We all know that silly cars are great, says Chris. But cars without windscreens are just plain stupid
“I LOVE A SILLY CAR. I LOVE LIGHTWEIGHTS AND PRETTY MUCH EVERY FAST CAR EVER”
Someone recently posted a video on Twitter of the new Aston Martin thingy without a windscreen. It was flecked with mud and crud, deploying its mighty V12 to pierce the M40’s rain at around 62mph, and the poor sod at the wheel was wearing a full-face crash helmet.
This video was a metaphor for all that’s wrong with the car industry. And this type of car – the one without a windscreen – signals the beginning of the end of a decade of mostly good things.
But that image of the grubby speedster is one of misery.
A car supposedly born out of passion traduced into a rolling metaphor for excess and stupidity. If these things had been around in Aristotle’s day, they’d have assumed some grand significance as a harbinger of imminent catastrophe: “Look out, King Philip has ordered an Elva, said Plato is a runt and he’s about to lose his s**t.”
To be clear, I love a silly car. I love lightweights and one-offs, weird garagista creations and pretty much every fast car ever made. But not having a windscreen is moronic. There is only one car that can somehow justify not having a windscreen, and that’s the Ariel Atom. It does so because there is no obvious place to put one, it’s from Somerset and Tom the boss doesn’t look unlike Shrek. The rest are utter bollocks.
Mostly, removing stuff from a car makes it better to drive – sound deadening, electronics, power steering, passengers. But the key ingredient to a happy drive is a windscreen. The stuffy old road tester in me would like to add that removing the roof is also a bad idea, but then McLaren came along with its carbon tub and that was no longer an issue. But the basic building block of enjoyable driving is a windscreen.
So when Ferrari announced the Monza thingy, I winced. It harked back to the 750 Monza race car which didn’t have a full windscreen BECAUSE IT WAS A RACING CAR. And it wasn’t some all-new lightweight special, it was an 812 that had come off second best in a tussle with an angle-grinder and weighed just as much as an 812. And this decapitated GT car cost about five times as much as the car on which it was beheaded – I mean based.
Then along came McLaren with the Elva. At least being carbon-tubbed it didn’t lose any meaningful rigidity, and being mid-engined it doesn’t look like some giant wheeled-proboscis, but it fitted the other criteria of the no-windscreen knob-fest: overpriced and targeted at the really rich, tasteless customers who could be tipped into buying Syphilis in the name of exclusivity. Strangely, there are still Elvas available to purchase if you’re interested. The Aston ruining the life of its poor test driver might sell a bit better, but who really cares?
Being hit in the face by a stone at much-mph is nasty. A wasp in the neck at 40mph feels like a dagger. Windscreens are integral to the fun of driving. If you drive a car wearing a crash helmet people rightly point and laugh at you. If you want to wear a crash helmet on the public highway, buy a motorcycle, they’re really good fun. Here endeth the lesson.