Steve Cropley
MY WEEK IN CARS
E by gum, it’s Arthur and Norman
TUESDAY
A triumphant start to the new year is swiftly followed by tragedy: I’ve had to return the Mclaren 570S Spider that has so delighted me over 650 mixed-use miles. It always takes a couple of days to get used to a Mclaren’s effect on other drivers. Some feel pressurised; some want to race; lots just want a phone pic. But you soon forget all that and start revelling in the delicious precision of every single driver action: every change of direction, every burst of torque, every near-instant gearchange and every dab of brake, the retardation magically attuned to your intentions. When you’re not in a car like this (ie most of the time), you tend to return to the default assumption: Mclarens are for going fast. And they are. But this 570S most excelled at making my slowest and most humdrum journey feel special.
WEDNESDAY
It’s tempting to be dragged down by bad news: Jaguar Land Rover is on the back foot and Ford is planning more European ‘right-sizing’. Bentley has been chided for not making enough money and Rolls-royce is fretting about Brexit’s effect on its parts supplies. Oh, and everyone who sells new cars (especially diesels) is up to here with being blind-sided by legislators loading them with contradictory, illogical, short-termist regulations at this worst of times. Yet as Mr Editor Tisshaw makes clear elsewhere in this magazine, there’s still much to be proud of and to look forward to in 2019. And remember, motor industry success is cyclical and always has been. We’re coming out of a decade-long period of strength, longer than usual because the 2008 recession was so deep. Those who operate car businesses are facing big problems, for sure, but they’ve seen tough times before. They won’t thank me for saying this, but they’re not entirely unprepared.
THURSDAY
The happy news that Kia is working to provide a good experience for keen drivers in the autonomous era does two things: it provides hope for those of us who so love driving that we won’t willingly give it up and it shows how far Kia has come since it made laughably cheap cars of small distinction, not long ago. Seems mood detectors will optimise and personalise our cabins. There’s still no steering wheel. Occupants and car will communicate instead by “the unspoken language of emotional feeling”. Which seems to suggest that the cabin will make us feel so damn good we’ll hardly care how we go, or where.
There’s much to be proud of and look forward to in 2019
FRIDAY
Despite last year’s resolve, I’ve still not taken an honest interest in Formula E, although our new motorsport expert and managing ed Damien Smith reckons there’s more driving talent there than anywhere this side of Formula 1. Still, I believe a press release from Gildo Pastor’s pioneering Venturi team has done the trick – by innocently revealing that works driver Norman Nato has just been joined by 18-yearold Arthur Leclerc. I’ve always been amused by racing drivers with ‘slow’ names. (Step forward Desmond Titterington, notable Jaguar D-type racer of the 1950s.) I just know that from now on I’ll want to know how my twin favourites Arthur and Norman are faring…
SATURDAY
Short journey in Andrew Frankel’s BMW 740d long-term test car followed by a squirt in our household Mazda MX-5. Both justify the description ‘good handling’ yet they’re hugely different. Worrying over this, I had a brainwave: the difference is in the transitions. The what? It’s a matter of how elegantly (or otherwise) these cars go from cornering hard one way to cornering hard the other. If a car can pull neat, accurate transitions, you can forgive it almost anything else.