MY WEEK IN CARS
MONDAY
Whenever I turn up at McLaren’s magnificent Woking Technology Centre, officially opened 20 years ago, I wonder whether those who work there ever get over the sense of wonder that we visitors feel. To me, the MTC is as magnificent as ever, and I especially love the way your excitement rises as you drive around the lake, enter the glass doors, walk past some of the world’s greatest racing cars and pitch up beside the red Austin 7 that Bruce McLaren and his dad used to race on the beach in New Zealand. I first read about that as a kid in Australia.
My latest visit was with my colleague Jonathan Bryce to see the new Artura Spider, which brings with it a suite of tweaks for the fixed-head model (see p10). We spent 90 minutes with chief engineer Andy Beale learning about the cars in detail. He talked a lot about giving the cars extra “bandwidth”, which is to say aiming the rewards of driving at normal drivers as well as experts; making the cars comfortable when going slowly as well as fast; and making them quiet when necessary and stirringly noisy when desired.
To me, that’s the achievement of modern supercar makers: an Artura is five times easier than a Lamborghini Countach to drive yet more enjoyable more of the time.
TUESDAY
A friend of mine has just finished whizzing me up the road in a 2018, 30,000-mile, dealer-serviced Jaguar XE P250 that he bought a couple of weekends ago for £12,500. It was like meeting an old friend and realising in a flash just how much you’ve missed them. An XE was my daily driver three or four years ago, and I suddenly remembered how brilliantly it steered, handled and looked. Also how compact it was: designer Ian Callum told us at launch that to house its powerful engine, sophisticated suspension, mandatory crash structure and 500-mile fuel capacity, it simply couldn’t be any smaller.
At the time, the XE got tarred and feathered for not being a BMW 3 Series. Nowadays it looks like one of the best-driving, best-value saloons going.
WEDNESDAY
European car industry body the ACEA reckons we need a genre of cheap, small, green, electric cars similar to Japan’s kei class, invented after the war to boost the local industry and put the country on wheels. A Glasgow business called Startline Motor Finance agrees this with proposition for the modern era, having polled 301 customers and 61 dealers.
So do I. Some of the most engaging baby ca
