Читать книгу Life in the Fast Lane: The Johnson Guide to Cars - Boris Johnson - Страница 6

Lexus have pitched the IS200 against the luxury car big boys. So why have they given it the voice of a girl?

Come on, baby, I say tersely to the girl, speak to me for heaven’s sake. You know how it is when you’re relying on some chick to map-read and they go all silent and sulky? We are coming down New North Road and some key decisions are in prospect. I’m not getting the help I need so I give Carol a poke with my index finger, because that’s the kind of relationship we have.

Come on, darling, we’re dawdling here in the middle of the road and there’s a gravel truck behind us that wants urgently to deliver its gravel. Is it right or left? And I jab her again, harder, because that’s the sort of guy I am, and then Carol speaks: so cool, so low, so scrotum-tighteningly thoughtful.

‘In a quarter of a mile,’ she says, ‘turn right.’

Ah, don’t you love her? She’s somewhere in her early thirties and her voice is perfectly pitched to mesh, to blend, above all not to offend the turbulent emotions of a guy lost in the sweltering Palio of the London traffic.

They’ve done tests on your average, red-blooded, Lexus-buying British male, and they’ve found that he’s a tricky customer. Give him a man’s voice telling him what to do—some jerk with a plummy accent—when he’s trying to do a U-turn in the middle of the Strand, or tax him with some toffee-nosed git correcting his choice of route, and what does he do? Under laboratory conditions your red-blooded, Lexus-buying male feels the veins in his neck become so engorged with incontinent rage that his collar button pops and, pow! He lets it all out with one savage blow of his left fist.

Crunch. Tinkle. Voice silent. Which is a pity, since Carol is the cleverest thing on four wheels. For a paltry £2,100 extra your IS200 Lexus is fitted with a GPS satellite guidance system, a gizmo of such mind-bending sophistication that to see her for the first time is to feel like a South Sea Islander seeing his first aeroplane, or stout Cortez gazing at the Pacific. Imagine a talking A–Z, bashfully unfurling herself on the dashboard every time you turn the ignition. Imagine maps, gorgeous colourful maps of every corner of the British Isles, with the one-way streets helpfully marked out.

The Lexus IS200, fitted with a GPS satellite guidance system, a gizmo of mind-bending sophistication.

Carol’s perfectly pitched to mesh, to

blend, above all not to offend the

turbulent emotions of a guy lost in the

sweltering Palio of the London traffic.

Then imagine your route illuminated by a thick blue line, every revolution of your wheels transmitted—ping—to a satellite transponder, and ping, somewhere in the inky wastes of the heavens a throbbing nose-cone breaks off from transmitting Rupert Murdoch’s ball-by-ball pornography to the people of Zimbabwe and tells your car there are exactly 150 yards to go before a right turn on the New North Road. Yes, that’s you, that blue line inching down that street before your eyes, and you gaze in rapture until—‘Whoa, sorry old fruit, didn’t see you there,’ you say to the weaving, terrified cyclist.

Ahem: that is one disadvantage—the display doesn’t show what else is on your street, and until all vehicles and pedestrians have their own satellite linkups and we can drive about on instruments only, it is as well not to ignore that amazing technological breakthrough—the transparent windscreen. ‘Whoa there’, I say to the cyclist, but thanks to the sensational disc brakes of the Lexus he is unharmed, and shakes his fist in friendly greeting.

‘In 50 yards…’ says Carol, and I think how much I love that use of yards; yes, she’s an imperial measurements sort of girl, Carol—strait-laced but sensuous, firm but tender, like an NHS nurse brusquely fluffing your pillows and then leaning over to take your temperature in fahrenheit, the watch pinned on to her snowy bosom, her ample bosoms…‘In 50 yards,’ says Carol, ‘right turn.’ And then I think, wait a mo…

Hang on, girlie. What do you mean ‘right turn’? How do you know that? This route is, I confess, well-known to me, since after working late in the evening I occasionally catch a cab home. This infrequent habit (expenses department, please note) taught me that to get from Islington to Canary Wharf it is cheapest and quickest to go via Commercial Road, though if you look at the map it appears that you go by Hackney. It costs roughly £11 to go my route, and it costs £14 to go the route the cabbies instinctively set out on.

Now, you would have thought that Carol could merely compute the shortest distance between two points; you’d have thought that like the cabbies, she’d ignore the traffic lights, the mini-roundabouts, the sleeping policemen and go via Hackney, even though it is slower. But no! I think she understands. I think she knows. Farewell A–Zs, you useless maps with the key page always torn out: may you rot in the boot in a compote of baby yoghurt and engine oil. Goodbye all you cabbies who boast of ‘The Knowledge’. Adieu to the time-honoured pelmanism of black-cab drivers, the weeks they spend on bicycles committing the streets of London to their memory: what a devastating rebuke Carol has delivered to their chauvinism.

Farewell A–Zs, you useless maps. Goodbye all you cabbies who boast of ‘The Knowledge’.

She doesn’t raise her voice; she doesn’t hit you with the map; and even if you accidentally hit her with your left hand and turn her off, she soon comes back to life and, with geisha-like deference, excogitates your next move. ‘In half a mile, turn right. Shortly after that, turn left,’ she says. Yes, you ask yourself, was there ever a girl so easy to turn on? ‘Keep left,’ she is saying as we come towards Spitalfields, ‘keep left.’

In fact, there are three forks here. ‘Keep left’, says Carol again, as obstinately as a guide in the old Soviet Union, with brown stockings and suspenders. Now this time, I think, she’s pushing me too far. She can’t be serious.

But such is her prestige by now, so insistent is her voice, that I do as she says. I keep left, and we end up in a one-way system in Hoxton market.

Vital statistics

In May 1999, the IS200 was launched against the BMW 3 series, Audi A4 and C-Class Mercedes.

Engine 2-litre, 250bhp 6-cylinder with 6-speed manual gearbox Top speed 134mph Acceleration 0–60mph in 9.5 secs Price (1999) from £20,500

A rubbish van is very slowly loading up. We are stranded outside the Aquarius nightclub and on the beer-splashed pavement, where the morning rays are starting to bring out the best of last night’s vomit, the tough eggs are looking appraisingly at Carol and me. Get us out of this one then, Carol, I say; and maybe there was something sneery in my voice, because after that she never quite recovered her form.

We do eventually make it to Canary Wharf, after I scrape an alloy hub (sorry folks) in Hoxton. But as soon as we approach the Tower of Doom, she says, ‘Do a U-turn as soon as possible.’ I swear. That’s exactly what she says. ‘Do a U-turn as soon as possible.’ Isn’t that spooky? What does she know? And who can say she does not have my best interests in her lonely metal heart?

Big Boris and the small Smart car made a great double act…well, his

builders and the Camden clampers thought they were a funny pair